A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2025, 4: Download.
Professor of Postcolonial Feminisms at the Department of Thematic Studies/Gender Studies division at at Linköping University, Sweden.
The author of eight scholarly books, over 250 articles and two postcolonial novels, Tlostanova focuses on non-Western gender theory, decolonial and postcolonial theory, and postsocialist studies.
Tiina Thörnroos was one of the participators of the project Archipelago Business Development. The project aims at developing new business models in the archipelago by forming partnerships between entrepreneurs and start-up companies in Finland (including Aland Islands) and Sweden.
For a few hectic weeks each summer, sparsely inhabited islands in the Stockholm Archipelago are transformed into coveted destinations for vacationers. For permanent residents who make their livelihood here, running a businesses in the seaside environment entails great challenges. We have met three entrepreneurs on three different islands, with diverse conditions but a common vision — keeping the archipelago alive.
A cursory reading of the literature describing yesterdays’ societies in the Stockholm Archipelago tells us that people in the archipelago heavily relied on fishing and small-scale farming for their living. With the arrival of modern industrialized society during the latter half of the 19th century, things changed, and other opportunities to earn a living appeared. However, there were and are certain circumstances in the Stockholm Archipelago that make it somewhat inert, preventing it from taking a place in the modern labor market.
Spatial polarization has become one of the EU’s most pressing issues. While the EU Member States have shown convergence in economic development, interregional inequalities within states have increased considerably. Polarization means that urban agglomerations and capital city-regions demonstrate population growth and increasing prosperity, while a growing number of rural, remote, and old industrial regions suffer from economic and demographic stagnation or decline. The growing divides between rich and poor regions are caused not only by economic laws.
In the period between the two world wars, Swedish interest in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was in general extremely limited, whereas from the other side Sweden was seen as a geopolitically inactive power and consequently as a possible source of support and an ally against the Baltic states’ two greater neighbors, the Soviet Union and Germany.
By conducting a comparative qualitative and systematic study of the local (island) pre-conditions for creating sustainable socio-economic development through entrepreneurship, here defined as a process of identifying, evaluating, and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities, this study aims to shed light on entrepreneurial responses to challenges and opportunities on three islands in the Stockholm Archipelago and how context influences these responses.
Although there have been great changes in the lives and livelihoods of people in the Baltic Sea archipelago during the last century, the lives of local inhabitants are still strongly linked to the local nature, culture, and history. Customary use of local ecosystems provides resources for the household, but it is also an important carrier of local identity, culture, and way of life. Fishing, hunting, and harvesting of berries, mushrooms, etc., function as cultural and intergenerational glue for the local community context even today. This paper reflects upon the cultural and social importance of the small scale and informal economy in the Swedish Baltic Sea archipelago for sustainability living local communities, some of the present challenges to its continuation, and the potentials for positive change. It is based on participatory research on customary use of biodiversity and local and traditional knowledge in the Kalix Archipelago in the northern Bothnian Bay and in the Sankt Anna Archipelago in the Baltic Sea proper.
The skitgrop system was, to use popular words by today’s politicians, a “world-class re-cycling system” and a commercial practice that helped Stockholm handle its problems with garbage and feces. But more important is that the skitgrop system demonstrates the archipelago population’s trust in future farming. When buying feces and garbage for fertilizer, large economic and physical resources were invested
This paper analyzes Soviet and Russian spy films with respect to maintaining and transmitting memories of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) in popular culture. The new Russian post-Soviet cinema (after the 2000s) about the “war spies” is considered not only with regard to its entertainment and ideological functions, but also with regard to its function as a “post-memory” of the traumatic experiences of the war and the Nazi occupation. The new Russian cinema about espionage and spies reinterprets the issues of dependent people, Stalinist repressions, and traumatic memories that were absent in Soviet cinema.
After a pogrom in Berlin in 1923, Alfred Döblin, an assimilated Jew, decided to travel to more originally Jewish settings, spending time amongst the people and environments that barely two decades later were as good as completely wiped out. Döblin’s book Reise in Polen [Journey to Poland] will be published in Swedish translation in autumn 2019. The Swedish translator of Döblin’s book, Peter Handberg travelled to Poland and Ukraine himself in 2018, or to put it more accurately, followed in the footsteps of the Holocaust.