puts it, the point of “the archive” is “to find a middle ground between the conventional legal-dogmatic method and Scandinavian legal realism’s failure to go beyond the positivist paradigm.”15 For Maria Nääv, the concern is how discrimination and equalityimproving measures are made intelligible and how the relationship between them is constructed in Swedish preparatory work.16 ForOtter Johansen, the main body of the dissertation “consists of the reading of a certain constructed ’archive’ […] The archive and the approach to create better descriptions are primarily inspired here by the work of Anne Orford.”17 For Nääv, “in order to carry out [the thesis’s] contemporary historical reading of the development of anti-discrimination legislation, I construct an archive, inspired by Anne Orford […] The archive enables me to realize my approach to studying the development of concepts.”18 To carry out these investigations, both writers set out to produce “archives”. Otter Johansen investigates the distinction between two fundamental concepts in Swedish administrative law: administrative procedures (ärendehandläggning) and concrete activity (faktisk verksamhet).His central move is to construct an archive of legal-dogmatic writings, preparatory works, and doctrinal debates concerning these categories, mainly from the 19th century onward. Reading this archive through a materialist and immanent critical perspective, Otter Johansen seeks not to unveil an essential meaning of these concepts, but to show how they reflect historically specific assumptions about state action and legality. His archive supports a reversal of perspective: public administration is not primarily decision-making butongoing, practical activity, a view that challenges the conventional view, which, in turn has created a “blind spot” in the study and practice of public law.19 Maria Nääv, in turn, is concerned with how discrimination and equality-enhancing measures have been conceptualized in Swedish lawmaking, particularly in preparatory works on discrimination legis108 constructing the past: legal archives and critique 15 Johansen, Förvaltning som verksamhet: bidrag till offentligrättens allmänna läror (see above, note 10), p. 98. 16 Ibid, p. 94 ff., and Nääv, (O)likabehandling. Likabehandling och jämlikhetsförbättrande åtgärder i den svenska diskrimineringslagstiftningens genealogi (see above, note 10), p. 67 ff. 17 Johansen, Förvaltning som verksamhet: bidrag till offentligrättens allmänna läror(above, note 10), p. 6. 18 Nääv, (O)likabehandling. Likabehandling och jämlikhetsförbättrande åtgärder i den svenska diskrimineringslagstiftningens genealogi (above, note 10), p. 21.
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