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Abstract

Easy Money? Money, Power and Value in the Field of Comparative Literature.

This article argues that money is an important concern within the field of Comparative Literature in Sweden. The discussion centers on money, power and value in relation to Swedish universities in general, and the field of Comparative Literature in particular. Primarily, this article argues that different forms of money are endowed with different forms of ”value” and that these differences have a rather large impact.

This article opens with a discussion and analysis of the relation between Swedish universities, the ideals of new public management, and money. It then considers literary research in the field of sociology of literature, literary historiography and memoirs, and concludes with a brief discussion about the importance of the source of funding, considering two examples from the Department of Literature at Uppsala University in the 1960s and 1970s. The article concludes that money is an incredibly powerful and symbolic agent in the field of Comparative Literature, and that there is no such thing as easy money.