Ecke, pappa och jag

Klass, social mobilitet och samhällsförändring

Abstract

This paper describes the history of the rural labor movement in Sweden and its specific popular adult education through life stories. The project centers on the author’s father’s narrated memories of his childhood and the farmhand Erik Eriksson, called Ecke (1903-1996). Ecke was a rural worker with just a few years of schooling who was organized in the Swedish popular education movement for workers at his time. Through his dedication he changed the social aspirations for rural workers’ children in the area, amongst them the author’s own father. The paper draws on a walk along interviews with the author’s father, in order to examine how memory, place and social mobility are interlaced when visiting the intervieweeÅLs childhood homes and remembering Ecke and his deed.