Contents

Papers 153 Feminine Possibilities – Karin Högström, Orientalisk dans i Stockholm. Femininiteter, 3 Editorial. By Birgitta Svensson möjligheter och begränsningar. Rev. by Anu 5 Forty Years of Ethnologia Scandinavica. By Laukkanen Nils-Arvid Bringéus 155 Imaginary Weaving – Anna Jakobsson, Expe- 7 Always on the Edge. Prostitution in Debate riencing Landscape while Walking. Rev. by and Cityscape. By Niels Jul Nielsen Tine Damsholt 25 Disappearing Landscapes. Embodied Experi- 157 Danish in Fashion – Marie Riegels Melchior, ence and Metaphoric Space in the Life Story Dansk på mode! En undersøgelse af design, of a Female Factory Worker. By Eerika Kos- identitet og historie i dansk modeindustri. Rev. kinen-Koivisto by Cecilia Fredriksson 40 The Communal Laundry. A Swedish Story. By 158 Viewpoints on the Sixties – Katja-Maria Miet- Kristina Lund tunen, Menneisyys ja historiakuva. Rev. by 57 Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity. Tytti Steel By Sarah Holst Kjær 160 Men’s Violence against Women – Gabriella 71 Age and Class in the Third Age. Talking about Nilsson, Könsmakt eller häxjakt? Rev. by Sid- Life as a Mappie. By Gabriella Nilsso n sel Natland 89 A Common European Identity. Cultural Herit- 165 What Finished off the Sepra Trade? – Raimo age, Commemoration, and Controversies. By Päiviö, Mikä tappoi seprakaupan? Rev. by Lene Otto Ulla Kallberg 111 The Ephemeral Act of Walking. Random Re- 167 Tailors, Seamstresses and Fashion – Pernilla flections on Moving in Landscapes of Memory Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och mo- (Loss). By Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch det. Rev. by Marie Riegels Melchior 129 Film Ethnography. A Sociocultural Analysis 168 At the Hither Side of the Future – René León of Feature Films. By Rikard Eriksson Rosales, Vid framtidens hitersta gräns. Rev. by Kristina Gustafsson 170 Narratives of War in Finland – Sofie Strandén, ”I eld, i blod, i frost, i svält”. Rev. by Alf Ar- Biographical Notes vidsson 175 Stories about Drunks – Susanne Waldén, 141 Carl Jacob Gardberg 1926–2010. By Solveig Berättad berusning. Rev. by Bo Nilsson Sjöberg-Pietarinen 176 Things that Matter – Margrit Wettstein, Livet 142 Per-Markku Ristilammi, Professor in Malmö. genom tingen. Rev. by Susanne Österlund- By Anna-Maria Åström Pötzsch 143 Thomas O’Dell, Professor in Lund. By Orvar 177 The Voice as an Instrument – Ingrid Åkesson, Löfgren Med rösten som instrument. Rev. by Pirkko 144 Cecilia Fredriksson, Professor in Helsingborg. Moisala By Helene Brembeck 145 Birgitta Meurling, Professor in Uppsala. By Hanna Snellman 146 Ella Johansson, Professor in Uppsala. By Bar- Book Reviews bro Blehr 181 The Gendered Museum – Det bekönade muse- 147 Fredrik Nilsson, Professor in Malmö. By Bir- et. Genusperspektiv i museologi och musei- gitta Svensson verksamhet. Inga-Lill Aronsson & Birgitta Meurling (eds.). Rev. by Lene Otto 182 Baby-boomers and Food – Ju mer vi är till- sammans. Fyrtiotalisterna och maten. Helene Reviews Brembeck (ed.). Rev. by Else-Marie Boyhus 183 Reprint of an Old Hunting Dictionary – M. H. New Dissertations Brummer, Försök Til et Swenskt Skogs- och Jagt-Lexicon. Rev. by Ingvar Svanberg 148 Besieged People – Besieged Places – Urban 184 Folk Art in Gudbrandsdalen – Tord Bugge- Ericsson, Belägrade människor – Belägrade land, Figurmaling i Gudbrandsdalen fra Roma rum. Rev. by Mark Vacher til Vågå. Rev. by Nils-Arvid Bringéus 148 Reproduction of Contemporary Monarchy – 185 Materiality and Cultural Analysis – Materiali- Mattias Frihammar, Ur svenska hjärtans djup seringer. Nye perspektiver på materialitet og – reproduktion av samtida monarki. Rev. by kulturanalyse. Tine Damsholt, Dorthe Gert Si- Lykke L. Pedersen monsen & Camilla Mordhorst (eds.). Rev. by 151 History and the Ongoing Process of Interpret- Fredrik Nilsson ing the Past – Anne Heimo, Kapina Sammatis- 186 Who Invented the Single-Family Neighbour- sa. Rev. by Tiiu Jaago hood? – Peter Dragsbo, Hvem opfandt parcel-

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 40, 2010 huskvarteret? Forstaden har en historie. Plan 213 Textile aesthetics – Minna Kragelund, Tekstil og boligbyggeri i danske forstadskvarterer æstetik – nytolkning af dansk kulturarv. Rev. 1900–1960. Rev. by Christina Haldin by Anneli Palmsköld 188 The Use of History – Negotiating Pasts in the 215 Reconsidering the Sámi Drums – Kerstin Eid- Nordic Countries. Interdisciplinary Studies in litz Kuoljok, Bilden av universum bland History and Memory. Anne Eriksen & Jón folken i norr. Rev. by Nika Potinkara Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.). Rev. by Niels Kayser 216 A Multifaceted Survey on Modernisation and Nielsen Women’s Everyday Lives in a Mari Village in 190 An Introduction to Cultural Production – Kult- Central Russia – Valkoisen jumalan tyttäret. tuurituotanto. Kehykset, käytännöt ja proses- Marilainen nainen ja modernisaatio. Ildikó sit. Maarit Grahn & Maunu Häyrynen (eds.). Lehtinen (ed.). Rev. by Marja-Liisa Keinänen Rev. by Tiina Käpylä 218 The Customer is King – Beatriz Lindqvist & 191 A Swedish Peasant’s Diary – Anders Gustavs- Mats Lindqvist, När kunden är kung. Rev. by son, Bondeliv på 1800-talet. Rev. by Mikkel Maja Chacinska Venborg Pedersen 220 Dreams and Routines of a Transnational Re- 192 Death As Reflected in Culture Studies – Dö- gion – Regionauterna – Öresundsregionen från den speglad i aktuell kulturforskning. Anders vision till vardag. Orvar Löfgren & Fredrik Gustavsson (ed.). Rev. by Nils G. Holm Nilsson (eds.). Rev. by Karri Kiiskinen 193 Temporality Unsynchronized – Tidens ter- 221 Emotions in Research – Känslornas koreogra- mik. Hastighet och kulturell förändring. Anna fi. Reflektioner kring känsla och förståelse i Hagborg, Rebecka Lennartsson, Maria Vall- kulturforskning. Lena Marander-Eklund and ström (eds.). Rev. by Dorthe Gert Simonsen Ruth Illman (eds.). Rev. by Tine Damsholt 194 Swedish Ethnologists and Folklorists – Svens- 222 Enchanted by Spas – Tom O’Dell, Spas. Rev. ka etnologer och folklorister. Mats Hellspong by Elisabeth Mansén & Fredrik Skott (eds.). Rev. by Ulrika Wolf- 224 Changes of Everyday Life in Gendered Rural Knuts Spaces – Gendered Rural Spaces. Pia Olsson 196 European Cultural Processes. – Kulturelle & Helena Ruotsala (eds.). Rev. by Leena processer i Europa. Flemming Hemmersam, Hangasmaa Astrid Jespersen & Lene Otto (eds.). Rev. by 226 Folk Culture in Focus – Folkkultur i fokus. Richard Tellström Maj Reinhammar (ed.). Rev. by Ulrika Wolf- 197 Danish Views of Food and Drink – Syn på Knuts mad og drikke i 1800-tallet. Ole Hyldtoft (ed.). 228 Finding a New Kind of Savo – Savo ja sen Rev. by Håkan Jönsson kansa. [Savo and Its People.] Riitta Räsänen 199 Colour and Clothing – Maja Jacobson, Färgen (ed.) Rev. by Anneli Meriläinen-Hyvärinen gör människan. Rev. by Maria Ekqvist 230 The Spaces In-Between – Mellanrummens 200 The Ambivalence of Home – Homes in Trans- möjligheter. Studier av föränderliga landskap. formation. Dwelling, Moving, Belonging. Katarina Saltzman (ed.). Rev. by Anne M. Hanna Johansson & Kirsi Saarikangas (eds.). Niemi Rev. by Teppo Korhonen 232 A Danish Smallholder in the Nineteenth Cen- 203 Media and Monarchy in Sweden – Media and tury – Gunnar Solvang, En østsjællandsk hus- Monarchy in Sweden. Mats Jönsson & Patrik mand i en brydningstid. Rev. by Anders Gus- Lundell (eds.). Rev. by Ann Helene Bolstad tavsson Skjelbred 234 Discourse Analysis or Conversation Analysis? 204 Transcultural Music – Sven-Erik Klinkmann, – Den väsentliga vardagen. Några diskursana- Från Wantons till Wild Force. Rev. by Niels lytiska begrepp på tal, text och bild. Anna Kayser Nielsen Sparrman et al. (eds.). Rev. by Sofie Strandén 207 Dairy Training in Denmark – Linda Klitmøl- 236 The Right to the City – Ulf Stahre, Reclaim ler, Som en skorsten. Rev. by Göran Sjögård the Streets: om gatufester, vägmotstånd och 210 Following the Last Traces of the Finnish Par- rätten till staden. Rev. by Hilary Stanworth sonage – Marja-Terttu Knapas, Markku Heik- 238 Reindeer Husbandry of the Könkämävuoma kilä & Timo Qvist, Suomalaiset pappilat. Sami – Lars J. Walkeapää, Könkämävuoma- Kulttuuri-, talous- rakennushistoriaa. [Finnish samernas renflyttningar till Norge – om som- parsonages. A cultural, economic and architec- marbosättningar i Troms fylke på 1900-talet. tural history.] Rev. by Sanna Eldén-Pehrsson Rev. by Patrik Lantto 212 A Cookbook is a Message – Maarit Knuuttila, 239 North Norwegian Local History in the Late Kauha ja kynä: Keittokirjojen kulttuurihisto- Nineteenth Century – Øyvind Wæraas, Bryt- riaa. [Ladle and pen: cultural history of cook- ningstid i Hammerfest 1860–1885. Rev. by books.] Rev. by Leena Rossi Anders Gustavsson 3 Editorial By Birgitta Svensson

For forty years, Ethnologia Scandinavica others give us glimpses of a vanishing fac- has presented current ethnological research tory landscape or are located in the ephem- from the Nordic countries. This year’s eral oscillation between people’s outer and volume displays two sides of the subject: inner landscapes. cultural-historical studies of people’s lives, In Niels Jul Nielsen’s article about urban and new contemporary theoretical ap- spaces on the margin, Henri Lefebvre’s proaches to everyday customs, habits, and triad provides theoretical guidance through norms. The problem of how dark memories a text that is able to discuss different spatial are incorporated in today’s European inte- processes and simultaneously orient the gration process, and the role of prostitution reader in a little-known social environment, in the past, are topics that raise questions prostitution in Copenhagen around 1900. about how certain complex and ambivalent The setting involves a number of contradic- phenomena are used in identity formation tions that recur not just in Danish society and sense making. Several articles bear the but also internationally. Although the article imprint of discussions of gender theory, and concerns a distant time, the topic is more of the extensive research on memory pro- relevant than ever before, since it sheds cesses and their significance in the lives of light on today’s debate about prostitution as individual people and in broad transnational abuse or work. contexts. Spatial awareness is making itself From Danish women at the turn of the increasingly felt in ethnology and once century, Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto brings again in the borderland formerly shared the reader to Finnish women but in a com- with human geography. pletely different setting: the factory. The The presentation of new professors is a time here is the mid-twentieth century, and source of knowledge about the position of the events are based on a single woman’s the subject, and this year we present no narrative. When she tells of the changes or fewer than six new professors of ethnology the disappearance of the many places that who have been installed in Sweden. They were typical of the industry where she spent show that a new generation is now making much of her life, she also says something its impact on the discipline. It is gratifying about greater changes to society, about open to see that the gender distribution is even. If and closed spaces, and about differences in the occurrence of many new professors this a female factory worker’s memories of year seems to be a particularly Swedish place and the current picture of industrial phenomenon, the many new dissertations history. Like several of the other articles show a good spread among the Nordic this year, this shows that emotional perspec- countries. tives have become more important in ethno- Among the articles in this year’s Ethno- logical analyses. Koskinen-Koivisto dis- logia Scandinavica , some are on the theme cusses methodologically interesting ques- of controversial issues on the margin, with tions about memory practices, storytelling, such different matters as prostitution and and biographical narratives. how communism can be incorporated in a One place that was significant for women European memory. Others seize on the in Sweden during the early days of the wel- meanings of places such as laundry rooms fare state was the laundry room. Based on in the early welfare state or middle-class liv- her study of the history and the underlying ing rooms. Several articles take place in ur- visions of the communal laundry room, ban spaces both past and present, while Kristina Lund shows both what it meant tra-

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 4 Birgitta Svensson, Editorial

ditionally and what it means today. No- nations against each other but also create, where else in the world do people do their for example, Russia as the antithesis of Eu- laundry as they do it in Sweden. The com- rope. munal laundry is a part of every apartment Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch shows how block. Today, however, the characteristic an act of walking constitutes a vital dimen- feature of the laundry seems to be all the sion of dwelling and everyday life. To assist conflicts between people that it generates. her she uses Tom O’Dell’s concepts of cul- Lund also discusses the potential of the tural kinesthesis , which clarifies the signifi- communal laundry in the future, and con- cance of the interplay of emotion and mo- cludes by asking whether laundry has once tion. Taking a walk involves using a bodily again become a class issue. memory and also relating to the surround- Sarah Holst Kjær’s article deals with an- ing landscape. Walking is a basic attitude to other space that was established in the twen- the place where it is done, and place and tieth century, namely, the living room. It is memory are in constant dialogue with each not the room as such that is in focus, but the other. It can also bridge limitations and in- part it plays in the intimate life of modern tervening spaces by combining an external couples. She shows how emotions are physical act with an inner one. shaped in the home and its staging by show- With the ambition of integrating ethno- ing, for example, how the materiality of the logical analysis with film theory, Rikard sofa can define the “hetero-emotions” of ur- Eriksson argues in his article for the impor- ban middle-class couples. tance of understanding the part played by In Gabriella Nilsson’s descriptions of life cinematographic techniques in the creation as mappies (mature, affluent, pioneering of socio-cultural meaning in what we see in people), we find ourselves in the upper the world of film. With the aid of the con- middle-class sphere, and the scene varies cepts of ethos and pathos he shows how between a small coastal town and the world. film can serve as an ethnographic source, Mappies form a kind of ideal image of what while simultaneously stressing the impor- has been called the fourth age, in which tance of a critical analysis of the visual lan- money and health are the foundation for the guage it contains. In his agenda for film eth- good life. The theoretical reasoning con- nography as a research method, he ends by cerns relations between cultural, symbolic, setting up a number of criteria for what this and economic capital. ought to include. Can the brief history of communism in As usual, the reviews section also reflects Europe be contained in a collective memory the many types of ethnology that are pur- as cultural heritage and do service in Euro- sued, such as the different spaces in the city, pean identity creation? By regarding the folk art and music, architecture and textile historical period between the Second World aesthetics. It mirrors traditional themes of War and 1989 as a cultural wasteland, Lene ethnology such as death, local history, and Otto discusses in her article how guidelines peasant diaries. Most of all, however, we are formed in the Europeanization process see new perspectives in ethnological re- as regards how interpretations and memo- search concerning materiality, museology, ries are transferred to transnational “stand- discourse analysis, how we interpret the ards for national memory constructions”. In past, and how interdisciplinary approaches the process, ambivalences and contradic- and global cultural processes make them- tions arise as problematic memories can pit selves felt in research. Forty Years of Ethnologia Scandinavica By Nils-Arvid Bringéus

The editor of Ethnologia Scandinavica , developed, however, the Germans could Professor Birgitta Svensson, has asked me not continue publishing the journal, which to write a short retrospective article to ran for just one year. mark the fact that it is 40 years since this Yet Sigurd Erixon had not been inactive journal was first published. either. In the same year, 1937, he pub- At the international fairytale confer- lished the first issue of the journal ence in Lund in 1935, the head of the Dia- Folk-Liv through the Royal Gustavus lect Archive in Uppsala, Herman Geijer, Adolphus Academy for Swedish Folk and Professor Sigurd Erixon in Stockholm Culture. In the foreword to the next issue suggested that the existing international Jan de Vries, President of the International cooperation should be expanded beyond Association of European Ethnology and fairytale studies. A new journal was envis- Folklore, announced that the journal Folk aged as an important component of this. had been incorporated in Folk-Liv . The What the organizers did not know was that following year Acta Ethnologica was also a group of younger delegates had a similar incorporated in Folk-Liv, which was now plan which they were keeping secret. On given the subtitle Acta Ethnologica et 24 March 1936 Herman Geijer wrote to Folkloristica Europaea . The journal was one of the three secretaries on the execu- in large format, half-bound. It was issued tive committee, Dr. Gair: “Two of the par- by the publisher Thule in Stockholm, ticipants at the congress in Lund, Dr. Gun- which was also responsible for the print- nar Granberg of Upsala and Dr. M. Haa- ing. Most of the articles were in English, a vio of Helsingfors, have secretly prepared few in German. a journal of their own, called Acta Ethno- Sigurd Erixon thus emerged victorious logica and intending to embrace the Scan- from the contest, and behind him he had dinavian North and the Balticum… The only the strength of the Royal Gustavus first number is at present in the press.” Adolphus Academy and no co-editors. The executive committee of the Lund The ensuing volumes appeared in the congress was not inactive, however. On same format but without the lavish bind- 24 March 1936 Åke Campbell reported to ing. In 1939, clouds were gathering on the Séamus Ó Duilearga in Dublin: “As re- European sky. Articles in the journal were gards a journal, we should try to arrange no longer translated into international lan- one in connection with the meeting in Ber- guages but published in Swedish. The lin. This journal would be under Nordic main idea of an international journal had management (Sigurd Erixon would be thus been abandoned. The different years editor-in-chief). Western Europe would of the journal also varied greatly in vol- however play a dominant part.” In January ume. 1937 the first issue of the journal Folk ap- After Sigurd Erixon’s death in 1968, peared in Leipzig, published by the Inter- Gösta Berg and Harald Hvarfner tempo- national Association for Folklore and Eth- rarily took over the work of editing the nology. Åke Campbell was one of the journal. It now had a much more modest members of the editorial board, but not look, being issued in small fascicles with Sigurd Erixon. As the political situation green monochrome covers. In the last

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 6 Nils-Arvid Bringéus, Forty Years of Ethnologia Scandinavica

double fascicle for 1969–1970 came the composed of Gösta Berg, Stockholm, announcement: “with this volume the se- Knut Kolsrud, Oslo, Holger Rasmussen, ries Folk-Liv is concluded. Manuscripts, Copenhagen, and Asko Vilkuna, Jyväsky- correspondence, and books should instead lä. The members were responsible for ac- be sent to the editorial board of Ethnolo- quiring articles and reviews from their gia Scandinavica , Professor Nils-Arvid own country. Once a year we met in some Bringéus, Finngatan 8, Lund.” Concealed place where it was suitable to hold plan- behind this information were exhaustive ning meetings. We were unable to employ discussions between Gösta Berg, Harald any editorial secretary. Coordinating the Hvarfner, and me. At the same time, the content was something that I as editor had international influences were making to do during my summer holidays in Ki- themselves felt again. In 1970 the name of vik. the university subject was changed from Giving an all-round presentation of eth- “Nordic and Comparative Folklife Stu- nological research in all the Nordic coun- dies” to “Ethnology, especially Euro- tries was not always easy. Finnish re- pean”. It was therefore natural that the search in particular could sometimes end designation ethnology should occur in the up in the shade, and since there was con- title of the journal, which presented itself siderable activity there, the Finnish Liter- as a “sequel to the earlier journal Folk-Liv , ary Society began to publish its own jour- started by Sigurd Erixon. The journal will nal, Ethnologia Fennica , with contribu- publish original papers in English and tions in English, starting in 1971. German based on all branches of material and social culture, and in interviews, bio- Having served as editor for 24 issues, I graphical notes and reports reflect ethno- passed this duty on to Professor Jonas logical contributions and activities in the Frykman while Margareta Tellenbach si- Scandinavian countries”. Folkloristics multaneously became assistant editor, was thus not included in the scope of the which she had been in reality before that. journal since a special periodical for this, At the same time, doctoral dissertations entitled Arv , had already begun to appear were separated from other literature in the in 1945. Ethnologia Scandinavica was de- reviews section. After eleven years as signed by Lars Tempte and in reality be- editor, Jonas Frykman was succeeded in came a yearbook and therefore could not 2005 by Professor Birgitta Svensson, function as an organ for debate. Coopera- Stockholm. As Lund continued to be her tion with the editor of the journal Ethnolo- main home, the journal still, after 40 gia Europaea , Professor Günter Wiegel- years, has its editorial office in the Folk- mann, was significant. I myself was en- life Archives in Lund. Since 2010, how- trusted with the task of editing Ethnologia ever, it has been distributed by Swedish Scandinavica , with an advisory council Science Press, Uppsala. Always on the Edge Prostitution in Debate and Cityscape By Niels Jul Nielsen

Welcome to Magstræde 16 – an eating place in history is erased from present-day brand- one of the most charming streets in town. Mag- ing – although drawing on the same by- stræde 16 is a historical address in Copenhagen’s gone days – is in no way surprising. Pros- Latin Quarter. An address redolent of tradition titution is among the fields that we are al- and atmosphere – and through many years a rich gastronomic culture as well. ways reluctant to deal with. In the fol- lowing, this theme will be investigated through a closer look at prostitution in This piece of information meets the visitor the neighbourhoods of Copenhagen in to one of Copenhagen’s new fancy semi- the period from approximately 1850 to gourmet restaurants. The restaurant is lo- 1910. cated in a narrow alley in the old Latin It holds for a field like prostitution that Quarter of the capital. Here prices and it is not just in the construction of the past rents are high, the buildings date back to that it is treated with distance and ambiva- the eighteenth century, and two low lence. As we also know from present-day houses are even among Copenhagen’s debate about prostitution, it is marked by very few remaining buildings from the heated voices divided between opposing seventeenth century. The restaurant delib- points of view. The second half of the erately links itself to this past, being well nineteenth century showed a similar ea- aware that potential customers are search- gerness to debate the issue. This article ing for more than just dinner when attend- will investigate the debate as an important ing a restaurant. Nostalgia, a whiff of his- aspect of prostitution in that period. In the tory, and the connection to the intimacy of conclusion I will also briefly comment on old Copenhagen are desirable assets on the change at the beginning of the twen- the competitive market of gastronomy. tieth century that initiated an almost hun- However, it is the privilege of the dred-year period with much less public storyteller to pick out the elements in his debate about the issue, and by extension of story, and what the text does not mention this I will also consider how the debate has is how this crooked and paved alley, to- flared up again in the present day. gether with the streets close to it, once When I look at the latter part of the made up one of Copenhagen’s prostitution nineteenth century, it is not only the neighbourhoods for more than half a cen- voices of the leading opinion makers in tury. And to cap it all, the staircase at journals and newspapers that are under in- Magstræde 16, from basement to dormer, vestigation. The intention is to combine served as a full brothel at least from the this aspect – you might call it the prostitu- first half of the nineteenth century to the tion discourse – with two more: the regu- beginning of the twentieth. So, as is well- lation of prostitution and the practice of known since the days of Paul Ricoeur prostitution. (1984–88, 2004), our common memory is The regulation through laws, statutory written and rewritten over and over when instruments, and so on is closely connect- it suits the ones with the power to com- ed to – if not inseparable from – the dis- pose it. course, and it is decisive for prostitution That the brothel part of Magstræde’s since it draws the borders and dictates the

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 8 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

conditions for it. Furthermore, regulation of regulation was played out in Copenha- is important for the way that prostitution is gen, I will relate the present study to the looked upon as something which is within extensive debate regarding space in the or beyond the edge of what is regarded as cultural sciences, since this concept is cru- acceptable. cial for the way I handle the three dimen- The practice of prostitution is of course sions of the discourse, regulation, and deeply dependent on the two other as- practice of prostitution. pects. Practice, as it is used here, refers to the way that prostitution demands space; Space as an Intersection how it needs to gain some kind of accept- A lot of activity related to prostitution ance from the immediate neighbourhood; takes place in hidden places and in the how it is dependent on having at its dis- shade. The act itself generally occurs be- posal places of various types – such as a hind closed doors, remote from fellow room to commit the act, streets and dance citizens and the public eye. This relation- halls where customers can be picked up, a ship between prostitute and customer is brothel to operate from, and so on. In con- not under investigation here, although, of nection with this, the legal framework course, these meetings underlie the pres- around prostitution is of major impor- ence of the issue of prostitution. tance. But there are other kinds of space that All in all, the triad of discourse, regula- are critical in the intersection between dis- tion, and practice makes up a close-knit course, regulation, and practice: prostitu- framework, which relates to different and tion is assigned space whether formally or inseparable aspects of prostitution’s way informally (dependent on discourse and of being embedded in society and among regulation) by the authorities; neighbours its citizens. 1 are confronted with activity related to Several scholars have investigated how prostitution; and so forth. Altogether, prostitution was practised in the growing various forms of clashes – or co-existence urban environments in the latter part of the – between prostitution and citizens in gen- nineteenth century; several of these cities eral take place in space. In working with exercised a system of regulation like the these different approaches, therefore, I one in Copenhagen (see later in the art- have chosen to go deep into a limited geo- icle). In Scandinavia the ethnologist Re- graphical area in the old capital. In this becka Lennartsson and the historian Tom- way it becomes possible to investigate my Lundquist especially have analysed how concrete practices connected to pros- the relationship between regulation, pros- titution are lived and enacted within the titution, and cityscape (the former in specific conditions existing in the latter Stockholm, the latter in different Swedish half of the nineteenth century. What hap- towns) while the system in Copenhagen pened in the streets? How did the neigh- has been treated by the historians Merete bours perceive prostitution? Where were Bøge Pedersen and Karin Lützen and the the limits of vice and promiscuity drawn? medical scholar Grethe Hartmann. 2 Be- How did the authorities act and react? fore returning to the way that the system What meanings were attached to prostitu- Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge 9

