Intellectuals: A Framework for Analysis, with Special Reference to the United States and Sweden

This paper develops a framework for analyzing intellectuals as an emergent social category It applies a model of the intellectual drawing on a range of studies to show how history and culture affect the very idea of the intellectual, as well as the possibilities of intellectual practice. The central argument is that any understanding of intellectuals should begin by situating the concept and the category it represents in context - historical. political and cultural. Comparative analysis is especially suited to this task, because it allows one to map similarities and differences across historical political cultures. The first part of the article deals with the historical emergence of the concept of the intellectual itself. the second part applies this concept more specifically to Sweden and the United States.