Carolina UppenbergResearcher

About me

My main research interests are agrarian social relations during the 18th and 19th centuries, gender history and labour history. Since April 2021, I am researcher and PI for the project “Challenging the domestic. Gender division of labour and economic change studied through 19th century crofters’ households”, a three-year project funded by the the Swedish Research Council, at the Department of Economic History and International Relations at Stockholm University. Through a comparison of the gender division and organization of labour in crofters’ households between the manorial economy of southern Sweden (Skåne) and the proto-industrial economy of western Sweden (Sjuhärad area), this study will contribute to the question of how gender division of labour and structure of the economy were connected during the thorough transformation towards industrialization.

I defended my thesis in Economic history in 2018 at the University of Gothenburg. In my thesis, Servants and masters (I husbondens bröd och arbete), I studied servants in agrarian households. I used theories on power relations derived from gender history and institutional theory in order to analyse the social relations that were created in the servant institution. Between 2019-2021 I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Economic History at Lund University, in the project “Dynamic peasants? Agency and inequality in Swedish modernization”. In this project, I studied the peasant farmers’ agency in the Diet of the four estates. In this project, I published articles analysing agrarian social relations in different ways. One part concerned the peasant farmer politicians’ standpoint on the Servant Acts, in which I was analysing their double position as law makers and masters/employers to servants. Another part was about large landowners political acting in order to secure power over their tenants in the municipal voting procedures.

2023

Uppenberg, Carolina & Nilsson, Malin. "The Crofter is a Woman: Gender Division of Labour in Rural Semi-landless Households, Sweden 1800-1900". Lund Papers in Economic History; no. 2023:253, https://swopec.hhs.se/luekhi/abs/luekhi0253.htm

Uppenberg, Carolina. "Contracted coercion: Land, Labour and Gender in the Swedish Crofter Institution", Scandinavian Journal of History, 2023:5 vol. 48, pp. 593-614. https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2023.2210153.

Uppenberg, Carolina. 'Dimensions of Free and Unfree Labour in the Swedish Servant Acts, 1664-1858' in Jane Whittle & Thijs Lambrecht (eds), Labour Laws in Preindustrial Europe: The Coercion and Regulation of Wage Labour, c.1300-1850, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, pp. 164-181. https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783277681/labour-laws-in-preindustrial-europe/

2022

Uppenberg, Carolina; Olsson, Mats. / 'Under the landlord’s thumb. Municipalities and local elites in Sweden 1862–1900', Social History, 2022:3 vol. 47, pp. 265-289. DOI: 10.1080/03071022.2022.2077478

Uppenberg, Carolina. / 'Book review: Med kjønnsperspektiv på norsk historie [With gender perspective on Norwegian history]', Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2022:2 vol 70, pp. 216-217. DOI: 10.1080/03585522.2021.1932579

2021

Uppenberg, Carolina. / 'Book review: Fantastiska verb: hur man fångar uppgifter om kön och arbete, Västmanland 1720-1880', Historisk tidskrift, 2021:3 vol. 141, pp. 572-575.

Østhus, Hanne; Uppenberg, Carolina. / ‘Servants in the early-modern Nordic countries – annotated bibliography’. 2021. https://dkan.worck.digital-history.uni-bielefeld.de/?q=servants-early-modern-nordic-countries

Uppenberg, Carolina; Olsson, Mats. / ‘Under the Landlord's Thumb. Municipalities and Local Elites in Sweden 1862-1900’. Lund Papers in Economic History; no. 2021:218. https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/0d6da33a-b311-4dc4-aa4b-a29fde36ee3a

Brunnström, Pål; Gladoic Håkansson, Peter; Uppenberg, Carolina. / ‘Migration and housing regimes in Sweden 1739-1982’. In: Scandinavian Journal of History. 2021:3 vol. 46, pp. 353-382. https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2020.1843532

2020

Uppenberg, Carolina. / ‘Masters writing the rules: how peasant farmer MPs in the Swedish Estate Diet understood servants’ labour and the labour laws, 1823–1863’. In: Agricultural History Review. 2020:2 vol. 68, pp. 238-256. https://www.bahs.org.uk/AgHRVOL.html?YEAR=2020&MOD=this

Uppenberg, Carolina. / ’Drängar och pigor. Om det agrara hushållets relationer’. In: Arbetarhistoria: meddelande från arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek. 2020:1-2 vol. 173-174, pp. 84-93. https://www.arbetarhistoria.se/173-174/

Uppenberg, Carolina; Bengtsson, Erik. / ’Temaintro: Klass i Sverige 1500-1900: Det gamla bondesamhället?’. In: Arbetarhistoria: meddelande från arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek. 2020:1-2 vol. 173-174, pp. 42-49.

Uppenberg, Carolina (guest editor); Bengtsson, Erik (guest editor). / ’Tema: Klass i Sverige 1500-1900’. In: Arbetarhistoria: meddelande från arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek. 2020:1-2 vol. 173-174, pp. 42-100.

2018

Uppenberg, Carolina. / I husbondens bröd och arbete. Kön, makt och kontrakt i det svenska tjänstefolkssystemet 1730-1860. [Servants and masters. Gender, contract, and power relations in the servant institution in Sweden, 1730-1860]. Doctoral dissertation. Gothenburg: Unit for Economic history, Department of Economy and Society, University of Gothenburg, 2018.

Uppenberg, Carolina. / ’Underordningens kontrakt. Kön och makt i tjänstefolkssystemet 1730-1860’. In: Kvinnors flit och slit. Kvinnors arbete under tidig svensk industrialisering. Editor / Fredrik Sandgren. Uppsala: Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 2018 vol. 55, pp. 125-148. https://opusculahistoricaupsaliensia.wordpress.com/55-fredrik-sandgren-red-2018/

2017

Uppenberg, Carolina. / ‘The servant institution during the Swedish agrarian revolution: the political economy of subservience’. In: Servants in rural Europe 1400-1900. Editor / Jane Whittle. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017, pp. 167-182. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/servants-in-rural-europe/A8CDD697C77400A83851FCE6E60C7C36#fndtn-contents

2012

Uppenberg, Carolina. / ‘Female Workers but not Women: Paradoxes in Women’s Conditions and Strategies in Swedish Trade Unions, 1900–1925’. In: Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements. 2012, vol. 48, pp. 49-72. https://doi.org/10.13154/mts.48.2012.49-72

Research projects

Ongoing

Completed

Challenging the domestic

Gender division of labour and economic change studied through 19th century crofters’households.