Among the often heard objections against the regulated prostitution were the commotion related to the brothel streets. On of these – Gothersgade – is portrayed here with the heading: “Gothersgade. Scenes appearing every night from 10 evening to 4 morning” and the footer ironically adds: “A nice sight for passing fathers with their sons and daughters, as well as for engaged couples”. Photo: Museum of Co- penhagen. tion? Did the neighbourhood change as a ably be apposite to assert, as Mike Crang consequence of prostitution? and Nigel Thrift (2000:3) do in their edit- Awareness of spatiality has grown in ed volume on space, that they have all the last two decades. This spatial turn abandoned a Kantian perspective of space (Crang & Thrift 2000:2) seems to be in as an absolute category in favour of a con- line with the change of scholarly course ception of space as process and space in which also resulted in the linguistic, the process , in other words, an approach also material, and the performative turn of re- comprising an emphasis on the relation- cent decades. It seems as if the lack of ship with time. In the present article this confidence in the appropriateness of mod- perspective indeed is relevant since the ernism’s systemic thought and theoretic change of urban neighbourhoods – physi- models has directed attention towards ob- cally as well as mentally – is at the core of jectives of a seemingly more sensuous and the investigation. accessible kind such as written texts, ma- What characterizes most present-day terials, and human agency. perspectives on spatiality is probably also Although reflections on and investiga- a rejection of a clear-cut distinction be- tions of spatiality are diverse, it will prob- tween subject and object. The material 10 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

and spatial is not exterior to the individual. from the very different ways they per- By extension it is not regarded as appro- ceive, enact, and perform in a particular priate to see individuals simplistically as spatial setting. assigning culture and meaning to their Following this, I would maintain that physical surroundings; it might just as we are best helped with trying to under- well be the other way around, and as a standing “the system behind” (well know- consequence the subject-object divide be- ing that some will claim that merely using comes blurred, if not irrelevant. What such a phrase is basically misinterpreting seems to be an even more commonly the coincidental world surrounding us); shared perspective, hence, is the self as and this calls for an approach that investi- created through their being-in-the-world gates how and why particular spaces – in a Heideggerian sense (ibid. 2000:9). It townscapes for instance – are created as a is notable that these present-day scholarly conglomerate of economic, political, tendencies run parallel to an increasing military, and other interests and struggles. citizen interest in urban neighbourhood So, space has actually to a large extent history and identity (Pløger 1997:6) – of been overlooked up to the last one or two which the opening quotation is also an ex- decades, and we need to extend the analy- ample. In a great many urban settings city sis and search for both the conditions for planning has become a matter of keen the presence of particular spaces and the public interest, where a common under- different cultural reasons and circum- standing seems to be that individuals both stances behind why and how certain indi- create and are created by the spaces they viduals enact these spaces (in their differ- inhabit and visit. ent ways); as the Norwegian ethnologist It is hard to disagree with the perspec- Hilde Danielsen puts it: “When we ask tive of a very complex relationship be- how places happen, how they are made, I tween self and space. Spaces are certainly think we should be interested in the con- not empty or neutral containers; they only texts, premises and ideals that contribute take on meaning from the individuals in- to the specific use, interpretation and re- habiting them; and vice versa, individuals flection connected to concrete places”, are not simple pre-formed selves populat- and she maintains the importance of also ing these different spaces. looking for “the different structures – ma- However, I see a jeopardy involved in terial, social and cultural – that are rele- this heavy emphasis on what happens in vant in the making of places” (Danielsen the interrelationship between self and 2010:71f.). This relation between cultural space. Spaces are constituted by much be- practice and space can be summarized as a sides, and more than what individuals at- production of social spaces through differ- tach to them: why are they there at all, ent forms of sense-making, and it is an ap- what historical circumstances (of any proach shared by many scholars with only kind) have created the conditions for their minor variations (Pløger 1997:15f.). being and appearance? Likewise, individ- To get at the complex interrelationships uals consist of much more than the spaces between different social groups and urban they are being-in; this is apparent just spaces, I have felt more comfortable re- Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge 11

turning to a work of older date, namely als and technocrats, the space which is Lefebvre’s well-known 1974 book Pro- conceived . This represents the intentions duction of Space , embedded in a Marxist, and conceptualizations of, for instance, modernist tradition. Lefebvre is well city planners. How do they want the city- aware of the importance of a theory of so- scape, and for what reasons? In relation to ciety, but he appends a conceptualization the present purpose, we get here a key to of spatiality which goes beyond the inten- the designation of particular streets for tions of other Marxist writers. 3 Lefebvre prostitution, and different efforts to create wants to understand the development of order through spatial regulation – as well space in its interrelationship with specific as to potential subsequent decisions about, historical – particularly economic – cir- for example, slum clearances. 4 cumstances, with society and culture as a Representational space refers to the whole. This seems to be the reason why he lived life, life as experienced and sensed. stresses the importance of the concept of It refers to affections and actions, to sym- production of space. Through the history bolic “readings” of the physical space, to of mankind, according to Lefebvre, spaces situations of any kind in actual everyday are generated and created in an ongoing occurrences. The area of prostitution is process. When working here with the rela- replete with this kind of spatiality with its tionship between prostitution and city- elusiveness, promiscuity, darkness, ten- scape, this approach seems particularly sion, and suspense – in other words, rep- fruitful. In this societal area spaces are resentational space is more or less the created, enacted, struggled about – and antithesis to conceived and ordered eventually demolished – through a melt- space, a fact easily observable in the ing pot of discourse, regulation, and actual present case when, for instance, the au- encountering on street level, all of this be- thorities struggle with licentiousness and ing conditioned by ideological, economic, lack of restraint. political, and social circumstances in a Spatial practices , being closely related particular historical setting. to perception (Lefebvre here talks about To work with this production of space , perceived space), are rather close to repre- Lefebvre develops his famous “spatial sentational spaces, but are linked more to triad” (Lefebvre 1998:33) of different as- the everyday world of people, to interac- pects or perspectives of space, mingled tions and making use of space, to being in into each other in real life but separable in production, reproduction, and consump- theory. For Lefebvre this is also a way of tion and the spaces this involves. It might getting a kind of access to qualities of be that we can find here the entrance to the space which are not necessarily percept- different ways in which spatiality is part of ible to the senses (Merrifield 2000:173). the conditions for different kinds of every- The triad is outlined as representations of day life: for instance, do prostitution areas space, representational space, and spatial appear secluded from the rest of the infra- practices. structural network of the city? Or is it The representations of space refer to something that fellow citizens will inad- planned space, to the spaces of profession- vertently meet and be confronted with? 12 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

And furthermore – if we change the per- tics of the prostitution debate in the period spective to the prostitutes 5 themselves – and the ways in which the authorities tried how are their practices related to the con- to control it through various types of regu- ditions provided by the spatiality of the lation. In part of the period, regulation city (where can potential customers be went into extreme detail and addressed picked up, is soliciting an option, etc.)? In prostitution practice on a large number of relation to these spatial practices Lefebvre day-to-day issues. Along with this more or (1998:38) also speaks of “the specific spa- less panoptic perspective of authorities – tial competence and performance of every debating and regulating – I also intend to society member”. investigate the interrelationship between Lefebvre’s triad is by no means beyond prostitution and its neighbours “from be- reproach. Perhaps the relation between low”. For this purpose, a thorough investi- presentations of space and representation- gation has been made of the development al space is too much of a dualism; perhaps of the residents in two particular streets – the three concepts are not that constituent one of them Magstræde – through more and comprehensive, and so on. However, than half a century, from 1850 to 1906. I find them appropriate for coming to These two streets are among the ones in terms with the obviously extremely het- which the authorities accepted the estab- erogeneous agendas of different group- lishment of brothels. By approaching the ings of the area in question here, and, fur- field in this way, it is possible to examine thermore, they are expedient in under- the reaction of neighbouring residents to- standing why certain spaces run through wards the prostitution activities – and such extreme changes as are the case. The hence experience some of the mechanisms three perspectives are intertwined; they that lay behind an urban neighbourhood are inseparable in real life and constantly turning, as will be shown, into a cultural provide the conditions for each other. wasteland. It follows from the above that The focus on space in the following – in the main issue here is not the personal his- concrete: the development in two separate tory of the individual prostitute, nor even streets seen as expressions on a micro- life as a prostitute, but rather prostitution level of some general characteristics of the in its interrelationship with the surround- relationships in question – should be seen ings – neighbours, public opinion, and as a methodological means to gain access politicians. to the complex interrelationship with de- bate and discussions, formal regulations Regulated Prostitution and the and day-to-day encounters between Debate people related to prostitution and other In several European countries the nine- citizens. In other words, space is an inter- teenth century meant a new way of toler- section for discourse, regulation and prac- ating prostitution under a broad system of tice. regulation. This does not imply that pros- To achieve insight into these different titution was actually legalized, but it was elements and their interrelationship, I will recognized as an issue that was regarded, present and discuss the main characteris- with some kind of necessity, as part of so- Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge 13

Sailors and other grown men, together with young boys gathered in Helsingørsgade, one of the brothel streets. Also the local kids are bystanders to the bustling. Probably the sailors have arrived from nearby Nyhavn (New Habour). In the period it was debated how young boys made a packed by leading sailors to the prostitutes. Photo: Museum of Copenhagen. ciety. The reason for this was not a more Europe and in the USA (Scott 1937:97f.). liberal way of looking at prostitution, as It was certainly not a new thing that pros- something women could choose for them- titution was regarded as a matter for the selves – as we hear in the present-day de- authorities to attend to. Through the cen- bate; the regulation system was estab- turies the ways of tackling the issue have lished in an effort to contain the spread of alternated between legislative acceptance venereal diseases. European states were (as in ancient Rome and to some extent in concerned about the health of their popu- the Middle Ages, with baths and other lations because of the transmission of ill- kinds of accepted arrangements) and nesses such as syphilis and gonorrhoea harsh repression (as in the fifteenth and when men visited prostitutes. Napoleon sixteenth centuries with a very restrictive was apparently the first to take up a kind church). 6 What was new in the nineteenth of regulation system, involving registra- century were the efforts to fully control tion of the women in question, and similar the field by building up a large-scale ad- systems became widespread throughout ministrative system; this – we can call it 14 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

modern and enlightened – way of tion of prostitution. Furthermore, they handling a topic like prostitution had not made sarcastic remarks about the way been seen before. In Denmark, a public only the women were subject to regula- police notice from 1809 is probably the tions, since men were transmitters of dis- first initiative that must be seen in this ease. Representatives of this stance also framework – although more isolated ar- included doctors, together with women rangements had also been made earlier, from the fledgling women’s movement. such as rights for prostitutes to be cured if Just as some of the individuals on the necessary at public expense. From 1809 pro-regulation side were involved in inter- onwards, however, making a living as a national institutional frameworks of doc- prostitute was actually accepted – not le- tors, policemen, politicians, and other galized – provided that the woman regis- groupings working with the planning of tered with the police. She was thereby en- modern society and the organization of the rolled in a more or less effective system of big cities, the anti-regulation side had its in- regular medical examination. In Den- ternational interface. The organization of mark, this administration and organization Abolitionists – the name referring to their of prostitution was consolidated in earnest disapproval of any kind of regulation – was when in 1874 a new act on prostitution founded in 1870 and had branches in sever- come into force, more or less ratifying al European countries, including Denmark. what had already been the practice. It must be underscored that none of the These initiatives certainly did not come participants in the public debate in this pe- without disagreement. Throughout the riod approved of prostitution – in contrast 1850s and 1860s – and definitely after the to the present day, for instance in the introduction of the act – the discussions Netherlands, where prostitution is held were fervent. There were two main sides high as part of an image of tolerance and in the debate. One argued in biological liberty. 7 Even the pro-regulators regarded terms that prostitution is an unavoidable the area as something erroneous, immoral, element of society, due to men’s sexual and best practised far from the public eye; dispositions; therefore the only rational if not cultural wasteland – since they relat- answer to the challenge from prostitution ed to it in an offensive way – then at least is to be sure that the prostitutes visited by it was a kind of only reluctantly accepted men are not transmitters of venereal dis- terrain. This was evident with the intro- eases. This side largely consisted of doc- duction in Copenhagen of a detailed edict tors who seemed to have great faith in in 1877 that followed up the three-year- modern medical abilities. Several politi- old national prostitution act. 8 This edict cians also took this stance. delineated which streets prostitution from The other side of the debate totally dis- brothels was allowed in and outlined the agreed with these doctors and other acceptable activities of prostitutes in pro-regulators. They opposed the accept- minutiae. What kind of behaviour was al- ance of men being slaves to their sexual lowed; or rather – since the edict was instincts, and they opposed any kind of packed with prohibitions – not allowed? It regulation that would admit the recogni- outlined the appropriate conduct for Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge 15

women in the brothels: children over four vidual prostitutes – that is, the officially years of age were prohibited inside the registered ones – and followed their do- brothels, as were boyfriends; any change ings. Furthermore, of course, it was the of address had to be reported within 24 police who took action if they received hours; no showing off in the windows was notices from the public about women sus- allowed, and so on. The rules for walking pected of living as prostitutes, a regular in- about in the streets are detailed as well: cident judging by the number of such let- distinctive, eye-catching clothes were ters from citizens in extant documents banned; when the women went for one of from the police department. their twice-weekly medical examinations Summing up, under this regulation sys- (also part of the obligations for the regis- tem it was the intention of those in charge tered women) they were preferably to ride – in contrast to their opponents – to create in a closed carriage and wear decent cloth- a rationalized, modern, all-embracing ing; and so on. And in this manner the control regime which confronted the issue edict continues through more than fifty in an offensive and openly sanctioned sections. 9 Altogether, the authorities did way. At the same time, however, it is ap- what they could to concentrate prostitu- parent how the whole field of prostitution tion activities in demarcated urban areas, was regarded as something culturally de- and to curtail chance encounters between plorable. Alongside the intention of keep- prostitution and “ordinary” citizens – ing prostitution distant from the public alongside their relative acceptance of it. eye, every effort was made to create trans- When the authorities accepted solicit- parency in all activities of the women in ing in a few streets, they were making a question when it came to the controlling virtue of necessity, since it was already party: the police. practised there. The same seems to have This two-sided approach is apparent been the case with the designation of spe- from the regulation initiatives of the pe- cific streets for the establishment of ac- riod – on the one hand creating clear cepted brothels – several of these were al- guidelines for the practice of prostitution, ready well known for that kind of activi- on the other hand making sharp demarca- ties (Hartmann 1967:76). Prostitutes were tions for this same practice and, not least, divided into two categories: those permit- limiting it to certain neighbourhoods. ted to practise by themselves, and those There are several interesting perspectives obliged to belong to a brothel with a host- in this, both in relation to the abolition of ess. The hostess constituted the link to the the system in 1906 and in relation to authorities and guaranteed the fulfilment present-day prostitution policy. These is- of the instructions in the edict. The main sues will be briefly touched upon in the point was the registration of the women, conclusion of this article. and the regular medical visitations they had to attend (followed by hospitalization The Prostitution of the Streets if they were found to be ill). This consti- We have seen how the debate and the tuted the whole basis for the system. The regulations put into practice handled pros- police kept meticulous records 10 of indi- titution as a problematic part of society, 16 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

balancing between (reluctant) acceptance of this kind of material, I have narrowed and explicit disapproval. Following Le- down the field to two streets, both fol- febvre, this also includes the efforts to lowed through six censuses – 1850, 1860, spatially control and regulate it. We need 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1906, and both to see the third aspect of the initially out- among the streets in which brothels are al- lined triad of concepts: namely, how pros- lowed. The investigated persons total ap- titution was actually practised in relation proximately 5,000 citizens. Through this to its neighbourhood – including, with the it is possible to create two kinds of picture: wording of Lefebvre, how it was spatially one of the social composition of the streets perceived and lived. in synchronic cross-sections, another of It is no simple task to reconstruct rele- the pattern of development through more vant patterns of prostitution and ordinary than half a century. Who were the resi- life in nineteenth-century neighbour- dents? Was the proportion of prostitutes hoods. As regards available unpublished increasing? And, if so, did this influence sources, it makes sense to distinguish be- the number and social profile of the neigh- tween what can be called silent and re- bours? vealing material. To the latter belong Furthermore, these particular streets documents rich in information, such as the have been chosen for this investigation be- above-mentioned letters to the police. cause – according to some contemporary Other sources of this kind are earnest ap- observers – one of them apparently repre- proaches from dedicated citizens to the sents the more exclusive part of the mar- authorities – such as the municipality – re- ket for sex sale and the other represents garding their opinion of local prostitution. the more common part. These approaches, however, are as scarce All in all, it will be possible through this in number as they are substantial in con- investigation to get a rough idea of the tent. In other words, the archives are by no co-existence of prostitution – when con- means filled with material fit to shed light centrated within limited areas – and “ordi- on the co-existence of prostitution and so- nary” citizens. cial surroundings. What seems to be total- In the following, I will first present the ly missing in the archives, furthermore, two streets and sum up the findings con- are the voices of the prostitutes them- cerning their development through the pe- selves – except when they defend them- riod. Secondly, I will add to this picture selves in the police records. the (few) explicit voices from the neigh- Hence, I have out of necessity also used bouring residents. material only touching incidentally upon Neither Magstræde nor Helsingørsgade prostitutes, but in turn doing it on exactly was among the fashionable streets of Co- the same conditions as for all the other cit- penhagen around 1850. Magstræde, how- izens. These sources are the regular cen- ever, was a socially heterogeneous loca- suses. 11 In these, prostitutes are listed side tion with quite a large number of occupa- by side with other residents in the same tions on the upper part of the social ladder; manner (name, year of birth, religion, oc- residents were not necessarily very rich cupation, etc.). In addition to the selection but many had professions of an academic Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge 17

kind. Alongside quite ordinary families there were also officials, civil servants from ministries, and other individuals of rather high esteem. Helsingørsgade – in contrast to this – was a street inhabited by common people, workers (skilled as well as unskilled) and only a few masters. When it comes to prostitution, there is no sign of it in the 1850 census – partly be- cause it was limited, partly due to the re- luctance in this early phase to actually ad- mit prostitution as a profession. Very few women have occupations that could be a cover-up for prostitution on a regular or occasional basis (these can be sewing, washing, and the like, occupations carried out from home and therefore difficult for A portray of Natalie Brodersen, allegedly a the police to check up). We know from brothel madam in Magstræde. The madams, or other sources (Hartmann 1967:51ff.), the hostesses, were the link between the authori- ties – in this case the police – and the prostitutes however, that – at least for a part of the who occupied the brothels. They should see to the year – prostitutes resided in a few of these adherence of the edict regarding health controls, apartments, but probably with varying in- rules within the brothel, conduct of the prosti- tutes, etc. Natalie Brodersen was born as a daugh- tensity. Only at one address (both streets ter of a bricklayer in 1851 and enrolled as a pros- contained just under twenty stairwells) titute in 1869 after several instances of suspicion was there any sign of actual brothel activ- for looseness. It was not uncommon that prosti- ity – and that was Magstræde 16. tutes later on became madams. Photo: Provincial archives of Zealand. Through the following decades, how- ever, the prostitutes show up in growing numbers. This does not necessarily mean Prostitution and the Neighbours that there were brothels; many were living What is important in the present investiga- alone or in couples in separate flats. How- tion is the reaction to this inevitable in- ever, brothels certainly turn up as well. In crease in prostitution on the part of the these there are typically 3–5 women work- neighbouring residents. Did they care, or ing as prostitutes together with the obliga- did their lives continue regardless of the tory hostess, not infrequently a former activities related to prostitution? prostitute herself. Not in all cases does the Two tendencies are apparent from a brothel fill the whole stairwell – although close look at the development in these two this is stipulated in the edict. Other devia- streets. tions from the rules concern the presence One is that the population as a whole of children above the age of four, which is was declining. This, however, need not be found in a few cases. due to the influx of new inhabitants. On a 18 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

general level, there was a heavy decline in est in what – for some residents – can be the population in the old part of Copenha- regarded as culturally acceptable and what gen in this period as a result of the demo- is regarded as beyond this limit. lition of the ramparts surrounding the The complaints as a rule denounce the capital and the related permission to build behaviour and conduct of the prostitutes: on the formerly – for military reasons – the women do not leave people unmolest- scarcely build-up environs. In this period ed, they solicit though this is prohibited, the immense working-class districts sur- and they invite attention from the passing rounding the old city were being created men from their windows. Judging by these and thousands of people moved to new complaints, it seems as if the streets flats in these suburbs. simply became magnets for noisy people, The other tendency in the two streets in and furthermore, the customers were not the fifty-year period, however, is signifi- only grown-ups, but younger boys as well. cant in relation to the issue in question: All in all, bustling and shouting became a The composition of the residents changed part of life in these streets. dramatically. There were fewer families Three main intentions in these ap- and well-reputed occupations; public proaches to the authorities can be dis- houses moved in; and so on. What can be cerned. One is the inconvenience caused deduced from the investigation in these by the liveliness close to one’s own resi- two streets is a development from a state dence. The other is the worry about the of affairs around mid-century with few moral condition of the young generation. prostitutes on an irregular basis, to a situ- The third objective is the negative influ- ation after the turn of the century where al- ence the activities related to prostitution most one fifth of the inhabitants were have on housing prices; often the writers prostitutes (or madams), and almost half of the complaints are landlords them- of the stairwells were made up of brothels. selves. To give an impression of the tone In short, if we regard prostitution – as was and gist of these writings, an excerpt done in the period – as something de- from one letter will be quoted. It was sent praved and unwanted, the two streets ex- by a group of citizens to the Copenhagen perienced what can best be characterized City Council from Magstræde’s neigh- as a radical social comedown. 12 bouring street Farvergade, also a brothel From this picture of the two streets – no street: doubt representative of the majority of the the women lean out the windows with the upper brothel streets where prostitution gained a part of their body, and hail the men present in the foothold – let us consider the views ex- street; and this happens day and night… the provi- plicitly voiced by the neighbours. It is ob- sions of the edict are not complied with at all. Es- vious that the letters addressed to the po- pecially in nos. 12 and 17 the women frequently lice and the city council by no means give show up, more or less dressed, in the open win- an adequate picture of attitudes to prosti- dows to hail or signal to the passing gentlemen, just as they shout across the street from the two tution in the period; we only hear the com- dwellings. The women frequently stay in the front plaints of dissatisfied citizens. These, door and solicit in a free-and-easy manner outside however, are relevant in terms of an inter- the dwellings and invite men to prostitution. 13 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge 19

Promiscuity, disobedience of the law and limits can be given through the following worry about the depreciation of property passage: “In several streets we meet them values are the main topics in this com- in groups where they block the pavement plaint, and this is typical of the (not many) and obstruct the passage. Not even main similar ones. streets … are excepted. In the most crowd- However, what is interesting with re- ed streets … in the evening when traffic is gard to the interrelationship between regu- heavy, public women [the contemporary lation and practice is that the authorities phrase for prostitutes] can be met, not were not willing to comply with the singly and still, but typically two or more wishes of the senders. The latter received in company, vociferous and insolent” the answer that they already knew about (Engelsted 1861:87). the status of the street when they bought their house, and that prostitution has a Conflicts, Co-existence, and Efforts to place in the public landscape and hence Control must be accepted (although, of course, the Above I have given a few glimpses of the senders receive conformation that rules way prostitution was a part of city life; the must be complied with). setting for it; how it was enacted; and how From the records that the police kept on it was met by fellow citizens. How can every prostitute when they were under this be seen as components in the produc- suspicion of vagrancy, we can also learn tion of space? How is the cityscape here several things about the way the landscape being conceived, perceived, and lived? of the city was used to create the necessary Regarding the conceiving , it is unmistak- connections. The prostitutes picked up able how the Copenhagen municipal au- customers at specific dance halls; they thorities, in cooperation with the police in mingled with them in public houses and the wake of the law of 1874 and the edict elsewhere in the night life of the city; and of 1877, made huge efforts to organize, they used certain streets – typically close order, and control the sphere of prostitu- to the brothel neighbourhoods – for so- tion. Special measures were designated liciting. In addition to these glimpses from for specific areas, and tremendous re- the unpublished sources, relevant ex- sources were put into the surveillance and amples can also be found in the contem- registration by the police, who seemed to porary literature where the different de- more or less know every woman in ques- baters from time to time use observations tion (to judge from the individually based supporting their arguments. From this we files in the archives). This was not a result learn, for instance, that schoolboys in of some casual idea on the part of power- some streets were invited to see the pri- ful Danish individuals, however. The vate parts of the women for small change whole system is in line with the interna- (Ehlers 1896:40), and also that these same tional vogue of the period and can be relat- schoolboys could make a few pennies by ed to a general concern for the physical taking incoming sailors to some of the health of the population together with an brothel streets. A final example of the use immense faith in the skills of medical of the cityscape far beyond the tolerated science; and it must furthermore be re- 20 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

