Jenny Andersson

Nordic Nostalgia and Nordic Light: the Swedish model as Utopia 1930–2007

In the last decade, Sweden has emerged on the other side of the 1990s crisis with, if not its self-image intact, then at least a reasserted confidence as, once again, the most modern country in the world. Crisis management in the 1990s seemed to have succeeded. The Swedish bumblebee – the unthinkable animal that flies despite its high taxes and large public sector – flew again. The ‘Swedish model’ was back after a decade as the punch bag of neoliberalism. Throughout the European centre left – from the debate on the European social model to Ségolène Royal and Gordon Brown – Sweden has reemerged as ‘Nordic light’, proof that a better world is possible. This reappraisal in the eyes of the world has paradoxical consequences in Sweden, since it seems to overwrite the uncertainty and insecurity of crisis with assertion and confidence, while leaving many questions unanswered. It also leads to new definitions of what Sweden is. The paper suggests that Sweden post-1990s suffers from a particular kind of nostalgia, in which the famous Model emerges as a kind of paradise lost with uncertain links both to past and future. While Sweden yet again becomes the utopia of others, it is a kind of future past to itself.

Between Growth and Security : Swedish Social Democracy from a Strong Society to a Third Way

The notion of social policy as a productive investment and a prerequisite for economic growth became a core feature in the ideology of Swedish social democracy, and a central component of the universalism of the Swedish welfare state. However as the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) embarked on its Third Way in 1981, this outlook on social policy as a productive investment was replaced by the identification of social policy as a cost and a burden for growth. This book discusses the components of this ideological turnaround from Swedish social democracys post-war notion of a strong society, to its notion of a Third Way in the early 1980s

Choosing Futures: Alva Myrdal and the Construction of Swedish Futures Studies, 1967-1972

This article discusses the Swedish discourse on futures studies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It focuses on the futures discourse of the group appointed by the Prime Minister, Olof Palme, in 1967 under the chairmanship of Alva Myrdal. The Swedish futures discourse focused on futures studies as a democratic means of reform in defence of the Swedish model and “Swedish” values of solidarity and equality, in opposition to an international futurology dominated by the Cold War and dystopic narratives of global disaster. The article suggests that the creation of Swedish futures studies, culminating in a Swedish institute for futures studies, can be seen as a highpoint of postwar planning and the Swedish belief in the possibility of constructing a particularly Swedish future from a particularly Swedish past.

Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries

It is widely acknowledged that recent decades have been marked by a resurgence of nationalism. Many have noted the apparent paradox that, in the era of globalization, national stereotypes, national images and even national brands seem to carry more resonance than ever before. Indeed, the idea of national peoples, far from being confined to the nationalist era of the 19th century and inter-war period, has come to dominate European political discourse in the 1990s and 2000s, with politicians in France, Britain and elsewhere making frequent reference to notions of French republican values, Britishness and the like. This phenomenon is also visible in the Nordic countries. Populist nationalist parties of the right such as the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti), the Progress Party in Norway (Fremskrittsparti) and the True Finns (Perussuomalaiset) have made significant political advances in recent years. In Norway, the commemoration of a centenary of independence in 2005, and the controversial redesign of the iconic National Museum sparked a debate about Norwegian identity, while the current (2009) bi-centenary of the 1808-9 Finnish war (Finska kriget/Suomen sota) has provoked similar reflections in Finland and Sweden. Meanwhile, in Sweden, recent years have seen a debate on the notion of Swedishness and what defines Swedish values, noticeable not only in political proposals for language and citizenship tests, but also in increasing references, in public discourse, to what Sweden is and what kind of modernity it represents. Although not merely a repetition of older forms of nationalist discourses, the contemporary phenomenon of nationalism is clearly related to ongoing historical processes, drawing on complex historical legacies in its notions of the people, nation, belonging or memory. Most of the time, contemporary nationalism is neither openly xenophobic nor racist, and thus stands in contrast to the aggressive forms of nationalism of the 1930s. Nonetheless, it frequently seems to be linked to perceptions of threats to

Governing the future: science, policy and public participation in the construction of the long term in the Netherlands and Sweden

This paper is a historical study of two institutions devoted to the problem of the future – the Dutch WRR (the Scientific Council for Government) and the Swedish Secretariat for Futures Studies – both created in 1972. While there is a growing interest in the social sciences for prediction, future imaginaries and the governance of risk, few studies have examined historically the integration of the category of the ‘future’ or the ‘long term’ in political systems in the postwar years, a period in which this category took on specific meaning and importance. We suggest that governing the long-term posed fundamental problems to particular societal models of expertise, decision-making and public participation. We argue that the scientific and political claim to govern the future was fundamentally contested, and that social struggle around the role and content of predictive expertise determined how the long term was incorporated into different systems of knowledge production and policy-making.

Closing the Future: Environmental Research and the Management of Conflicting Future Value Orders

This paper examines a struggle over the future use of Nordic forests, which took place from 2009 to 2012 within a major research program, Future Forests—Sustainable Strategies under Uncertainty and Risk, organized and funded by Mistra, The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. We explore the role of strategic environmental research in societal constructions of long-term challenges and future risks. Specifically, we draw attention to the role played by environmental research in the creation of future images that become dominant for how societies structure action for the long term. We also show that this process is on several accounts problematic. Research labeled “strategic” or “relevant” is intended to manage long-term risks and challenges in a sustainable way, by taking into account the “open” and “plural” nature of the future. The case of Future Forests suggests, rather, that by contributing to the emergence of dominant future images, environmental research is entangled with a process of gradual consensus creation around what may be highly selective or biased narratives of the long term, which may conceal or postpone key forms of future conflict.

Not without a Future

What is the good society? At the moment this is a question that is being asked by political actors all over the political spectrum, and not only by social democracy. The very word ‘society’, at least in the UK, has become a rather troublesome one, as New Labour’s active state was transplanted by Cameron’s big society, made up as this was of social conservatism and rather disturbing continuations of New Labour policy — such as the behavioural Nudge Unit. The latter is charged with making people behave in ways deemed better for their own and society’s good. It is not only the paternalism and the social engineering latent in this conception that are troubling; troubling is also the way in which ‘good’ has come to be understood in its economic sense, as determined by socio-technical parameters of efficiency. Is this the enduring legacy of New Labour? The conservatives did not come up with this themselves; on the contrary, this is a notion of the good that social democracy has actively promoted, not only in its Fabian past, but specifically in the last decades, as the welfare state was reinvented from a moral and ethical argument to a form of socioeconomic investment. With such heavy legacies from past and recent history, it would seem that neither the element of ‘good’ nor that of ‘society’ is particularly useful in terms of rethinking social democracy and a possibly better world to live in. At least at the moment, both elements are tainted by political discourses emanating from a central field that seems to have become a kind of intellectual prison.