Stefan Jonsson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3591214 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stefan Jonsson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stefan |
| FAMILY NAME | Jonsson |
| SIGNATURE | JONSSON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Uppsala University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5462-3041 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 103 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Between Equality and Competition: The Organisational Consequences of Imagined Competition
Marketization research typically takes competition as a present condition and asks what follows. We ask what precedes it. University School, a Swedish municipal upper-secondary school, was established in 2005 against private competitors that did not arrive for 16 years. Drawing on Beckert’s fictional expectations, we distinguish the imaginary of competition – the cultural material available in a field – from imagined competition, the anticipation…
Teaching schools to compete: The case of Swedish upper secondary education
Significant efforts have been made to promote competition in public service sectors, expanding the reach of competition into non-economic fields. Surprisingly little is, however, known about the process by which competition is introduced into such settings. We examine this process, focusing on a Swedish municipality's efforts to implement competition for students among its schools. By incorporating recent theoretical advancements regarding compet…
The Aesthetics of Protest on Kyiv's Maidan: Reflections on Political Emergence and the Twenty-First-Century Crowd
This essay argues that aesthetic works offer an understanding of the performativity of democratic protests and crowd action. It analyzes a handful of artworks from the Ukrainian Revolution of 2013-2014. The article demonstrates how aesthetic works express what may be termed political emergence: people who have no say in political institutions come together to change the political order. Aesthetic works enable an understanding of political emergen…
Unfolding Political Emergence: The Knowledge of Visual Artworks in Peter Weiss'sThe Aesthetics of Resistance
Starting out from the interpretation of Picasso's Guernica in Peter Weiss's The Aesthetics of Resistance, this essay discusses how, why, and for what purposes Weiss inserted extensive discussions of classical and contemporary artworks in his novel. More specifically, and by introducing the two notions of the foldout and political emergence, the essay investigates how the visual artworks in Weiss's narrative reconfigure understandings of temporali…
Cultures of rejection in the Covid-19 crisis
This article offers a collectively developed analysis of the Covid-19 crisis as it relates to contemporary cultures of rejection, i.e. the socio-cultural conditions in which authoritarian and right-wing populist politics thrive, in Europe. We explore how the pandemic and its management reinforces, transforms and/or overrides existing antagonisms and institutes new ones in Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Germany and Sweden. We discuss how the Covid-19 c…
Explaining the homogeneous diffusion of Covid-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions across heterogeneous countries
Significance We investigate what drives OECD countries to adopt COVID-19 restrictive policies such as lockdowns and school closures, and find that government policies are strongly driven by the policies initiated in other countries. The level of democracy also matters: While strong democracies are slower to initiate restrictive policies, they are more likely to follow the policies of nearby countries. Following the lead of others rather than maki…
A society which is not: Political emergence and migrant agency
This essay represents an effort to rethink the relationship between political emergence and migrant agency. This undertaking has a theoretical motivation. Mainstream human and social sciences seem to be at an impasse because of their structural inability to interpret and explain systemic crises and contradictions. While this is a topic far too complex to be dealt with in a brief essay, the following pages will explore three expressions of this im…
Un soulèvement de toutes les couleurs - notes sur les Gilets jaunes
Quels espoirs suscitent les Gilets jaunes pour le reste de l’Europe ou pour la societe mondiale ? En tant qu’observateur de la peripherie nord du continent, je pose la question suivante : s’agit-il
Isomorphism, Diffusion and Decoupling: Concept Evolution and Theoretical Challenges
This chapter traces the evolution of the core theoretical constructs of isomorphism, decoupling and diffusion in organizational institutionalism. We first review the original theoretical formulations of these constructs and then examine their evolution in empirical research conducted over the past four decades. We point to unexamined and challenging aspects of this conceptual evolution, including the causal relationships among these core theoreti…
Eurafrica Incognita: The Colonial Origins of the European Union
Research Article| April 01 2017 Eurafrica Incognita: The Colonial Origins of the European Union Peo Hansen; Peo Hansen Peo Hansen is professor of political science at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University. A former senior fellow at the Remarque Institute at New York University, his research areas include European integration, EU migration policy, postwar European geopolitics, and the history…
On Pia Arke