Inside one of the brothels in the street Helsingørsgade, c. 1905. The madam to the right. Two of the three prostitutes appear in the distinctive dress which they – according to the edict – were obliged to wear when leaving the brothel. The edict also stated that children above the age of 4 were not allowed to attend the brothels – a section clearly infringed in this case. Photo: Museum of Copenhagen. garded as a general part of an ongoing seller. Glances could be cast across the inter-state struggle to be on a level with streets as well as over the tables in bars other modernized nations of the world. and dance halls and contravene the limits Underneath it all lies – as mentioned ear- intended in the regulations, just as women lier – a belief in the futility of controlling could easily catch the attention of men by men’s sex urge; the viewpoint which in showing themselves in the windows, so- this particular period in general took the liciting, and so on. 14 However, all these lead in the international debate forums. possibilities of creating an atmosphere of When it comes to the way space is lived suspense, just like the various efforts to af- in relation to prostitution, one is struck by fect the senses of potential customers, how difficult this area was to control and were dependent on an actual encounter be- curb. A lot of things were enacted in the tween the two necessary parties in the re- dark. The cityscape – despite the efforts to lationship. control it – provided a wide spectrum of This brings us to space as perceived . potential encounters between buyer and After all, it was a minority of the capital’s Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge 21

inhabitants who ran into prostitution by see their street being invaded by custom- accident. The system provided for a con- ers and prying visitors, and pestered by centration of the related activities to spe- shouting and noisy night-life, with fre- cific areas, despite the above-mentioned quent visits by the police. Still others were opportunities to sidestep these restric- part of the development themselves. Just tions. People who did not wander about like the prostitutes and the madams, they the streets at night and kept out of the benefited from prostitution and its mag- neighbourhoods in question might not en- netic abilities; among these were the inns counter prostitution at all. However, some and public houses, which grew in number citizens were offended by prostitution. as we see from the censuses. For these, as These were basically of two kinds. There is the case for the prostitutes, the image of were the ones who condemned it for moral the streets and neighbourhoods was more reasons, just as we know from today’s de- or less essential for their existence. A po- bate; and in that case the actual practice tential party benefiting from prostitution and enactment of prostitution are unim- could be the authorities (municipality and portant, since there is simply no accept- state), as it is well known today that the able form for it. The other group felt that sex industry promotes an increase in econ- their situation and living conditions were omic terms; this possibility, however, is spoiled or at least compromised. These are not mentioned anywhere in the sources, the ones we meet in the complaints to the and it is likely that circulation of money city council, or the ones who wrote letters related to prostitution mostly benefited the to the local police station – and they are people directly involved. probably also the ones who moved out of The actions of prostitutes and custom- the brothel streets in large numbers in the ers; the reactions to prostitution; the ef- latter half of the nineteenth century, al- forts to control it and shape its realization; though most of the latter are silent in the the enactments in the urban areas; the sources (except for their disappearance crossing of borders of a physical, mental from the censuses from the brothel and legal kind make up different kinds of streets). These reactions to prostitution are producing and being produced by space; not explainable through a feature common in this case, living with and by prostitution to all mankind as regards what happens as a component of society and urban life. when “ordinary” citizens are faced with In other words there is no unambigu- the world of prostitution, no matter how ous lesson to learn from the experiences special, if not barrier-breaking, this world in the late nineteenth century, except per- might appear for some. The reactions are haps that when prostitution became heav- better understood as based on the specific ily concentrated – as was the case in conditions related to the day-to-day prac- some of the brothel streets – it caused a tices of the citizens in question. For some, severe social comedown and degenera- prostitution threatens their income and tion into slum, often accompanied by savings – we saw an example of that street disturbances on a regular basis. For above; others are physically offended be- the most part, however, prostitution took cause they live close to the activities and place in remoteness and insularity with 22 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

no involvement of any third party. When and adapted to a new time with a changed it comes to spatiality, then, the area was discourse and legislative framework. constituted by a diversity of spaces made Not all prostitution neighbourhoods ex- up of intentions of regulation and control perienced definitive abolition or slum together with the actual actions of the clearance, but in mental terms this was inhabitants; moreover, spaces were more or less their destiny. Their history as ascribed a diverse selection of meanings hosts of prostitution has been erased from related to people’s dissimilar ways of liv- the narrative of their past – as the intro- ing their lives and using the physical sur- ductory quotation explicitly shows. In this roundings. way the prostitution of the late nineteenth century has been subjected to a double re- Posterity pression – physically as well as mentally. So, what happened in the years that fol- And that brings us to the debate of to- lowed the system of accepted and regulat- day. Not since the end of the nineteenth ed prostitution? Briefly, in 1906, the pros- century have the discussions been as titution act was replaced with a law fierce as in the last decade. The main – and against vagrancy, and the whole system seemingly inextricable – division today was abolished. Actually, nobody knew concerns the view of prostitution as either whether it had had any positive impact on abuse or work .16 I will go no further into the containment of venereal diseases – a this, besides pointing out how a conse- fact that probably is part of the explana- quence of the intransigent arguing – where tion why the Abolitionists gained the up- for instance the stance is either for a pro- per hand in the debate. In general, the hibition on the purchase of sex as in Swe- twentieth century saw a shift to abolition- den and Norway, or for normalizing the ism, one expression of that being the con- whole business – is that issues of prostitu- demnation of countries with laws permit- tion remain an incessant battlefield. So, ting brothels by the League of Nations in when a fancy restaurant draws upon the 1929 (Bassermann 1968:297). The impact murky, gloomy, and piquant past of the on the cityscape of Copenhagen in 1906 street it is located in, it has to leave out act was quite big, at least on the areas that prostitution, although this was what were controllable. The brothels disap- everybody once related to its promiscuity. peared from the selected streets 15 and in this period, moreover, the Copenhagen Niels Jul Nielsen Associate Professor, Ph.D. municipality started its first slum clear- Ethnology Section, Saxo Institute ances in the most dilapidated parts of the University of Copenhagen capital. Some of these were in a neigh- Njalsgade 80 bourhood close to Helsingørsgade, also DK-2300 S e-mail: [email protected] heavily marked by prostitution in the regulation period. Helsingørsgade itself Notes was abolished in the 1950s. Of course, 1 The present article is based on a research prostitution did not disappear with the project on prostitution carried out with vary- new law. It spread to other parts of the city ing intensity in the period 2008–2010. This Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge 23

project – published in Nielsen & Frandsen these streets – Holmensgade – is an excellent 2010 – makes a comparison between the situ- example of the efforts of the authorities and ation in the latter half of the nineteenth centu- of public opinion to deny the past if it is not ry and the last three or four decades, also suitable for the present: originally the name through the three dimensions of discourse, of the street was Ulkegade, but since prosti- regulation, and practice. tution flourished here for several centuries, 2 Outside Scandinavia similar studies concern- an effort at rebranding was tried in the early ing the regulation of prostitution in this period nineteenth century, when the name was have been undertaken, for instance by the his- changed to Holmensgade. This, however, torians Judith Walkowitz and Timothy Gil- had no impact on the activities in the street. foyle regarding the situation in England and After 1900 and the abolition of the regula- New York respectively. tion of prostitution the name was changed 3 Such as Castells, whose city space in The Ur- once again, now to Bremerholm, a name that ban Question , according to Merrifield (2000: it still holds today. 169), was merely a container of social and 10 These are the “Sager vedr. indskrivning af class relationships. offentlige fruentimmere 1867–1906” (Re- 4 In a paper delivered in 1975 Lefebvre talks ports regarding registration of prostitutes about catastrophic space, the boundaries of 1867–1906), in the Provincial Archives of which – when exceeded – lead to the dissolu- Sjælland. tion of the space (he makes an analogy to an 11 The censuses are nationwide counts of every aeroplane breaking the sound barrier). On a citizen – the first one appearing in 1787, the small scale this can be an illustration of what last one in the 1950s. The second half of the happens when urban neighbourhoods suc- nineteenth century was when they were con- cumb due to too severe social disintegration ducted with the highest density. They are ac- (Lefebvre 1997:45). cessible at the National Archive and at the 5 I use “prostitute” here as a somewhat neutral Provincial Archive of Sjælland. A large term (although the designation of the women amount of them today are accessible on the in question has always been debated, see Internet as well. Nielsen & Frandsen 2010:173) while in the 12 As a means to check the validity of the analy- period they were called offentlige fruentim- sis of the development in the two streets, the mer (there is no parallel English term, but it results have been compared with an alley, can be rendered as “public women”), this be- Brolæggerstræde, very close to Magstræde ing a reference to the way they were tied to a and of almost the same size. Brolægger- societal regulation system. stræde’s social profile is completely un- 6 See for instance Scott 1936, Bassermann 1968 changed; this confirms that the developmental and Hartmann 1967. pattern of the two other streets is connected to 7 See for instance Nielsen & Frandsen 2010: the influx of prostitution. 144–160 where the background to, and the 13 Debates of the Municipal Council of Copen- present-day experiences of, the tolerance of hagen (Borgerrepræsentationens forhand- prostitution in Amsterdam is discussed and linger), Copenhagen City Archives. related to the Danish experiences today and in 14 The above mentioned reports regarding regis- the nineteenth century. tration of prostitutes contain a large amount of 8 The full title of the edict is Regulativ for Poli- examples of these kinds of infringements of tiets Tilsyn med offentlige Fruentimmer i the regulations, either in the form of the po- Kjøbenhavn af 9. Marts 1877 (Edict regarding licemen’s reports or as letters attached to the the supervisory authority of the police over individual reports sent to the police by citi- prostitutes in Copenhagen. March 9, 1877), zens. http://prostitution.e-museum.dk/pdfkilder/ 15 Actually the brothels had been illegal since 4.%20Politipraksis%20og%20domsmyndighe 1901 without this change being followed by d/Politiregulativ%201877.pdf. their disappearance. With the more radical 9 Soliciting in the streets was also generally change in 1906, however, they did vanish. abandoned; however, in a few of the brothel 16 See for instance Gangoli 2006. The debate’s streets it was permitted. Actually, one of much more persistent nature is no doubt relat- 24 Niels Jul Nielsen, Always on the Edge

ed to the fact that organizations composed of Lefebvre, Henri 1998: Production of Space . Ox- prostitutes (typically called “sex workers”, a ford. way of underlining the “prostitution as work” Lennartsson, Rebecka 2001: Malaria Urbana – approach) have come into existence in an ef- om byråflickan Anna Johannesdotter och pros- fort to insist on regular rights for prostitutes. titutionen i Stockholm kring 1900 . Stockholm. This debate is analysed thoroughly in Nielsen Lundquist, Tommie 1982: Den disciplinerede & Frandsen 2010. dubbelmoralen. Studier i den reglementerade prostitutions historia i Sverige 1859–1918 . References Göteborg. Lützen, Karin 1998: Byen tæmmes. Kernefamilie, Bassermann, Luco 1968: Det ældste erhverv. sociale reformer og velgørenhed i 1800-tallets Prostitutionens kulturhistorie . Copenhagen. København . Viborg. Crang, Mike & Nigel Thrift (eds.) 2000: Thinking Merrifield, Andy 2000: Henri Lefebvre. A Social- Space . London & New York. ist in Space. In Thinking Space , ed. Mike Crang Danielsen, Hilde 2010: Diversity and the Concept & Nigel Thrift, pp. 167–182. London & New of Place. Ethnologia Scandinavica. York. Ehlers, Edvard 1896: Bidrag til Diskussionen af Nielsen, Niels Jul & Lise Astrup Frandsen 2010: Prostitutionsspørgsmålet . Copenhagen. Sex til salg i storbyen. Prostitution sidst i Engelsted, S. 1861: Om Foranstaltningerne mod 1800-tallet og i nyere tid . Copenhagen. Udbredelsen af veneriske Sygdomme i Kjøben- Pedersen, Merete Bøge 2000: Den reglemen- havn . Copenhagen. terede prostitution i København 1874–1906 . Gangoli, Geetanjali & Nicole Westmarland (eds.) Gylling. 2006: International Approaches to Prostitution. Pløger, John 1997: På sporet av byteorien. In På Law and Policy in Europe and Asia , pp. 68–82. sporet av byen. Lesninger av senmoderne byliv , Bristol. ed. Jonny Aspen & John Pløger, pp. 5–40. Oslo. Gilfoyle, Timothy J. 1994: City of Eros. New York Ricoeur, Paul 1984–88: Time and Narrative , vols. City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization I–III. Chicago. of Sex, 1790–1920 . Chicago. Ricoeur, Paul 2004: Memory, History and Forget- Hartmann, Grethe 1967: Boliger og bordeller. ting . Chicago. Oversigt over prostitutionens former og til- Scott, George Ryley 1936: A History of Prostitu- holdssteder i København til forskellige tider . tion from Antiquity to the Present Day . London. Copenhagen. Walkowitz, Judith 1980: Prostitution and Vic- Lefebvre, Henri 1997: Det bymessige rommets torian Society . Cambridge. produksjonsprosess . In På sporet av byen. Les- ninger av senmoderne byliv , ed. Jonny Aspen & John Pløger, pp. 43–58. Oslo. Disappearing Landscapes Embodied Experience and Metaphoric Space in the Life Story of a Female Factory Worker By Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto

What disappeared then, we suggest, was not only “but then, life started to change in that vil- the central source for economic and social life in lage.” Unlike in many other interviews, the community, but also the framework for mem- this one only contains two variants of the ories. Around the image of the mill, people con- structed their own identities, incorporating work- narratives that were told either in earlier or 4 based ideologies of gender. Thus, deconstruction in later interviews. Why so? Life stories of the mill altered the cultural and psychological often consist of key narratives which are as well the social and the physical landscapes of repeated and told over again (Linde 1993). the town (Modell & Hinshaw 1996:133). In this particular interview, new narratives This article 1 focuses on experiences of seem to rise from the context of change re- change and of disappearing landscape lating to space and places. Many of these from the perspective of an elderly factory narratives (like much of the life narra- worker, whose stories I analyse in my PhD tives) are nostalgic in their tone. I am in- research. 2 In this text, I examine the nar- terested in this sudden burst of new nostal- rated space created in her stories and ex- gic narratives. Nostalgia, melancholic plore situated embodied experiences and longing for the past that has been lost, de- their symbolic meanings. I am interested rives from details that take on emotional in the way she tells about differentiated content. Nostalgia is twofold: some things spaces and specific places that no longer from the past are remembered while exist in the physical landscape. What does others are (deliberately) forgotten (Kor- it mean to her that her home environment kiakangas 1999:171–172; Åström & Kor- and working place have changed radical- kiakangas 2004:11–12). In my analysis, I ly? Using the concepts of metaphoric will investigate the nostalgia to find out space and site of memory, it is argued here what kinds of experiences are attached to that the disappearing narrated landscape the narrated places of factory village: recreated in the narration and its places What features, events, and feelings are symbolize, or rather materialize or em- emphasized while others are pushed into body , larger themes central to my narra- the background? What makes certain tor’s life and sense of self. Place-based places special and worthy of telling about personal stories continue to resonate even years later, after they have disappeared? after the physical sites/locations are gone. Could it also be that certain physical sites The narrated places, sites of memory, – whether they still exist or not – lend need not be physical any longer but they themselves to being remembered? My can be remembered, and narrated because analysis will consist of theorizing the re- of their continuing metaphorical power membered and narrated space, and reflect- and relevance in the present. ing the metaphorical power of Elsa’s nar- In this article, I will thus go through the ratives. Instead of pointing at the degen- material from one particular interview erative, problematic power of turning to- with a former production line worker, Elsa wards the past, I seek to illuminate and Koskinen (interview 8, January 6th 2002), deploy a positive view on nostalgia. Fol- addressing the changes in the factory com- lowing the folklorist Ray Cashman’s re- munity. 3 I asked about these changes after flections on critical nostalgia (2006), I ar- several interviews ending with her saying: gue that the nostalgia attached to the nar-

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 26 Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes

rated places can entail positive and enrich- factory producing raw iron from scrap ing connotations of the old factory metal and lake ore. In addition to the iron- community and patriarchal social order. works, Inha supported a sawmill, also situated on the river. The factory and the Disappearing Landscape: The Old village grew bigger at the end of the nine- Factory Community teenth century, drawing people from the The industrial change has not only been surrounding region. In 1883, railways dramatic, but also a constant part of work- were built close to Inha Ironworks. Right ers’ life (Ahvenisto 2008; Kortelainen after that, Inha’s industrial units (both the 2008:25). Starting from the late nineteenth ironworks and the sawmill) were sold to a century, Finland industrialized rapidly. Swedish engineer August Keirkner, later Factory communities grew and flourished known as the Patron , who invested in new for some time in the rural countryside. technology such as steam engines. The This continued until after the Second factory started to process the iron into World War, when technology and societal horseshoes and spikes. Besides develop- development quickly began to replace tra- ing the industry, the Patron also contribut- ditional (patriarchal) factory communities ed to the life of the workers, starting a and when urbanization and globalization school in 1889 and constructing a power- led to post- and de-industrialization. Mod- house giving electricity to the village. ern business units emerged without hav- There was also a common baking place, ing direct connection to residential areas sauna, and a factory-owned shop. At the or to diverse social activities. Places of beginning of the twentieth century the employment and places of residence were workers organized and started to engage not necessarily related. These significant in various activities of the labour move- changes took place during Elsa Koski- ment – cultural and political. The local nen’s life. The ironworks in which she had workers’ union was established in 1904. once worked invested in new technologies In 1907, the workers built a community and the traditional community which had hall, where different cultural events such sprung up around the factory started to as evening parties, concerts and workers’ disappear. The factory still exists and runs theatre performances took place. Workers today, but the physical environment, the also had their own sports club, which or- factory village, has almost disappeared. ganized programmes for both children and Today, there are still almost as many adults, male and female. Popular histori- people living there as 60 years ago, but the cal writings by local amateur historians landscape and the social dynamics have describe the old Inha factory community changed significantly. and its activities in nostalgic terms, draw- The factory community of Inha was ing a picture of harmonious, vibrant, and situated by a river, just as all water- well-organized village life. powered ironworks started before the in- The factory was sold in 1917 to the vention of steam power. Inha Ironworks in Fiskars group, who still runs it today. Inha Ähtäri in Southern Ostrobothnia was start- factory village and the iron production ed in 1841, at first as a really small rural also suffered from the Great Depression of Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes 27

the 1930s but it survived and kept going. used to play in the piles of scrap metal of During the Second World War, the factory the work yard, an open space and the served Finnish military industry. Women centre of the village. Elsa learned physical who were recruited during the war to com- labour at an early age and grew to know pensate for the labour shortage continued the work thoroughly. Among other things, to work in the factory after the war. The she worked as a handyman carrying boxes 1940s and 1950s were busy times of re- of horseshoes and operated a machine on building. Karelian resettlement and the a horseshoe line. After the war, she mar- baby boom increased the population. The ried a worker from the same village and latter part of the modernizing process of they had three children. As was thought to Finnish society, often called the Structural be typical of the time, Elsa stayed at home Change in Finland, took place in the with them. 5 But as described earlier, times 1960s. The new big generation left the changed, and so did her social position as countryside to look for jobs in the cities. the wife of a man who had climbed the so- Forest work, agriculture and industry de- cial hierarchy when, in the late 1960s, the veloped and mechanized fast, and educa- factory invested in new technologies. Ma- tion became more valued and common chines replaced physical work and new among ordinary Finns. This change affect- professionals were hired to design and ed the Inha factory village and the iron- analyse the production. Elsa’s husband works as well. Some crucial elements of educated himself and became first a fore- the landscape and of the social life man, then a production designer. His changed after the factory engaged in new family became a middle-class family, technology and started modern produc- moving from old small factory-owned tion-line work in steel and aluminium. apartments to larger and nicer ones. His Until that, the factory community was or- wife, Elsa, however, went back to the ganized in a hierarchy that placed people lower-status physical labour of the pro- in different categories, grouping them as duction-line worker, this time to put to- workers and as upper class, which fol- gether pieces of steel hinges. The family lowed the dynamics and hierarchy of other lived in a dwelling (at last a single house) Finnish industrial communities of the owned by the factory until retirement in twentieth century (see e.g. Leminen 1996; 1984. Elsa retired at the same time as her Schreiber 2004:299; Kortelainen 2008: husband (1984), and they moved away 40–43, 47–52; Ahvenisto 2008). The shift from the factory village to the municipal to modernization changed these classed centre of Ähtäri. They bought a flat, where dynamics. Elsa still continues to live. Her husband Elsa Koskinen (maiden name Kiikkala) died in 1989. 6 was born in 1927 as the seventh child of a factory worker’s large family (altogether Place Organizing Experience and 12 children) that lived right next to the Memory factory, along with other families, in big Place and time are both basic dimensions log houses owned by the company and that give structure to experience. The built for the factory workers. Children geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) has sug- 28 Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes

gested that a place can master or even stop of site of memory .7 Finnish folklorists time. Places might preserve the past and and oral historians have used the term tie them together with events, building a site of memory in relation to the collec- continuum between different times. Inter- tive creating of traditions and ritualized estingly enough, Elsa can’t point out when exercise of power. In their view, oral tra- any of the accounts she narrates happened. ditions of particular places and events Often the time does not even matter to her. that live in collective local traditions are As a researcher, I am more interested in often excluded from official history (see the chronology than she is. Instead, Elsa e.g. Peltonen 2003; Tuomaala 2004; remembers things according to the place Fingerroos 2004, 2008; Heimo 2006). In and house her family lived in: my case study, there are no concrete or Eerika: When did the washing machine arrive? material sites left that would accommo- When did you wash by hand? Can you estimate? date rituals or other commemorative tra- Elsa: Well we lived that time in “the Engineer’s ditions, because these sites have disap- Manor” [a huge log house of three apartments]. peared or have deteriorated. However, these disappearing places have attracted Eerika: Ok. stories and they are constantly recreated Elsa: Until the time that… in the course of life-story telling. The Eerika: It was either the 1960s or the 70s? stories of the old factory community communicate unofficial knowledge that Elsa: Well, you see, your father was already a studies of industrial history and history grown-up when we lived there. of technology often ignore when describ- Eerika: It must have been the 70s then. ing modernization, development, and There are only a few major events in her technological advancement: the experi- life she can date: the time she entered ential level and the individual (worker’s) working life (when the Second World War point of view. In this case the attachment broke out and everybody over the age of to sites that are reminders of communali- 15 had to do productive work), the times ty and that establish a sense of self are when her children were born and left omitted from official histories. The con- home, and the time she herself retired cept of the site of memory illuminates the from the factory work. Other events and importance and the social dynamics of narratives, and her reminiscences in gen- remembering. However, it is important to eral, are situated in certain places and note that Pierre Nora referred to material, spaces, some of which seem to act as more not narrated sites, and memory as ritual- than a scene. In my view, they become ized (or even compulsive) action pushed sites that orient the storytelling and define by a collective need to remember (Nora Elsa’s life and identity; in other words, 1989). 8 My material, life-story telling, is place is a way of understanding the world more personal, but it could also be seen (see Cresswell 2004:11). as ritually enacted narration. The disap- Scholars of new history and oral his- pearing of places indeed calls for action, torians have discussed the meanings at- in this case storytelling, which could be tached to certain sites using the concept seen as place making , a term used by the Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes 29

anthropologist Keith Basso (1996:5). 9 I lainen 2009). Both of these levels, textual am interested in this process of meaning- (stylistic) and experiential (phenomeno- giving which occurs over the course of logical), are needed in the analysis of nar- time, which seems linked both to collec- rated space. Spatiality is a sensual and em- tive and personal experiences and to col- bodied experience, but in order to map out lective and personal identities (ibid. 7). and analyse it, this experience needs to be The historian Saara Tuomaala has elab- verbalized and conceptualized. Thus, lan- orated on the concept of site of memory in guage is closely related to the spatiality as her study of experiences of Finnish chil- well (see Merleau-Ponty 1962:283–347; dren and young people in the public Meriläinen-Hyvärinen 2010:69). Some school of 1930s (2004). She was interest- emotional and embodied memories may ed in the way Finnish boys and girls were regenerate exactly the same kind of feel- educated to become proper citizens in the ings as once experienced (Klein 2006:18– early time of the nation state Finland. 19), but it may be hard to verbalize and Tuomaala found that many of these prac- conceptualize traumatic experiences or tices, such as hygiene instruction, moral scenes related to dramatic changes in cul- education and discipline, have become ture or society such as war experiences. 11 collective embodied memories. She ar- Thus, a physical site and embodied mem- gues that experiences leave behind sym- ory might offer a concrete example and a bolic and linguistic marks which are inter- place to which those who do not share the twined with the cultural construction of same experiences can also relate. Philoso- narratives. Through this, personal-experi- pher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) has ence narratives about feelings, emotions, used the metaphor of phantom limb to de- moves and acts preserve sites of memory scribe bodily layered memory (see also that create past-directed metaphoric Tuomaala 2009:80). Disappeared places space , where various meanings are articu- that only exist in collective or perhaps in lated (Tuomaala 2004:58). individual memory could be described as Metaphoric space is close to the con- phantom limbs of a body of culture. The cept of chronotope created by the literary stories told about the sites that used to theoretician Mikhail Bakhtin. Chrono- exist verbalize the feeling of loss, and em- tope, or in other words time space , stops body the process of change. Thus, narrat- time and captures events in a certain ed sites of memory are amputated limbs of space. In chronotopes, form and content, the disappearing landscape, the embodied time and space get entangled with the metaphoric space. whole storyline and the historical context (Bakhtin 1979:243–244). 10 According to Sites (Dis)Connecting People Bakhtin, chronotopes are created by the When I asked Elsa to describe the major author, who makes up entire worlds in the changes that occurred in the factory com- process of writing, and in doing so, bor- munity during her lifetime, she first men- rows categories of the real worlds around. tioned that many of the places where The concept may also serve in analysing people used to meet each other, such as personal narratives of true life (see Savo- shops, bank and post offices, closed down. 30 Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes

She misses the sense of communality that yard of the mansion of the former factory is embodied in these concrete spaces: the owner: open factory yard which was always You were not supposed to go on to the grounds crowded and served as a market place, the of the factory owner’s mansion. But we went big smokestack everybody could see, and anyway. There was a housekeeper there. The the old bridges where people gathered yard was well taken care of. Nowadays they were torn down one by one. don’t look after the yard that way. It was always so nicely decorated, even the road was raked. We It went a little bit too far. All those places started went there to the end of the road. There were to disappear. Places that were living conditions for many of us, as usual, because the families were the old factory workers. The bridges were gone, big. The housekeeper shouted – she had a loud and in the end, all the dwellings disappeared, the voice – “Children, you shouldn’t come here: houses, our homes, they are gone. There are only there’s a big snake in the forest!” She didn’t a few left there, Hurutlinna, we lived there for a know what to say. while, and Lumppulinna, and some private houses, two of them on the rock. And the commu- One version of the story continues: “Some nity hall is left, they renovated it, it is a village of us shouted back that you are the big house and I have heard it looks nice. But I don’t snake yourself!” want to go there anymore, there is nothing left This story could be interpreted as a kind there. The bushes grow on the roads and on the of counter-narrative, an expression of the ruins of the old buildings. They are gone. I only oral history of working-class children. It feel sad if I go there. also shows that the mental borders are At the beginning of the century, factory somewhat flexible and transform over the communities were hierarchal and patri- course of time. The factory owner’s man- archal but also very communal. Studies of sion often serves as a scene for different Finnish industrial communities of the stories, for example many popular ghost twentieth century have illuminated the dy- stories local people still know. In fact, the namics of social order and sense of com- mansion is one of the few places left in the munality (see e.g. Ahvenisto 2008; Korte- old factory village that reminds people of lainen 2008). Besides distinguishing be- the times of the Patron and his flourishing tween different groups within the worker factory village. By the time Elsa was a community, these studies have shown child, nobody lived in that house anymore. how the factory communities established Nevertheless, it was still a very special different symbolic borders of us and them, and an upper-class place. The factory between the outsiders and the insiders. community she represents in her stories Some of these borders were marked by seems to be controversial when it comes geographical sites and others by buildings to hierarchies and space. There are many or other constructions. There were also borders and places with limited access, es- some shared mental borders that were not pecially for a child. visible. In Elsa’s stories there are traces of Some examples of chronotopes intro- symbolic borders, and she often tells duced by Bakhtin, road and threshold , about incidents where these borders were also underline the interconnectedness crossed, for example when she and the and the individual trajectory and sense of other children were secretly playing in the self (see Bakhtin 1984). Road, both as a Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes 31

scene and as a metaphor, is not only belonging to the group and establishing characterized by movement and travel- the worker identity. Later, on the other ling, it is also a place for meeting people hand, being a worker, a part of the com- and for forming collective experiences munity also gave freedom and access to and memories. Saara Tuomaala (2006) certain sites. Elsa also mentions that has shown how meaningful the way to there used to be much more freedom and school was to Finnish children of the possibilities to cross different lines then 1930s, how well it was remembered than there are nowadays: years later and how it resonated with the You can’t go there anymore. That time you could values of the time, such as independ- go around freely. Like the riverside, you could ence, perseverance and self sustainabili- walk on the river bend right next to a factory building. People went fishing there. But you ty. The stories of the way to school dealt have no business going there anymore. There with different conceptions of time, au- was the bridge and the road also right in the thority and morality, and included both middle of the working yard. People went to work collective and personal memories. Ulla and school along the bridge just next to the Savolainen (2009) who has studied a smelting furnace. travel narrative of a Karelian evacuee, Elsa describes how the factory yard was found connections to the chronotope of open to anybody, even children who threshold, which symbolizes individual lived in the village. It thereby affected growth and entering a new phase in life. everybody’s life (see Kirsti Salmi-Nik- Elsa’s story about crossing the bounda- lander (2004:300). Today, the factory ries as a child tells about learning the so- area is closed to outsiders by a fence. It cial rules and norms of the community, is clear that Elsa feels sad about the

