Social Mobility and National Character Jonas Frykman

Frykman, Jonas 1989: Social Mobility and National Character. - Ethnologia Europaea XIX: 33-46.

National character is seen here as the competence people develop in the encoun­ ter with social conditions. Using "typically Swedish" characteristics as described by Gustav Sundbiirg and Ake Daun - extrospection, starchiness, efficiency, avoiding conflicts - I describe the conditions that encourage such attitudes. The basic assumption is that they characterize people with easy social mobility: only a fifth of Sweden's educated and professional class comes from homes with an academic tradition. Pictures of the national character are painted by this group. Many academics come from the conscientious working class or from lower­ middle-class families striving to climb; they have been active in associations and popular movements. They have sought to prove their capability, defining them­ selves in relation to their work, and displaying few striking personal or cultural traits. This gave them a place in hierarchical structures of the expansive public and private sectors. The capability strategy is discussed in UlfHannerz's dichoto­ my of perspective and message. The empirical material comes from interviews and memmrs. Today there are signs that the features of the starchy Swede are being replaced by flashier personal and cultural traits, at least in the educated class. Capability no longer ensures success. I suggest that this is due to the narrowing of the influx to universities and the availability of alternative careers outside the hierarchical orders.

Docent, fil. dr Jonas Frykman, Department of European Ethnology, Lund Uni­ versity, Finngatan 8, S-223 62 Lund.

In ethnological research into nationality there With examples from twentieth-century Swe­ is a troublesome vacuum - the link between den I shall discuss here the connection between social mobility and national character. How is the sort of characteristics that are considered consciousness formed in people who are mov­ "typically Swedish" - above all the stiff Swed­ ing upwards in the social structures? What ish formality - and the attitudes which can be kinds ofnatfrmal self-understanding develop in appropriate in a socially mobile society. countries where people stick to their roots com­ pared with countries where they have to break away? 1 In sociology and demography, however, so­ cial mobility is a well-established area of re­ Swedishness as competence search. There have been studies of the oppor­ It is of course risky to make general descrip­ tunities for mobility, of career paths, of open tions of a nation's characteristics - there are and closed societies, of the influence of mobility horrifying examples to deter us, and scholars on class consciousness and professional iden­ who repudiate such descriptions tend to be tity, and so forth. 2 The linking factors that are more numerous than those who attempt them. put forward concern the conditions of groups Whereas national culture is a legitimate re­ and classes, but rarely the more general ques­ search field, people's identity character is a tion of how mobility may be related to a dis­ more dubious area. Scholars in recent years tinctive national character. have delighted in discussing European civiliza-

3 Ethnologia Europaea XIX. I 33 n tion processes, what different class cultures do thus not on psychodynamic processes creating to people's subjectivity, and so on. The purpose a certain personality or individual identity, but has been to use historical and cross-cultural rather on external circumstances which de­ comparisons to relativize our almost axiomatic mand specific patterns of adaptation. Swedish­ notions about the delimited individual person­ ness is then the answer to the question "How ality; this is something that is created and can one get by in Sweden"? Changing external changed, nothing that is, something that circumstances produce different definitions of arises in a context and is reformed when the what is typically Swedish. context changes. The concept of identity is Like any skill, the nation~l character is problematic to handle, since it claims to de­ something that is generally learned uncon­ scribe more than segments of a person's com­ sciously. It is drilled in through many everyday petence; it seeks to capture the totality. And it encounters with people and things, engrained is hard to capture the varied possibilities in a like manual dexterity and habits. It is only formula. The very obsession with what is per­ when it is contrasted with other realities that sonal and individual can be seen as one of the it is clearly revealed. Swedishness in America, most distinctive features in the ideology of the for instance, has no more than a superficial late twentieth century (cf. Marcus & Fischer resemblance to present-day Swedish traits in 1986: 45- 76). the old country, precisely because conditions in What is called Swedishness differs from one the new world are so different (Klein 1988). time to another, from the senior civil servant to Ethnic identity is not a package that the im­ the lumberjack, from Vasterbotten in the migrant brings with him from his homeland; it north to Skane in the south. National individu­ must be anchored in the current flow of every­ ality tends to evade anyone who attempts a day events ifit is to survive. In a similar way, scientific description. the ethnicity of immigrants to Sweden be­ At the same time, it is evident that there are comes, as Billy Ehn and others have shown, a certain basic features in, say, Swedishness or negotiable commodity, a compromise arising Hungarianness which are transmitted from out of the confrontation with Swedish society generation to generation, a distinctiveness (Ehn 1988). The host country, not the country which is not effaced even in this age of commu­ of origin, determines the framework for the nication and migration. This entices research­ choice of national characteristics. ers to try ever more refined methods of in­ It will be seen that I assume that some of the vestigation, from surveys to psychological skills which are part of Swedishness are con­ tests, to find new ways to measure these na­ nected to the ease of movement within society, tionally coloured peculiarities (see Daun's pa­ of pursuing a career which takes the individual per in this volume). to places his parents never saw. These are fea­ As an alternative to trying to capture iden­ tures developed in contexts where people are tity, the researcher can look for the distinctive forced to be highly flexible in their close per­ skills that people need in a particular country. sonal relations. Hungary and Sweden provide certain external conditions which form the basis of nationality. The "typically Swedish" properties would then The Swedish temperament be the strategies people have used in order to That social mobility is one cornerstone of the manoeuvre in Swedish society, as individuals Swedish temperament is evident from the sta­ learn to master their own society's game. tistician Gustav Sundbarg's description early This view offers a dynamic way to approach this century. He drew attention to the way the question of the national character. Instead Swedes were turned outwards, not in the sense of being a certain identity, it becomes a learned of being extroverted, but extrospective. The op­ disposition, competence, or skill. This is a sit­ posite of this was the introspection of the uational skill, but it really does need the right thoughtful, reflective type of person. Whereas situation if it is to be displayed. The focus is Danes - Sundbarg's constant object of compar-

