Norbert Götz

Södertörn University | sh · Institute of Contemporary History

This is an innovative new history of famine relief and humanitarianism. The authors apply a moral economy approach to shed new light on the forces and ideas that motivated and shaped humanitarian aid during the Great Irish Famine, the famine of 1921-1922 in Soviet Russia and the Ukraine, and the 1980s Ethiopian famine. They place these episodes wit...

This overview begins with a discussion of how the term NGO entered international relations in connection with the UN Charter conference. It continues with a chronological sketch of the emergence of NGOs in the nineteenth century. It then discusses the quantitative development of NGOs until today, periodisation issues, and major trends, suggesting a...

‘Mental map’ is a term referring to the way people orientate themselves in their spatial surroundings and how they perceive the world. Alongside ‘cognitive map’, its approximate synonym, the concept of a mental map is established in geography, the behavioral sciences, and psychology. Over the past two decades the idea of mental maps has been adopte...

This article engages with political region building by examining the diverging conceptions of the Baltic Sea region since the 1970s. It maps the fuzzy geography arising from the enmeshment of territory with a multitude of frameworks for regional action. After 1989, the region became the object of interregional and neighborhood policies established...

The article highlights the shift from “organized humanitarianism” to “expressive humanitarianism”, characterized by the increasing influence of four key elements: media, voluntary organizations, witness accounts, and the role of spectacle and celebrities. This research offers valuable empirical context for the transformation of humanitarianism arou...

Political Histories of Conflict: Social Cleavages, Political Ideologies, Clashes of Sovereignty - 11th Annual Conference of the Association for Political History (APH), Södertörn University, 12-14 June 2024. Organisers: Norbert Götz, Andreas Åkerlund, Yulia Gradskova, Francesco Zavatti.

Book of Abstracts of "Political Histories of Conflict: Social Cleavages, Political Ideologies, Clashes of Sovereignty" - 11th Annual Conference of the Association for Political History (APH), Södertörn University, 12-14 June 2024. Organisers: Norbert Götz, Andreas Åkerlund, Yulia Gradskova, Francesco Zavatti

Context, variety and genealogy are among the contributions historical studies generally make to populism research. This chapter argues that there is another, as yet almost untapped, resource in historical approaches, namely a theory of moral economy that, when stripped of normative presumptions and idiographic limitations, can improve our understan...

While late modernity in Europe and elsewhere is characterized by growing individualism and the decline of grand narratives, this is happening in an increasingly interconnected world. As we show in this chapter for the Red Cross Movement and other organizations such as MSF, the humanitarian sector is exposed to both tendencies and has undergone a ma...

The concept of mental maps is used in several disciplines including geography, psychology, history, linguistics, economics, anthropology, political science, and computer game design. However, until now, there has been little communication between these disciplines and methodological schools involved in mental mapping. Mental Maps: Geographical and...

Case studies on the Great Irish Famine 1840s, the Russian famine 1921-23, and the famine in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s.

OPEN ACCESS: https://doi.org/10.1080/08873631.2018.1426953

Zusammenfassung Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht am Beispiel Erfurts die Verteilung humanitärer Hilfsgelder des Londoner „Committee for Relieving the Distresses in Germany and Other Parts of the Continent“ (1805–1815). Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den Jahren 1814 und 1815, denn die Quellen zur ersten Hilfskampagne der Jahre 1805 und 1806 sind...

Sweden's relationship with the United Nations fluctuated considerably between 1941 and 1946. This article examines how the Nordic country's own security interests were sometimes viewed as compatible and sometimes at odds with membership of the United Nations. The discussions surrounding Sweden's accession to the United Nations and actions of its fi...

OPEN ACCESS: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2015.1054556 — This article challenges E.P. Thompson's definition of 'moral economy' as a traditional consensus of crowd rights that were swept away by market forces. Instead, it suggests that the concept has the potential of improving the understanding of modern civil society. Moral economy was a term...

The 'open society' has become a watchword of liberal democracy and the market system in the modern globalized world. Openness stands for individual opportunity and collective reason, as well as bottom-up empower-ment and top-down transparency. It has become a cherished value, despite its vagueness and the connotation of vulnerability that surrounds...

The London-based Committee for Relieving the Distressed Inhabitants of Germany, and Other Parts of the Continent is an early example of a large-scale voluntary relief programme that has gone unappreciated in the annals of humanitarianism. The present article examines the period in 1808 and 1809 when this committee redirected its relief efforts to S...

The chapter discusses the rise of identity politics after the cultural changes of 1968 and the political changes of 1989, with a focus on the Baltic Sea region.

The essays in this collection present research on national, class, and gender identities in the Baltic Sea Region and Eastern Europe being conducted by researchers based at the Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University, Stockholm. The contributors focus on transnational flow as they explore Danish, Estonian, Finnish, German, Lithuania...