Children on the bridge in the 1920s. Photo: Gustav Welin. The Archives of Fiskars Inhan Tehtaat oy ab. 32 Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes

places she can’t visit anymore and about the loss of community, and thus what is not the sites that are not there anymore. She there physically is likewise not there so- has concretely lost contact with these cially. Elsa is concretely cut off from the places while so many buildings are gone community. and the landscape has turned totally dif- ferent: Stability and Presence Elsa: The River is not the same anymore. It grows Everyday life consists of streams of chang- different kind of plants. I don’t know if it is there ing events and developments such as mod- anymore. At least you can’t see it. … And there ernization or globalization. On the other was the mill and the bridge. It was a romantic hand, people preserve traditions and men- place, the old mill. And the phone centre, that talities consciously and unconsciously. The white and yellow building… long duration of cultural values and practic- Eerika: It was right next to the factory, right? Elsa: No, the bridge was there. You don’t know es can be seen in social practices such as that. It’s not there anymore. It was really sad for self-sufficiency or gender roles (Two dif- old workers that they had to tear it down. They ferent times, see Braudel 1980; 1993). shouldn’t have done that. It could have been saved Based on ethnographic fieldwork among as a footbridge. Cars couldn’t use it anymore. different communities in Turkey, Ireland They use to drive through it. Somehow it was a and Bangladesh, the folklorist Henry Glas- nice bridge. We spent a lot of time there, walked sie (1998) suggests that what matters most there in the evening and stayed there. to communities and individual people In this story, Elsa relates to a larger collec- themselves is the long duration – stability, tive experience of loss by saying that the continuation and integrity. Stability seems old workers were devastated when the to be important to my informant, especially places they used to know and gather when it comes to physical environment and around were torn down. Disappeared the social world connected to it. Elsa miss- places mean more to her than just losing es the physical landscape of the factory personal bindings to the physical environ- community that was dominated by the fac- ment. These sites used to bring people to- tory and the big smokestack. It seems to gether. Therefore, the loss is more abstract: serve her both as a symbol of the old indus- by demolishing the bridge, they took away trial community and a symbol of the an important part of communality and change that has occurred in the industrial worker identity, the interconnectedness and the social world and their dynamics: between the people. The folklorist Patrick Elsa: And the smokestack. It was the last thing B. Mullen found interconnectedness to be they demolished. They say that the old men cried one of the central themes in life stories of that day [in a touched voice]. We had a hard time many of his elderly informants (1992: being there. I can’t understand that. It wouldn’t 271). Many of them wanted to belong to have bothered anyone there. their communities, be close to their fami- Eerika: When did they do that? lies, but also to the meaningful places such Elsa: I was still working that time. It was the time of the technological advances. Those old as the landscapes of their childhood and men were still there like Gunnar. It was a sad professional life they felt connected with. time for them. Those men have seen the smoke- The loss of the physical structure parallels stack everyday during their whole life. It was Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes 33

hard for me too. It felt like death visited the Furthermore, Elsa, who went to school village. The smokestack had a lightning rod so for four years only and started working at we did not have to be scared when the storm an early age, feels incompetent in today’s came on and the thunder roared. And everybody felt at home there…even if you were poor. It world of higher education and information didn’t matter. Everybody was in the same boat. technology; she feels there is no place for her or the other old people in this new so- Elsa connects the demolished smokestack cial order. Social change, blurring of as a “landmark” to a larger issue: to the boundaries and openings of possibilities sense of security and belonging, being part of a whole. New technology brought can also be a threat to a person’s sense of about more changes than just lighter work self, as contradictory as it first might seem at new computer-driven production lines. from today’s individualist point of view. The social hierarchy of the community In Elsa’s words, the old workers cried turned different when ironworkers were when they saw how the smokestack was no longer needed but instead, the factory demolished. Even if she was younger, she hired some engineers and other trained also grew in its presence. She gets nostal- professionals. The younger generation gic when thinking about the village and started to study and move out of the vil- the sense of belonging. lage, and social life died. The folklorist Ray Cashman has studied storytelling in Northern Ireland in an area that has undergone “staggering amount of change over the past century” (2006:137). He points out that material culture can provide resources from which people re- vise their memory of the past and their identities in the present. Therefore, nostal- gia can be seen as more than just a coun- terproductive modern malaise. In fact, it is a way to cope with the changes around and a source of a better future. Cashman’s eld- erly informants had started again to build old-style rural houses and use old rural ar- tefacts and vehicles on their home farms. They explained that they want to keep something from the old world and teach the younger generation how different life was back in the old days (Cashman 2006). 12 Elsa would have liked to preserve the physical landscape and the particular ma- terial sites, because for her they character- Demolishing the smokestack in 1966. Photo: The ize the old stable factory community. The Archive of Traditional Society of Ähtäri. sites such as the smokestack not only 34 Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes

mark the place, but establish a material Meriläinen-Hyvärinen emphasized the and physical connection to the past. The reciprocal relation between the place and industrial advance that closed down the the subject (2010:75). Not only do people old coal-fired steam engines did not stop make places, the transformations of space at that point either. The factory still exists also affect people. Some places offer today, but it struggles with the challenges people the sense of stability that correlates of globalizing industry and market econ- with the coherence of the self (see Tuan omy. Elsa is well aware of the current de- 2006:16–19, 29). 13 One of Meriläinen- velopment, and often states that the times Hyvärinen’s informants, her elderly fa- have really changed. According to her, ther, experienced deep sorrow for the lost back in the old days, there was a lot of place, and Meriläinen-Hyvärinen (2010: work to do, and today there are unem- 68) compared his feelings to an early ployed people who do not have anything death. Elsa compares the demolition of the to do. However, she also doubts whether smokestack to death as well, not to a per- people of today would do such work any- sonal death but to the death of the commu- more. nity and communal spirit. Apart from this The geographer Doreen Massey sees dramatic event, the transformation of the place as processes that are not frozen in factory village and changes in the social one time (2005). In her view, places do not dynamics of Inha Ironworks happened have single identities but multiple ones, over a longer period of time. However, the and they are by no means enclosures, with disappearing sites are concrete examples a clear inside and outside. Thus, places are of this institutional change, condensations social processes and meeting points, of time acting as fruitful sources of story- where history accumulates. Following telling. Massey’s ideas, the anthropologist Anneli Meriläinen-Hyvärinen (2010) has ex- Conclusions: Amputated Sites, Living amined the experiences of the transform- Meanings and Continued Lives ing place in the case of the Talvivaara Since I started studying Elsa’s stories, I mining area in Finland. She interviewed have wondered why she cherishes these people who used to live there but who memories of hierarchical factory commu- were forced to sell their houses and their nity and hard physical work. Isn’t it great land to the mining company. She states that the world has changed and we are that the mining area is indeed a space time more equal and do not have to work in where local history, personal experiences such circumstances anymore (see Koski- of the place (topobiography) and even nen-Koivisto 2009)? Nostalgic thinking globalizing challenges of industrial busi- has been characterized negatively as a re- ness meet. This could be said of numerous jection of the change and the dynamic other industrial spaces, many of which process between progress and stability grew and flourished, then deindustrial- (see e.g. Lowenthal 1985). However, as ized, and thus were transformed in various Ray Cashman (2006) has demonstrated, ways (cf. Kortelainen 2006; 2008; Ahve- nostalgia can also be seen as a more com- nisto 2008). plex practice, a part of critical thinking. Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes 35

The metaphoric space Elsa Koskinen cre- phoric spaces from their sites of memory. ates in her stories is full of sites that con- Place is created in and through social nect her to the old factory community. practices (Mahlamäki 2005:46; Massey Hierarchical and communal, this space of- 2005). Storytelling creates a metaphoric fers her a sense of security, a feeling of space, where sites connect to the sense of knowing her place in the world. The sites self and meaning in life. In Elsa’s story- such as the river, the old bridges, the fac- telling practice, the disappearing sites of tory owner’s mansion and the smokestack the old factory community symbolize the connect her to other people, and material- loss of the communality and stability, and ize both the change and the stability of the clear social hierarchy created by the patriarchal factory community which may factory and the work. The factory, the never have been that stable, but at least workers and the upper class, the dwellings clearer, more familiar, or more manage- and other buildings, the river, the bridges able from her point of view. Material and and the smokestack were once part of the physical sites are sources of life-story tell- disappearing landscape, the social body ing and of the sense of self even, if they no Elsa Koskinen was part of. The feelings of longer exist. Creating the space over and loss are deep and concrete. Thus, the over again does not mean that the narrator change is materialized and embodied in is living in the past, but rather that she is places, amputated phantom sites that con- using the past to cope in the present. tinue to exist and give meaning to her life In Elsa’s case, today’s world manifests through storytelling. In Elsa’s case, by itself in loneliness, in confusing amounts employing powerful metaphors and nos- of individualism and in growing compe- talgic images, her personal narratives tence on globalizing markets. The old fac- communicate experiences of loss, but also tory community with its narrated sites is a work as resources for continuing her life metaphoric space of communality, safe by strengthening her sense of self and po- social order, and an opportunity for an un- sitioning her in the constantly changing trained, hard-working labourer to support globalizing world. Thus, nostalgia related a family. The storytelling and the meta- to the disappearing landscapes of the old phorical space carries the positive parts of factory community entails positive power the past into the future, to another person, of continuity, the long duration of time. in this case me – a grandchild and aca- demic scholar, who has not seen the actual Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto MA, Doctoral Student (ethnology) landscape, experienced the everyday life Dept. of History and Ethnology of factory village or met the people of the P.O. Box 35 (v) old community. The life there was un- FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä known and foreign to me until I heard the e-mail: [email protected] emotional personal narratives, most of which Elsa told to me for the first time and Notes this time only. As Bakhtinian chronotopes 1 I would like to thank many people who helped me to develop this text and who contributed to introduce specific time-places for readers, different versions presented at several confer- narrators of their own lives create meta- ences and workshops. Ray Cashman, Barbara 36 Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes

Lloyd, Sabra Webber and Saara Tuomaala 6 This summary of Elsa’s life is mine, and em- gave their insightful comments on the previ- phasizes several changes in her life course. ous versions based on papers presented at Many of these changes, however, have been AFS Annual Meeting 2009 in Boise (the ses- narrativized by Elsa herself. Trying to contex- sion Narrative I: The Storyteller’s Position in tualize her life, I have pushed it into a chrono- Personal Experience Narrative ) at Contact: logical and more causal order. The Dynamics of Power and Culture 2010 in 7 The term site(s) of memory ( lieux de mé- Columbus, Ohio (a joint graduate student con- moire ) was created by French historian Pierre ference between the Ohio State University Nora (1989). He observed that modern society and Indiana University), and at the Narra- is in the phase of dislocation and anxiety tivitet och materialitet workshop 2010 in Vis- caused by unprecedented change, and that by. I am grateful for all the comments I re- people are driven to preserve as many traces ceived from the discussants and participants of the past as possible. Nora wanted to present of these events. This article is tied to the re- critique of the historical memory of a nation search project Happy Days? Everyday Life state. In his view, sites of memory are the last and Nostalgia of the Extended 1950s , funded places that conserve living memory, which by Academy of Finland (decision number has disappeared when the production of writ- 137923). ten, constructed history. According to Nora, 2 In my PhD research The World Changing sites of memory are non-written manifesta- around Me – Intersections of Gender, Class tions of “the presence of the past within the and Work in the 20th-Century Life Story of a present” (ibid. 20) which are “at once imme- Female Laborer , I analyse the life story of diately available in concrete sensual experi- Elsa Koskinen, my grandmother, who was ence and susceptible to the most abstract elab- born in 1927. She is a retired factory worker oration” (ibid. 18). and still alive. She worked in Inha Ironworks 8 It has been shown that ritual repetition and in the rural district of Ähtäri, Southern Ostro- shared embodied experiences create collective bothnia, in the centre of Finland, and lived in memory and identity that the members of the the surrounding factory village, a small com- group grow into (see Connerton 1989; for ex- munity of 400 people, until retiring. Later, she amples based on ethnography see e.g. Noyes moved from this village to the municipal 2003). Telling stories about the ritual events centre. In my dissertation, I examine the ways and the places where these events took place is in which she represents herself in relation to also an important part of the collective (and the changes that took place in modernizing personal) experience and strengthens identity Finland of the 20th century. (see Myerhoff 1978; Mullen 1992). 3 The research material consists of twelve 9 Keith Basso (1996) studied place-names and life-story interviews which I conducted be- stories among the Western Apache . He saw tween 2001 and 2004. that Apache’s stories of meaningful sites func- 4 In the interview 8, 6 th of January 2002, 10 per- tion to remind them of the past and to teach a cent of all narratives were retold variants. In moral lesson to younger generations. Accord- other interviews the average amount of retold ing to Basso, place making is “universal tool of variants was 30 percent. historical imagination”, which takes place “at 5 The 1950s is often considered as the era of that precise moment, when ordinary percep- housewives, a time when married women tions begin to loosen their hold, a border has stayed at home and took care of the house- been crossed and the country starts to change. hold. The image of the housewife was also Awareness has shifted its footing, and the char- prevalent in Finland during this time (Wikan- acter of the place, now transfigured by der 1999:157). However, statistics show that thoughts of an earlier day, swiftly takes on a married women did not return to being house- new and foreign look” (ibid. 5). wives, supported by their husbands as they re- 10 Bakhtin’s chronotopes are somewhat vague turned from war, to the same extent as in other and they are by no means easy to distinguish. European countries (Haavio-Mannila 1984: Bakhtin uses them almost as metaphors 49; Naisten asemaa 1970:38). (Mahlamäki 2005:45–47). Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes 37

11 The kind of phenomena, known as vivid or Apache. Albuquerque: University of New flashbulb memories, are part of autobio- Mexico Press. graphical memory, and often related to emo- Braudel, Fernand 1980: On History. Chicago: tionally arousing events. Besides psychology, University of Chicago Press. memory and narration have been studied in Braudel, Fernand 1993: A History of Civilizations. oral history and narrative studies (see e.g. New York: Penguin. Portelli 1991:63; Vilkko 1997:169–170; Pel- Cashman, Ray 2006: Critical Nostalgia and Mate- tonen 1996:28; Korkiakangas 1999:166–167; rial Culture in Northern Ireland. Journal of Tuomaala 2006:273). American Folklore 119, pp. 137–160. 12 Empirical research and analysis of people’s Connerton, Paul 1989: How Societies Remember. relations to particular spaces may bring up Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. some of the positive elements of nostalgia. Cresswell, Tim 2004: Place: A Short Introduc- Studying the strategies of town-dwellers’ re- tion. Malden, Oxford & Victoria: Blackwell. actions to the planning of a new school build- Fingerroos, Outi 2008: Karelia: A Place of ing, the ethnologist Pirjo Korkiakangas Memories and Utopias. Oral Tradition 23:2, (2004) noted that nostalgia functioned as a re- source which not only strengthened the identi- pp. 235–254. ty of a place, but also created a kind of “legal- Glassie, Henry 1982: Passing the Time in Bally- ized” moral claims on those in power. menone. Culture and History of an Ulster Com- 13 Coherence related to self and life-story telling munity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva- is a problematic concept in the narrative study nia Press. of lives. Some scholars do not believe that Glassie, Henry 1998: History’s Dark Places. Dis- there is any self outside the narrative, or em- tinguished Lecture of the Institute and Society phasize the coherent self as an eligible and for Advance Study given on October 4, 1996. healthy subject agent (see e.g. McIntyre Distinguished Lecture Series 8. Bloomington: 1985). This view has been criticized, among Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study. other things, for the demand of closure and Haavio-Mannila, Elina 1984: Itsenäisyyden ajan oneness (see e.g. Löyttyniemi 2004:69). How- suomalainen nainen. Sukupuolten tasa-arvo ever, narrative form tends to construct coher- historiassa., pp. 41–54. Helsinki: Kouluhalli- ence, offering an arena for negotiating contra- tus. dictory life experiences and/or major changes Heimo, Anne 2006: Places Lost, Memories Re- and passing of time (Ricoeur 1992). Life- gained. In Narrating, Doing, Experiencing. story telling thereby helps people to accept Nordic Folkloristic Perspectives , ed. Annikki the chaos and fragmentariness of life (Löyt- Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Barbro Klein & Ulf Pal- tyniemi 2004:68–70). menfelt, pp. 47–63. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. References Klein, Barbro 2006: Introduction. In Narrating, Ahvenisto, Inkeri 2009: Tehdas yhdistää ja erot- Doing, Experiencing. Nordic Folkloristic Per- taa. Verlassa 1880-luvulta 1960-luvulle. Hel- spectives , ed. Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Bar- sinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. bro Klein & Ulf Palmenfelt, pp. 47–63. Helsin- Åström, Anna-Maria & Korkiakangas, Pirjo ki: Finnish Literature Society. 2004: Introduction. In Memories of my Town. Korkiakangas, Pirjo 1999: Muisti, muistelu, The Town Dwellers and Their Places in Three perinne. In Kulttuurin muuttuvat kasvot , ed. Bo Finnish Towns , ed. Anna-Maria Åström, Pirjo Lönnqvist, Elina Kiuru & Eeva Uusitalo, pp. Korkiakangas & Pia Olsson, pp. 7–16. Helsin- 155–176. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden ki: Finnish Literature Society. Seura. Bahtin, Mihail 1979: Kirjallisuuden ja estetiikan Korkiakangas, Pirjo 2004: Memories and the ongelmia. Moskova: Kustannusliike Progress. Identity of Place. Strategies of Town Residents Bakhtin, Mikhail 1984: The Problems of Dos- in Jyväskylä. In Memories of my Town. The toevsky’s Poetics. Transl. Caryl Emerson. Min- Town Dwellers and Their Places in Three Finn- neapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ish Towns , ed. Anna-Maria Åström, Pirjo Kor- Basso, Keith H. 1996: Wisdom Sits in Places. kiakangas & Pia Olsson, pp. 150–171. Helsinki: Landscape and Language among the Western Finnish Literature Society. 38 Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes

Kortelainen, Kaisu 2006: Tehdasyhteisöstä kir- Nora, Pierre 1989: Between History and Memory. joitettu kartta. In Paikka. Eletty, kuviteltu, ker- Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations 26, rottu , ed. Seppo Knuuttila, Pekka Laaksonen & pp .7–24. Ulla Piela, pp. 291–307. Kalevalaseuran vuosi- Noyes, Dorothy 2003: Fire in the Plaça. Catalan kirja 85. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Festival Politics after Franco. Philadelphia: Seura. University of Pennsylvania Press. Kortelainen, Kaisu 2008: Penttilän sahayhteisö ja Peltonen, Ulla-Maija 1996: Punakapinan muistot. työläisyys. Muistitietotutkimus. Helsinki: Tutkimus työväen muistelukerronnan muotou- Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. tumisesta vuoden 1918 jälkeen. Helsinki: Koskinen-Koivisto, Eerika 2009: Healthy, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Skilled, Disciplined – Modernizing Changes Peltonen, Ulla-Maija 2003: Muistin paikat. Vuo- and the Sense of Self in the Embodied Experi- den 1918 sisällissodan muistamisesta ja unoh- ences of a Female Factory Worker. Ethnologia tamisesta. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuu- Fennica 36, pp. 72–83. den Seura. Leminen, Pia 1996: Kohtaamisia ja väistöjä. Ra- Portelli, Alessandro 1991: The Death of Luigi jankäyntiä 1930-luvun tehdasyhteisössä. In Trastulli and Other Stories. Form and Meaning Matkoja moderniin Lähikuvia suomalaisten in Oral History. Albany: State University of elämästä , ed. Marjatta Rahikainen, pp. 167– New York Press. 186. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura. Ricoeur, Paul 1992: Oneself as Another. Chicago: Linde, Charlotte 1993: Life Stories. The Creation University of Chicago Press. of Coherence. New York, Oxford: Oxford Uni- Savolainen, Ulla 2009: Kasvun tiellä ja muutosten versity Press. kynnyksellä. Evakkopojan muistelukertomuk- Löyttyniemi, Varpu 2004: Kerrottu identiteetti, sen kronotoopit. Kasvatus & Aika 3:3. pp. 95– neuvoteltu sukupuoli. Auscultatio medici. Jy- 114. väskylä: Minerva. Schreiber, Heidi 2004: Bruksbilder – minnen av Mahlamäki, Tiina 2005: Naisia kansalaisuuden svensk vardag på gamla bruksorter i Finland. In kynnyksellä. Eeva Joenpellon Lohja-sarjan Min bruksmiljö. Hågkonster från finländska tulkinta. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden bruk , ed. John Hackman, Heidi Schreiber, Lotta Seura. Wessberg & Anna-Maria Åström, pp. 298–306. Massey, Doreen 2005: For Space . London: Sage. Åbo: Åbo Akademi. McIntyre, Alisdair 1985: After Virtue . Notre Tuan, Yi-Fu 1977: Space and Place. The Perspec- Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. tive of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Meriläinen-Hyvärinen, Anneli 2010: “Sanopa Minnesota Press. minulle, onko meijän hyvä olla täällä?” Paikka- Tuan, Yi-Fu 2006: Paikan taju: aika, paikka ja kokemukset kolmen talvivaaralaisen elämässä. minuus. In Paikka. Eletty, kuviteltu, Kerrottui , Elore 17:1. ed. Seppo Knuuttila, Pekka Laaksonen & Ulla Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1962 [1958]: Phenom- Piela, pp. 15–30. Kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 85. enology of Perception. London: Routlegde. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Modell, Judith & Hinshaw, John 1996: Male Tuomaala, Saara 2004: Työtätekevistä käsistä Work and Mill Work. Memory and Gender in puhtaiksi ja kirjoittaviksi. Suomalaisen oppivel- Homestead, Pennsylvania. In Gender and vollisuuskoulun ja maalaislasten kohtaaminen Memory , ed. Selma Leydesdorff, Luisa Pas- 1921 –1939. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuu- serini & Paul Thompson, pp. 133–147. Interna- den Seura. tional Yearbook of Oral History and Life Sto- Tuomaala, Saara 2006: Kinoksia ja kivik- ries IV. Oxford: Oxford University Press. kokankaita – koulutie suomalaisen modernisaa- Mullen, Patrick B. 1992: Listening to Old Voices. tion kokemuksena ja metaforana. In Moder- Folklore, Life Stories and the Elderly. Urbana nisaatio ja kansan kokemus suomessa 1860– & Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 1960 , ed. Hilkka Helsti, Laura Stark & Saara Myerhoff, Barbara 1978: Number Our Days. New Tuomaala, pp. 241–276. Helsinki: Suomalaisen York: Simon and Schuster. Kirjallisuuden Seura. Naisten asemaa 1970: Naisten asemaa tutkivan Tuomaala, Saara 2009: The Dialogues In- komitean mietintö . Komiteanmietintö 1970: A between. A Phenomenological Perspective on 8. Helsinki. Women’s Oral History Interviews. Oral Histo- Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Disappearing Landscapes 39

ry. The Challenges of Dialogue , ed. Marta paikkana. Naisen elämän kerronta ja luenta. Kurkowska-Budzan & Krzysztof Zamorski, pp. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. 77–86. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Ben- Wikander, Ulla 1999: Kvinnoarbete i Europa jamin’s Publishing Company. 1789–1950. Genus, makt och arbetsdelning . Vilkko, Anni 1997: Omaelämäkerta kohtaamis- Stockholm: Atlas. The Communal Laundry A Swedish Story By Kristina Lund

The Communal Laundry Room – similar to the Swedish ones. In Finland Loved and Hated and Norway communal laundry rooms ex- To be able to wash one’s clothes in a ist but not to the same extent as in Sweden. well-equipped, modern laundry room, In many European cities, such as Copen- without having to buy a washing machine hagen and Berlin, there are commercial or tumble dryer or leave the building, can laundry facilities, laundromats, instead of be appreciated as a privilege – or it can laundry rooms in the apartment building. feel like a major headache to have to plan, Even in Sweden fewer and fewer laundry book, and share space with unknown rooms are being built today, since most neighbours. The communal laundry room people demand laundry facilities in the leaves few people unaffected. home. The communal laundry room is rather The word for the laundry room, unique to Sweden. It is based on the vision tvättstuga 1 – literally “wash-cottage” – is of the “People’s Home” ( Folkhemmet ), a hardly associated with the urban life that fair and equal society, and the idea that most people live today, but nevertheless everyone should be able to wash their own the word remains. Perhaps the fellowship clothes and keep clean. In the communal in the laundry room still implies some laundry room, clean meets dirty, written kind of village mentality where we get rules face unwritten rules, and perfection- close together. In peasant society the laun- ists confront slovenly people. Sometimes dry was carried out in a separate building, these encounters are cheerful, sometimes and since then the word has been deeply they end up in angry notes pinned to the rooted. The laundry room is for many door, or violence reported to the police. people the place where they meet their The communal laundry room is both a neighbours. In many neighbourhoods, the public and a private space. It is not easy to laundry room has the same role as the share your dirt with strangers and to ex- church had in bygone days. pose your underwear to others. Sweden has a tradition of apartment Despite the fact that the Swedish model housing supported by communal areas, is built on collective values, Sweden today such as outdoor spaces, bicycle rooms, is a country characterized by a high extent garbage rooms, meeting rooms, play- of individualism and independence. How- grounds – and communal laundry rooms. ever, the communal laundry is not as com- Today there are communal laundries in mon in other countries. The communal most apartment buildings, both those with laundry is a leftover as typically Swedish rental apartments and those with privately as the alcohol retail monopoly and the owned flats. right of public access. In many other coun- Around 42 per cent of Sweden’s popu- tries people use the neighbourhood laun- lation live in apartment buildings. Most of dry or take their washing to someone if these have a communal laundry room. they do not have a washing machine in This means that almost half of the Swe- their flat. In countries like Switzerland dish population has access to communal and Austria and in some parts of United laundry rooms, and even more people States there are communal laundry rooms have experience of one.