34 ison - were good psychologists and judges of Sundbarg's study of the national temperament human character, with a mastery of words, was a supplement to the Inquiry into Emigra­ Swedes were geared to actions __,,and outward­ tion, it was scarcely the cosmology and culture looking utility. Swedes built machines, edu­ of the masses that the author was most famil­ cated the people, administered justice, and or­ iar with. The Swedish extrospection was an ganized an efficient civil service. They also re­ excellent strategy for men in the service of the tained the virtues of the previous two centu­ state, holding office or enjoying positions of ries, when Sweden was a great power. trust, aiming for promotion and a career Sundbarg's Swedes belong to a martial nobility within a given system. The vertical bonds to a devoted to doing good outside the nation's strong central government and the will to boundaries and outside themselves. A Swede is serve furthered precisely the attitudes Sund­ ever attended by a sense of duty, "a splendid barg chose to see as essential features of the fighter, a law-abiding citizen, a good husband, Swedish character. Danishness, by contrast, a humane master, and a dexterous worker - was nourished by a more pronounced bour­ when he wants to be" (Sundbarg 1911: 16). The geois society with strong horizontal relations. author implies that the latter reservation is Sundbarg, who made no claims to scientific unfortunate, since the qualities required of stringency, was bold in his historical conclu­ people at the turn of the century were bour­ sions. His essay on the national temperament geois virtues like control and prudence, the was part of a national rhetoric which sought to force of argument rather than the argument of explain how splendid Sweden really was. As force. But the Swede was by nature nai:ve, and the source of the Swedish national tempera­ for his noble goals he fought fairly in a world ment Sundbarg invoked the historic freedom of that demanded cunning and introspective cal­ the peasant; he claimed that Swedish extro­ culation. spection was due to the freedom of the Swedish When Sundbarg called the Swede long­ people to form their distinctive personality sighted he meant precisely this transcendental without pressure from outside. ''The great psy­ attitude: Swedes had a blurred vision of chologists of our time are the Russians, as a close-up things, whereas Danes were short­ result of centuries of physical and mental op­ sighted and ceremonious, obsessed with every­ pression, which we cannot imagine" (Sundbarg day concerns and plans. 1911: 16). And why not look at the Danes, with The idea of extrospection also prompts Sund­ their serfdom and bondage, struggles with barg to note that Swedes mostly view the outer Germany, and so on! But Sweden has never person. They do not mix with people from other been occupied by foreign powers, has escaped classes, which he explains as a lack of interest the European experience of "the oppression of in what is human. They were instead careful to one social class by another", and the individual heed all the dictates of propriety, afraid of has had comparatively great political freedom making fools of themselves, always obedient to vis-a-vis the governing power. directives and decrees from higher authorities. Sundbarg concludes his explanation of the Since external signs were important - they national character by asserting that Swedish showed one's place in the system - people were society has permitted mobility between the so­ anxious that no one should have more than his cial classes. Although one may question the due . Envy and the prohibition mentality - the historical accuracy of this idealized description, Swede's pet vices - result from this attitude. Sundbarg the statistician knew what he was It can be said that Gustav Sundbarg was talking about as regards mobility. describing a well-educated person moving in hierarchical structures. The turn-of-the-cen­ tury Swede advanced along the corridors of officialdom, shouted commands in the army, or The typical Swede planned the course of railway lines straight as When the ethnologist Ake Daun describes pre­ an arrow through farming land. Although sent-day Swedes in the well-ordered welfare

3* 35 state, there are both parallels and differences down, since this would only be an obstacle in to Sundbarg's picture. Shyness and diffidence one's career. are still prominent characteristics. Swedes still The portrait thus corresponds nicely with appear to be extrospective in the sense that today' s flexible social engineers pursuing their they feel more at home in what they do than careers. They have adopted the attitudes that what they are, more geared to accomplishing go with thejob,just as Gustav Sundbarg's stiff­ something in this world than to being with necked officials were well fitted to the demands their fellow human beings. A Swede becomes of their hierarchical structures. Sundbarg's someone by achieving something. Sweden required different strategies from the It can even be hard to catch sight of a Swede; welfare state. Yet both reveal a dependence on the description is of a person who is "ordinary" the system and obedience to its commands, and in the extreme and clumsy at handling inter­ both exist in contexts allowing high mobility . personal conflicts . Whereas members of other Today Sweden is said to have the highest nations display the gaudy feathers of their social mobility of any country in Europe. Sta­ prominent characteristics, a Swede appears in tistics tell us that "a majority of the Swedish his everyday grey costume, avoiding all embar­ population has changed class affiliation be­ rassing attention. He has important things to tween childhood and adulthood" (Vogel 1987). 3 accomplish and is upset if he cannot devote This is not only typical of the last few decades, himself to technical or organizational tasks, but also of the entire twentieth century. which he carries out earnestly and honestly. Most of those who are counted as the edu­ Only if he has a few drinks does he break the cated middle class are social climbers who have silence, but even then he is not particularly left their origin and been accultured to new eloquent - the laconism is too deep-rooted. He contexts. About 30 per cent of today's upper believes strongly in outer forms (Daun 1986). middle class - senior officials in the public and Daun's portrait of what is "typically Swed­ private sectors - grew up in working-class ish" is based on penetrating and wide-ranging homes, and 25 per cent of them come from the tests of social psychology. Contrasted with the lower middle class. Although the majority of Finnish and Japanese character, it reveals a university graduates' children also follow the fundamental Swedish personality type (Daun path oflearning, these today make up only 17 1988; Daun et al. 1988). Whereas Sundbarg per cent of the senior officials. The educated makes broad generalizations about the rea­ class is thus by far the most heterogeneous sons, Daun aims for precision in the description stratum in society as regards origin (Vogel of the personality. 1987: 109-119) . Is the similarity of the two descriptions due to the handing down of 'Swedishness' from generation to generation, from the turn of the The nationality of the educated class century to the present day, or is the continuity For the past few years I have been working on ensured by correspondences in the conditions? a project focusing on the' culture borne by the Does the character of today's Swede also reveal educated groups in twentieth-century Swe­ the societal framework of the welfare state? den.4 The empirical and theoretical discussion Yes, possibly, if the description is socially is based on the conditions applying to these restricted . Perhaps the features which Daun people. The primary material of the research has emphasized should be seen as strategies project consists of life-history interviews and which have been applicable in a certain socie­ memoirs . The temporal focus is on the first half tal situation - one with great chances of ad­ of the century . Most of the people interviewed vancement in a growing public or private sec­ are between 60 and 70, with a contrasting tor, where the jobs require qualities like flex­ group consisting of a younger generation born ibility and adaptability, careful regard to the in the 1940s. demands of the situation and the superiors. The overriding question of mobility and na­ One's own personal profile must be played tional character is narrowly restricted here in

