Varför vill ingen lyssna? : en kunskapshistorisk undersökning av hur polisspåret etablerades i diskussionen om mordet på Olof Palme

Sammanfattning: Ever since the murder of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in February 1986, many different theories about who the killer could be have been created and discussed. One of the more intensely discussed theories is the “police-conspiracy theory”. In this thesis I investigate how this theory became a kind of public knowledge in the years after the assassination. Using a theoretical framework based on the recently established field “the history of knowledge” I study how different actors in society played a significant role in establishing the “police-conspiracy theory”. The civilians most active in researching the different aspects of the assassination has been labelled with the, somewhat degrading, term “privatspanare” (private sleuths). As these individuals played a big role in the discussion about the “police-conspiracy” theory it was of interest to study how this network of “privatspanare” was created. The study also examines in what ways two different commissions, which were tasked to review the murder investigation,influenced the establishing of the “police-conspiracy theory”. This thesis concludes that the newspaper Dagens Nyheter did not function as what historians of knowledge defines as a “public arena of knowledge”. Instead Dagens Nyheter functioned as a valuable tool for different actors to reach out to the public. It can also show that the establishing of the “police-conspiracy theory” in the media was closely linked to the fall from grace of Hans Holmér, the police in charge of the investigation during its first year. Regarding the two commissions, this study concludes that both commissions unwillingly gave the theory legitimacy by even looking into it. The most valuable result of this thesis is the new analytical term “knowledge community”. By studying a smaller group of “privatspanare” that focused on the “police-conspiracy theory”, the thesis can show that these actors are part of a bigger community based around the murder of Olof Palme. This community is based on knowledge actions and transactions of varying kinds. The term has great potential for the history of knowledge as it defines a phenomenon that before has been defined as both actor and arena or not defined at all. The study shows that this knowledge community was created as an effect of the process of knowledge circulation, which in itself is a new empirical conclusion.