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry 41

Communal laundries display a great va- dirty laundry was beaten clean with wood- riety. At 47 Katarina Bangata in Stock- en bats on piers and in “batting cottages”, holm, 21 apartments share a laundry room often in cold water. It was a hard chore with two washing machines, one tumble that women performed together. dryer and a drying cabinet. Laundry time Along with industrialization, new is booked by writing on a calendar outside mechanical washing devices were intro- the room. At Kungsklippan, just a few duced. But doing the laundry was still metro stops away, 430 apartments share heavy, and washing it by hand was by far one laundry room, which consists of seven the most common way. washrooms, each with a set of machines, The new society that emerged at the with fully electronic reservation and lock turn of the century meant an increased systems. Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm, professionalization of new jobs as washer- has Sweden’s largest laundry room, where women and laundry maids. Urbanization 22 families can wash at the same time. and a growing middle class created a de- Doing the laundry is closely associated mand for laundry services. Those who with everyday routine. Boredom, waiting, could afford it let special facilities, known and habit are undervalued in a society as “wash-aways”, do their laundry. For where variability, flexibility and having most people, however, that was not poss- fun are highly esteemed. Doing the laun- ible. Sweden at that time was a country dry is a fundamental part of life for most with large class differences, and poverty people, but also a trivial everyday chore was widespread. In the early twentieth that attracts little attention. Furthermore, century, Sweden was still a country of washing is a Sisyphean task: the laundry is emigration, with high unemployment and eternal. a stagnant economy. After emigration to The way people have managed their America slowed down, migration to urban laundry, hygiene, and dirt is a traditional areas and especially to the capital in- subject of ethnological study at the Nor- creased. Many people moved into the 2 diska Museet. This article is about the cities, and especially in Stockholm people history and the underlying visions of the lived in overcrowded homes. Many found communal laundry and the related con- it hard to keep themselves and their flicts, about the dirt and the lint. clothes clean. There were laundry facilities, coopera- Heavy Laundry tive, collective and neighbourhood laun- The water was cold. They were on their knees on dries, sometimes equipped with machines. the shaky jetty below Gertrudsborg, beating the But the washing facilities could be far washing with bent sticks. Sometimes the jetty from home and were insufficient for swung so deep that they got water over their everyone. And of course there were laun- 3 knees. dry rooms in residential buildings early in Washing has changed radically in Sweden the last century, but they were simple fa- over the last hundred years. In the early cilities equipped with wood- and gas-fired twentieth century, clothes were washed a boilers and washbasins, sometimes with a few times a year on special washdays. The cauldron to boil the laundry in. The drying 42 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry

space was often in the attic, which could of the state, according to the most radical be cold in the winter. “Usually this place debaters. The movement was called “the has no heating […]. Washing clothes in a new objectivity” and became influential in laundry room like this normally takes two contemporary art, architecture, and hous- to three days. How long it can take before ing construction, and also in the social de- the clothes are dry during the cold season bate. has not been reported, but one must of Alva Myrdal (1902–1986) and Gunnar course reckon with a week or so,” writes Myrdal (1898–1987) had prominent roles Brita Åkerman (1941) in a study of how in this debate. In their report book Kris i everyday life was organized in the late befolkningsfrågan (Crisis in the Popula- 1930s in Stockholm. tion Question, 1934), they highlighted the These early laundry rooms were im- importance of an orderly family life. They practical, lacking machines, and it still warned that lack of living space and took several days to do the washing. Many low-quality housing gave a poor environ- people still washed small laundry items by ment for children to grow up in, which re- hand in the kitchen or bathroom, and dried sulted in physical and psychological harm. them over the stove. Better housing – along with other reforms – was a remedy against the low birth rate The Big Clean-up that would also slow migration. Sweden has filth within its border, too much filth Alva Myrdal fought for women’s op- to tolerate calmly, and this filth must be eliminat- portunities. She wanted to solve what she ed as quickly and as thoroughly as possible, not called the general problem, the difficulty merely for the sake of national prestige but – far of combining paid work and family life. more importantly – for the sake of national effi- Her solution was that housework should ciency. We cannot afford to have so much filth in be professionalized, with clothes taken to the national machinery (Nordström 1938). a laundry for washing, nursery care for the Until the 1930s, Sweden had Europe’s children, and restaurants to do the cook- worst housing standards. The situation ing. A controversial part of her ideas were was bad all over the country but especially the proposals about forced sterilization of in big cities like Stockholm. The number individuals with undesirable characteris- of inhabitants had exploded. Poverty was tics, to achieve the ideal society. widespread and many people lived in The journalist Ludvig “Lubbe” Nord- cramped homes that were damp, dark, and ström (1882–1942) was another signifi- dirty. The lack of hygiene made many cant figure in the debate. He wrote a re- sick, and diseases like cholera and typhoid port, Lort-Sverige (Sweden the Filthy), were widespread. that exposed the dreadful state of housing. During the 1930s there were various His high-profile stories were broadcast by political and social movements promoting Swedish Radio in 1938 and became a change in Sweden. Voices were raised in milestone in Swedish investigative jour- the public debate imploring politicians to nalism, subsequently also printed as a clean up the squalor. Housing, which was book. Sweden’s filth, according to Nord- a private matter, should be responsibility ström, was not only a social but a moral Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry 43

problem. Spiritual filth was widespread. home. The People’s Home was founded on The old ideas and the antiquated ideals an ideology that the state can create and had to be removed, along with the poor manage growth, prosperity and equality. housing. Sweden needed a major clean-up. Even poor people would live a healthy and The historian of ideas Ronny Am- clean life without disease and dirt. björnsson (1996) writes that the leading The People Home of the future would be Social Democrats ran a public-health practical and hygienic, situated close to na- campaign directed at the Swedish working ture, in other words, in the suburbs, far from class. “Hygiene was the buzzword of the the inner city’s dark and dirty surroundings. thirties. With hygiene they tried to pin- Light, air, and cleanliness became a meta- point an ideal which, beginning with ex- phor for enlightenment and rationality. ternal behaviour, came to involve all di- Clean, bright, practical, rational, functional, mensions of everyday life, from brushing and comfortable were the watchwords and teeth to the morality of marital inter- ideals of the welfare state. Hygienic hous- course. Dirt was not only what stuck to the ing and the clean society forged an associa- skin but also things that crept into tion between body, health, cleanliness, and thoughts and fantasies.” a new modern social order. Along with industrialization, new ideas New Ideals in Swedish Society – the swept over the country, and the 1930s saw People’s Home the beginning of the modernization of Sweden. A new approach to health The foundation of the home is the community and the sense of responsibility. A good home recog- emerged and the politically charged hous- nizes no one who is privileged or neglected, no ing issue was connected to laundry work. favourites or step-children. No one there looks Besides the hygienic aspect there was also down on another, no one seeks to benefit at an- a desire to relieve housewives of the other’s expense, the strong do not repress and time-consuming washing so that they plunder the weak. Equality, consideration, and could work outside the home. helpfulness prevail in a good home. The laundry took a lot of time, and by These words were spoken by the Social freeing up time for women, they could de- Democratic politician Per Albin Hansson vote themselves to something else or earn (1885–1946). His ideas about the People’s money by working outside the home; this Home were important in creating the new made women responsible for both earning Sweden. In the Swedish welfare state, a living and taking care of the laundry. everybody should have the right to a good The working housewife became a familiar home with facilities for washing them- concept and topic of lively debate. During selves and their clothes. In his famous the 1930s and 1940s the working woman speech in 1928 he indicated the labour was the ideal; later in the 1950s it turned movement’s new direction. The People’s into the ideal of the strong housewife. Home was a vision of society based on It was society’s responsibility to address solidarity, equality, security, justice – all both residential and laundry issue. Perhaps would be fine and the state would take care women’s housework was in focus, but the of the weak. Society would be like a good welfare state was created by men. Ideas 44 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry

about gender roles were clear: the wife was about how everyday life could be made linked to the home and the husband to the easier for women. nation. The home was the woman’s job and HSB’s very first laundry was started in workplace. The rationalization of house- 1925, in the Röda Bergen area in Stock- work would raise its status and make the holm, equipped with electric washing woman into an expert in housework. machines and spin dryers. The fact that The growth of the modern society was the laundry room was situated inside the closely related to the housing issue. When apartment building was new. It would new homes were built, the social and take another few years before the new democratic aspirations were combined functional homes were equipped with with new hygiene ideals. Everyone had refuse disposal chutes, hot water, modern the right to housing – good housing. bathrooms, kitchens – and communal Politicians joined representatives of laundry rooms with modern washing ma- modernism in pursuit of the good home. chines. The new architectural ideas had their HSB’s machine-equipped laundry major breakthrough at the International rooms were compared to the former laun- Exhibition in Stockholm in 1930, when dry rooms, which were impractical and modernism was presented for the first time-consuming, often taking several time to a wider audience. Through politi- days. “It is equipped with a washing ma- cal means housing conditions would be chine and rinsing basins and tubs in suffi- improved and a good standard of accom- cient numbers, usually with a mangle and modation would be offered to everyone. a drying room with hot-air dryer, located on the same floor as the laundry room. It Laundry Room Pioneers takes no more than half a day for a big According to entirely credible information, with wash, and even drying is included in this these machines one person could wash 60 kg of time” (Åkerman 1941). clothes in about 8 hours with much less labour than washing by hand. A wash that takes two days, usually by two people, can easily be done in the machine by one person in a day. This estimate of the social savings that could be gained if hand washing was re- placed by machine washing was made by the Board of Directors of HSB, the Tenants’ Savings and Building Associa- tion, a housing corporation and popular non-government organization for coopera- tively owned flats. HSB, together with the architect Sven Wallander (1890–1968), played a leading role in the modernization of Swedish homes and the establishment of the communal laundry room. The organiza- tion was early in putting forward new ideas Photo: Karl Heinz Hernried © Nordiska museet. Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry 45

Besides the fact that people gained ac- in housing standards was part of the dem- cess to modern homes, they were also dis- ocratic project. HSB participated actively ciplined and learned to live in a modern in the development of the laundry issue way. It was primarily the working class and was represented in government com- whose character was to be improved by mittees and various studies. this means. The welfare-state ideology contained an element of education, and A Symbol of Rational Housework there were calls for good behaviour and It must not only be equipped with water, drainage, hygienic living. central heating, electricity, kitchen and sanitary The socially committed architect Sven installations, and storage areas, but must also have Wallander tried to convince housewives access to other appropriate equipment such as about the benefits of the new machine- refuse disposal chutes, laundry room and storage equipped laundry rooms but failed. At area in the basement or attic ( God Bostad 1954). first the innovations aroused opposition The search for the good dwelling, the good and suspicion among housewives. Could home, characterized the period from the technology really be better than washing 1930s until the 1980s. Rules were needed by hand? Comments among the women when many parties – architects, engineers, that emerged from the interviews were, politicians, planners, women’s organiza- for example: “machine washing wears tions – were engaged in the housing prob- clothes out more”, “clothes get very badly lem. The Domestic Research Institute chafed”, “wanted to get some fresh air into (Hemmens forskningsinstitut, HFI), was the clothes” (Åkerman 1941). founded in 1944 by housewives’ leagues The HSB pioneer Olga Grimlund (mar- and women’s organizations. The scheme ried to the politician Otto Grimlund) had was financed by the state, and the aim was better success. She led evening classes to rationalize housework through research where HSB taught how the modern home and consumer information. Domestic should be operated. A key issue was the science teachers, chemists, nutritional management of the common laundry scientists, sociologists, architects, and en- room. HSB had special hostesses to con- gineers went into people’s homes, and pri- vince housewives of the benefits. HSB vate lives. They researched, timed, ex- housewives say, for example, “it is so amined and measured. The status of the easy”, “a pleasure to wash in this kind of housewife was raised – she was now an ex- laundry room”, “I recommend it because pert in housework. it’s nice”, “If you go down in the morning Up until the 1930s, Sweden had the with the dirty clothes, you will back in the lowest standard of housing in Europe. afternoon with the laundry clean and More, better, and cheaper homes needed ironed” (Åkerman 1941). to be built. The HFI defined what it re- HSB was a predecessor when it came to garded as a good standard of housing, and developing practical homes but was also drew up norms and regulations. Being criticized for building luxury flats. It was able to do the laundry was one of them. surely not necessary for workers to be able In 1957 the HFI was restructured and to take a bath at home! But to HSB the rise had its name changed to the National In- 46 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry

Beginning of the 1950s. Photo: Erik Liljeroth © Nordiska mu- seet. stitute for Consumer Affairs (Statens in- abandoned in favour of the laundry rooms stitut för konsumentfrågor), which is now in the apartment building itself: in short, the Swedish Consumer Agency (Konsu- the nearby common laundry room as we mentverket). know it today. The official government report Kollek- HSB housing was only available for tiv tvätt (“Collective laundry”), presented those who could afford the down pay- in 1947, argued that the state should take ment, but HSB’s example was followed responsibility for the laundry issue. The by housing corporations owned by muni- investigators considered that large social cipalities in the sector. 4 This is a major gains could be made if laundry was per- reason why the laundry room became so formed in a more rational way. common in Sweden. Right from the outset Washing facilities with large machines all apartment blocks were to contain pub- that were used by many households were lic facilities such as child care, refuse stor- recommended, and large-scale facilities age rooms, meeting rooms, a playhouse were also built, which meant that laundry and laundry rooms. was transported over long distances. Later The public provision of rental apart- the idea of factory-like laundries was ments was considerable, and the housing Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry 47

policies could be accomplished through The “Washing Book” ( Tvättboken ) the municipally owned housing corpora- published by the National Institute for tion. Consumer Affairs in 1969 described the Housing policies during the post-war options available for organizing laundry era, together with HSB’s visions and the work: personal washing machines, a laun- Swedish municipally owned housing cor- dry room in the building, laundry busi- porations, are important reasons for the nesses, public laundries, professional expansion of communal laundry rooms in hand-in laundry. “Washing was heavy and Sweden. Government loans financed the time-consuming 10–20 years ago, but can construction of public facilities in apart- now be significantly simplified by using ment blocks in every neighbourhood. new fabrics and above all new devices. Laundry rooms were made standard in With access to an automatic washing ma- newly built apartment blocks in the 1940s, chine the effort will now be very small.” and the real breakthrough came in the Expansion was rapid, and after only a 1950s. At the same time, washing ma- few years 80 per cent of all households in chines began to be used in homes but they apartment buildings had access to laundry were costly and not something everyone rooms. In the 1960s the proportion had could afford. The washing machine was a risen to 90 per cent. Laundry had become technological revolution which facilitated something that families could take care of the work of 1950s housewives. As we by themselves. It was not possible to do have seen, however, the labour-saving frequent small washes. home technology was also a way to get The expansion peaked in the early women into the labour market. 1970s, when most of the residents of apartment blocks had access to laundry rooms. At the same time, automatic wash- ing machines were introduced. The vision of the good home and access to laundry rooms persisted during the coming decades. The issues then con- cerned machines, environment, and tech- nology. In the 1980s, for example, the harmful effects of dryers were discussed, and the 1990s saw a breakthrough for energy-saving machines.

A Minefield The laundry room is a minefield. We have nothing to envy in the Middle East. We have our own Gaza Strip in the basement. Do you think it is a coinci- dence that the laundry room is always built adja- In 1955 front-loaded Wascator machines had cent to the shelter? Of course not. It takes more been launched. Photo: Karl Heinz Hernried © than a Russian air strike to get Swedes to abandon Nordiska museet. their laundry time. The laundry room brings to- 48 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry

gether the holy trinity of the Swedish mentality: dry room was always filled with cat’s order, respect, and punctuality. Keeping a laundry hair. time is an act of good faith, perhaps the only pat- One tenant in five has got into trouble in riotic deed that a Swede can perform. It is impor- the laundry room, according to a survey in tant that immigrants learn that quickly (Ezpeleta 2009). the tenants’ magazine Hem & Hyra (2007). The most common conflicts in the The communal laundry room is not only communal laundry room are caused by used for washing clothes. It also gives rise laundry times and cleaning. Not cleaning to meetings, irritation, arguments, and the tumble dryer’s lint filter is considered conflicts as people with diverse routines a violation by some. share it. Although you are most often The laundry room can be seen as a alone in there while you do your wash, the miniature society where there are some- communal laundry is a room you share times struggles about who is entitled to with others. In the laundry your personal use the room and the machines. People habits face those of other people. In the have defined territories, and when these laundry your neighbours’ views of dirt, limits are exceeded, conflicts arise. The hygiene, and the immediate environment proximity and the small space makes us collide with your own ideas. It is a semi- repressed, which sometimes leads to a private place, a space between private and conflict, says the mediator Eleonore Lind, public. who is hired by housing corporations to Many people have either suffered a give mediation training in laundry room laundry room incident themselves or conflicts. It is also an intimate situation know someone who has. This is the sub- when clothes that you have worn close to ject of many stories. There is the young the body are exposed. man who had lint pressed through his In 2008, a total of 72 cases of laundry mailbox by an unknown neighbour; the fa- room threats and beatings were reported to ther who found his laundry thrown on the the police in the county of Stockholm dirty floor when he failed to empty the alone. Who is entitled to use the machines machine in time; the mother who had an is the most common dispute between outburst when she had her laundry time neighbours. Beatings, threats, and rapes stolen for the third time the same week; are also among the crimes committed in and the young woman who had her under- communal laundries. wear and favourite jeans stolen. The housing corporations use bill- People tend to dwell on the negative boards, information, and technology to experiences. The girl who has had her avoid conflicts. Many real estate repre- white sofa covers damaged when the sentatives are trained to mediate between neighbour who had used the machine be- residents, and some housing corporations fore her had dyed clothes blue does not hire a professional mediator to resolve dis- keep this tragedy to herself, nor does the putes. To prevent such problems, more mother with allergic children who was and more housing corporations are install- forced to buy a washing machine for the ing digital booking systems, allowing apartment when the machine in the laun- only one household at a time to enter the Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry 49

laundry room. Other housing corporations a subject of discussion. It is often the are trying large, manned laundry rooms, negative experiences that become stories. or installing washing machines in each Three out of four tenants use the com- flat. In order to create a secure environ- munal laundry room. The majority, 71 per ment, cameras and alarm phones are cent, find it sufficiently cleaned and tidy. sometimes installed. Today, when new Most of those who wish for a tidier laun- apartment buildings are produced, the dry room are women. The reason for this housing corporations avoid placing the could be that women spend twice as much laundry rooms in the basement where they time as men doing housework. A Swedish are hard to reach. Instead they locate the household spends two and half hours on laundry rooms on the ground floor, with average per week doing the washing, and windows facing the courtyard or the the greatest gap between the sexes lies in street. Ensuring transparency is a way to the washing of clothes. While men spend prevent fights and conflicts. half an hour per week washing clothes, The laundry room is a classic arena for women spend two hours. 5 disputes between neighbours, as con- firmed by Cecilia Henning, associate pro- Get Your Act Together! fessor of social work at the School of As the board has received complaints about some Health Sciences, Jönköping University, in people not cleaning the laundry after they have a conversation. Everyone has to take re- used it, it is extremely important that everyone sponsibility for the communal laundry takes responsibility and cleans up after themselves room, but people may tend not to look af- before leaving the laundry. If cleaning does not improve from now on, measures will have to be ter it as well as they do their own home. taken, which might lead to us to bar people from The boundaries are not clear. This makes the laundry if they don’t clean up after themselves. the laundry a space exposed to conflicts. We hope there will be improvements for every- Careful management of superficial one’s sake! neighbourly contacts is more important The Board 6 than one might think. The communal In the 1930s, the poor were taught how to laundry is a room that many people visit. keep clean and tidy. Social upbringing It may therefore be very anonymous. If was an important idea behind the creation you do not know who your neighbours of communal laundry rooms, and it still are, you will be more sensitive to poor lives on today. In the 1930s and 1940s cleaning and problems with the time poor people were supposed to learn how schedule. Greeting your neighbours and to become clean and tidy when they knowing what they look like will increase moved into the apartments built for large tolerance, according to Cecilia Henning. families. Today landlords instruct their In spite of the conflicts, the Swedish residents in how to behave in the commu- communal laundry room is appreciated. nal laundry room. Manufacturers of wash- But the community with neighbours, the ing machines and detergents teach people spontaneous meetings and discussions how to use the correct washing cycle and taking place in laundry rooms across the the right amount of detergent. Neighbours country every day are not as rewarding as educate each other. The angry note in the 50 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry

laundry room is famous and infamous. dirty? When is a sweater dirty? Does it Everyone has seen one, no one has ever have to be washed after it has been worn written one. These notes pass on modest once, or does it get another chance? At proposals for actions, accusations, insults, the same time, studies show how both en- often with exclamation marks, capital vironment and body are affected by the letters, and angry drawings. The note frequent washing. The increase in aller- writers’ strategies and styles vary. gies and eutrophic waters is partly the re- But why all these notes? Fear of con- sult of overdosing of detergents and fab- flict as well as anonymity are considered ric softeners. to lie behind the inclination of Swedes to Each time a machine runs, it takes 60 li- communicate through written notes in- tres of water and 1 kilowatt-hour of elec- stead of face-to-face. “An angry note tricity. Add to that the energy used for means more than a thousand angry drying. A laundry room with fully loaded words,” according to a website (www.ar- machines running on the right cycle will galappen.se) that publishes angry notes keep down costs and spare the environ- from the laundry room. ment. Private washing machines in the If you get angry or annoyed with any- apartments increase the amount of small thing in the laundry room, the basic rule wash loads and hence the consumption of is: no angry notes, according to the medi- water. ator Eleonore Lind. Instead you should find out what has happened and who is re- Relative Dirt sponsible. Contact the person in question, The battle against dirt, impurity, and disorder is but do not make accusations or assump- the classic struggle against chaos (Frykman & tions. Ask questions instead. Be specific Löfgren 1987:166). and tell the person what you have seen, Cultural ideas about dirt and cleanliness heard, or smelled. Suggest actions, formu- permeate the whole of contemporary so- lated as questions. Perhaps everything is ciety. What is dirty to one person might just a misunderstanding. be clean to someone else. Different cul- tures, groups, people, and historical eras Spotless Clothing and Contaminated have their own beliefs and rules about Environment what is dirty or clean. The view of dirt In bygone peasant society, people wore and purity says a lot about the taboos and their working clothes from Monday to morality in society, according to the cul- Saturday. On Saturday night it was time to tural anthropologist Mary Douglas bath and change clothes. On Sunday they (Frykman & Löfgren 1980; Johansson & dressed up to go to church. On Monday Miegel 1996:86ff). By understanding the unwashed working clothes were put on what is seen as dirty or clean, we know again. Now it is different. Many people about the categorization system that wash their clothes after wearing them only forms the basis for the organization of so- one day. cial life. Dirt is something relative; an Laundry removes dirt and the clothes object is not dirty itself but is considered become clean. But what is clean and dirty depending on where and when it is Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry 51

Photo: Karl Heinz Hernried © Nordiska museet. placed. Mary Douglas cites the old defi- means that we restore society and relation- nition of dirt as matter out of place . Food ships. Sorting clothes as clean or dirty is is clean on the plate but dirty on the floor, simultaneously a way to make a moral as- hair and nails are nice on the body but sessment. disgusting when found in food or in the Many people sort clothes into dark and clean laundry. Washing powder is clean light shades, and according to washing in the box but dirty when poured outside temperature, but there are other cultural the detergent dispenser. differences when it comes to sorting the In society there is a large amount of laundry. The Romani people’s tradition of classification that is expressed in the sorting clothes is perhaps the most famous norms, regulations, laws, decrees, catego- example. They have a whole system of ries, and boundaries. Doing your laundry proper behaviour and examples of moral is a way to organize your life. What does judgements. In an article by Nora Wein- not fit, what is different or strange, is traub (2004) some women friends from dirty. A stain on the shirt breaks the order. different backgrounds discuss how they It must therefore be removed. The percep- sort the laundry. A Romani woman says tion of dirt and cleanliness is about much that her people sort everything – socks and more than the actual spots and stains. underwear separately as well as towels When we clean, wash, and set things in and face towels for the lower body, and of place we restore the moral order. What is course men’s and women’s clothes are wrong has to be removed or brought back kept apart. A woman of Egyptian back- to its rightful place. Creating order is a ground separates women’s and men’s kind of social ritual, which ultimately clothing. A friend from Syria does not mix 52 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry

underwear with garments that have not the laundry room environment-friendly been in direct contact with the body. An- and to prevent neighbours from getting other person would not mix baby clothes into conflict with each other. Technology with adult clothes, tablecloths with sheets is used to manage both these challenges. or handkerchiefs. In the future, we might have to get used Is it wasted energy to follow the old tra- to more collective solutions in order to ditions from a time when today’s efficient create a sustainable society, such as machines were not in use, or are they hab- car-pooling and extended public trans- its worth preserving? Physical purity is in- port systems. separable from moral purity. Historically, Development in late twentieth and early dirt has been associated with guilt. Being twenty-first century has taken different clean means being free of debt, having a paths. In some cases, the collective idea clear conscience. Moreover, purity tradi- has been abandoned. Laundry rooms have tions are also about identity, about show- been closed because of feuds between ing who you are. To the Romani people, neighbours, and in some newly built the purity rules are an important part of apartment blocks there are washing ma- their identity which is linked to their his- chines and dryers installed in each flat – torically difficult living conditions. Habits no communal laundry room, no fuss. persist and do not change so easily even Other housing companies, on the other though society changes. hand, invest in laundry rooms and carry out various improvements. There are two The Laundry Room Now and approaches: the construction of more and Tomorrow smaller laundry rooms, or of fewer and It can be like the situation abroad, where people larger ones. either have their own washing machine or use a To make the laundry room function laundromat in the neighbourhood. Or the laundry more smoothly, lock cylinders which can rooms might change into assembly points with be booked with a key are now being re- ironing facilities, children’s playroom and a social placed with digital booking and lock sys- 7 space next door. tems. This way no booked times are A communal laundry room is a natural blocked due to forgotten cylinders, and all feature today in most apartment blocks in the hours can be used efficiently, but it is Sweden. The laundry room was created also a way to prevent neighbours from during a time when everyone was sup- taking each other’s times and to regulate posed to achieve the best material stand- access to the laundry room. Only those ard. Prosperity and growth were on the who have booked can enter. There are agenda. That everyone would be able to fewer encounters between neighbours, wash was a question of democracy and ac- and the risk of theft is reduced. cessibility. The original idea behind the The digital booking board is always communal laundry room was to create connected to the laundry room, but in good economy and community. many houses with a digital system it is Today other issues have to be re- also possible to book and change the laun- solved. The main challenges are to make dry times online. The electronic system Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry 53

