Att skriva Stads- och kommunhistoria : En handledning för forskning med Stads- och kommunhistoriskt källmaterial

The primary aim of this book is to encourage and facilitate the study of history of towns and municipalities. Various forms of social science research on Swedish local authorities might derive advantage from this book. The staff of local archives and prospective amateur researcher, for example among the members of local folklore society, also ought to enjoy the content of this book. Another purpose of the publication is to suggest continuous comparative studies, where Swedish municipalities are compared in different ways. The number of Swedish municipalities was considerably reduced during the second half of the 20th century. For that reason it is now the proper time to pursue comparative studies of municipalities which no longer exist and are replaced by greater administrative units. Too much of the previous research has been done as case studies of one singular rural district. It should be emphasized that many local investigations have been done by amateur researcher who have not always used a reliable scholarly scientific course of action. The source material for the proposed inquiries should mostly be taken from the Swedish municipal archives. In principle all the 290 present municipalities have their own archives, which means that there is a large supply of source material in the whole country. This is one of the greatest advantages of working with this type of historical source material. In the archives material is stored from the introduction of the current standard of municipality in 1863 and on. It deals thus with the period of more than 140 years during which the Swedish society has changed dramatically. Local material from towns and rural districts concerning the time up to 1862 is normally found in the national provincial record offices, so it is not always easily accessible from a geographical point of view. The book has been divided into a number of thematic fields, such as municipal divisions, local politics, the role of women in local politics, municipal finances and economic expansion, social welfare, educational systems, environmental issues, health care, fire protection the technical sector and cultural and recreational activities. This grouping means, that strictly speaking it is enough to read the sphere in which you show a keen interest, except the two introductory chapters, considering comprehensive facts in the field of municipal history. Each thematic field is then regularly divided into four items, background and earlier research, proposals for future research, limits of interpretation and source material. This order has not been used earlier, and the footnotes should give comparatively many references to other works which could be useful. Key words: source material, archives, municipalities, local politics