Pia Arke’s work reminds Danes and Europeans of a history they never got to know, or were taught not to know, because it happened overseas. It began to be shown and discussed at the beginning of the 1990s,a period when notions of globalisation offered new models for understanding the dynamics of the world and exposed neglected historical and aesthetic issues. Among the most important of these issues were the colonial legacies of Western European s…
Austere Histories in European Societies: Social Exclusion and the Contest of Colonial Memories
Austere Histories in European Societies discusses how the current economic and political crisis in Europe affects not just our present but also our views and interpretations of the past. The contributions to the book examine a firmly defined problem: in which ways do crisis and decline in contemporary Europe trigger a selective forgetting and remodelling of the past? This problem is addressed through a set of questions, which the contributors to …
Where humanism finds its ends: Lessons from Pia Arke and Katarina Pirak Sikku on the difficulty of narrating the Arctic
This article argues that any attempt to conceive of a new narrative of the postcolonial Arctic will fail if it does not also entail a new narrative of European history. It begins by asserting the strong afterlife of colonial narratives of the Arctic through the example of the author’s own difficulty in writing an authentic, ethically acceptable report about East Greenland. By drawing on further examples, and by introducing narratological theory, …
Europas plantage? Afrikas plats i EU: S historia
This essay describes the history of the Eurafrican project as it evolved from the Pan-European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (i.e. today’s EU) in the late 1950s. By way of conclusion, the article also discusses how this history affects current relations between Africa and the EU. As shown in the article practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working …
Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism
In order to think theoretically about our global age it is important to understand how the global has been conceived historically. 'Eurafrica' was an intellectual endeavor and political project that from the 1920s saw Europe's future survival - its continued role in history - as completely bound up with Europe's successful merger with Africa. In its time the concept of Eurafrica was tremendously influential in the process of European integration.…
Another Colonialism: Africa in the History of E uropean Integration
Today's E uropean U nion was founded in a 1950s marked by its member states' involvement in numerous colonial conflicts and with the colonial question firmly entrenched on the E uropean and international agenda. This notwithstanding, there is hardly any scholarly investigations to date that have examined colonialism's bearing on the historical project and process of E uropean integration. In tackling this puzzle, the present article proceeds in t…
Crowds and Democracy: The Idea and Image of the Masses from Revolution to Fascism
Between 1918 and 1933, the masses became a decisive preoccupation of European culture, fueling modernist movements in art, literature, architecture, theater, and cinema, as well as the rise of comm
After Individuality: Freud's Mass Psychology and Weimar Politics
In Mass Psychology and Analysis of the “I” (1921), Sigmund Freud opens a new chapter in the history of crowd psychology by arguing that masses are produced through processes of identification with authoritarian leadership. This essay asks how it is that Freud's mass theory has been interpreted both as a theory of the psyche and as a theory of society and, as for the latter alternative, as a theory of fascism and of social cohesion in general. Fre…
Imperial Origins of European Integration and the Case of Eurafrica: A Reply to Gary Marks’‘Europe and Its Empires’
This article offers a critique of Gary Marks’ recent article in JCMS , entitled ‘Europe and Its Empires: From Rome to the European Union’. Although it sympathizes with Marks’ invocation of empire as a key theoretical concept and historical category in the study of European integration, it fundamentally disagrees with his ‘continentalist’ operationalization. Marks chooses to discuss the nexus of empire and European integration exclusively with ref…
Bringing Africa as a ‘Dowry to Europe: European Integration and the Eurafrican Project, 1920–1960
This essay examines the history of the ‘Eurafrican project’ as it evolved from the Pan-European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (EEC) (i.e. today's EU) in the late 1950s. As shown in the essay, practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working towards European integration during this period placed Africa's incorporation into the European enterprise as a c…
Ubiquity and Legitimacy: Disentangling Diffusion and Institutionalization
Diffusion and institutionalization are of prime sociological importance, as both processes unfold at the intersections of relations and structures, as well as persistence and change. Yet they are often confounded, leading to theoretical and methodological biases that hinder the development of generalizable arguments. We look at diffusion and institutionalization distinctively, each as both a process and an outcome in terms of three dimensions: th…
The Ideology of Universalism
Contending visions of universality, from Kantian common sense to the doctrine of human rights. Can a constellation of singularities emerge within the standardization envisaged by globalized production? Prompts from Musil, Gursky and the carpet-weavers of Kuyan-Bulak
Building Eurafrica: Reviving Colonialism through European Integration, 1920–60
