Co-writing: Part 2

Academic writing requires courage. Not least when doing so in collaboration with others. An aspect of co-writing is that it involves another academic reading your texts in an unfinished – sometimes extremely raw – condition. There will be awkward sentences, unfinished thoughts, less than fluent English and incoherent text segments. The kind of stuff most academics wouldn’t want to show anyone. In this respect, most joint writing projects occur in constellations characterized by a great level of trust. The project undertaken by Isak Hammar and myself, which I wrote about in the first part of this series of blog posts, was one such constellation. 

The second co-writing project I want to discuss was of a slightly different nature. This was a collaboration with sustainability researcher Anna Kaijser. At the time, we didn’t know each other all that well. We had gotten to know each other during a PhD course in 2012 and had since interacted sporadically. In the spring of 2015, we ran into each other by chance at an informal lunch with Norwegian STS-scholar and environmental historian Kristin Asdal. 

During this lunch, we discovered that our postdoc ideas clearly had some things in common. Anna was interested in Scandinavian environmental youth organizations. I was interested in the emergence of modern environmentalism during the years around 1970. Anna suggested that we should write something together. Why not adopt a historical perspective on an environmental youth organization? Perhaps Nature and Youth Sweden (Fältbiologerna), which she had been involved in when she was young? 

To ensure that this idea would actually materialize, we decided to schedule a project day before the end of the semester. The plan was that we would discuss our ideas but also start to familiarize ourselves with a possible empirical material. We decided to order some twenty volumes of the magazine Fältbiologen from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. We booked a room at the University Library in Lund and started reading. We relatively quickly started to find interesting things. 

In particular, our attention was caught by the young activist Erik Isakson. He was all over the place in the material. In the 1960s, he climbed trees and led a series of adventurous expeditions. Toward the end of the decade, he became an editor and took an active part in the environmental debate. Then he vanished. A few years into the 1970s, he made a comeback. It turned out that he had accepted the consequences of his critique of civilization and moved to Greenland! 

Our plan was to study how Nature and Youth Sweden was affected by, and itself influenced, the Swedish ecological turn. Our hope was that Erik Isakson could serve as a common thread. That the larger process of change could be made visible through his life. After our day at the library, we scheduled a new meeting after the summer. The plan was that we would then draw up the guidelines for what our article might look like and where we should submit it. 

Our second project day was also carried out at the library. We then agreed upon a rough structure for the article and who should write what. The plan was to start in the present with the struggle in the Ojnare Forest on the island of Gotland going on at the time. Nature and Youth Sweden played a prominent role in this conflict. On the basis of this, we wanted to address questions on how environmental youth activism has developed historically. We also decided which texts to analyze in more detail and made copies of these. 

Some good things had also transpired between the two meetings. I had been given a two-year postdoc position in Lund and Anna the same kind of position in Linköping. Here, a large environmental humanities environment was taking shape. It came naturally for us to carry out our study within the framework of these two positions. That is why we didn’t find it necessary to apply for smaller project grants. We were ready to start working. At the same time, we had both planned quite a lot during the fall. As a result, the actual writing was postponed until the spring of 2016. We decided to focus on a historical journal and to write in English. We decided on Scandinavian Journal of History. 

Just like Isak Hammar, Anna had written her thesis in English. This made me feel more confident. It meant that my English could be straightened up by someone else. We also made it clear from the outset that we would adopt a more relaxed attitude vis-à-vis our text. Step one was to create an outline. Step two was to prepare a first draft. Only then had the time come to edit, tighten up the text and try to write more eloquently. This worked out well, not least as Anna had previous experiences of co-writing. 

Our text turned into a manuscript during the spring, but before we submitted it, we made sure that it was read by others. Here, we used our various networks to get perspectives from both the field of history as well as from environmental humanities. I was very pleased to travel to Linköping and present our text at their higher seminar. This was attended by senior academics such as Jonas Anshelm, Johan Hedrén and Björn-Ola Linnér. Academics whose texts I had carefully read but whom I had never met. 

After having incorporated comments from our readers, the time had come to submit our manuscript. Anna took care of this as I was about to go on parental leave. We got the text back in various stages and had to make quite a few changes. Among other things, the role of Erik Isakson was toned down and Ojnare Forest didn’t make it to the final version. We talked about our work on the phone, but Anna was responsible for the major revision efforts. I would once again like to stress the advantage of being two authors during the review process. It really makes it much easier not to take criticism personally and to come up with good solutions. 

Another stage where this form of dual authorship proved valuable concerned disseminating the text. I took Anna to the national history conference in Sundsvall and she invited me to the Science and Technology History days in Norrköping she was organizing. It was great presenting our research together and fun to better get to know each other’s acquaintances. 

By writing together, we became friends. Our joint project was never a major track for either of us. But it was a very meaningful, interesting and instructive project. The finished article, “Young Activists in Muddy Boots: Fältbiologerna and the Ecological Turn 1959–1974,” was finally published in the summer of 2018.

This is the second part in the blog-series "Co-writing". Read the first part here.

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