Do the Nordics warrant the label 'global good Samaritans' in human rights promotion? Is the Nordic welfare state a close to perfect realisation of human rights norms? Alternatively, do Nordic international and domestic human rights policies constitute a peculiar 'Nordic human rights paradox' where norms are supported internationally while not being implemented at home? In what is the first collection of articles on Nordic human rights history, we take issue with previous scholarship, finding it often to be unsubstantiated and lacking a basis in historical contexts and relevant source materials. This also includes the stream of historical studies in the past decade, where, until recently, the Nordic countries have represented something of a blind spot. However, the lack of prior interest in the region means there are several promising avenues for historical investigations of both the Nordic countries in human rights history and the role of human rights in the history of the region.
This article addresses the role of asymmetry in the interaction between intellectual fields in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By focusing on the spatial and temporal hierarchies implicit in the ways intellectuals from the Nordic countries perceived and made use of marginality and backwardness, the article brings a peripheral perspective to the discussion of transnational intellectual history. This is important as the discussion on transnational history tends to stress notions like reciprocity and hybridity, which reproduce the ideal of a borderless and equal republic of letters, and paints a too harmonious picture of global cultural space.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.