This paper examines the history of the ‘Eurafrican project’ as it evolved from the Pan‐ European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (EEC) (i.e. today’s EU) in the late 1950s. As we show, practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working towards European integration during this period placed Africa’s incorporation into the European enterprise as a central obj…
Isomorphism, Diffusion and Decoupling
A Citizen of Kakania
An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Spivak: I think now of the necessity of unlearning one's learning in a slightly different way from when I first said it. I understand all my work as being in a sort of stream of learning how to unlearn and what to unlearn, because my positions are growing and changing so much; since I don't really work from within an expertise, I have to really be on my feet learning new things all the time, and as I learn these new things, my positions change. I…
Ubiquity and Legitimacy: Disentangling Diffusion and Institutionalization
Diffusion and institutionalization are of prime sociological importance, as both processes unfold at the intersections of relations and structures, as well as persistence and change. Yet they are often confounded, leading to theoretical and methodological biases that hinder the development of generalizable arguments. We look at diffusion and institutionalization distinctively, each as both a process and an outcome in terms of three dimensions: th…
Imperial Origins of European Integration and the Case of Eurafrica: A Reply to Gary Marks’‘Europe and Its Empires’
This article offers a critique of Gary Marks’ recent article in JCMS , entitled ‘Europe and Its Empires: From Rome to the European Union’. Although it sympathizes with Marks’ invocation of empire as a key theoretical concept and historical category in the study of European integration, it fundamentally disagrees with his ‘continentalist’ operationalization. Marks chooses to discuss the nexus of empire and European integration exclusively with ref…
Bringing Africa as a ‘Dowry to Europe: European Integration and the Eurafrican Project, 1920–1960
This essay examines the history of the ‘Eurafrican project’ as it evolved from the Pan-European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (EEC) (i.e. today's EU) in the late 1950s. As shown in the essay, practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working towards European integration during this period placed Africa's incorporation into the European enterprise as a c…
Another Colonialism: Africa in the History of E uropean Integration
Today's E uropean U nion was founded in a 1950s marked by its member states' involvement in numerous colonial conflicts and with the colonial question firmly entrenched on the E uropean and international agenda. This notwithstanding, there is hardly any scholarly investigations to date that have examined colonialism's bearing on the historical project and process of E uropean integration. In tackling this puzzle, the present article proceeds in t…
A society which is not: Political emergence and migrant agency
This essay represents an effort to rethink the relationship between political emergence and migrant agency. This undertaking has a theoretical motivation. Mainstream human and social sciences seem to be at an impasse because of their structural inability to interpret and explain systemic crises and contradictions. While this is a topic far too complex to be dealt with in a brief essay, the following pages will explore three expressions of this im…
Eurafrica Incognita: The Colonial Origins of the European Union
Research Article| April 01 2017 Eurafrica Incognita: The Colonial Origins of the European Union Peo Hansen; Peo Hansen Peo Hansen is professor of political science at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University. A former senior fellow at the Remarque Institute at New York University, his research areas include European integration, EU migration policy, postwar European geopolitics, and the history…
Society Degree Zero: Christ, Communism, and the Madness of Crowds in the Art of James Ensor
Research Article| August 01 2001 Society Degree Zero: Christ, Communism, and the Madness of Crowds in the Art of James Ensor Stefan Jonsson Stefan Jonsson Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (2001) 75 (1): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2001.75.1.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo …
Teaching schools to compete: The case of Swedish upper secondary education
Significant efforts have been made to promote competition in public service sectors, expanding the reach of competition into non-economic fields. Surprisingly little is, however, known about the process by which competition is introduced into such settings. We examine this process, focusing on a Swedish municipality's efforts to implement competition for students among its schools. By incorporating recent theoretical advancements regarding compet…
On Pia Arke
Pia Arke’s work reminds Danes and Europeans of a history they never got to know, or were taught not to know, because it happened overseas. It began to be shown and discussed at the beginning of the 1990s,a period when notions of globalisation offered new models for understanding the dynamics of the world and exposed neglected historical and aesthetic issues. Among the most important of these issues were the colonial legacies of Western European s…
After Individuality: Freud's Mass Psychology and Weimar Politics
In Mass Psychology and Analysis of the “I” (1921), Sigmund Freud opens a new chapter in the history of crowd psychology by arguing that masses are produced through processes of identification with authoritarian leadership. This essay asks how it is that Freud's mass theory has been interpreted both as a theory of the psyche and as a theory of society and, as for the latter alternative, as a theory of fascism and of social cohesion in general. Fre…
