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Gendered Agency. Access to and use of power in the networks of a sixteenth century Nordic local community

This PostDoc Project, to be carried out by the applicant in the School of History, University of Turku, analyses the gendered access to and the use of power in the networks of one local Nordic community in the sixteenth century. As a case study, the project focuses on the rural community in and around the Estate of Sundholm in Southwestern Finland (then a part of the Swedish realm).

In the sixteenth century, the estate belonged to the noble Fleming Family. There is an exceptionally rich collection of documents about the relations and networks of the inhabitants of the Estate and the servants, tenants and common farmers living in and around the area. Having its starting point in the New Social and Cultural History, based on a fresh combination and analysis of sources, the project is going to map the female and male access to and forms of power in the local networks, horisontal and vertical alike.

As several gender historians have pointed out, most women and many men of the early modern society were excluded from certain forms of power. However, they were still using the means available for them, resorting to networks and different ways of influence and negotiation to shape the process of decision making. These different accesses and ways of using power are in the focus of the project, and the documents allow the analysis of both women as men as subjected to and users of power. In this study, the networks of neighbours, relatives and protectors or protegés are made visible and analysed.

While the members of the Fleming family often had an important role in these networks, even mutual connections of the common men and women, excluding the nobility, are taken into account. Hierarchies based on gender, social status and other factors are analysed. The project resorts to both quantitative and qualitative analysis. In the quantitative analysis, information about inhabitants, their farms and location, is collected into a database. With the help of this database, the genealogical connections, geographical proximity and patterns of inheritance can be observed. In cooperation with archaeologists and their digital 3D modellings, these relations are also mapped on the landscape of the time.

The qualitative analysis, on the other hand, focuses on a close reading of rhetoric of documents in individual cases. Through the qualitative analysis, it is possible to see how the hierarchical relations were defined and negotiated in the everyday interaction and how the sixteenth century women and men, noble or common, tried to shape their destinies, creatively using means available to them. Building on the former expertise of the researcher and the current international discussion, carried out in cooperation with such expert networks as Cliohres.net Power and Culture Thematic Group, the project provides a monography with a new ,comprehensive analysis of the gendered dynamics in a local early modern community.