Peace with the Earth
Book by Elisabeth Tamm and Elin Wägner. Originally published by Bonnier in 1940, this English translation is published by Archive Books in 2022. Translation from Swedish to English by Katarina Trodden. With an introductory conversation by Åsa Elzén, Ros Gray and Åsa Sonjasdotter, and with foreword by editor Åsa Sonjasdotter.
Elin Wägner and Elisabeth Tamm by
Hjälmaresund, Fogelstad, Sweden. August, 1921. Photographer unknown. Reproduced
with kind permission of KvinnSam, the National Resource Library for Gender
Studies, The University Library, Gothenburg, Sweden.The authors of this pamphlet, Elin Wägner [1882–1949] and Elisabeth Tamm [1880–1958], were active in a transnational movement of radical, non-conformist women, many of whom would today most likely call themselves queer-feminist. They operated between and across established, accepted, and legally sanctioned societal structures such as patriarchal family orders, scientific disciplines, political parties, and religious communities. Their argument was that war and war-like relations cannot be undone until patriarchal, fascist, and colonial domination is overcome. They also recognized that, as Wägner states in the introductory chapter, “This involves a paradigm shift and all that it entails in terms of social change.”
The still-ongoing and rapidly escalating exploitation of earthly life by corporate and state-sanctioned powers re-actualizes the call of this pamphlet. To translate and re-read it across languages, locations, and practices today is a way to reconnect to the wider discussions that the knowledge captured in this pamphlet has emerged from – for current debates to gain continuity, depth, and scope.
This edition includes a conversation between artist Åsa Elzén; writer, editor, and educator in art and ecology Ros Gray; and artist and editor of this publication Åsa Sonjasdotter. Further, it includes an introduction from the 1982 and 2014 Swedish editions by artist and farmer Flory Gate, as well as an expansion of key references.
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Foreword by Åsa Sonjasdotter. The authors of this pamphlet, Elin Wägner (1882–1949) and Elizabeth Tamm (1880–1958), were active in a transnational movement that had mobilized to stop the imperial aggressions leading to the first world-wide war, and who by the time of the pamphlet’s writing experienced the outbreak of yet another world-encompassing war. The activists of this movement had made their analysis clear: they recognized that war and war-like relations cannot be undone until patriarchal and colonial relations are overcome. They also recognized that, as Wägner states in the introductory chapter: “This involves a paradigm shift and all that it entails in terms of social change.”
There are several reasons to wish to translate this pamphlet and make it available to a wider audience today. The place it speaks from is not often referred to – not in historical writing and political theory, nor in the fields of agronomy or environmental studies. It gathers experiences made in the interrelated movements for women’s suffrage, peace, and organic farming taking place as resistance-from-within against the aggressing powers during the first half of the twentieth century. The participants of this network were radical, intellectual, non-conformist women, many of whom would today most likely call themselves queer. They operated between and across established, accepted, and legally sanctioned societal structures such as patriarchal family orders, scientific disciplines, political parties, and religious communities. For these reasons, their actions are poorly documented.
The still-ongoing and rapidly escalating exploitation of earthly life by corporate and state-sanctioned powers, re-actualizes the call of this pamphlet. Even those structures that were installed by the regimes that “won” the second world war, for the safeguarding of “peace” and “food safety,” seem to have come to understand that this destructive relation does not hold, nor does it provide what it set out to promise. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations recently issued a report revealing that it is not the large corporations that feed the world. On the contrary, of the six-hundred-and-eight million farms in the world, more than ninety percent are family farms, occupying around seventy to eighty percent of the farmland and producing eighty percent of the world’s food in value terms. Farms smaller than two hectares account for eighty-four percent of all farms worldwide, but operate only around twelve percent of all agricultural land, still producing roughly thirty-five percent of the world’s food. In these production units, as well as in the plantation industry, women play a major role.[1]
The question of land custody and gender in food production is a central concern of this pamphlet. The authors propose a realistic, peaceful, and radical method for the transformation of privately owned land to become land held in hereditary lease. This is a form of custody that is not necessarily tied to patriarchal or biological family structures. Rather, it focuses on careful management and long-term perspectives. Additional questions brought to debate involve plant and cattle breeding, the mechanization of farms and farmers, divisions among genders in the farm system, taxation systems that encourage careful maintenance of land and resources, as well as the question of how and where education takes place. Finally, the authors propose a local-to-local worldwide network to replace the failing League of Nations. This structure should not be built by sovereign nation states and individuals, but be a peaceful network from below to support the actual custodians of land. This visionary proposal resonates with the declaration by La Via Campesina of the international peasant movement regarding the Rights of Peasants – Women and Men, which was adopted in 2008.[2]
The authors were active at the center of politics and debate in their time. They knew that to question modernization and industrial progress went against the grain. What yet made their call significant at the time as well as today is its solid grounding in thorough knowledge and tangible experiences. The analysis refers to known facts and existing conditions. Its visionary proposals are realistically framed.