Photo: Karl Heinz Hernried © Nordiska museet. makes the laundry room into both an ac- makes life easier or a barrier that cuts out cessible and an enclosed space. people and prevents human encounters? The system has several weaknesses or Technology has also contributed to strengths depending on how you look at it, energy-saving machines and automatic besides the fact that the community will detergent dosage. This avoids overdose disappear. The system is relentless and not and detergent spill. And it is not up to negotiable. Anyone who forgets to pick up each individual to choose an environ- his or her laundry in time will simply be mentally friendly detergent. The housing locked out. The only way they can gain company has already done that. The new access to their clothes is to wait for the computerized washing machines weigh person who has booked the next time. the laundry and adjust the water con- There are stories of people writing polite sumption to suit the weight, and the dryer notes to ask to have their newly washed switches off when the clothes are dry. Al- clothes put outside the laundry room door. ternatives to detergent already exist, for And there is no mercy for those who take example, washing nuts and laundry balls. a chance and start another machine even How effective they are remains to be though time is short. When the washing seen. time is over the machines are turned off, The future laundry room will be even ready or not. Is technology a tool that more about the environment. Washing 54 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry

machine manufacturers, architects, deter- rooms are given a more comfortable and gent manufacturers and housing con- warm interior design, with tiles and better struction companies are working to lighting. Sometimes architects are hired to achieve an environmentally friendly choose the design and colour scheme of laundry room and sustainable washing, the laundry room. In some laundry rooms with less wear on clothes and a fresh per- there even are corners with books, televi- spective on purity. In order to become sion and music. more environmentally friendly, less con- Those who believe in the future of the sumption of water and energy is required common laundry always insist that col- as well as improved detergent, and above lective solutions are superior for the en- all, that consumers change their washing vironment. But not everyone is ready to behaviour. share dirt and machines with others. In the future we are expected to have Anyone who can afford it can buy their machines that will wash with a third as way out of laundry matters and feuds much water, with almost half the energy with neighbours. Especially in condom- consumption, and with drying fans iniums, it is common that people have powered by sound waves. The project their own washing machine and dryer. S’wash (Sustainable domestication The dissolution of collective solutions is washing, run by IVL Swedish Environ- a general trend in today’s society, with mental Research Institute) is about de- privatization, deregulation, the selling veloping sustainable washing. But the off of public housing, fewer members of ability to wash totally without water is trade unions and student unions. There also a vision for the future. Even today is also an increasing group who do not there are washing machines designed for use the laundry room by simply paying larger laundries that wash in liquid to have their clothes washed by profes- carbon dioxide. If it were possible to sional cleaners. Boring routine work is take dry clothes out of the machine, dry- assigned to somebody else. In Stock- ing rooms, drying cabinets, and tumble holm and other major cities in Sweden, dryers would become superfluous. A there are laundries on every other street great deal of energy could thus be saved corner where you can have five shirts (Cavallin 2009). washed and ironed for around 100 kro- As we have seen, the laundry room is nor. In some circles it is also common to no longer hidden in inaccessible base- hand in sheets for washing and ironing. ments. In newly built apartment blocks the Women’s double responsibility for un- laundry room is located on ground level paid laundry and paid work continues with windows. This makes the room both today, and the concept of the working more accessible and secure. Sometimes housewife that was created half a centu- the laundry facilities are placed in separate ry ago is unfortunately still relevant. buildings in the inner courtyard, which At the same time, it has become more means that the laundry room can be used common to hire housekeepers to take day and night since no neighbours are dis- care of laundry and cleaning, perhaps turbed. Another trend is that laundry especially in the big cities. The bene- Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry 55

ficial tax deduction rules for household 5 According to a survey in the magazine Hem & services means that it is not just high Hyra 2009 and SCB time use study in 2000/ 01. income earners, but also stressed middle- 6 This note was sent in from a housing corpora- class families with children who pay for tion in Liljeholmen, Stockholm. home care. Washing machine manufac- 7 Klas Hall, Marketing director HBV, purchase turers such as Electrolux are thus facing department of SABO (Swedish Association of Public Housing Companies) in the magazine new challenges when it is not the same Bofast (no. 3, 2009). person who buys and uses the machine. Anyone who has paid for the new ad- References vanced machine may have never used it. Åkerman, Brita 1941: Familjen som växte ur sitt Is Sweden thus back where it all began hem . Stockholm. when the laundry was a class issue? Åkerman, Brita 1983: Den okända vardagen. Om arbetet i hemmen . Stockholm: Akademilitte- Kristina Lund ratur. Doctoral student Ambjörnsson, Ronny 1996: Mitt förnamn är Ron- ny . Stockholm: Bonnier Alba. Department of Child and Youth Studies Batra, David 2008: Den som inte tar bort luddet Stockholm University ska dö! Stockholm: Frank. SE-106 91 Stockholm Cavallin, Benedikta 2009: Ljudvågor torkar fram- e-mail: [email protected] tidens tvätt. Bofast 3. Douglas, Mary 1966: Purity and Danger. An Notes Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo . 1 The word tvättstuga is attested from 1640 ac- London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. cording to the dictionary Nationalencyklope- Ekman, Kerstin 1976: Springkällan . Stockholm: diens ordbok and Rune Palm, Department of Bonnier. Scandinavian Languages, Stockholm Univer- Ezpeleta, Martin 2009: Sista ordet. Norrbottens sity. Kuriren 4 April. 2 This article is a condensed version of the book Frykman, Jonas & Löfgren, Orvar 1987: Culture Tvättstugan: En svensk historia (2009) that Builders . New Brunswick: Rutgers University was connected to the exhibition “Tvättstugan” Press. at the Nordiska Museet (November 2009– God bostad 1954: Stockholm: Bostadsstyr. March 2010). The author was responsible for Hazelius-Berg, Gunnel 1970: Tvätt. Fataburen. the research. Collecting “angry notes” and Nordiska museets och Skansens årsbok . personal stories related to communal laundry Henning, C. & Lövgren, S. 2004: Behovet av rooms was part of the research; this material trygghet och identitet – vad betyder nätverket? is now kept in the archives of the museum. I In Rapport från hälsans provinser. En jubi- am grateful to the following people for per- leumsantologi , ed. I. Norin. Linköping: Tema sonal communications: Cecilia Henning, Hälsa och samhälle, Linköpings universitet. School of Health Sciences, Jönköping Univer- Henriksson, Greger (2000). Organisationsformer sity; Roland Johansson, HSB; Eleonore Lind, för hushållens tvätt i Stockholm under 1900- medling.nu; Ulrika Sax, SABO. talet. Unpublished report. Forskningsgruppen 3 From the novel Springkällan by Kerstin Ek- för miljöstrategiska studier. Stockholms univer- man (1976). This section is based on Ramberg sitet. (2004), Ranby (2009), Rosén (2002), Larsson Jacobsson, Eva 2007: Du har inte städat! Hem & (2004), Molina (2008). Hyra, Hyresgästföreningen 1, 2007. 4 The public housing is run by municipally Jacobsson, Eva 2009: Rör inte vår älskade owned housing corporations with a non-profit tvättstuga. Hem & Hyra, Hyresgästföreningen purpose. The amount of public housing pro- 5, 2009. duced in the 1940s and 1950s is rather large in Johansson, Thomas & Miegel, Fredrik 1996: Kul- Sweden. tursociologi . Lund: Studentlitteratur. 56 Kristina Lund, The Communal Laundry

Klepp, Ingun Grimstad 2006: Skittentøyets kul- Pyykölä, Minna 2007: Nu synas tvättstugan. Fas- turhistorie. Hvorfor kvinner vasker klær . Oslo: tighetsfolket 9, 2007. Novus. Ramberg, Klas 1995: Svensk mångfald. För- Kollektiv tvätt. Betänkande med förslag att under- valtning och boende i några invandrartäta bo- lätta hushållens tvättarbete . 1941 års befolk- stadsområden . Botkyrka: Mångkulturellt Cen- ningsutredning. Stockholm, 1947. trum. Lagerspetz, Olli 2006: Smuts. En bok om världen, Ramberg, Klas 2000: Allmännyttan. Välfärds- vårt hem . Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings bygge 1850–2000 . Stockholm: Byggförlaget i bokförlag Symposion. samarbete med Sveriges allmännyttiga bostads- Larsson, Katarina 2004: Andrahandskontrakt i företag (SABO). folkhemmet. Närmiljö och kvinnors föränd- Ramberg, Klas 2004: Ut ur skiten! Om hygien i ringsstrategier . Diss. Örebro: Univ-bibl. folkhemmets bostadsfråga. In Tio tvättar sig , Lund, Kristina 2009: Tvättstugan. En svensk his- ed. Christina Westergren, pp. 108–131. Stock- toria. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag. holm: Nordiska museets förlag. Magnusson, Olle 2002: Den förbaskade gamla Ranby, Henrik 2009: Stadsplanering och tvätten. In Tyg överallt , ed. Christina Wester- bostäder. In Signums svenska kulturhistoria. gren, pp. 248–263. Stockholm: Nordiska mu- 1900-talet . Stockholm: Signum. seets förlag. Rosén, Ulla 2002: Ett rent sekel. Så erövrade Molina, Irene 2008: Segregation – eller den svens- Electrolux-Wascator AB världen: 1902–2002 . ka bostadsförsörjningens paradoxer. In Indu- Ljungby: Electrolux-Wascator AB. striland. Tolv forskare om när Sverige blev mo- Rydberg Mitchell, Birgitta 1993: Den eviga dernt , ed. Jan af Geijerstam, pp. 151–169. byken. Planering för tvätt i flerbostadshus . Stockholm: Premiss. Lund. Myrdal, Alva & Myrdal, Gunnar 1934: Kris i be- Tvättboken. Metoder, medel och redskap för tvätt . folkningsfrågan . Stockholm: Bonnier. 2nd ed. Stockholm: Statens institut för konsu- Nordström, Ludvig 1938: Lort-Sverige. Stock- mentfrågor, 1969. holm: Kooperativa förbundet. Wallander, Sven 1965: Minnen. D. 2, HSB och Olsson, Marianne 1967: Tvätt före maskinerna. den tekniska utvecklingen . Stockholm: HSB:s Fataburen . riksförbund. Pedersen, Britt 1980: Gemensam närtvättstuga. Weintraub, Nora 2004: Riktigt rent. In Tio tvättar Planering, utrustning, handikappanpassning . sig , ed. Christina Westergren, pp. 150–165. Stockholm: Byggforskningsrådet. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag. Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity By Sarah Holst Kjær

Late modern, urban couple’s relationships The interviews not only present the are performed at home as an act of longing lazy, resting or pleasurable sofa-routines for relational intimacy through things. The after a long day at work or on a Sunday af- materiality of the home – furniture, ternoon. Domestic things and relationship laundry, dishes – can be defined as a cul- interpretations activate more common tural third through which couples relate, ideals and anti-ideals of the male/female- make sense and evaluate their mutual feel- relationship: Through the couples’ en- ings of nearness or absence. Thus, roman- gagement with things we also gain access tic couples create and negotiate positive or to larger present cultural ideologies on in- negative feelings through the cultural and dividual time opposing family time, material order of their home. gender-role stereotypes and their choreog- An ethnological, qualitative research- raphies, and human power-positions and study on the everyday life of romantic strategies. coupling is the point of departure. Be- tween 2003 and 2005 I studied how Twenty Four Pieces couples performed and defined good (and Two adult grandchildren, their parents and bad) coupling through cultural symbols, I spend an afternoon in 2003 packing up fantasies, places and things. The field- Carlo and Gerda’s home. Carlo and Gerda work was done in private homes and on had lived in a terrace house in the outskirts urban arenas of leisure. The focus of the of Copenhagen for over fifty years. The interviews was to understand ‘relationship first years they lived together with their normality’ practiced by heterosexual, four children and later on they lived there middle-class, well-educated, reflexive and by themselves. urban couples between the age of 23 and On our way to the house the grandchil- 50 in Copenhagen, Denmark (Kjær 2009). dren told me that they had visited Carlo This article discusses one aspect of and Gerda almost every day when they late modern coupling, namely the kind of were children. While their mother was at intimacy which happens in the living work they had done their homework at room. I discuss domestic things on this their kitchen-table, they were skipped off arena – the sofa, newspaper, TV-set and to sports at the right hour, and sometimes computer games. Being present in the – in order to create small mundane cele- sometimes unpredictable course of brations – Gerda had made a dessert of everyday life events, things are used by ice-cream and sweet liqueur from a bottle the couple to interpret and evaluate the she once had bought on a holiday in emotional intensity of their interpersonal Spain – using the special occasions to intimacy. In many ways handling the speak about the world. In my field notes materiality of home is not only a skill I wrote: which points to materiality itself. The terrace house has been given up and Carlo and Handling is also a practice by which one Gerda have moved to a home for the elderly. demonstrates attentive or indifferent Some years ago, Gerda was the first one to move personal attitudes or what is considered out and now it is time for Carlo. At the home, Car- to be good or bad habits. lo has got a room located one floor below Gerda’s.

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 58 Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity

Yesterday morning the grandchildren took Carlo Home and Feelings to the home. They sat him in a couch in the main Certain feelings are supposed to be felt at living room and went to get Gerda. certain places, as the English sociologist Back at the house, glass and china are put out on Mike Featherstone (1994:62) writes. He the dining table. Twenty four pieces of each item are going to be divided into smaller units and the continues: Still, home is not a place where family will inherit. Cupboards and drawers are only certain feelings are accepted. On the emptied and books on the shelves are ready to be contrary the cultural logic of home is put in boxes and circulated. Family pictures are based on the idea of “the private” where lined up and bear witness of the time when Carlo feelings and their many dimensions are and Gerda was younger. Tenerife, Mallorca and accepted between people who know each Greenland are some of the places they have had other: Cruel, unpleasant, boring, safe, se- the money and time to travel to. There is also a cure, loving, joyful or happy feelings are black and white picture of Gerda with a couple of friends at the International Worker’s Day. associated to home. At the same time, Now Carlo and Gerda are ill and old and do not Featherstone explains, home is also a remember many things – not even their grand- place involved in cultural fantasies of the children. But they remember each other as Gerda unbroken kinship, the continuation of so- enters the living room. The young people had cial bonds and long-lasting emotions. In counted the nineteen times – or something like order to accept the idea that the private that – Carlo had kissed Gerda on the cheek. contains both pleasant and unpleasant The number of kisses is the only thing told as we pack up the house. We do things in silence. feelings, a certain level of self-control, Carlo and Gerda will never come back. discipline and instruction by others are culturally acknowledged social perform- That afternoon, the sense of loss defined ances of home. the course of the events. The objects of “Home” can furthermore be defined as the home were attached with both new a place of a local modus where people and old meaning. While the younger who are significant to one another en- generation reminded themselves of the gage in particular social situations. Cul- old couple, the afternoon had a dense at- tural rules for emotional commitment mosphere which defined the family’s and conduct, like Featherstone describes performance. Carlo and Gerda’s home it, are more or less recognized by the had changed in the modus of the situa- people involved. But the local modus of tion. A long life had materialised itself home narrows the private even further and the things had become objects of in- down by pointing to a specific knowl- spection. Now an old collection of ob- edge about this place and these people. jects could be split into new collections. Social situations at home can remind the Things could be distributed and they individual of how one is supposed – or could rephrase the large family into not supposed - to act exactly here. This smaller, nuclear families of the grand- local type of social performance indi- children. Things could transfer old emo- cates a specific and precise way of tional meaning into the lives of the next knowing each other by being part of a generation. They were the memories of common life world and its experiences long lasting love. (Gullestad 1989:14, 23). Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity 59

As part of people’s identity, home can tion. This presupposition was, by the additionally be understood as a tool for as- woman, expressed as a fear of being too sociation. Through both the cultural and much, too active and too controlling. By local meanings of home one can explore the man it was expressed as a fear of being how a group of people in a certain era, too less, too passive and too controlled. geographical setting and particular con- This male/female-dichotomy was con- text organises their everyday life and sidered negative and reminded the create meaning out of their experiences, couple’s on how a male/female-relation- thoughts and feelings (Londos 1993: ship was not supposed to be. Thus the 44-45). Thus home presents both cultural dichotomy referred to how one should ideologies of the private and local and so- correct ones gender-identity and gender- cial agreements between people who performance in order to live up to the cul- share a common life world. tural fantasies of being an ideal man or woman with more flattering gender-at- Beginnings tributes such as the male being strong and Some of the couples in my research leading and the woman being delicate and project had lived together for a few years following (Kjær 2009). It is important to when the interviews took place. Their note that this is a common cultural fantasy great interest was to create an everyday – and hence also the couples’ – which life practice that would uphold the cultural stimulates a self-disciplining ambition of ideal of the long-lasting, romantic rela- wanting to improve man and woman in or- tionship where the couple will progress der to correct a relationship-balance into into becoming a family. Progress was un- something more suitable and acceptable. derstood in natural, logical and hence But the cultural male/female-dichoto- positive terms. This meant negotiating the my did not refer to the couples’ everyday ‘correct’ relational ways of balancing in- life practice: Both the man and the woman dividual work hours and leisure time had full time jobs and individual leisure spend in public with the project of becom- activities. They had no difficulties in ing a family. Both man and woman re- equally sharing and dividing the domestic garded self-realisation and social time as responsibility in the sense that the person equally important. – male or female – with less work-related The couples charged their home and its stress took the largest duty at home. Ac- materiality with specific emotional mean- cordingly, when using this fantastic male/ ings. In general they understood their female-dichotomy it was a way of cultur- home along the line of the cultural male/ ally and rhetorically pointing to an emo- female-dichotomy where public space tional problem in the relationship. It was a corresponds with the male and private way to appeal for things to be different space with the female. Thus there was a and a way to express feelings of distance, presupposition that home was the absence and longing. woman’s ambition and engagement which Anne, a woman around thirty, ex- at the same time produced a presupposi- plained how she perceived home and liv- tion that home was not the male’s ambi- ing together with her husband Søren: 60 Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity

Anne: The home is a material frame-work around “the symbolic” as a rule-based type of as- a relationship. It is a project for many – including sociation. This way of thinking follows me. Søren said it very clearly when we moved in fixed rules by which a bond between an together: This would be our first great project! image and a cultural convention is estab- And he would be a man around the house. He would do all the practical things and this would be lished: When one sees an image, one is a wonderful thing we’d have. I have asked him culturally trained to pre-understand (a what it means symbolically in our relationship that single or many of) its narrative conven- he has never done any work at the apartment. But tions. At least to Anne the order of home he doesn’t think I can put it like that. The apart- referred – in an analogue way – to the re- ment isn’t finished and hasn’t been for three years. lationship’s emotional order. The un- Sarah: Why does it need to be done? finished home became a symbol of the un- Anne: It would bring energy to other things. finished cultural convention that she and Everything is blocked. Time, energy and money. Søren were supposed to be headed in the It feels like a story of eternity, when it should have direction of the family. been a lift-off story. And then we could get the Anne presented metaphors of stagna- baby and the car! tion. Energy and time had been blocked Anne and Søren seemed to have agreed and the building project had become a sto- about their building project when moving ry of eternity. By these metaphors Anne in three years ago. Something was un- suggested that she was waiting for an finished, although Søren disagreed with absent, future storyline of their relation- Anne’s interpretation. ship. In Anne’s story there is an association between the evolvement of the relation- Domestic Things ship from couple to family and the mate- Waiting points to the different social pro- rial order of the home. The home present- cesses and practices of maintaining an in- ed materiality; the practical things Anne timate relationship. Practices of relation- and Søren had planned to do. Thus home ship-maintenance can be performed presented gendered relationship fantasies, through available and close to hand do- changing the couple into a family by mestic things. As the English anthropolo- Søren keeping his promise of being a gist Daniel Miller (1998:18) explains in handy-man around the house. This male his article Making Love in Supermarkets – figure was not only pointing to a cultural a study on English housewives – shopping ideal of masculinity. It also worked as for groceries is “primarily an act of love Anne’s rhetorical gender-trope by which that in its daily conscientiousness be- she appealed for things to be different. comes one of the primary means by which The materiality of home became a sym- relationships of love and care are consti- bol – as Anne said – of two people’s dif- tuted by practice”. ferent expectations to and different under- Similarly in order to sustain family- standings of their relationship. There were relationships, this interpersonal feeling of fantastic and ideal goals and actual facts waiting is often about handling the mate- of homemaking. The American so- riality of home, writes the Norwegian an- ciologist Keri Brandt (2006:143) defines thropologist Jorun Solheim (2001:36-43). Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity 61

In her study on late-modern fishing fami- the contrary portrayed in a chair, occupied lies in the Western coastal landscape of with a piece of needlework or one or two Norway, the men of the families are away children in her lap. Sometimes she looks from two weeks up to six months at the out the window. time. The women in their turn stay indoors This symbolism does not expose an except when they engage in religious ideal family-constellation of the 16 th cen- work or social activities with the children. tury Holland. Neither does it expose a nu- Otherwise they are at home. They are clear family form which did not exist in an waiting, as Solheim writes. The women era with no efficient birth-control. Ac- keep an eye on the weather and investigate cording to de Mare the paintings are rather if the ocean is still or stormy. They make an exercise in style and technique by preparations around the house and count which the three dimensional space of the days for the return of their husbands. home is explored. Furthermore the paint- Their waiting is closely connected to the ings are a study of facial expressions: The dangers of the sea and to feelings of uncer- figures gaze at each other, maybe or may- tainty and hope. Although the women be not longing for each other. Al though master domestic routines and are able to the association between home and (fami- maintain the house completely, they ly) feelings of intimacy is said to have nevertheless pick out small tasks in the arisen only in the 18 th century, there is home for their husbands to repair when still, as de Mare discusses, a certain rela- they return. Domestic things become part tionship between the male and female in of a romantic ritual that bears witness not the paintings: The woman is portrayed as of the lack of the women’s skills, but to the embodied embrace of the home – a the missing husband who is awaited and place for the man to leave from and return who is remembered despite his absence. to. When he comes back, the to-do-list of With de Mares art historian study one things is a token of affection that confirms can define “absence” as a hetero-emotion: that he is wanted and belongs to this par- Man and woman are absent from each ticular household. other because they are culturally expected to embody different arenas – him by the Absence door and her by the window. They are un- Home as a place for feelings is sometimes synchronised in time and space but main- embodied by the waiting woman and the tain their relationship through practices of absent man. Studying the paintings of the dreaming, longing and waiting. 16 th century artist Pieter de Hooch (1629– Returning to the couples in my study it 1689) the Dutch art historian Heidi de thus became a performance of the cultural Mare (1999:21, 28, 30) investigates how hetero-emotion to engage in this conven- male and female are portrayed in de tional absence between man and woman. Hooch’s paintings. She comes to the con- Absence – wanting it, necessitating it, clusion that every male figure is located at claiming it, ignoring it, or opposing it – door entrances – just about to leave or en- was, to the couples, a self-evident way by ter the house. Every female figure is on which two people created their social unit 62 Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity

and showed that they cared. In other Torben: I like my work and feel that it is very words they made use of cultural symbol- stimulating. But I am often tired when I come ism in order to perform their significant home. The time I spend around the house is generally spent on practical things and on time to- feelings. gether with Benedikte. I think she understands it the way that I don’t priorities our personal life to- Longing gether because I work a lot. But I don’t work a lot Examples of late modern longing was more than average hours. given by the interviewed couples. Most Benedikte: It is not a surprise that it is me who of their feeling-descriptions on absence feels dissatisfied. During the years I have been evolved around the time spend outside begging and nagging for us to do something to- the home and away from their partner. gether. I have suggested that we take up courses in In order to pursue their career and their car-repairing, needle work – anything. Just as long as Torben decides! Otherwise I will be pleading individual leisure activities, engaging in all the time. the routines of the home, sharing meals or spending time together was contest- Torben and Benedikte came to embody ed. the cultural expectations to public and pri- The couples shared public space in vate arenas as gendered. Their situation of equal ways and in this sense they were ur- longing and the creation of mutual feel- ban career people who had changing but ings were formed along the lines of the identical responsibilities at home while cultural expectations to an unsatisfied the other was away. Still, the couples bor- woman and to the man unable to satisfy rowed from the hetero-emotion of ab- because of his analogue relationship to sence. They were occupied with the cul- public space. The couple performed rec- tural fantasy that a woman is closely con- ognisable hetero-emotions of absence in nected to home and hence to the responsi- order to express importance of intimacy. bility of engaging her husband in But they also demonstrated a cultural fan- relationship-intimacy. This was a respon- tasy of the ‘correct’ asymmetrical male/ sibility that both man and women identi- female-relationship since the actual time fied as the woman’s activity. Public en- spend apart not was extensive, but only a gagements – especially work – activated little extra than average hours, as Torben cultural feelings of the woman longing for explained. Debating work hours became more and the man’s bad conscience of de- an agreed-upon opportunity to perform livering less. This asymmetry contained feelings of mutuality. fears of detachment and divorce. In this sense the implicit meaning of absence in The Sofa the hetero-emotion motivated them to Interpersonal feelings of absence or near- ‘work on’ their relationship. Divorce was ness could also be performed in the sofa at not agreeable either to them or to the cul- home. A domestic object could strengthen tural ideal of a life-long romance. or ease feelings of longing. The couples Torben and Benedikte, a couple in their described this particular piece of furniture forties, explained longing for shared time and its body-object practices as ways to between them: evaluate the presence of intimacy in the Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity 63

relationship. Drifting into mutual feelings, The Oriental suffah , which means a blanket- the sofa became a situating practice where covered podium placed along the walls of the liv- th two bodies, synchronised in time and ing room, came to Europe already in the 16 cen- tury. In France it was developed into a sit- space, could finally meet and engage. The ting-bench for at least six people, with armrests piece of furniture offered techniques of in- but backless. Later it was also seen without arm- timacy to the late-modern couple. rests and had the oriental names; the ottoman and Olav, who lived together with Maria – devan . This honored piece of furniture came into both in their late twenties, explained how discredit in Southern Europe when Crébillon in intimacy was practiced in their sofa: 1742 wrote a pornographic novel by the name: Le sopha . It got so far that no clergyman dared to own Olav: The sofa is about closeness and the intimacy a piece of furniture under that name. But when the of being silent together. It is almost spelled out. sofa came to Denmark and replaced the old We feel very secure by having each other. This is wall-bench it was acknowledged as the most treas- how I feel about it. It is very nice just to sit next to ured piece of furniture of the living room. each other in the same sofa, but we do not have to do the same things. I can watch TV while Maria is On its way through France to Scandinavia reading the newspaper. the connotations of the sofa changed – ac- cording to Heft – from something exotic What did Olav mean by the phrase that si- to something erotic and even porno- lence is “almost spelled out”? Could this graphic. This can be interpreted as a piece of furniture carry any particular con- dramatisation by the ethnologist himself, notations of relaxation, intimacy and though. According to the German art his- closeness? torian Andreas Mayer’s (2006) study, the Most people today would probably ap- novel Le sopha started a scandal partly be- prove of these connotations but studying cause of the lightly dressed women depict- the cultural history of the sofa it is clear ed in the book. But the main discredit was that the techniques of intimacy had to be more about the sofa resembling a bed and taught. How should one lead a gentle con- in this sense it would be inappropriate at versation, how should one participate in the living room’s official arena to sleep or resting, how should two people make relax where you were expected to stay themselves comfortable in this peculiar awake, socialise and entertain your quests. piece of furniture that was not a bed nei- The sofa was, nonetheless, met by ador- ther a chair? The new European sofa-users ation in a sofa-manual written by the Aus- needed instruction and guidance. Ethnolo- trian art historian Jakob von Falke in the gists and art historians set out to describe year of 1880. Most new sofa-users in Eu- the sofa’s implicit meanings. rope, he meant, could learn to master its The sofa was designed in the Orient and exotic relaxation- and pleasure tech- with this geographical origin it soon be- niques. In the manual von Falke recom- came a piece of furniture that represented mends all Europeans to surrender to its (Western) conceptions of the East: The ex- soft, tender and indefinable curves which, otic, mystic, and sensuous. In the 1950s the in his words, had “the advantage of ten- Danish ethnologist Tage Heft (1953:76, my derness sliding into human relationships translation) made a pictorial description of and opening the doors of the mind”. In the how the sofa arrived to Europe: late 18 th century the sofa made it possible 64 Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity

for oneself to be transported to something emotional distance and gender-drama be- different. Now the social exchange of day- tween man and woman. dreaming, fantasising and imagining be- came the highest form of lifestyle-fashion Everyday Meditation (after Wittmann 2006:84). As active career-people the interviewed Meanwhile, and at least around the year couples were to a large extend influenced 2000, the sofa became a place for by late-modern imperatives of self-reali- self-contemplation (Andersdotter 2001: sation and work-ethics (to work (on), im- 1). The furniture was also turned into an prove and achieve). These ideals were not instrument of self-presentation: Accord- only active on the public arena but also ing to a study on young urban couples understood as relevant in the couple’s in- moving in together, the Danish anthropol- terpersonal relationship. ogist Trine Wulf-Andersen (2000) has Sprawling on the sofa with the every- suggested that the sofa is much more than day-meditation of watching TV, playing mere comfort, relaxation or aesthetics. In- computer games or watching DVD as stead, she found, that the piece of furniture Sunday morning entertainment should be accentuated and reminded the owner of balanced with more challenging occupa- his or hers life-history. When moving in tions such as newspaper-reading, conver- together, the choice of sofa – his or hers – sation or planning the future, the couples became a question of identity. The living explained. The sofa thus referred to a ne- room could be decorated with grand- gotiation between couple-time and indi- mother’s antique sofa but also with the vidual time which again pointed to feel- ‘victory couch’ – a magic sofa from which ings of nearness and absence. In other important soccer-matches had been words, the sofa’s early-modern romantic watched and won. To the couples, select- exchange of tenderness, imagining and ing the sofa became a question of which fantasising was still in fashion but now one of the parties that could compose a competed with late-modern styles of self- personal background more significant contemplation and media-consumption. than the other’s. I asked Anne what a disagreement be- When a market-survey by the Swedish tween herself and Søren would look like. furniture chain IKEA declared the sofa the She explained: most popular piece of furniture amongst Anne: We are usually very friendly to each other Scandinavian adult males from the age of and kiss and hug. But something is lurking. Every thirty to forty-four, at the same time as three or four months I explode. I rage and mix Scandinavian women of the same age everything together into one big truth about Søren. used the sofa significantly less frequent, It is like an outburst of a slogan! the sofa had become an item of age- and Sarah: What kind of truth? gender statistics. 1 At this point it was possible to imagine all sorts of domestic Anne: That he is lazy and sits in the sofa playing games all the time. Xbox , Playstation and other scenarios. If the sofa previously had of- computer games. He says it’s to relax and have en- fered connotations of sensuous intimacy it tertainment. I think it is all right but sometimes it’s now was an IKEA-packaging of possible too much. Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity 65