36 n terms of time and social class. By concentrat­ ing on this particular group we can question Perspectives and messages h whether what we call national culture is any­ How should the cultural analyst approach the 1r thing more than plain and simple self-under­ effect of frequent upward mobility on national Lt standing. We can then focus our attention on character? And what does it mean that many f­ the main question: How is this self-under­ of the educated and those who mould public ls standing shaped by the experiences of a person opinion are social climbers, or as I prefer to call 's changing class? them, class travellers. It may here bring .e Any discussion of national character in the greater clarity if we think in terms of the di­ n twentieth-century world must take into con­ chotomy of communication and experience, d sideration the attitudes of the educated. "Who which is adopted from the anthropologist Ulf ,t builds a national culture, who constructs a na­ Hannerz's discussion (1982) of the two ways in tional history, a national symbolic world?" is which consciousness is built up . l- Orvar Lofgren's rhetorical question (1985); his On one hand, the individual acquires "on his h answer invokes the American anthropologist own a sort of personal experience ... from his Benedict Anderson, who points out that the specific place in the social structure." As child vision of the beloved native land has been con­ or adult, as man or woman, as worker or direc­ s, jured up by educated people, intellectuals in a tor, we have differing experiences. The individ­ broad sense. They have needed an imaginary ual interprets his circumstances, tries to un­ l- society to work for, something to give purpose derstand them, creates fantasies and dreams and meaning to their own contribution. They on the basis of his personal experience. His w have not worked for their own good, nor for place in the social structure gives class con­ ,d their class or their family - it has been the sciousness and ideologies, conditioning life­ ,s nation and the people that have given legiti­ forms and habits . This socially acquired knowl­ macy to work that has claimed to be altruistic edge Hannerz calls perspectiv e. (Anderson 1983). The distinctive national fea­ He uses the term message to describe the other source, symbolic communication. "The 1e tures have thus been fostered by people who .7 needed not only a mythical charter for their individual gets second-hand experiences from !d projects but also one that was of use to them in one or more members of society, or ready-made their own career. ideas of other kinds" (Hannerz 1982: 58). This lS el They have had exceptionally good opportuni­ includes messages from the school teacher, ties to disseminate their own view of what was from the mass media and advertising hoard­ distinctively national. They administer the ec­ ings, from friends and parents, from "popular onomic , political, and reproductive power; they culture" and "high culture" . The messages are also have access to the public sphere and are the "culture" of a society, while the perspec­ ,n visible in the mass media. It is obvious that it is tives are the citizens' experiences. te this group which has created stereotypes such The messages are the centre of ethnological e­ as "the starchy Swede" . The group is certainly attention in the analysis of the symbolic sides ,n not homogeneous , ridden as it is by ideological , of peasant society - myths , tales, and other ,e cultural, and generation conflicts, and this is folklore - whereas perspectives are seen more :h also reflected in the hesitation about what in the study of everyday material and social 5 td should be defined as distinctively national. conditions. In modern society, an increasingly ,lf What is typically Swedish is often presented as differentiated social structure tends to frag­ id a caricature of what they actually do not wish ment people's experiences , whereas the rich tg to be identified with. flow of cultural communication has an inte­ ·n grating effect. When messages are received by people with a­ their individual perspectives, there takes place in that interpretation which we can call their cul­ ture, in the scientific sense of subculture. Peo-