The Ideology of Universalism
Contending visions of universality, from Kantian common sense to the doctrine of human rights. Can a constellation of singularities emerge within the standardization envisaged by globalized production? Prompts from Musil, Gursky and the carpet-weavers of Kuyan-Bulak
An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Spivak: I think now of the necessity of unlearning one's learning in a slightly different way from when I first said it. I understand all my work as being in a sort of stream of learning how to unlearn and what to unlearn, because my positions are growing and changing so much; since I don't really work from within an expertise, I have to really be on my feet learning new things all the time, and as I learn these new things, my positions change. I…
Neither Inside nor Outside: "Subjectivity and the Spaces of Modernity in Robert Musil's "The Man without Qualities
Robert Musil once wrote short essay about doors. He presented rather eccentric thesis: Doors are thing of the past, even if back doors are still said to crop up at architectural competitions.1 Indulging in the quasi-scientific jargon that is standard feature of his shrewd satire, Musil defines the door as a rectangular wooden frame set in the wall, on which moveable board is fastened. The point, according to Musil, is that this piece of wood lose…
Society Degree Zero: Christ, Communism, and the Madness of Crowds in the Art of James Ensor
Research Article| August 01 2001 Society Degree Zero: Christ, Communism, and the Madness of Crowds in the Art of James Ensor Stefan Jonsson Stefan Jonsson Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (2001) 75 (1): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2001.75.1.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo …
Subject without Nation. Robert Musil and the History of Modern Identity
A Citizen of Kakania
Isomorphism, Diffusion and Decoupling
Building Eurafrica: Reviving Colonialism through European Integration, 1920–60
This paper examines the history of the ‘Eurafrican project’ as it evolved from the Pan‐ European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (EEC) (i.e. today’s EU) in the late 1950s. As we show, practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working towards European integration during this period placed Africa’s incorporation into the European enterprise as a central obj…
The Ideology of Universalism
Contending visions of universality, from Kantian common sense to the doctrine of human rights. Can a constellation of singularities emerge within the standardization envisaged by globalized production? Prompts from Musil, Gursky and the carpet-weavers of Kuyan-Bulak
Bringing Africa as a ‘Dowry to Europe: European Integration and the Eurafrican Project, 1920–1960
This essay examines the history of the ‘Eurafrican project’ as it evolved from the Pan-European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (EEC) (i.e. today's EU) in the late 1950s. As shown in the essay, practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working towards European integration during this period placed Africa's incorporation into the European enterprise as a c…
Ubiquity and Legitimacy: Disentangling Diffusion and Institutionalization
Diffusion and institutionalization are of prime sociological importance, as both processes unfold at the intersections of relations and structures, as well as persistence and change. Yet they are often confounded, leading to theoretical and methodological biases that hinder the development of generalizable arguments. We look at diffusion and institutionalization distinctively, each as both a process and an outcome in terms of three dimensions: th…
Imperial Origins of European Integration and the Case of Eurafrica: A Reply to Gary Marks’‘Europe and Its Empires’
This article offers a critique of Gary Marks’ recent article in JCMS , entitled ‘Europe and Its Empires: From Rome to the European Union’. Although it sympathizes with Marks’ invocation of empire as a key theoretical concept and historical category in the study of European integration, it fundamentally disagrees with his ‘continentalist’ operationalization. Marks chooses to discuss the nexus of empire and European integration exclusively with ref…
Crowds and Democracy: The Idea and Image of the Masses from Revolution to Fascism
Between 1918 and 1933, the masses became a decisive preoccupation of European culture, fueling modernist movements in art, literature, architecture, theater, and cinema, as well as the rise of comm
After Individuality: Freud's Mass Psychology and Weimar Politics
In Mass Psychology and Analysis of the “I” (1921), Sigmund Freud opens a new chapter in the history of crowd psychology by arguing that masses are produced through processes of identification with authoritarian leadership. This essay asks how it is that Freud's mass theory has been interpreted both as a theory of the psyche and as a theory of society and, as for the latter alternative, as a theory of fascism and of social cohesion in general. Fre…
Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism
In order to think theoretically about our global age it is important to understand how the global has been conceived historically. 'Eurafrica' was an intellectual endeavor and political project that from the 1920s saw Europe's future survival - its continued role in history - as completely bound up with Europe's successful merger with Africa. In its time the concept of Eurafrica was tremendously influential in the process of European integration.…
