Orvar Löfgren

Regionauts: The Transformation of Cross-Border Regions in Scandinavia.

Many cross-border regions in Europe remain more political dreamscapes than examples of strong transnational integration.The development of the Öresund region through a bridge linking Copenhagen and eastern Denmark with Southern Sweden has been seen as a model for EU region building. Drawing on a multidisciplinary project, this article uses the Öresund case as a starting point, bringing in some contrastive Scandinavian examples. The aim is to discuss how regions try to make themselves visible and attractive for investments and visitors, but above all to what extent they produce regionauts actively creating integration by different border-crossing activities and contacts. The focus is on the cultural dimensions found in everyday practices and symbolic manifestations of these transnational processes. What kind of gaps between regional rhetoric and actual mundane activities emerge? A historical perspective is used to illustrate these changing border dynamics in which cultural, political and economic asymmetries often become an energizing factor.

Motion and emotion: learning to be a railawy traveller

The daily commute is often routinized into mindless transportation, which makes it hard to study. But how have commuters acquired the skills of rail travel? This paper looks at the materialities of motion and emotion, drawing on railway travel experiences of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using a historical perspective to develop an ethnography of the mundane and seemingly eventless, the focus is on the interplay between material infrastructures of travel and emotional mindscapes. How did feelings of anxiety and security, boredom and euphoria surface in arrivals and departures, in situations of waiting or daydreaming? New social skills in handling crowds and strangers were developed, and ideas of class materialized in everything from the choice of decoration in train compartments to patterns of segregation in the new main stations.

The New Economy: A Cultural History

In this article I look at some cultural aspects of the economic frenzy of the 1990s, a period often labelled ‘the new economy’. The focus is on the ways in which processes of culturalization became an important part of production, in such fields as e-commerce and ‘the experience economy’. How was culture packaged and marketed in new ways, for example in the production of symbols, images, auras, experiences and events? I explore how the technologies of imagineering, performance, styling and design came to play important roles in this process. Other important traits of this development are discussed in a comparison with earlier examples of the emergence of ‘new economies’: the aesthetics and practices of speed, the cult of creativity, ‘the catwalk economy’ and the importance of public display and performance, as well as the importance of ‘newness’.

The secret lives of tourists: Delays, disappointments and daydreams

Tourist research on life in “The Experience Economy” has led to a focus on the eventful and dramatic, on ways of packaging and marketing “great experiences” that turn a heritage into an event, a city into desires, a museum into an adventure. There is a lot of talk about the production of great atmospheres and exciting events, but tourist life is of course full of non‐events, indifferent or bad experiences. This paper looks at such situations. How do tourists experience waiting for a delayed flight, daydreaming on the beach or finding the promised great experiences disappointing or just boring? What happens when tourists are doing nothing or just experience “the same old thing”?

Off the edge: experiments in cultural analysis

In Search of Missing Processes Sensing The Cream Effect Warming Smoothing Aisthesis & Anaesthesia Ageing Wasting Bracketing Wear and Tear Fossilisation Composting Moving The Doppler Effect Slow Motion Synch/Unsynch Stealth Still Life Transforming Zero-making Artificialisation Backlash Backdrafts Customising Menuing Mystifying Self-mystification Camouflage Silence Sanchismo Sleeping.

Island magic and the making of a transnational region

How can an artificial island and a bridge‐building project shape the dreams and plans for a transnational region? In this article I examine the making of the öresund region of Denmark and Sweden by analyzing the intertwining of bridge construction and region building, from the early dreams and plans, to the actual construction phase, to the ceremonial opening in 2000, and to the difficult transition into an everyday transportation system. The ways in which the construction was organized and staged came to mirror some important trends of the so‐called new economy and many of its buzzwords. Engineering and imagineering were combined in new ways.

Routinising research : academic skills in analogue and digitial worlds

This paper explores research routines which are so mundane that they are rarely noticed and may be hard to even verbalise. How does one acquire the bodily dexterity of rifling through a filing cabinet, skimming Google lists or judging a book by holding in it one’s hands? Drawing on interviews with and observations among scholars of both the analogue and digital generations, mainly in the social and cultural sciences, I look at how such routines are established, naturalised and transformed. They may be seen as methods slowly turning into inconspicuous habits. To what extent do such practices, which are often seen as intensely personal, actually mirror norms and cultural conventions of specific academic settings? With a focus on materialities and sensibilities, I discuss three arenas of everyday academic activities: writing, reading and handling information.

Changing emotional economies: The case of Sweden 1970–2010

This paper discusses processes of emotionalisation and commodification at home and work, a theme that has been a focus of Arlie Hochschilds research in the USA over the last four decades. What happens when you look at similar processes within another national frame? The American experience is contrasted to that of two periods of rapid cultural and economic change in Swedish society during the early 1970s and late 1990s. Some similarities and differences in the emotional economies of these two periods are explored. My perspective is ethnological, with a focus on changes in the emotional landscape of everyday life. The main argument is that a historical perspective can capture some of the contradictory and many stranded aspects of both commodification and de-commodification processes.

Mess: on domestic overflows

ABSTRACT Many homes in affluent Western societies have an ongoing battle against domestic mess, because of the steady inflow of new acquisitions. This essay looks at the ways in which mess has travelled through modern history and has ended up as both a powerful metaphor and a constant everyday worry in consumer life. In this process, mess has often been defined as a problematic condition, often reflecting the moral shortcoming of messy individuals. It has also created new market opportunities, services and solutions for de-cluttering. Mess illustrates some of the tensions in contemporary patterns of consumption and highlights the understudied aspects of how commodities are transformed during their domestic life cycle. The focus is on the ways in which materiality and affect are linked in these processes. The paper draws on an ongoing research project, “Managing Overflow.”

Everyday Life, Anthropology of

The study of everyday life is an interdisciplinary field that stands for a special interest in the commonplace and the seemingly trivial routines and activities of daily life as well as a focus on ordinary people as creative actors rather than passive consumers or objects of domination. Like few other similar concepts, the study of everyday life has been used not only as a research perspective or analytical tool but also as a research ideology. The study of everyday life developed in the postwar period as an alternative to, or critique of, mainstream traditions in the social sciences, often with a focus on anthropological, ethnographic, and qualitative approaches.