37 ple with similar social experiences tend to pick This assumption is contrary to what was up similar messages. That they do not do so is said earlier about how consciousness is formed. the very foundation of ethnological and an­ For the reasoning to be valid, the educated thropological research . Otherwise it could be must also come from uniform home back­ claimed that culture was nothing more than a grounds. Yet we have seen that people in this mechanical superstructure based on social and social category have different experiences material conditions. A place in the social struc­ which make them interpret messages differ­ ture does not automatically determine one's ently. consciousness, and the fact that one belongs to - Education does different things to different a certain social category does not mean that people. What for some people is a reinforce­ one acquires a specific culture or can count on ment of impressions from home is for other really belonging to any group. people a schooling in social rootlessness . When When individuals do constitute a group, a the boy from a working-class home and the gang or a society, a seedbed is created for in­ doctor's son stand together on the high-school tensive communication and thus for the re­ steps on graduation day to be acclaimed by working which we call a subculture, with the their parents, they have not only gone to differ­ rules and symbols which emerge. ent schools, but will also go home to different Typical of social climbers is that they appear graduation parties. to develop shared perspectives as a result of School is part of a protracted passage rite in their coming from humble backgrounds and which pupils from the working-class must pursuing a career . They are in a corresponding gradually learn the rules of the game: educa­ way open to messages that show strong agree­ tion and change of culture . The passage rite is ment. On the other hand, they rarely consti­ intended to rub off a previous identity and tute a subculture. They are incorporated into teaching is a part of this important retraining ready-made contexts which _they will in turn process . Perhaps we can, with Vincent Crapan­ influence, but perspectives and messages will zano (1980), compare the passage rite to an not coincide and make it possible to articulate introduction to a long period of anxiety, the a distinct culture . In other words, there is a aim of which is to put the individual in a state greater probability that they will become which makes him orient himself towards the Sundbarg's extrospective Swedes or Daun's goals that have been set up. starchy Swedes . They develop skills in hand­ Or to use Hannerz 's conceptual dichotomy: ling the chances offered them by the system, one stands to gain by denying one's own per­ but they are not so inclined to relax and culti­ spective and accepting the messages that are vate their new garden. communicated. The working-class youth must actively acquire what he does not passively receive in everyday life from his parents and friends (cf. Lopareto & Hazelrigg 1975). School The capability syndrome and knowledge provide an admission ticket to In scholarly literature about the open society another world. there is an assumption that society's elite stra­ When we speak of "unequal recruitment to tum should be homogeneous because everyone higher education" - the fact that two out of there has undergone the same socialization . three children of academically educated par­ The members have shared memories from ents also go to university, whereas only one school and university, shared frames of refer­ working-class child in seven does so - we have ence, and their systems of values therefore a demonstration in statistical form of what it tend to agree .6 When intellectuals are de­ costs to reject everyday life, to leave the famil­ scribed as "the new class ", this refers to the iar perspectives and put one's faith in the way that education can make different people school's message. Everybody has the same the same, and to the influence of the profession chance, but only a few choose to take it . Equal- on the individual. 7

38 IS ity is formal but not representative. School count of their fathers' social prestige whereas l does not encourage class segregation, it only we had to qualify using our own talents. ,d prepares the way for it. "Those bloody upper-class scum got every­ c­ The notion of equality that applies in schools thing free, he knew that. Help from home in is and universities says that class affiliation every way. Money if they needed it. Contacts. should not be articulated, that boundaries He had nothing, only his energy and his will. r- should not be visible. And his reading head, as his teacher had once Paradoxically, this can increase the discrimi­ said. nation in the system. It makes the background Work was what counted. The individual de­ ~- a tabooed sphere; this private concern is diffi­ termines his own destiny. Forges his own for­ cult to pin down and hard to communicate. It is tune. It's only a question of will" (Andersson n not class background that prevents this but 1980: 70). ,e personal qualities, they say. Only by acquiring The life-stories can, logically enough, con­ Jl the qualities that the school encourages can firm that it was a common attitude to feel y the class traveller be helped on his way, but "selected"; these students had a vocation to r- this means denying his perspective. administer the special intellectual gifts with 1t From the individual's viewpoint, the predica­ which they had been endowed. There was no ment is made bearable by the knowledge that hope of winning points on account of their life­ he or she is on the way to something else - that style, manners, etiquette, or civilization. When the present affiliation is only provisional. they were praised it was for having succeeded There is a promise of real life in the future. despite their background. Many educated people of working-class ori­ Their capability also increased their social gin tell of a strategy which we can call being homelessness. Along with intelligence as a capable (a rather inadequate translation of source of their identity, there has also emerged Swedish duktig, an adjective which not only an individuality in the sense of lonesomeness. expresses a condescending admission of clever­ It was the personal baggage, the individual's ness but also overtones ofreliable but unimagi­ qualities, that brought rewards, not socially native proficiency). They played down their formed perspectives. "I know that I have be­ origin and achieved dignity by showing off come what I am through what I have their competence. They worked and "swotted" achieved," as one academic said with satisfac­ r: to attain the recognition that they believed tion in an interview. By this he meant that others were born with. Or as one of the people what had happened during his career was un­ e in my survey remarked resolutely: "It was only der his control, he himself was responsible for it a matter of working, of getting on and study­ what he had become. And in a world where you y ing." become what you achieve, the guiding star of d "In my class there were no less than three or reason shines bright, while irrationality is 11 four who came from professors' families and glimpsed in chiaroscuro along with mysticism, 0 had an academic foundation. They got so much romanticism, and inherited cultural character­ free. They had a library at home and a tradi­ istics. tion of reading books and reference works and This isolating cleverness was also reinforced things that I had to borrow. That was obvious by social isolation. The class traveller would when we had to write essays. They had a tradi­ probably find himself treated with bewilder­ e tion that was self-evident for them but not for ment and could sometimes even be expelled e me." from the youth groups of his home environ­ t Working-class pupils' dependence on their ment, rejected by his old playmates and l­ own achievement, and comparisons with pupils friends. There is a close watch on the boundary e from an academic background led to a struggle between those who continue beyond compul­ e between the truly gifted and the spoiled. They sory school and those who start working as I- had been given everything at home and were soon as possible. "I became a loner, went therefore suspect; they had been seeded on ac- around by myself thinking and minding my