Another Colonialism: Africa in the History of E uropean Integration
Today's E uropean U nion was founded in a 1950s marked by its member states' involvement in numerous colonial conflicts and with the colonial question firmly entrenched on the E uropean and international agenda. This notwithstanding, there is hardly any scholarly investigations to date that have examined colonialism's bearing on the historical project and process of E uropean integration. In tackling this puzzle, the present article proceeds in t…
Europas plantage? Afrikas plats i EU: S historia
This essay describes the history of the Eurafrican project as it evolved from the Pan-European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (i.e. today’s EU) in the late 1950s. By way of conclusion, the article also discusses how this history affects current relations between Africa and the EU. As shown in the article practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working …
Austere Histories in European Societies: Social Exclusion and the Contest of Colonial Memories
Austere Histories in European Societies discusses how the current economic and political crisis in Europe affects not just our present but also our views and interpretations of the past. The contributions to the book examine a firmly defined problem: in which ways do crisis and decline in contemporary Europe trigger a selective forgetting and remodelling of the past? This problem is addressed through a set of questions, which the contributors to …
Where humanism finds its ends: Lessons from Pia Arke and Katarina Pirak Sikku on the difficulty of narrating the Arctic
This article argues that any attempt to conceive of a new narrative of the postcolonial Arctic will fail if it does not also entail a new narrative of European history. It begins by asserting the strong afterlife of colonial narratives of the Arctic through the example of the author’s own difficulty in writing an authentic, ethically acceptable report about East Greenland. By drawing on further examples, and by introducing narratological theory, …
Isomorphism, Diffusion and Decoupling: Concept Evolution and Theoretical Challenges
This chapter traces the evolution of the core theoretical constructs of isomorphism, decoupling and diffusion in organizational institutionalism. We first review the original theoretical formulations of these constructs and then examine their evolution in empirical research conducted over the past four decades. We point to unexamined and challenging aspects of this conceptual evolution, including the causal relationships among these core theoreti…
Eurafrica Incognita: The Colonial Origins of the European Union
Research Article| April 01 2017 Eurafrica Incognita: The Colonial Origins of the European Union Peo Hansen; Peo Hansen Peo Hansen is professor of political science at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University. A former senior fellow at the Remarque Institute at New York University, his research areas include European integration, EU migration policy, postwar European geopolitics, and the history…
On Pia Arke
Pia Arke’s work reminds Danes and Europeans of a history they never got to know, or were taught not to know, because it happened overseas. It began to be shown and discussed at the beginning of the 1990s,a period when notions of globalisation offered new models for understanding the dynamics of the world and exposed neglected historical and aesthetic issues. Among the most important of these issues were the colonial legacies of Western European s…
Un soulèvement de toutes les couleurs - notes sur les Gilets jaunes
Quels espoirs suscitent les Gilets jaunes pour le reste de l’Europe ou pour la societe mondiale ? En tant qu’observateur de la peripherie nord du continent, je pose la question suivante : s’agit-il
Explaining the homogeneous diffusion of Covid-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions across heterogeneous countries
Significance We investigate what drives OECD countries to adopt COVID-19 restrictive policies such as lockdowns and school closures, and find that government policies are strongly driven by the policies initiated in other countries. The level of democracy also matters: While strong democracies are slower to initiate restrictive policies, they are more likely to follow the policies of nearby countries. Following the lead of others rather than maki…
A society which is not: Political emergence and migrant agency
This essay represents an effort to rethink the relationship between political emergence and migrant agency. This undertaking has a theoretical motivation. Mainstream human and social sciences seem to be at an impasse because of their structural inability to interpret and explain systemic crises and contradictions. While this is a topic far too complex to be dealt with in a brief essay, the following pages will explore three expressions of this im…
Cultures of rejection in the Covid-19 crisis
This article offers a collectively developed analysis of the Covid-19 crisis as it relates to contemporary cultures of rejection, i.e. the socio-cultural conditions in which authoritarian and right-wing populist politics thrive, in Europe. We explore how the pandemic and its management reinforces, transforms and/or overrides existing antagonisms and institutes new ones in Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Germany and Sweden. We discuss how the Covid-19 c…
Political science (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Politics (13 works) · Art (8 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Colonialism (7 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Political economy (7 works)