Literary practices, capital structures and political position-taking: The Norwegian writers during World War II

Abstract

Analyses of writers’ political orientations have typically focused on individual authors’ works and trajectories. Inspired by Bourdieu's field theory and by Sapiro's works on the French literary field, this article demonstrates how the Norwegian writers’ position-takings during WW II were related to their locations in two other sets of structures: the structures in the Norwegian field of literary practices in the 1930s and '40s, and their locations in cultural, economic and social capital hierarchies. Based on data on 308 writers we ask: How did the writers and intellectuals respond to democratic backsliding, loss of cultural autonomy and authoritarianism on the rise?