39 own business", is a comment from one who of how much was sacrificed for them. They can experienced the double loss of affiliation: not seldom remember getting any real help with being fully accepted by the people he had to homework. Instead they received support in turn to, and rejected by those he was forced to the form of watchful discipline, anxiety and leave. Ronny Ambjiirnsson, a professor of the hopes, constant exhortations to be hard-work­ history of ideas who comes from a working­ ing and conscientious. "Mother was really class home, tells of how he had to abjure his strict. She beat us as soon as we disobeyed. background when he came to grammar school; And if we didn't do our homework ... " The this meant rejecting the working-class identity mother told them to study, but did not tell markers of being hard-working and skotsam, them how. another key adjective meaning "conscientious, We often hear that it was the mother who orderly, sober, reliable": was the driving force at home. She had time to "The concept of conscientiousness did not think of her gifted children, in the wish that have the same central importance for my new they could fulfil the educational ambitions that schoolmates from bourgeois backgrounds, and she could not; she took a job as a cleaner in did not have nearly the same rich meaning for order to make it possible for them to study; she them as for me. This was a sort of fall from followed and admired their progress; and it grace in my life; I began to find conscientious was to her they showed their grades and their people puritanical, limited, and boring" (Am­ graduation certificate. The father is more often I bjiirnsson 1988:9). depicted in the classic pose of male breadwin­ ner, whose masculinity can make it difficult for him to communicate with his sons. He provided The liberation the economic conditions that allowed the chil­ For the children of academically educated par­ dren to leave home, but he was unable to main­ ents it has been a matter of course that studies tain contact with them when they had gradu­ should lead to more studies. They have not ated from high school: needed to be told this directly - they have done it anyway. The strength of their internal re­ "By frugality and overtime production is shown by the fact that 87 per he brought up three sons to graduate. cent of the children become either profession­ He breathed and lived through them, als or industrialists (Vogel 1987: 81ff.). Nor they became steps towards the sun. have they needed any instructions about what He himself had never been to the cinema or the they should become - parents have been able theatre to trust that their children would make the or had time to read books. right decision on their own. Everyday impres­ They had succeeded, and now they come home sions guided them to some extent. The father at weekends took his son on walks through the forest and and talk with foreign voices about these taught him how to discover and name the things. world. On Sunday afternoons they went to mu­ Their women have cold eyes seums and art exhibitions. Conversation round and despise him when he eats off the knife. the dinner table was an education in itself, He will never understand giving ideas to be incorporated into the school who built the wall of his loneliness". assignment; there was a comfortable reading (Sjodin 1949) chair by the bookcase. We hear a very different story from children Children from the working class who em­ from homes lacking an educational tradition. barked on a career not infrequently come from Their schooldays and higher education meant families with a great willingness to break a heavy financial burden on the parents. Edu­ away, from homes where the parents were ac­ cation was a family investment, yielding re­ tive in politics or trade unions working for turns only long afterwards. They were aware change. These settings have been permeated

40 by diligence, thrift, and a strong work ethic, that the children have primarily chosen or spurring the children still more to ''become been encouraged to follow an education leading something" - else (Hultqvist 1988). to a profession, so that they can become some­ There are circumstances in people's every­ thing. Professions such as engineering, social day experience of family, relatives, and second­ work, teaching, and the clergy are dominated ary groups which make them leave home and by people with origins in the working class or embark on a career path away from what they the lower middle class. Back in the 1930s the are used to. And it appears not to be the pat­ theological faculties in Sweden's universities tern solely in academic families but in work­ had the greatest number of students who did ing-class and middle-class homes. I shall dis­ not come from class I (cf. Frykman 1988: 129f., cuss elsewhere what features of the family 161, n. 104). In government authorities offer­ structure and kinship relations may have con­ ing both employment and education - post of­ tributed to the breakaway. 8 Here we can fice, customs, defence, police - there is also a merely note that the ties were of a liberating relatively strong representation from these kind . strata. Professions like these have taken over Another circumstance is frequently men­ the role of primary school teacher as the first tioned in the interviews . Somewhere in the step in a family career. family there is the distant model of a relative If education liberates the individual from his with an education: a clergyman, a teacher, an background, it seems probable that it is his officer, an aunt who writes, a doctor. This per­ profession and his talent, diligence and other son in the familiar world testifies to the possi­ extrospective facets which make up the basis bility of class travel, proving that the family for his way of life. He has broken away from actually has a tradition of learning, that there circumstances to which he cannot return . It really is a "restlessness", and so on. Virtually can also be a relief and an advantage to escape every informant who has spoken about his ready-made definitions of existence. "We tend background has mentioned an uncle or an aunt to see the breakup of old interpersonal rela­ like this. Perhaps there was a chance to stay tions from the suffering aspect, as if one be­ with him or her in the town with the distin­ came poor as a result of each loss", writes Peter guished school, perhaps he or she supported Bruckner (1987: 43f.), meaning that the ab­ the student in other ways. The existence of sence of parents, relatives, and habits, which such a relative - the rule rather than the ex­ would otherwise imprison the individual, can ception - always reinforced the feeling that the in fact be a precondition for discoveries and important things in life are somewhere else. creativity. Such factors in the social setting combine to We may see things more clearly if we com­ persuade the would-be class traveller to break pare the experiences of the immigrant. The away, to leave the perspectives that flourish in cancer researcher Georg Klein, by origin a the class where he was born and to listen to Hungarian Jew but now a naturalized Swede , other messages. Even his own immediate calls his memoirs "Instead of a Homeland". He world tells him to get going. is invoking the words of Nelly Sachs, "An Stelle von Heimat, halte ich die Verwandlun­ gen der Welt ." He left Budapest in 1947, when Towards security and unease he was in his early twenties, and came to study Sending children to school has been the surest medicine in Stockholm. Twenty-two years after way of guaranteeing their security. If the leaving Hungary he returned to Budapest in working-class family is anxious that the sons 1970 to lecture : should have an education while the daughters "The President of the Academy, Hungary's have to face the prospect of doing something leading neurobiologist, a highly intelligent and more practical and domestic, the hope is that very sensitive man, found exactly the right the daughters can marry into circumstances expression when he introduced me. He did not that the sons have to acquire . This also means call me a Hungarian but "our colleague who

