Image source: Source: Stockholms stadsmuseet
How did a working-class identity form in Stockholm's taverns at the end of the nineteenth-century?
The constant spectre of underemployment and poverty bedevilled Stockholm’s working class that responded by devising unique strategies to resist economic and social subjugation. The geographer Allan Pred incorporates numerous methodologies to demonstrate how an interdisciplinary approach best discovers the lived experiences of Stockholm’s dock workers, their movement within the city, and their unique language. Since his analysis, scholars interested in the role of port cities and the process of globalisation have reinterpreted these spaces as “contact zones” and “liminal spaces” and their role in the movement of labour within great empires or the establishment of a global bourgeoisie. This dissertation incorporates a multidisciplinary approach to reveal the resistance strategies of Stockholm’s working-class men and women as they responded to fluctuations in the maritime economy as this port city joined the global economy. It examines how these strategies served as the basis for the construction of a class identity decades before the rise of labour unionism when workers began to employ more militant acts of rebellion to resist their employers’ agendas. This study represents an important contribution to the fields of gender, social, labour and global history during a period of unparalleled demographic, economic, political, social and cultural upheaval. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the myriad social and economic strategies working-class men and women living in Stockholm employed during their daily lives to navigate the devastating effects of globalisation during the late nineteenth century. This city serves as an excellent case study because the consequences of its rapid increase in population expands our appreciation of the resilience of the working class in a part of the world that historians have typically considered peripheral to the process of globalisation since countries on the North Sea fringe lagged behind the market integration on the immediate Atlantic.
