Identity, Interest and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden’s Intervention in the Thirty Years War

This book offers an original combination of cultural and narratological analysis with an empirical study of identity and political action. It is at once a powerful critique of rational choice theories of action and a solution to the historiographical puzzle of why Sweden went to war in 1630. Erik Ringmar argues that people act not only for reasons of interest, but also for reasons of identity, and that the latter are, in fact, more fundamental.