Elin Wägner was an author and journalist who wrote for major Swedish journals and newspapers. Her novels – featuring portrayals of women in their roles as maidens, secretaries, and lovers in a society undergoing modernization – were widely read and debated. As part of her work as a journalist, Wägner travelled extensively, and she took part in the 1915 International Women’s Conference in The Hague. Initially, this conference was organized on the topic of suffrage. As World War I broke out in 2014, the conference shifted its focus to advocate for peace. When the war concluded in 1918, women were given access to the vote in several of the countries that had been involved in the war. In the UK, the vote was initially given only to women who had worked in support of the war effort. For those who had struggled for women’s suffrage as a means to gain access to political power in the struggle for peace, this was a bitter result.
Elisabeth Tamm was the holder of an organic farm, as well as a politician. At a young age, she had inherited the estate Fogelstad, where she applied principles of organic farming. When women in Sweden obtained the right to vote in 1918 (the first election when they could vote took place in 1921), Tamm was one of the first five women to hold a seat in Parliament. Becoming aware that access to the vote in no way is a guarantee for access to real political power, The Women Citizens’ School (Kvinnliga Medborgarskolan) was established at Fogelstad in 1922. As women had gained access to the vote, they needed to educate themselves in their new roles as citizens. Among the subjects for study were the history of democracy and civil rights, rhetoric, and psychology. The centre was founded by a network of members within the suffrage and peace movement, often referred to as the Fogelstad Group, after the name of Tamm’s estate. Tamm further established The Women’s Barn and Livestock School at Fogelstad, with the mission to provide a professional education for women farm workers. Complementary to these educational centres and intended to reach the entire country, the weekly journal The Epoch (Tidevarvet) was established in 1925 by the network within and around the Fogelstad Group.
Peace with the Earth was published in 1940 and has been republished in Swedish in 1982, 2014, and in 2021. This is the first time it is published in translation. This English edition is accompanied by extensive footnotes and references made possible thanks to contributions by artist and researcher Åsa Élzen. The foreword to the 2014 edition is written by artist, farmer, and peace activist Flory Gate (1904 – 1998). The question of intergenerational continuity beyond patriarchal and biological family structures, which permeates the pamphlet’s analysis, is exemplified by how Gate in 1982 used parts of her inheritance to establish the foundation The Flory Gate Foundation – Peace with the Earth(Flory Gates stiftelse – Fred med jorden). The foundation’s mission is to support women’s access to land as well as organic farming initiatives.
With the wish to bridge the transition from the social and cultural context in which the pamphlet was written to the wider realm this translation reaches today, this publication includes a conversation between artist and researcher Åsa Elzén, who researches the network within and surrounding the Fogelstad Group; writer, editor, and educator in art and ecology Ros Gray; and artist and researcher of histories of agriculture – as well as editor of this publication – Åsa Sonjasdotter. In addition, this foreword is informed by conversations with Elzén and Gray on the legacy of the transnational network that the Fogelstad group was a part of.
To translate and re-read this pamphlet across languages, locations, and practices today is a way to reconnect to the wider discussions that the knowledge captured in this pamphlet has emerged from – for current debates to gain continuity, depth, and scope. What has stirred the wish to re-visit the debates of this movement is the analysis of how, in order to overcome violent, extractive relations, peace not only between people on the Earth is necessary, but also with the Earth itself.
[1] The Path of Peasant and Popular Feminism in La Via Campesina. La Via Campesina. May. 2021.
Current data from the report “Which farms feed the world and has farmland become more concentrated?” by Sarah K.Lowdera Marco, V. Sánchez (FAO), Raffaele Bertini (FAO). World Development. Volume 142, June 2021.
[2] https://viacampesina.org/en/declaration-of-rights-of-peasants-women-and-men/