41 pt

originally came from Hungary and who speaks dence" (interview in Sydsvenska Dagbladet 17 our language as well as the rest of us." This Jan. 1988). Andersson himself has taken ad­ was a perfect definition, and I could not have vantage of the openness of the educational sys­ wished for a better one (G. Klein 1984: 218). 9 tem. Now he has ended up as one of "the class­ In Klein's autobiography it is his work and less, neither lower-class, middle-class, nor up­ the worldwide research community that is the per-class, but pulled up by the roots," and with homeland. It is discovery, progress, the future his main identity associated with his profes­ which gives meaning to the daily tasks. It is in sion. "Ifl ever had the power,"he says, "I would the role of intellectual that he feels securely at set about a redistribution of self-confidence." home. At all events, there is some probability that The examples quoted show how background the many class travellers become their profes­ can become a liberating resource, something to sions, feeling at home more in what they do mobilize the individual. Light baggage makes than in what they are. This also creates a seed­ for easier mobility. The class traveller can, like bed for loyalty to modernity. Tomorrow offers the emigrant, become the bearer of progress better solutions. Better worlds can be created and change, following roughly the same norms with the aid of science, technology, and reason. as the "marginal man" described by the sociol­ The breakaway from the old brings a faith in ogist R. E. Park: modernity, since it also means coming to terms "One of the consequences of migration is to with one's personal background. The step from create a situation in which the same individ­ the poverty of agrarian Sweden to the modern­ ual... finds himself striving to live in two di­ istic welfare state, the "People's Home", was verse cultural groups. The effect is to produce taken by many who saw that their own career an unstable character - a personality type was consistent with social change. The welfare with characteristic forms of behavior. This is state was the utopia that promised a home, the "marginal man". It is in the mind of the some time. marginal man that the conflicting cultures meet and fuse (Park 1928: 881) 10 That the external conditions exist naturally Mobilizing contexts does not mean that the class traveller becomes The chance of breaking away from one's imme­ a creative boundary-walker, an immigrant in diate world is of course facilitated by changed two cultures who has been given the opportu­ social and economic circumstances. From the nity of perspectivizing both. The conditions 1930s onwards, the number of people in fur­ nevertheless allow not only for a more relaxed ther education has multiplied. The number of security strategy but also for a greater willing­ university graduates alone has multiplied al­ ness to bank on the uncertain. most tenfold over a fifty-year period from the But both groups are haunted to a greater or 1930s up to the present day.11 lesser extent by a special but seldom outspoken Mobility has been encouraged by the rapid sense of insecurity. It originates in the conflict expansion of the welfare state and the fact that between, on the one hand, society's messages, Sweden has remained outside two world wars. and, on the other, the sense of disorientation External circumstances like these contribute that results from coming from a background to Sweden's alleged position as the European that has not prepared one for the present life. country with the greatest social mobility. This mental disposition is not confined to an But these are not the only factors. In the older generation with experience of a more early years of this century the rate of change stratified class society. One child of the 1940s, was relatively modest. Up to the middle of the Dan Andersson, economist with the Swedish 1930s there was stagnation on the labour mar­ Trade Union Confederation, who grew up in a ket and elsewhere. Yet despite this, recruit­ working-class district of the textile town of ment to the higher professions was from a rela­ Boras, says: "I can smell out an academic from tively broad base. Can it be worth trying to the working class. He has much less self-confi- explain this by suggesting that the willingness

42 to break away has been reinforced by social parents were members or they themselves groups outside the family, and by contexts were involved in youth activities of some sort. other than mere expansion? The educationist Elisabeth Hultqvist (1988) It appears as if one of the most important has shown that when students in the 1960s background factors was the great number of flocked to fill the places at the School of Social popular movements, which were common in Work in Umea, most of the class travellers the late nineteenth century and a natural fea­ came from families with a solid tradition of ture of the Swedish scene in the early twen­ association activity. tieth century. The local labour party, the free For literary scholars it is obvious that con­ church, the temperance lodge were all local tact with libraries, theatrical groups, or study phenomena preaching a global message. When circles has been of decisive importance for the free church came to the village it instilled a many of today's proletarian writers. new scale of values in its adherents. It made In order to proceed in the analysis of the the members homeless in their village but at interplay of national character and social mo­ home with God and the congregation. It urged bility, we need a combination of the more gen­ them to break with local patterns and enter a eral socio-economic processes and the organi­ community which had the nation, perhaps zation of eyeryday life in different groups and even the entire world, as its field of action. It periods. At present there are more questions made geographical mobility easier that there than answers. were free churches in the cities and towns, ready to welcome the traveller among the brothers and sisters in the new congregation. The rootlessness which the class traveller could otherwise have felt found considerable The shy Swede loses his shyness compensation in the familiar patterns offered A distinctive national character is a form of here. 12 The movements also opened many ca­ skill which is developed in the interplay be­ reer paths. A schooling in a religious or trade tween individual and structure. In order to get union movement was an admission ticket to on in Sweden today, one needs a different com­ association work, positions of responsibility in petence from that required a generation ago. local government, political duties on the na­ Many "typically Swedish" characteristics have tional level, and so forth. The Swedish Parlia­ been useful for those coming from a humble ment has in this way had a disproportionately background into a qualified profession. They high number of representatives from these have had to refrain from articulating their own movements. style, displaying their own pattern of culture. Being prepared to break away was an obvi­ Being grey was a strategic asset here. ous prerequisite for these Swedish popular In the Sweden of 1988, people may smile at movements. This is an exciting field calling out Gustav Sundbiirg's picture of the extrospec­ for study, which would probably show that mo­ tive, honest, chivalrous Swede; perhaps we bility has been higher among those who were should even question the portrait of the shy, active in the movements. For example, has a starchy Swede from the heyday of the welfare region like Jonkoping County, with its high state. Today's young people feel a tingle of de­ degree of free church activity, bred more class light as they rediscover bourgeois culture, tak­ travellers than the adjacent Kronoberg ing an interest in breeding and etiquette, dar­ County, which is ecclesiastically conserva­ ing to stand out in their provocative elegance. tive?13 Extravagant night life with glitter and cham­ It is common in my interview material that pagne testifies to other virtues than those when academically educated people from the dressed in unobtrusive grey. The friendly but working class and the lower middle class talk somewhat uneasy use of the familiar pronoun about their childhood and youth, there is some du, which has bridged social distinctions dur­ contact with a popular movement. Either the ing the last few decades, is slowly being re-