Rationales of Humanitarianism: The Case of British Relief to Germany, 1805–1815 This article examines the British humanitarian relief campaign initiated by the Committee for Relieving the Distresses in Germany and Other Parts of the Continent (1805–1815). It demonstrates the significance of two aspects for the campaign: the activism of London-based...

The transdisciplinary coherence of area studies can be enhanced through a cross-fertilisation of historical and social sciences with concepts derived from philology and cultural studies. The five Scandinavian power investigations (Norway 1972–1982, Sweden 1985–1990, Denmark 1997–2003, Norway 1997–2003, and Finland 2007–2010) are here recognised as...

Five power investigations have been conducted in the Nordic countries since 1972, and they constitute a unique body of scholarly work. The close connection of these investigations to state power has not dissuaded prominent scholars from participating in them, nor have their findings evoked strong criticism. Combining politically guided perspectives...

Obwohl oder gerade weil es im Schwedischen keine griffige Entsprechung des deutschen Begriffs Verband gibt – man behilft sich mit dem mehrdeutigen Wort organisation, gelegentlich wird auch von „Interessenorganisation“, „(ideellem) Verein“ oder „Zusammenschluss“ gesprochen –, hat die Rede vom schwedischen Modellcharakter für den Bereich des Verbands...

The ascendency of executive power in the presence of weak parliamentary and societal control has given rise to a need for deliberative forms of diplomacy in international relations. As Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden regularly include members of parliament, party representatives, and representatives of civil society in their delegatio...

Existing research on Scandinavian peace activism has largely been guided by a traditional nation-state perspective and an institutionalist outlook. This view puts the starting point of Scandinavian peace activism in the 1880s, the time when the first peace associations were established in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The article at hand demonstrate...

This article examines Norwegian policy vis-à-vis the United Nations (UN) through the end of 1945. From here it will become clear that framing foreign policy orientations of the 1940s along conventional lines exaggerates the commitment of Norwegian politicians to two grand ideas. The novel idea of Atlantic alignment, developed by Norwegian circles i...

This article examines the emergence of the so-called Western European and Others Group as well as that of the caucus of European Communities at the General Assembly of the United Nations based on a study of documents from Nordic foreign ministries in the period 1945 to 1975. It shows that the global entanglement of Western Europe both stimulated an...

In this article I aim to provide a better understanding of the concept `non-governmental organization' and its implications for the politics of international relations. As the prevailing confusion about the term stems largely from poor knowledge about the politics behind its introduction and function, the overarching question asks how NGOs have bee...

From the mid-1950s on, the United Nations (UN) provided a forum for Finland to have an international presence despite its status as a neutral country in the Cold War. But until 1955, Finland's bid to join the UN was blocked by the Soviet Union. The inability to gain admission caused some Finns to favor staying outside the UN, a view that gained its...

Das Geschenk, das sich die Mitglieder zum sechzigsten Geburtstag der Vereinten Nationen selbst machten, fiel bekanntlich mager aus. In gewisser Weise ist die folgende Rezension eine Rezension von ,Rezensionen des in diesem Zusammenhang verabschiedeten Dokuments sowie der gegenwärtigen Haltung der Weltregierungen zu ihrer gemeinsamen Allzweckorganis...

The article addresses the conceptual history of the Swedish term "folkhem" (people's home) in the twentieth century.

In the wake of the Cold War, the concept of Norden (‘the North’) comprising the countries of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland has lost some of its attraction. Norden does not any longer imply a favourable position with a lower level of tension than in the rest of Europe. And, admittedly, at present there are many reasons for the promoti...

Obwohl oder gerade weil es im Schwedischen keine griffige Entsprechung des deutschen Begriffs Verband gibt — man behilft sich mit dem mehrdeutigen Wort organisation, gelegentlich wird auch von „Interessenorganisation“, „(ideellem) Verein“ oder „Zusammenschluß“ gesprochen -, hat die Rede vom schwedischen Modellcharakter für den Bereich des Verbandsw...

Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert ist zu Recht als ein "Jahrhundert der Extreme" bezeichnet worden. Die in der historischen Bewertung so unterschiedlichen nationalen und sozialen Integrationskonzepte der Volksgemeinschaft in Deutschland und des Volksheims in Schweden stehen exemplarisch für destruktive beziehungsweise konstruktive Versuche, den Herausford...

Sweden’s roll during World War II has recently been paid increasing attention to, since its proclaimed neutrality seems rather doubtful in some respects. The ambition of the following paper is not to shed more light on these questions. The focus is instead on the domestic organization of Swedish society under the condition of war in the surrounding...

Zusammenfassung Rechtsextremismus wird in der Forschung vor allem als eine Reaktion auf negative Modernisierungserfahrungen angesehen. Wirtschaftliche Probleme und Ängste sind nach dieser Sichtweise der Nährboden rechtsextremer Einstellungen und Verhaltensweisen. Bei aller Plausibilität hat diese Modernisierungsverlierer-Hypothese empirisch wenig B...

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