Abstract

This article recovers and analyses some of the ways in which 'society' in the latter half of the eighteenth century was re-described by Swedish political writers attempting to reform current ways of organizing social and political space. The article shows how a radical language of politics contributed to the formation of a new collective identity for commoners. By concentrating on changing social descriptions -- specifically the challenges that were posed to conventional ways of understanding and representing society -- two relationships of central importance to understanding the emergence of modern political thought and social organization are analysed: firstly, the relationship between political rhetoric in the construction of new collective identities and, secondly, the relationship between political struggle and the media, or public sphere. Moreover, the article contributes to a history of early European radical political thought, focusing on ideological developments that took place before the French Revolution and on the so- called margins of Europe