43 L placed by the use of the formal ni. Perhaps we elite stratum - whether we call them the aca­ may find that the reserved Swede - at least in demic class or the educated bourgeoisie - have the middle-class world - is a dying breed. toned down their profile . As a category they Today's articulation of and striving for dis­ have served others while showing few individ­ tinctions may have its roots in the fact that the ual contours. This is probably due to the fact state is no longer such an obvious provider of that they are a diverse mixture of people from attractive career opportunities. The ideal of different social settings. The blend of people of service which encouraged both the Swedish ex­ widely varying social origin can have contrib­ trospection and the starchy shyness is not as uted to the choice of a neutral picture of their useful for today's youth as it has been for to­ own identity; a picture in which rationality and day's adult, those in professional employment. competence are given pride of place before Now those who acquire an education are at­ what is distinctively and aggressively national­ tracted to private industry and the chance of istic. And it is in this group that high mobility establishing oneself as "one's own master" - also creates the conditions necessary for play­ this is where opportunity and high incomes are ing down distinctive national features. to be found. In this world it is important to It is probable that this group's self-image has emphasize rather than play down one's own also had an influence on the way other people profile. define what is typically Swedish. If mobility The external conditions fostering a different decreases, we may also hear new definitions. personal - and national - character are com­ What form Swedishness will take in future de­ bined with the fact that recruitment to the pends on what competence tomorrow's Swedes ranks of the educated is slowly shifting . It is - and in this case the educated class - will be people with a different perspective who are trained for, and on what strategies they will be now entering the educational system. It ap­ able to use. But to understand the distinctive pears as if the influx of people to long-term national character, one must look closely at the education is narrowing. With almost 400, 000 processes which create the attitudes. National academics today, as opposed to a tenth of this character is a constantly changing answer to number forty years ago, we can expect a great this encounter of personal competence and ex­ deal of internal recruitment. Families from so­ ternal conditions. ciety's elite will probably be increasingly suc­ cessful at using the educational system to re­ produce their own culture. More and more of those aiming at a uni­ Notes versity education come, then, from academic 1. Ethnological works including discussions of the and middle-class homes. And these are homes problems of the upwardly mobile are Wigerfelt where parents are consciously concerned about 1981 and Stigsdotter 1985, but these do not take the education of their children, about values up the connection between national character such as independence and cultural profiling. and mobility. 2. See, for example, Coxon & Jones 1975; Glass Today's young generation has thus been encul­ 1954; Svalastoga 1959. The present essay is tured in a world that has prepared them for based on, among other things, the results of an their future career - perhaps not so much interdisciplinary conference at the Department through diligence , sacrifices, and uncertain of History, Umea University , in April 1987, "So­ seeking , but rather in the familiarity, instilled cial struktur , social mobilitet och social for­ andring", where my paper "Klassresenarens di­ since childhood, in handling social relations lemma" was a pilot study for the present work . and behaving with confidence in the arenas 3. The term class affiliation is somewhat vaguely where they move . defined. If the population is divided into the We can sum up the way the mobility of the three groupings of workers, salaried employees, and professionals and industrialists, only about little category of people with a higher educa­ half have changed class . tion has influenced their character. Twentieth­ 4. The research project "The Cultural Formation of century Sweden is distinctive for the way the the New Class" is financed by the Council for