Sarah: And then you explode? inferior. The male will distinguish himself Anne: Yes. I just think it’s getting out of hand. It by creating distance to females and female becomes some sort of a non-existence. I think it is orders. He, other men and even women okay but he can easily spend a whole weekend will consider a male to be less a man if he playing. If he has a week off from work he will is a part of a female order. Thus by engag- play. ing in the superior male order, a man re- Sarah: How to you solve your disagreement? ceives a set of attractive and culturally Anne: Then he looses his temper and starts crying ‘correct’ masculinity rules, norms and and the conversation starts from there. At this ideals. In return, he has to uphold the order point, I think we have some really good conversa- by living up to, performing and promoting tions. We unravel a lot and cut through what ever its expectations, for instance by practical- is on TV and what ever misunderstanding of who ly and rhetorically including males and said what and how everything was meant and in- excluding females. In this perspective, the terpreted and why things were said the way they were. It all makes sense. man will find it less desirable to engage with the woman. Instead he will prefer the Sarah: Does he feel that way too? male order and will regard its cultural Anne: He says he does. He also thinks it’s hard. ideals and fantasies – male absence, male He says something in him wants to avoid it. He be- things and male feelings – as more valu- lieves it’s a male-thing, that men don’t like a ne- able. gotiation-conflict. Men want it to be easy and Because domestic conflict (with a there is not supposed to be any trouble. woman) – according to Søren – was not Sarah: Do you not feel the same? Even though you for men, he could rhetorically separate are not a man? himself from negative feelings and un- Anne: Yes. But it is characteristics he attributes comfortable negotiation. The “male- men. thing” disconnected male and female and In Anne’s narrative Søren had explained thus Anne and Søren were detached. that “something in him” – as in other men Nevertheless this gender-fantasy was also – wanted to avoid confrontation, and by an appeal for harmony and easy familiari- this strategy of gender-essentialism and ty. gender-generalisation and he inscribed The American litterateur James B. himself in a general cultural fantasy of a Twitchell (2006:10, 147-149) has studied male order. the combination of male-absence and the According to the Australian historian male-wish for harmony. In his book Robert Connell (1996) a “male order” has Where Men Hide he discusses how men the purpose of including and excluding perform the masculinity-practice of re- people on grounds of their sex – an at- treating and reducing oneself. Though tribute as difficult to change as e.g. eth- huts, shacks and basements are some of nicity. Still, the intention is to separate the detached places which first come into males from females and prefer men over mind, the most intelligent hiding place women. This is a structural feature in most and the very fine art of disappearing is, ac- Western societies, Connell explains, and a cording to Twitchell, so obvious that one female order is in consequence considered tends to forget it. Of course it is right in the 66 Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity

middle of the living room in front of the ing uttered. Both male and female abused TV-set and “in the eye of the hurricane” as their gender-power: Women would use he calls it. Twitchell probably refers to their tears while men would use violence. home as the woman’s domain, but he also This created a general sympathy for the – by this natural metaphor – uses a wide- woman but not for the man. Again the spread dramatisation of the woman who is woman was the domineering part, Døving attributed with nature’s body and hence suggested. 2 spontaneous, wild and even child-like Considering the cultural and historical feelings (Kjær 2007). Comfortable and re- values of public and private space there is laxed the man has “withdrawn himself” not much power attached to being the and “cut down on life” in the sofa, as hostess at home or choose clothes or Twitchell writes. food. But ‘power and dominance’ is “Withdrawal” means withdrawal from nonetheless a strong theme when dis- something or someone. The performance cussing the male/female-relationship in of male-reduction can hardly be played the context of home. Although Døving out without the presence of a woman and only considers the cultural fantasy of the her culturally given responsibility of dominant woman of the home, and in this home and husband. If this fantasy did not sense avoids discussing larger issues on exist, there would be nothing and no one societal power structures, the question is to withdraw from. This obvious hiding still what ”power” has to be made of in place within reach of the woman – her ap- order to be defined as interpersonal peals, attention and possible services – dominance. presents the hetero- emotion of male ab- Defined by interpersonal, unpleasant sence, but since the living room is his fa- feelings, and returning to the narrative of vourite hiding place, everyone around him Anne and Søren’s sofa-conflict, Anne will have to show consideration. If his hid- had, on the one hand, made Søren cry: She ing place is discovered or contested, he is had exploded, said hurtful things and de- willing to fight for easy familiarity, manded at change. Was this an act of Twitchell claim. In this sense the male’s power, powerlessness or something else? hetero-emotion of absence also include On the other hand, Søren had lost his tem- strong feelings of belonging. per: He had not wanted to take part of the conflict and thought it was commonplace The Power of Definition that men preferred comfort, cosiness and In 2005 a media-debate rose on the ques- easy familiarity. Was this an act of power, tion of “gender-power”. In the newspaper a defence or something else? At least, ease Dagbladet the Norwegian anthropologist and unease was negotiated. Runar Døving stated that the woman was The British sociologist Beverly Skeggs “the master of the house” – she had the au- (1997) has discussed “power” in relation thority. “Power” manifested itself as the to the otherwise pleasant phenomenon woman being in command of everyday “ease”. One could be let to believe that a life. She decided the clothing and food of free expression of negative and positive the family. She was the “hostess” as Døv- feelings at home is allowed and accepted. Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity 67

Still, as Skeggs argues, one risks break- had a dominating attitude, she was still ing the contract of a relationship if one breaking the home’s social conventions of challenges the consensus-rule that ease easy familiarity – a convention she herself will maintain a social relationship. as a cultural individual approved of. In Those, who do not agree that ease is com- this sense she ‘knew’ she could risk the forting will either, have to become accus- social contract of the relationship. On the tomed to harmony, or risk breaking the other hand Søren extended his body and social contract. being into the cultural order of home as In addition, the Norwegian social psy- ease, he fought for it and mastered it. In chologist Hanne Haavind (2000:200, this sense he united himself with larger 215) has explained that “power” needs to agreed-upon comfort-ideals, which Anne specified into a “power of definition” departed from, and this gave him the concept. The person who decides the out- power to decide what kind of feelings that come of a situation i.e. whether the cir- were appropriate, and, how and what to cumstance is comfortable or uncomfort- discuss. The power of definition was able is, at the same time, the superior furthermore underlined by a male order part, because this person defines the rhetoric which meant that not only Søren emotional imperatives. Thus when inter- but all men would feel and think the exact personal feelings are defined as appropri- same way as he did. ate, inappropriate, comfortable or un- comfortable the decision-making person Activity or Rest also has the power of definition. Social consensus is not only a question of Since ease is the ideal social conven- ease and unease. Interviewing the couples tion and consensus of home, it is cultur- we discussed how the ideals of coupling ally inappropriate and wrong to prefer were influenced by the imperatives of the uneasy. Even the person advocating self-realisation and work-ethics which for unpleasantness would understand the had entered into the private arena of late possible consequences of breaking the modernity. social contract. In contrast, a person who If one person had surrendered to sofa- understands how to fit his or her own per- meditations – like Anne had portrayed ception of relationship-ease to the cultur- Søren’s habits – this would, in this per- al ideals of home-consensus will in con- spective, go against late-modern ideals of sequence become the person in power to the individual’s activity and achievement. define how things should – or should not In many ways the couples’ relationships – be. Power is thus possessed by the per- were based on two people who actively son who masters the conventions of a practised some kind of self-realisation in cultural power structure. This structure order to avoid being un-inspirational or will, in return, underline the individual’s even a boring company to the other. power to define. The sofa staged feelings that the Although Anne, as a woman was cul- couples either idealised or feared. In the turally expected to be the master of the interview with Kristoffer and Louise, a house and one could even claim that she couple in their late twenties, they ex- 68 Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity

plained which sofa habits were acceptable Sarah: In the sofa? in their relationship: Torben: Yes. Kristoffer: If Louise always was lying on the Benedikte: Now we are looking for something sofa… new. A little more than just a good dinner with Louise: Then I know what would happen! Kris- wine. We like that but it’s not enough. toffer would break up with me. That’s for sure. Torben: It is not enough either, to watch a movie Sarah: Why is that? or go out. Louise: He would not have anything to look up to. Sarah: Talk about the same things? There wouldn’t be any challenges. Benedikte: Yes. In the same way!

Kristoffer: No. That is right. Torben: Or go up to the cabin. Although it is nice Louise: I would not get any input and then I would up there it too becomes a habit. be boring. Benedikte: Yes. One has to renew oneself all the Kristoffer: It is vital to a relationship that you have time. common grounds and follow each other. You have The pleasurable habits of leisure ex- to be able to level with one another. Because you were once in love doesn’t mean that you will be pressed something good but also too forty years after. You need to work on it. well-known. While the cultural signs of the romantic couple were abundant, it still The couples’ largest fear was divorce. could be better and why have a good rela- Lying on the sofa meant not doing one’s tionship, when one could achieve a sub- best, working on being active and inter- lime one? esting. Thus Louise explained that she The sofa was a piece of furniture for would break their social contract if her dreaming of how things could eventually level of activity was lower than Kristof- be as soon as Torben and Benedikte had fer’s. They both agreed that the consen- found something new and renewable to sus of the relationship concerned ethics do, as Benedikte said. The sofa thus creat- of work, self-improvement and hence ed a social room for evaluating the enjoy- mutual exchanges of challenging conver- able things Torben and Benedikte had al- sation. Otherwise the relationship would ready achieved. In this way they demon- be dissolved. strated the energetic and full of life ideal a In the interview with Torben and Bene- male/female-relationship of the late- dikte they told something similar. They modern era was expected to have. Even too felt a relationship would be more ideal Torben’s complaint about his own indi- – harmonious and balanced – by a high vidual leisure time being slowly replaced level of activity: by (the dream of) joint activities, became Torben: I had always imagined my relationship to a consolidation of the romantic couple come second and my personal hobbies to come choosing couple time over individual time. first. But little by little I stopped doing the things The sofa was suitable to transport one- I have always done. Without replacing them with self to opportunities beyond the familiar, anything else – and now we just sit here. and to something that was not fully de- Benedikte: And do nothing! fined (McCall & Becker 1990:10). Two Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity 69

people could agree about the future. With The couples were urban, middle-class fantasy, effort and unselfishness as driv- career people. They shared public and pri- ing forces one could change a good rela- vate space in equal ways. However, they tionship into one with new and better performed interpersonal feelings through standards. gendered stereotypes and cultural fanta- sies on male and female. These feelings of Conclusion longing and belonging mean that detach- Though “home” is considered a private ment between male and female is a central domain which contains a cultural logic of trait in the characterisation of a “hetero- tension between ease and unease, social emotion”. The couples’ feelings of intima- and cultural rules of consensus still articu- cy, absence or nearness, and the appeal for lates home as a place for easy familiarity. things to be different can additionally be I have discussed interpersonal acts of defined as hetero-emotions because these power and dominance as “power of defi- feelings originate from the construction of nition”. By this encirclement it becomes the male/female-dichotomy itself and not clear that a person – male or female – who from everyday life reality of the couple. is able to define good or bad habits of the Thus the cultural history of the male/ home will create a stronger argument by female-dichotomy – and its division of using cultural and social consensus and its public and private space and its analogue agreed-upon rhetoric and practices. subdivision of male and female – pro- Both man and woman agreed that feel- duces relationship-feelings on the basis of ings of boredom, absence or conflict could distance between man and woman. In late- dissolve their relationship. The interviews modern coupling, practices, rhetoric and showed that an equally balanced and exit- ideals are performed in order to overcome, ing relationship could be achieved by im- live with or negotiate this heteroemotional peratives of self-realisation and work relationship premise – the cultural fantasy, ethics. The couples felt they could make a or anachronism, of male-female detach- good relationship even better if it evolved ment. into family-life and into new and different experiences other than the well-known Sarah Holst Kjær and all-ready tested out routines. These Post Doctor practices were ways to avoid separation. Centre for Experience Economy Department of Innovation and Economic Organi- In many ways the materiality of the sofa zation contested late-modern imperatives of ac- BI-Norwegian School of Management tivity and provoked fears of stagnation. Kjøita 21, NO-4663 Kristiansand Still, it also promoted romantic practices – e-mail: [email protected] doing pleasurable tings and dreaming for a better future. Through the intimate sharing Notes of couple time, this piece of furniture 1 The Swedish newspaper, Sydsvenskan , Wed., th showed that techniques of closeness were 5 of November, 2003. 2 Sissel Fantoft: ”Kvinnan er husets herre” in considered more ideal than the individ- the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet , Sun., ual’s everyday media meditation. 5th of June, 2005, 10-11. 70 Sarah Holst Kjær, Home and the Longing for Easy Familiarity

References cago: The University of Chicago Press. Brandt, Keri 2006: Intelligent Bodies: Embodied de Mare, Heidi 1999: Domesticity in Dispute: A Subjectivity Human-Horse Communication. In Reconsideration of Sources. In At Home. An Body/Embodiment. Symbolic Interaction and Anthropology of Domestic Space , ed. Irene the Sociology of the Body , eds. Dennis Waskul Cieraad. New York: Syracuse University Press. and Philip Vannini . Ashgate. Hampshire: Pub- Mayer, Andreas 2006: Nackte Seelen. Die mo- lishing Limited. ralische Ökonomie der Couch. In Die Couch. Connell, Robert 1996: Maskuliniteter . Göteborg: Vom Denken im Liegen , ed. Lydia Marienelli. Bokförlaget Daidalos. Prestel, München, Berlin, London & New Featherstone, Mike 1994: Kultur, kropp och kon- York: Sigmund Freud Privatstiftung Wien. sumption: Kultursociologiska Textar . Stock- Miller, Daniel 1998: A Theory of Shopping . Cam- holm/Stehag: Symposion. bridge: Polity Press. Gullestad, Marianne 1989: Kultur og hverdagsliv: Skeggs, Beverly 1997: Att bli respektabel. Kon- På sporet av det moderne Norge . Oslo: Oslo struktioner av klass och kön. Göteborg: Daida- Universitetsforlag. los. Heft, Tage 1953: Danske Sæder og Skikke. En un- Solheim, Jorun 2001: Den öppna kroppen. Om dersøgelse af Livet i en Dansk Købstad før og könssymbolik i modern kultur . Göteborg: Dai- nu. Bind 1-2. København: Chr. Erichsens For- dalos. lag. Twitchell, James B. 2006: Where Men Hide . (Pho- Haavind, Hanne 2000: Kjønn og fortolkende me- tographs by Ken Ross). New York: Columbia tode: Metodiske muligheter i kvalitativ forsk- ning. Trondheim: Gyldendal Akademisk. University Press. Kjær, Sarah Holst 2009: Sådan er det at elske. En Wittmann, Barbara 2006: Das reflexive Lotter- kulturanalyse af parforhold København: Mu- bett. Vom sozialen Leben der Couch in 22 seum Tusculanums Forlag. Bildern. In Die Couch. Vom Denken im Liegen, Kjær, Sarah Holst 2007: Oceaner och kaptener. In ed. Lydia Marienelli. Prestel, München, Berlin, Sexuellt. Kulturens Årsbok 2007 , ed. Lars-Eric London & New York: Sigmund Freud Privat- Jönsson, Lund: Kulturens Årsbok. stiftung Wien. Londos, Eva 1993: Uppåt väggarna I svenska Wulf-Andersen, Trine 2000: Om at ”lukke døren” hem. En etnologisk studie av bildbruk . Stock- i fællesskab. En undersøgelse af personlige og holm: Carlsson Bokförlag. kulturelle dilemmaer i forhandlingen af hjem. McCall, Michal M. & Becker, Howard 1990: Institut for Antropologi: Københavns Univer- Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies . Chi- sitet. Age and Class in the Third Age Talking about Life as a Mappie By Gabriella Nilsson

Healthy, Active, and Affluent cation, childhood and adult life represent In mass media and popular science a the first and second ages). The history of number of years back, the idea was the concept goes back to USA in the 1940s launched that the generation which is now but it became established in Sweden over retiring is different from previous genera- the past decade. One of the most cited ac- tions. 1 According to the ideal image, to- counts of the concept can be found in his- day’s recent retirees are described as be- torian Peter Laslett’s book A Fresh Map of ing healthier, more active, and having bet- Life. The emergence of the Third Age ter finances that the generation before (1989). The third age is usually defined as them. They are expected both to demand a stage of life that begins with the statuto- and to afford paying for experiences of ry retirement age (in Sweden, 65 or 67) different kinds ( KK-bladet no. 2, 2007; and ends as the conditions for an active, see Soukannas 2008; Brembeck (ed.) independent life decline. Consequently, 2010). The distinction between young and the delimitation assumes also a fourth age, old are described as being blurred, result- which is characterized above all by de- ing in a kind of uni-age lifestyle (Feather- pendence and infirmity (Hubbard 1976: stone and Hepworth 1991:373). Instead of 60; M. Nilsson 2008:17; Thelin 2009; see turning into sweet old ladies and nice old Torres and Hammarström 2007:68). The gentlemen, they’re straddling their Harley view of retired life as divided into two Davidsons and heading off into a second stages is shared by the retirees studied age of freedom that recalls their teenage here but is described instead in terms of years. Without children, without debts, present and future. The informants distin- and with lots of time ( Expressen , Dec. 27, guish between the active, mobile, healthy 2008). 2 One explanation offered is that present and the anticipated passive, im- those retiring from 2005 onward are the mobile, unwell future. This division of re- large, so-called baby boom generation – tired life also corresponds with the one people who in the course of their working made in gerontological research through lives are supposed to have dominated so- the distinction between young old people ciety and to have acquired the financial and old old people (see Neugarten 1974). means to make demands of life (Edmunds The background to this distinction is the and Turner 2002; Gilleard and Higgs view of aging, dominant since the begin- 2007; Karisto 2007; Rasmussen 1985, ning of the twentieth century, as a societal 2005). As retirees, they are expected to problem (Jönsson 2002; see Cruikshank continue making demands that are just as 2003; Hepworth 2000). The social scien- high (see Lindgren et al. 2005). 3 tist Magnus Nilsson in his dissertation One designation for the recent retirees Våra äldre: Om konstruktionen av äldre i that figures in the media is the abbrevia- offentligheten (Our “Older People”: On tion Mappie – Mature Affluent Pioneering the Construction of Older People in the People. 4 An attempt to delimit the stage of General Public) (2008) shows that the life in which these Mappies find them- connection between older people and con- selves is quite frequently made with the cepts like illness, dependence, incompe- concept of the third age (where, by impli- tence, and stagnation are made almost au-

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 72 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

tomatically in the media, in official re- What concepts of this type are trying to ports, and by their own interest organiza- capture is the temporal stages of aging, but tions (M. Nilsson 2008:27). As an they are simultaneously concealing the antithesis to this negative characteriza- fact that life as a retiree is affected by tion, an alternative approach in gerontolo- other factors than age, such as gender and gy has made itself felt, in which promi- class (Fors 2010). The media’s description nence is given to older people’s experi- of the third age does not necessarily de- ence, competence, and activity (see e.g. scribe reality for the great majority but is Liliequist 2009; Jönsson and Larsson largely the invention of the advertising in- 2009). Activity in old age has become a dustry and the trend institutes, hand in universal “good” and the questioning of hand with the technological inventions of its benefits within gerontological circles, medicine (Edgren 2004; Lövgren 2005; sociologist Stephen Katz writes in a some- see also Brembeck (ed.) 2010). For many, what sarcastic tone, would be considered the Harley Davidson has no meaning as a unprofessional, if not heretical (Katz metaphor for the demands that retirees to- 2000:135f.). The Danish folklorist and re- day are assumed to be making. In reality, searcher on aging Anne Leonora Blaakil- a life of the kind portrayed is made diffi- de is critical of the fact that this paradigm cult by physical or financial obstacles (see of activity has come to totally dominate Ronström (ed.) 1998). It is not just anyone the cultural landscape of our time. It is her who can afford to drive a Harley David- opinion that it has become the duty of ol- son, and it is not so easy to drive a motor- der people to demonstrate a high degree of cycle at all with a worn-out back. Talking activity in order both to achieve high cul- about retirees as Mappies makes certain tural status and to indicate that they are not subject positions possible but reveals fis- being a burden on society (Blaakilde sures and diversity as well (see Krekula, 2007a:40). At the same time disabled and Nervänen and Näsman 2005:83; Lövgren dependent people have become targets of 2009:30f.). The image of today’s recent state policies to empower and activate retirees ignores the way different power them (Katz 2000:147). Nilsson is critical structures operate in different directions, as well, pointing out that this way of try- something that, to be sure, yields political ing to increase the value of older people’s clout inasmuch as the retiree group is ho- activity only works through a rejection of mogenized but which has its price in that the weak and sick (M. Nilsson 2008: certain voices are subordinated to the 96ff.). Positively intended concepts like dominant message (see Edgren 2009). As young-old people and the third age only a matter of fact, the social scientist Ange- have meaning apart from old-old people lika Thelin shows in a literature review and the fourth age. Of particular impor- that, in practice, the concept of the third tance to this article is the view that differ- age is not at all used to describe a stage of ent ways of describing and categorizing life that includes a heterogeneous group of people, in research as well as in the media, older people united by the commonality of has implications for, and possibly delimit age. Instead, it represents a homogeneous peoples’ lives. social category of older people who are Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age 73

active and have abundant resources (The- tute. The subject, in the sense of discourse lin 2009; see Larsson 2007), a category theory, is fragmented and can adopt vari- that has at least as strong a connection to ous competing subject positions depend- class as to age. ing on context (Winter Jørgensen and Despite the media interest and the large Phillips 2000:48). This does not mean, number of popular-science accounts of however, that subject positions are freely life in the third age, few Swedish studies chosen. Access to and mobility between have been made of people who could in different positions is curtailed and limited. fact be categorized as Mappies – who are Other categorizations than age, such as healthy, active, and affluent retirees. 5 This class and gender, function as structurally article makes a first attempt to fill this em- compelling and determine what is poss- pirical vacuum. Its aim is to study in what ible to do, and talk about, in a credible way this group portrays life as a retiree by fashion, and what is not (Skeggs 1997). 7 relating to the image of today’s retirees – Context-dependent experiences of superi- as Mappies in the third age – but also to in- ority and inferiority, exclusion and inclu- vestigate how the description of retired sion, identification and disidentification life becomes a way of doing class. The give rise to habitual ways of acting and of point of departure is a constructivist per- understanding one’s environment (Bour- spective where social categories are con- dieu 1986; Skeggs 1997). 8 The informants sidered procedural and seen as something are in agreement with which themes and we constantly do thorough cultural and so- code words talking about life as a retiree cial practices. The interest is primarily on ought to contain and at the same time find the intersection between age and class. 6 themselves in a socioeconomic situation that makes them credible. Passing as a Life as a Retiree in Simrishamn Mappie requires that they exhibit suffi- The ethnologist Birgitta Svensson in a cient symbolic capital – that they really study of intellectuals describes some are healthy, active, and affluent. The so- people as better than others at constructing ciologist Pierre Bourdieu uses the concept the ideal identity through choice of con- of capital to describe how different assets cepts and themes in their narratives – economic capital, cultural capital, social (Svensson 1997). It becomes clear in the capital, etc. – function as valid currency meeting with the retirees in this study how within various power and dominance well their telling is in accord with the idea structures, in various fields (Bourdieu of how life in the third age ought to be 1986). The British sociologist Beverly lived. Position as a Mappie is accentuated Skeggs, who is strongly influenced by at the expense of other imaginable ways of Bourdieu in her studies of gender and living as a retiree, such as a quieter life or class, particularly stresses the necessity a focus on the grandparental role. Exist- that a capital be actively legitimized by ence is described taking shape through the those who dominate a given field in order continual, and to a large extent conscious, for it to be valid, to be translated into sym- staging that choice of residence, leisure bolic capital (Skeggs 1997). Consequent- interests, and habits of socializing consti- ly, it is only when the retirees’ choices of 74 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

