Klara Arnberg

From the great department store with love: window display and the transfer of commercial knowledge in early twentieth-century Sweden

ABSTRACT This article highlights the transfers and practical uses of the commercial knowledge of window dressing in early twentieth-century Sweden through the analysis of the professional career and family business of Oscar Lundkvist, Swedish display pioneer and former window dresser in chief of the largest and first Swedish department store, Nordiska Kompaniet. Building on rich source material including unique written and photographic documents from the Lundkvist family, educational material and trade journals, we show how the innovative and spectacular became ordinary and mundane in retail praxis. We argue that the emergence and professionalization of window display brought with it the dissemination and trivialization of the same practice. By focusing on not only the most conspicuous aspects and cultural meanings of window displays but also on the materials and competences involved, we explain how setting up the displays became an everyday commercial practice and how it was positioned between advertising and retail as well as between the artistic and the commercial.

Mad women: gendered divisions in the Swedish advertising industry, 1930–2012

Abstract This article constitutes a first attempt to systematically map the presence of women in the greatly changing Swedish advertising industry since 1930. The overarching aim of the study is to analyse how the gendered divisions of labour and business changed in relation to both business structure and the overall labour market in Sweden. While we conclude that women constituted around 40–50% of the workforce over time, we see an increase in the shares of women in higher positions and in women who were self-employed and managers. This upturn, however, stabilised during the 1990s. We argue that the changes in gendered divisions of labour and business coincided with a fast-changing business structure. First, the old cartel broke down in the mid-1960s. Then, the number of firms increased quickly during the 1970s and 1980s, and the market share for the largest firms declined. This, in turn, meant new business opportunities for women at the same time as their overall labour market participation increased. The article stresses the importance of both acknowledging women’s presence in the industry development as well as the structures constituting gender divisions.

Ambivalent Spaces—The Emergence of a New Gay Male Norm Situated Between Notions of the Commercial and the Political in the Swedish Gay Press, 1969–1986

Within sexual geographies, sexual struggles over urban public spaces are frequently explored. Less common is research on sexual struggles within sexually shared spaces and gay spaces. The aim of the article is to examine discursive struggles of meanings of gay male identity enacted in discussions of commodification/capitalism, disclosure, and space in Swedish gay press during 1969–1986. We trace the ambivalent feelings or the emergence of a new gay male norm situated between commercialism and non-commercialism within the Swedish gay press back to the 1970s. In the article we show how a monosexualization process was taking place in both the Swedish gay press as well as within sexual spaces. We explore rhetorical struggles between two competing discursive meanings of (ideal homonormative) male homosexuality, gay culture, and space: one wider (inclusive) and one narrower (exclusive).

Beyond Mrs consumer: competing femininities in Swedish advertising trade publications, 1900–1939

ABSTRACT This article follows the discussion on female consumers in Swedish advertising journals and handbooks. The aim is to problematise the gendered aspects of Swedish consumer and early advertising history, by studying how the notion of the female consumer intersected with notions of social class, marital status and sexuality. The article also closes in on the persons who were invited to embody the consuming women and what kind of interests they represented. The article concludes that, from the start of the twentieth century, gender and class was prevalent in the advertising literature. The married woman was also from the start seen as the head of the consuming family. Therefore, reaching her through advertising became key for facilitating the relations between producer and consumer. With time, different women’s organisations, the weekly press, and new theories of advertising from the US addressing the notion of ‘Mrs Consumer’ came to influence the Swedish advertising trade press. The result became the favouring of a certain kind of middle class, urban and rational kind of femininity, strongly connected to homemaking and women’s roles in purchasing for the family. However, this femininity also paralleled notions of ‘the flapper’ and the professional woman.

Before the Scandinavian ‘porn wave’: the business and regulations of magazines considered obscene in Sweden, 1910–1950

ABSTRACTIn this article, the Swedish market for magazines considered obscene (by authorities, distributors, retailers, etc.) is analyzed, with a focus on the first half of the twentieth century. Obscene content was combatted with several recurrent strategies by popular movements, the joint daily press, distributors and retailers, in addition to Freedom of the Press cases. However, once the consensus about the problem of pornography had been broken, during which time pornographers found ways to circumvent these strategies, a pornographic market was able to develop. The magazines that were considered obscene had different sub-genres: humorous and satirical (in the 1910s and 1920s), sex education (in the 1930s), nudism (1930s onwards) and pin-up (1940s onwards). All of the magazines in various ways distanced themselves from pornographic or sexual commercialism, but were nonetheless treated as part of it. Later, Sweden became one of the ‘forerunners’ in developing a market for pornography. This article traces...

For Men, by Men? Women's Business Activities in the Pornographic Press Compared to the Overall Publishing Industry in Sweden 1950–1972

This article focuses on womens business positions in Swedish porn publishing from the 1950s to the 1970s, i.e. when pornography was legalized and when sexually explicit magazines made their commercial breakthrough. The research draws on statistical information on womens entrepreneurial roles in the overall publishing industry, which is then compared with womens agency in porn publishing. According to the findings, women seem to have had a slightly more central role in pornography than within the mainstream publishing industry. The analysis is also expanded with details about a few key female pornography entrepreneurs, tracing their publications and business strategies connected to the Freedom of the Press legislation. It is argued that womens presence in pornographic print and in the overall publishing industry were in fact similar, with a high ratio of family businesses. Womens entrepreneurship in pornography thus followed a more general historical pattern whereby women engaged in small-scale business with relatively low barriers to entry.