44 Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. considered destructive . See also Balle-Pedersen I have presented it in Frykman 1986, 1987, 1977. 1988a, 1988b. 13. Cf. Frykman 1988b, where I show how the free 5. Cf. Frykman 1988a for a discussion of how the churches around Jonkoping were much more life-mode of the educated must be full of con­ successful than those in Kronoberg County in trasts and conflicts. Only through mutability is capturing the young and bringing them into continuity guaranteed . Children learn to chal­ tune with the times. lenge authority, question established patterns, and "get even". In a changeable society any other strategy would be doomed to make them something other than future bearers of the in­ tellectual life-mode . The conflicts are an essen­ References tial feature. Alund, A. 1987: PM for konferensen Social struktur, 6. ''If it is assumed that an academic education social mobilitet och social forandring, Umea 23-25 leads to a commom cultural identification and april 1987. sharing of values between individuals, the trend Ambjornsson, Ronny 1988: Den skotsamma arbeta­ would lead to more similar frames of reference ren. Stockholm. and a greater sense of community within the Anderson, Benedict 1983: Imagin ed Communities: upper class. This would probably increase the Ref7,ections on the Origin and Spread of National­ socio-political strength of class I" (Jonsson 1987: ism. London. 170). Andersson, Gunder 1980: Komma ifatt . Stockholm. 7. Cf. Gouldner 1979, who argues that the group, Balle-Pedersen Margareta 1977: Guds folk i Dan­ despite its obvious fragmentation, has a broad mark . In: Folk & Kultur: 78-126 common foundation because it possesses the at­ Bruckner , Peter 1987: Avsides. Att vdxa upp i Tredje titude of critical discourse . riket. Lund . 8. In a forthcoming study with the working title "I Coxon, A. P. M., & C. L. Jones (eds.) 1975 : Social rorelse: Hur fostras en svensk intellektuell?" I Mobility. Harmondsworth. shall discuss the volatility of close relations Crapanzano, Vincent 1980: Rite of Return . In: W. within the family and how children learn at an Meunsterberger & L. B. Boyer (eds.): Psychoana­ early age to see people's qualities and status as lytic Study of Society 9. New York. fluid and mutable. Society tends to be seen as Daun, Ake 1986: The Japanese of the North - The composed of individuals, and attitudes are Swedes of Asia. In: Ethnologia Scandinavica: adopted as if fixed cultural rules or classifica­ 5-17. tions did not exist. To a certain extent this is Daun, Ake 1988: Svenskhet som hinder i kulturmo­ linked to a bilateral pattern of authority in fam­ tet. In: Ake Daun & Billy Ehn (eds.): Blandsverige. ilies where the mother has both power and au­ Kulturskillnader och kulturmoten . Stockholm: thority . 322-347. 9. The quotation comes in a context where Klein Daun , Ake, Carl-Erik Mattlar & Erkki Alanen 1988: describes how he suddenly rediscovers his past. Finsk och svensk personlighet . In : Ake Daun & Streets, visits to museums and theatres take Billy Ehn (eds.): Blandsverig e. Kultur ski llnader him back to his youth and the hardships of the och kulturmoten. Stockholm: 266-294. war years. Science may have become his new Ehn , Billy 1988: Sta,ategi mot skillnader and Upp­ homeland, but there was another homeland to vaxt i Blandsverige. In: Ake Daun & Billy Ehn return to. (eds.): Blandsverige. Kulturskillnad er och kultur­ 10. Park is quoted by Alund 1987, who points out moten. Stockholm: 295-306, 348-361. that the instability of the marginal man is rela­ Frykman , Jonas 1986: Hur fostras en svensk in­ tive, depending on which immigrant group a tellektuell? In: Tvdrsnitt 4. person belongs to. A person at the bottom of the Frykman, Jonas 1987: The Educating Class. In: Kin­ Swedish social pyramid who has to earn a living derkultur: 25. Deutscher Volkskundekon gress in by cleaning or washing dishes is hardly likely to Bremen 1985. Bremen . have any creative instability in his conscious­ Frykman, Jonas 1988a: Fordelen med att vara in­ ness . formell. In: Orvar Lofgren (ed.): Hej, def dr fran 11. The number of professionals - the only figure forsdhringskassan. Stockholm: 17-35. calculated for the educated class - is today Frykman, Jonas 1988b: Dansbane eldndel: Ungdo­ around 370,000. In the 1930s it was about men, populdrkulturen, opinionen. Stockholm. 30,000. Glass, D. V. (ed.) 1954: Social Mobility in Britain. 12. Ambjornsson (1988) shows how many of the fun­ London. damental virtues in, for example, the temper­ Gouldner, Alvin W. 1979: The Future of Int ellectuals ance movement were intended to liberate the and the Rise of the New Class. New York. individual from previous social ties that were Hannerz , Ulf 1982: Delkulturerna och helheten. In:

45 Ulf Hannerz, Rita Liljestrom & Orvar Lofgren Marcus, George E., & Michael M. J. Fischer 1986: (eds.): Kultur och medvetande. Stockholm. Anthropology as Cultural Critique. An Experi­ Hultqvist, Elisabeth 1988: "Man blev na't!" En ut­ mental Moment in Human Sciences. Chicago. bildningssociologisk studie om en grupp socio­ Park, R. E. 1928: Human Migration and the Margin­ nomer utbildade vid Socialhi.igskolan i Umea. In: al Man. In: American Journal of Sociology 33: UH.A Projektrapport 1988: 33. 881-893. Jonsson, Janne. 1987: Educational Resources. In: Sjodin, Stig 1949: Bandvalsaren. In: Sotfragment. Robert Erikson and Rune Aberg (eds.): Welfare in Stockholm. Transition. A Survey of Living Conditions in Swe­ Stigsdotter, Margareta 1985: Den langa viigens den 1968-1981. Oxford: 153-179. man. In: Jonas Frykman & Orvar Lofgren (eds.): Klein, Barbro 1988: Den gamla hembygden eller vad Modiirna tider. Lund: 256-293. har hiint med de svenska folktraditionerna i USA? Sundbiirg, Gustav 1911: Det svenska folklynnet. In: Ake Daun & Billy Ehn (eds.): Blandsverige. Stockholm. Kulturskillnader och kulturmoten. Stockholm: Svalastoga, Kaare 1959: Prestige, Class and Mobil­ 43-67. ity. London. Klein, Georg 1984: I stiillet for hemland. Stockholm. Vogel, Joachim 1987: Det svenska klassamhiillet. Lofgren, Orvar 1985: Nationalkiinslans kulturella Klasstruktur, social rorlighet och ojiimlikhet. Lev­ organisation. Contribution to a seminar on "Men­ nadsforhallanden 1975-85, Rapport 50, SCB. talities", Bjiirsjolagard, mimeo. Stockholm. Lopareto, J., & L. E. Hazelrigg 1975: The Attitudinal Wigerfelt, Berit 1981: Klassresan: En etnologisk stu­ Consequences of Status Change. In: A. P. M. Coxon die av social mobilitet och kulturell anpassning. & C. L. Jones (eds.): Social Mobility. Harmonds­ Department of European Ethnology, Lund Uni­ worth: 241-247. versity, mimeo.

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