residence, leisure interests, and habits of formants can be described as belonging to socializing have been read as signs that a certain category of retirees – the healthy, they are healthy, active, and affluent that active, and affluent retirees. If one disre- the staging constitutes a symbolic capital. gards the dimension of age, however, their This article is based on interviews made life choices would be understood equally with persons who categorize themselves well in terms of class. as healthy, active, and affluent retirees. While it can be ascertained that the ba- They are between the ages of 58 and 73 sis for class society is unequal economic and live in the municipality of Simris- living conditions, such a statement does hamn in Österlen, the southeastern part of not necessarily mean that similar experi- the province of Skåne. 9 All have moved to ences of economic superiority or inferior- the municipality, either in the midst of ity create affiliations that can be designat- their working life or as recent retirees, ed in simple terms. A concept like work- which follows Simrishamn’s population ing class has never been unambiguous or statistics. Statistically, an age bulge of considered to encompass a homogeneous residents just under the age of 60 is form- group of people (see e.g. Lindqvist 1987; ing. Further, people in the age group of 50 Lundin 1992), but a distinction between through 67 are immigrating to the muni- working class and bourgeois class, for ex- cipality (CFL 2006). More often than not, ample, has been rendered still more diffi- Österlen is portrayed as a place where it is cult as other, parallel forms of differentia- possible to achieve a particularly high tion like ethnicity and gender have been quality of life due to its open countryside brought out in gender studies and post- and its proximity to the sea. Thus, it is not colonial theory (de los Reyes (ed.) 2006). inconceivable that it is the very category The great impact of the intersectional per- of retirees which is studied here that is spective necessarily has significance for moving to Simrishamn – or “Sweden’s the view of each individual power struc- Florida,” as one informant calls the mu- ture (Krekula, Nervänen and Näsman nicipality. With regard to finances, the 2005; Edgren 2004). To regard class as an group is relatively homogeneous. One of affiliation is both analytically and empiri- the informants is at the absolute pinnacle cally problematic (Lindqvist 1996:14f.). 10 of society, while another considers things For this reason, Skeggs stresses the impor- to be really tough financially. Compared tance of regarding human affiliations of with the collective of retirees as a whole, all kinds as processual: that they are done however, all informants are to be found in in interaction with other people, rather the upper stratum. One similarity among than possessed (Skeggs 1997; see also the participant men is that they have been Svensson 1997). The informants describe managing directors of, or have owned, their own life with the help of markers of large companies that, when sold or upon similarity and difference. Hence, the con- their retirement, had generated a great cept of class is used in this article as an in- deal of financial capital. The women, as strument for structuring the informants’ professionals, have had qualified posi- stories of lived experiences rather than as tions in the health-care sector. The in- a designation for certain groups of indi- Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age 75

viduals. The focus is on how class is used same dividing line is found there, between to stage, reflect upon, and tell about life as what is perceived as authentic and inau- a retiree: how the categories of class and thentic aging. Authentic aging is under- age intersect. stood in the books as part of our biological destiny, a natural breakdown that afflicts In Good Health us all sooner or later and thus imposes no A principal goal of the life choices that the blame on the individual. Inauthentic, pre- retirees describe themselves making is to mature aging, on the other hand, carries a be and to remain healthy (see Cruikshank heavy moralistic charge and ought to be 2003:159ff.). Preserving good health is avoided by living the right way. Not even the very prerequisite for being able to live to try to preserve good health is perceived the life that is striven for (Alftberg 2010). as immoral, not least because poor health It is only thus that the Future – their con- can lead to an economic burden for socie- cept for illness and dependence – can be ty (Mannerfelt 1999:51ff.; see Katz 2000). kept at a distance. The supposition that the This approach gives the distinction be- person who is not struck by illness can tween the third and the fourth ages an ad- hold off aging recurs in other studies ditional explanation. Crossing the bound- (Trossholmen 2000:121; see also Blaakil- ary to the fourth age prematurely becomes de 2007:39; Lövgren 2009:46ff.). It is also a sign of insufficient character. Converse- a central component in the discursive con- ly, the ability to remain in the third age as ception of today’s retirees – they simply long as possible (and, above all, longer are healthier than previous generations than other people) becomes evidence of (Expressen , Dec. 27, 2008). For four of responsibility and morality. If we go fur- the five informants in this study, acting ther back in time, to the first half of the consciously to counteract the anticipated twentieth century, it is evident that the de- negative effects of aging is a given. The mand to assume responsibility for one’s maintenance of good health is portrayed own health pertained not only to the aging as a job. part of the population; rather, the trim, I sort of think that you have a personal responsi- healthy body had been a central bourgeois bility. Some illness you can never get away from, ideal (Frykman and Löfgren 1979; F. you can be struck by it, but you can actually man- Nilsson 2007, 2011). Hence, society’s age quite well if you work with it yourself. Work educative demands for greater assumption with your health, in other words. (Inger) of responsibility have been addressed Inger distinguishes between illness that is above all to the working class. It was their not possible to escape and illness that can bad habits that were to be curbed (F. Nils- be avoided for the person who takes re- son 2007; see also Bildtgård 2002; Liukko sponsibility for his or her health. 11 The di- 1996). For this reason, failing at one’s vision suggests a view of aging as to some own health is not only a sign of immorali- extent self-inflicted. The ethnologist ty but also signifies a failure to hold a cer- Charlotte Mannerfelt has noted in a survey tain class position. The ethnologist Fred- of advice books addressed to recent re- rik Nilsson recounts in a study of mascu- tirees from the 1960s onward, that the linity and obesity how the bourgeois man 76 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

William Banting in nineteenth-century This is apparent especially from the way London experienced his being overweight he mixes the use of we and I. It is “We” as a state that fettered him in a body that (he and his wife) who eat appropriately belonged to a different class (F. Nilsson and “I” (himself) who is fond of sweet 2007:31). In a corresponding fashion, the things. Erik says he wants to avoid food self-evident choice to take responsibility that is not appropriate, at the same time for one’s health could be interpreted as a that his description of the healthier marga- way for the Simrishamn retirees to live up rine as “stuff” that according to science is to a superior class position. Not to live “supposed to be positive,” suggests some healthily would be the same as doing a dif- degree of hesitation. However, he ex- ferent class position than the one they con- presses no thoughts that it could be other- sider themselves to hold. wise, such as that, being a retiree, he Working with one’s health, as Inger might be entitled to indulge himself. He formulates it, means, as far as both she and appears to be in full agreement with the the other informants are concerned, that idea that a healthy life as a retiree requires they are physically active. The most com- sacrifices. When, in spite of this, ailments mon form of exercise is golf. Three of the make themselves felt, it creates a certain informants devote spring, summer, and irritation. autumn to playing golf several times a I’ve had the privilege to be extremely healthy week. Working out at the gym, life out- throughout my life, I haven’t been sick ten times doors, and long walks with the dog are in my entire working life maybe, but now one also highlighted as important health-pro- thing and another like this … problems of age. moting activities. Beyond exercise, food Cholesterol level a little high and, well, now and stands out as an important tool for staying then I probably had, well, what would you call it, a very, very mild stroke, maybe. That kind of healthy. Wholesome eating habits are a thing turns up, and you have to start taking self-evident choice, even in those cases blood-thinning drugs, like most old people have that require forgoing things. to, for that matter, but that kind of thing is a disad- We eat sensibly, I think. We avoid food that’s not vantage that’s coming. But there’s nothing to be appropriate, rich food. We, or I, have an ambition to done about it because it strikes everyone, I under- lose a little weight, so we avoid the kind of thing stand that. […] There are no big problems. It’s just that isn’t positive in that way. We’re giving up but- sort of … it irritates me because I’m not used to it. ter now and switching to the kind of stuff like Becel I’ve never taken medicine, not ever. I’ve hardly margarine and that sort of thing that’s supposed to swallowed an Albyl in my entire life and then sud- be positive, and that they say is scientifically prov- denly now it’s a few pills. The doctor says you en, so to speak, positive and lowers cholesterol and ought to take cholesterol-lowering and blood- that sort of thing. I want to lose weight. I weigh 90, thinning drugs. It’s normal, in their opinion. Do it! 91 [kg] and I’m damned if I’m not getting down to It’s just something to accept. I’m not suffering 85, and it’s slow going. I’m way too fond of sweet from it, but … well, it’s a small source of irrita- things, buns and pastries and that sort of thing. tion. You see that there may be more to come. They’re scrumptious, but there are some things (Erik) you’ve got to do without. (Erik) Erik is very cautious about placing him- The quotation shows that Erik is ambiva- self in the sick role. He does not say he has lent in relation to the new eating habits. had a stroke but “a very, very mild stroke, Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age 77

maybe.” The medicines he is compelled to requisite for the active life they were seek- take are, in his description, a normality ing. In Simrishamn the golf season is that goes with age, not with sickness. It is longer, it is closer to the continent, which “most old people” who take blood-thin- is described as simplifying travel, and ners, not sick old people. At the same there are large numbers of other retirees to time, he is fully aware of what these socialize with. Living an active life means “problems of age” signify. They provide having a lot to do, that “the calendar is an insight into what is to come. From now pretty full” (Kristina). on, he will never be getting healthier, only If it’s not a golf day, it might be gardening that sicker. They also provide insight into the takes a number of hours in the day. It’s actually diminished subject status that is assumed rare for us to sit reading books and that sort of to follow with increased infirmity. After thing in the daytime. I often say to Kristina, now his life as a successful corporate execu- it’s five o’clock and I haven’t sat in the rocking chair or on the sofa and read for a while all day, tive, suddenly other people know better but it’s work in the garden, taking care of the car than Erik does himself. “Do it!” he is ex- or something. Taking care of the house, so to horted by his doctor. He who has almost speak. Then, a couple of days a week, there’s never been sick in his entire working life bridge in the afternoons. (Erik) is now beginning to approach a stage of Here, Erik paints the picture of his fully life in which gradually increasing infirmi- booked life. Always, he has something go- ty and dependence are anticipated and ac- ing on. It is rare that he sits on the sofa or cepted. Independent of Erik’s efforts to in the rocking chair and reads. Instead, as maintain his position as a healthy retiree he portrays it, he is often taken by surprise through his choice of eating habits, the ail- when it is five o’clock in the afternoon and ments are forcing him in a palpable way to he has not yet sat down. The rocking chair relate to the traditional discourse on aging and the sofa as well as the book reading as the same thing as sickness (see M. Nils- here functions as symbols of the slower son 2008). For the person who is not pace of old age (Hubbard 1976:60) that healthy, still being active and affluent the informants try to dissociate them- does not help – as the Future comes closer, selves from. Not using them becomes the it becomes harder to pass as a Mappie . same as not being old. According to Mag- nus Nilsson, passivity and lack of occupa- An Active Life tion are portrayed both as morally illegiti- Retiring is not infrequently described as mate and, from a health perspective, as a an existential crossroads where it is a risky behavior. Looked at this way, being question of choosing correctly in order to unoccupied is a consequence not of lack continue to develop and not stagnate of ability but lack of enterprise, and lazi- (Lövgren 2009). Three of the informants ness. The responsibility for activating moved from the Stockholm area to Sim- oneself rests with the individual (M. Nils- rishamn in connection with retirement. son 2008), an assumption of responsibility They describe the move as a decisive with which the informants appear to be in choice of path, a fresh start that changed agreement. For some of them, the dog their whole “concept of life,” and a pre- functions expressly as a means of forcing 78 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

themselves to activity in the event that pation has long been portrayed as a way to their own morality should fall short. Erik, keep spirits up and obstruct the progress in the quotation above, successfully does of aging, while lack of occupation is con- the position of active retiree and accord- sidered to lead to rapid aging, immobility, ingly stands out as a person who takes re- apathy, and a premature death (Mannerfelt sponsibility to counteract aging. In the in- 1999:20, 51ff.). At the same time, the quo- terviews, the imagined opposite – being tations reflect a demand that is placed not sedentary – symbolizes stagnation. It ap- only on old people but on people in mod- pears inconceivable to do something sit- ern society in general and on the bour- ting down. geoisie in particular. Activity, movement, [It’s important] to fill your daily life with some- and a predilection for change are strongly thing instead of sitting down not doing anything. enjoined, and time a scarce resource one (Inger) must gain power over (Svensson 1997; I say it like this, that the day I’m sitting in the Frykman and Löfgren 1979:34). The eth- wheelchair shaking, I don’t want to regret that I nologist Mats Lindqvist describes in his didn’t do such and such. That I didn’t travel there study of the economic elite that the temp- and there. I want to try to do what I want to do tation to sit down and lean back comfort- now. And we do have plans for various destina- ably, resting on one’s laurels, is con- tions we want to experience within a couple of sidered the beginning of the decline years, which we have said we’ll do. So that we do (Lindqvist 1996:60). Consequently, the it before we’re sitting still here. (Erik) demand for activity is directed at the in- In the quotations, two forms of sitting ap- formants in their capacity as retirees, pear: the voluntary sitting down and the “modern people,” and bourgeois. involuntary sitting still . The dividing line It is not just any occupation that counts; between these two corresponds to the one only a “meaningful” one becomes valid between inauthentic and authentic aging symbolic capital. In the description of that has been discussed above (Mannerfelt their own active lifestyle, the informants 1999). The informants are able to counter- position themselves in relation to passivi- act the voluntary sitting themselves, ty but also against, according to them, less simply by not sitting, not being unoccu- meaningful occupation. Activity in the pied. The involuntary, enforced sitting, on sense of meaningful occupation has sig- the other hand, is perceived as inevitable. nificance especially for the doing of class. It is not a question of if they end up in a Maybe that we’re a little more active than ordi- 12 wheelchair but when . Soon enough they nary retirees, or is that my prejudices, but I do will be sitting still, dependent on others think so … and maybe also that we get involved in and without the possibility to act on their different things. My husband also has various own daily life. Until that time, it is a mat- commitments, not in politics but nonprofit things. ter of making the most of life in order to And there I suppose you could say that we might avoid regretting what was not done. This be a little more involved than the average […] I think it has to do with personality. If you’ve had a too is a perception that recurs in studies of profession that has been tremendously inspiring old people (Trossholmen 2000:123). Ac- and interesting, you’ve had that drive to partici- cording to Mannerfelt, meaningful occu- pate in things and be involved, so to speak. Believ- Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age 79

ing that you can have an influence, or, well, may- but not with just any occupation. She does be you don’t think that any more, but at any rate, not want to be served a retiree’s selection involving yourself in something you think can en- but wants to be able to choose among the rich the mind. (Inger) offerings of music and lectures that are Inger is not only active, she believes she is addressed to all ages. On the other hand, more active than ordinary retirees, an as- she thinks that there are groups of retirees sertion that aims above all to increase the other than the category she considers her- value of her own lifestyle. Moreover, she self to belong to, who need to be served an ties the active life to other positive con- occupation in order not to become seden- cepts like involvement, commitments, and tary. the ability to have an influence, which she SPF [Sveriges Pensionärsförbund, the Swedish thinks are bound up with her personality. Association of Senior Citizens] and PRO [Pen- At the same time, she describes the desire sionärernas Riksorganisation, the Swedish Pen- to be active as a driving force already dur- sioners’ National Organization] make enormous ing her professional life. It is those who efforts, but that being so, I sometimes get a little have had an inspiring and interesting pro- doubtful about their program selection. That it’s a fession who continue to be active as re- little too … old, if you see what I mean. Today’s retiree is much more active, much healthier, than tirees, which confirms the third age as a if you go back just fifteen years. PRO is addressed homogeneous social category rather than more to … I’m against this thing of saying “work- a stage of life. ers,” but … No, I’m not attracted by their selec- The ethnologist Ninni Trossholmen, tion. […] Maybe it’s that the people who don’t who has compared older women of work- feel that [the activities of the retirees’ associa- ing-class and bourgeois backgrounds, re- tions] are attractive don’t need them. They go to lectures or music that they find themselves […]. spectively, in her dissertation, shows that Maybe it’s that they appeal to the category that “active” is a watchword regardless of isn’t attracted by all this other offering and find a class experience. The dividing line be- community there, then. A lot do go there to, if tween the women in her study is rather at you’re single, to have a sense of community. To what is and is not experienced as activity. make new acquaintances. And maybe that’s be- For the working-class women, activity is cause of not having this that we have, bridge and synonymous with physical movement golf and music. So that you find your contacts in other ways. I can’t answer that. (Kristina) (sports, exercise, or being outside in na- ture) and handicraft. For the bourgeois Kristina’s reasoning calls Trossholmen’s women, it is instead a matter of involve- results to mind. The working-class women ment and is an important part of their in her study had not planned their activi- self-image (Trossholmen 2000:186ff.). ties before retirement; their leisure-time Seen in this light, Inger’s talk of drive and occupation was initiated only when PRO being involved, commitments, and influ- offered it. The bourgeois women, on the ence is not merely a way to describe life as other hand, had already begun the cultiva- a retiree but is also a way to hold a specific tion of an interest before they retired and class position. The class aspect recurs in had planned for the time of retirement Kristina’s description as well. Kristina (Trossholmen 2000:131). Skeggs points stresses the importance of being occupied, out that talking about class differs from 80 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

living class. Class connotations of various age (e.g. Silvergenerationen [The Silver actions may permeate everything, but they Generation]). 13 Of the informants in this are seldom expressed, particularly not by study, it is Rolf and Lennart above all who those who do not wish to be reminded of are still working, Rolf with his own start- which position they themselves have. For up company and Lennart as a board mem- her informants, class is more a matter of ber of a large number of companies, as a disidentification than identification, dis- mentor for younger executives, and as a simulation than simulation, i.e. constitutes project manager for several multimil- a basis for dissociation from one’s own lion-kronor projects. Both say that they “class affiliation” rather than identity for- are working because it is an interesting mation (Skeggs 1997:124). Since Kristina form of occupation. Job and leisure time is able to pass as a person in a superior flow together and become a “jobby.” class position, she has no need to distance I want to be occupied with something interesting, herself from class as a category of differ- I don’t want to just work. […] I enjoy various entiation; even so, it appears that she is forms of business, of course, I do. It’s my hobby, hesitant about how she should designate it has turned into that, more or less. (Rolf) these other retirees, particularly in talking It’s a “jobby,” that’s what it is. It can be a hobby, about them explicitly in terms of class. being involved in different projects. It may actual- Perhaps they are “workers,” perhaps they ly be – this sounds a little pathetic – but it may ac- are “single.” Regardless of which, she is tually be that you come to a realization in life that clearly making a distinction between re- this is how it was, pretty much. (Lennart) tirees who have the occupations she does Both of them describe themselves as en- (golf, bridge, and music) and those who joying business affairs and projects, but do not. Here, the retirees’ organizations at the same time the choice of occupation may symbolize the Other, something con- is portrayed as both haphazard and crete from which to dissociate oneself doubtful. It just happened that the work without being forced to name individuals. turned into their hobby. One explanation Those who are dependent on PRO’s selec- that would correspond to the haphazard tion in order to satisfy the requirement of aspect of Lennart’s and Rolf’s choice to activity are excluded from the third-age go on working anyway after retirement is category. Their occupations cannot be the power of habit. The habits we have translated into a symbolic capital that is been socialized into give us a sense of valid in a field which is dominated by confidence and speak of how we should Mappies . act in various situations (Frykman and Löfgren 1992; Hansson 2010). For some- Continuing to Work one who has stood at the center of a large One way to remain active is not to stop company all his life, it might be difficult working. For this reason, an important to stop, for reasons having to do with political issue for many retirees’ organiza- what feels comfortable (see Lindqvist tions is that society should increase the 1996). However, Lennart thinks the con- value of retirees’ experience and be open tinued work could be perceived as path- to a higher, or rather elective, retirement etic. Rolf develops this, saying that he ac- Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age 81

tually feels the occupations of retired life mate for the economic elite in his study. ought to be something other than those of According to him, once the baton has professional life. been handed on to the next generation, I have always had an interest in lakes and the sea the outlook on the necessary forward and boats. That’s why we chose to move down to movement changes. The future they had the sea here. Maybe get a fishing boat and be The previously been eager to be the first to Old Man and the Sea and go out fishing here later reach becomes threatening and problem- on. I enjoy fishing, I do, but I haven’t taken ad- atic. Standing still, which had previously vantage of it here that much yet. […] I think it’s been tantamount to passivity, decline, beneficial to have something besides your job to occupy yourself with. I don’t think it’s good to and death, becomes the only thing in the have your work as a hobby, which it often turns new situation that might slow departure into when you have your own business. from this life (Lindqvist 1996:123). Rolf Gabriella: But if you think it’s fun to work, why and Lennart, however, do not give the can’t you have work as a hobby? same legitimacy to standing still (except possibly in their view of the fourth age), Rolf: Yes, you can, clearly. I have, and it has as is apparent from how brusquely Len- yielded good results, but I still feel that it would have been fun if I’d had some more intense hobby nart interrupts his reveries: of some sort. Studying old churches or what you I had imagined golf, books, cars, and especially, will (laughter). Life is too short, I suppose that’s cooking. I thought, wonderful, plenty of time, my conclusion from the whole thing. walk down to the harbor and buy a little fish, make a good dinner for my wife when she gets home in Rolf’s conception of life as a retiree dif- the evening, slaving away and struggling. She fers strongly from how he is living in re- works a lot. Devote some time to finding the ality. His imagined life in retirement is ingredients, making it with a little quality from highly romanticized and expresses a various things. […] No, it would have been too longing to do something else. His own sedentary just wondering whether all the spoke life appears to collide with a more tradi- rims are polished properly, could I hit a better golf tional view of life as a retiree. Here, it is stroke, or why haven’t I read that book. I had an image of how life would be, but of course it didn’t important to reflect on how age and class turn out like that at all. (Lennart) intersect. What different life choices are enjoined by retirees in the doing of class? In the choice between the more traditional Both Lennart and Rolf point out that their conception of aging as something quiet continuing to work has nothing to do and thoughtful, and the active ideal, Len- with money. They do not need to work to nart takes his stand for the latter. Another make a living, but having the financial life than the one he is living now would means to choose one’s lifestyle oneself have been too sedentary. At the same time does not necessarily mean that one’s that the coercive nature of class position freedom to choose is unlimited. Class po- can be a factor that plays into the decision sition imprints and curtails people’s to continue working, it is important not to agency regardless of whether, from a forget the rhetoric in Rolf’s and Lennart’s hierarchical point of view, it is superior statements. It is the voices of the privi- or inferior (Skeggs 1997). Lindqvist de- leged that we are hearing, those who have scribes the quieter retired life as legiti- been given a continued opportunity to 82 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

keep working, something Lennart himself as a whole. A few experience themselves admits. It is easy to say that one would as entirely without financial limitations rather study old churches than be head of and able to fulfill all their dreams and a company if the choice is free. Time at wishes. For them, money exists to be used. the “front” in command of a large com- Travel, food, and drink are given promi- pany is an ideal of the business leaders in nence as important ingredients of a good Lindqvist’s study. The entire modern life, but the car and the house are also career system is drawn an ascending curve mentioned repeatedly. Their social circle that, when it eventually sinks, leaves us consists to a large extent of other retirees behind (Lindqvist 1996:120ff.). As long who have also moved to Simrishamn, with as work is valued so highly in our culture, whom they are able to share this good life. it is going to be difficult for the individual The informants explain their choice of to relate to being placed outside produc- company with the fact that, as new ar- tion (Trossholmen 2000:113). Against the rivals, they have been forced to look out- background of this, still to be in demand ward to make friends in a way that the on the job market after the age of 65 or 67 people born there have not needed to. Erik is regarded as a sign of unique compe- indicates, however, that one reason could tence and proof of success in one’s career also be differences in how they “feel and (see e.g. Expressen , Dec. 27, 2008). 14 In think” (Erik). When he develops this, it is this context, the work’s value is chiefly apparent that the differences are a matter the symbolic capital it generates, some- of lifestyle and finances. thing that is needed in order to be able to I think it has a very great deal to do with finances. pass as an active retiree. As long as we are A retiree, say a farmer somewhere down here who productive and able to contribute to socie- becomes a retiree and who has worked in agricul- ty ourselves, we are regarded as adults ture his whole life, has a retired life that’s far re- moved from the one I have, and want to have. But (Krekula, Nervänen and Näsman 2005: those who have moved down here having been a 85). Continuing to work, regarded as a corporate executive, had a company or the like, meaningful occupation, becomes an effec- there are lots of doctors and people like that who tive way to resist aging, but also a way to have decent finances, I think their lives are pretty remind the surrounding world of the suc- much like we have it. (Erik) cessful career. The dividing line between themselves – the former corporate executives and the Money and the Good Life doctors – and other retirees in Simrishamn Beverly Skeggs is of the opinion that, – described interchangeably by the in- above all, what distinguishes people with formants as natives, people from Skåne, different class experiences from one an- workers, farmers, or fishermen – fills an other is the possibility of disregarding important function as a basis for the con- money and creating distance from the bare struction of a new community in Sim- necessities of life (Skeggs 1997). All in- rishamn bound up with age, but also with formants describe themselves as belong- class. Being included requires one to have ing to an economically privileged group in a reasonably similar life, for which “de- comparison with the collective of retirees cent finances” are required. For those of Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age 83

the informants who, in comparison with her social circle are traveling. In compari- retirees who have even better finances, are son with her friends’ (even more) active not able to disregard money, the dividing lifestyle, Inger ends up left behind. In- line becomes problematic. This is evident stead, she is forced into an involuntary from Inger’s description of her dreams of sedentariness on the sofa in front of televi- travel. Inger had not anticipated so drastic sion travel programs or reading travel ads. a lowering of standards after retirement In the discussion of postmodern society in and blames herself and her husband for the 1990s, the mass media and virtual re- having been naïve and putting themselves ality were expected to come increasingly in a difficult financial situation. to replace the need to actually transport We think a lot more in terms of finances now, we oneself. The world would be experienced do. But it’s nothing that we’re suffering from. from the TV sofa (Löfgren 1997). It is ap- But, yes, when we hear how other people are parent from Inger’s account how wrong maybe traveling. We travel to visit our daughter [in Kuala Lumpur], of course, but those are like that supposition is. As a symbol of devel- our only holidays abroad. Sure, I’m certainly the opment and individualization, travel is one who might have thought a little bit there that still a powerful ideal (Lindqvist 1996) and we would be traveling a lot and seeing a lot of the is an important symbolic capital in the world once we were retirees. That’s not the way third age. An interesting paradox in it’s been, but, no, when you come back to this thing of as long as you’re healthy and have a Inger’s statement is that the recurring trips good everyday life, it doesn’t matter that much if to visit their daughter in Kuala Lumpur, a you can’t exactly buy or do … We’re doing well, destination many Swedes would regard as it’s not that … […] I should have traveled! I tremendously exciting, do not seem to should have (laughter). I sit reading travel ads. contribute to their symbolic travel capital. But watching TV works, too. And we have traveled a good deal in the past, of course. And These trips apparently do not count as you’ve got the memories. (Inger) travel in the sense that Inger dreams of and hears friends telling about. As the ethnol- Inger points out again and again that she ogist Orvar Löfgren writes, certain travels and her husband are doing well in spite of mean a great deal, while others pass with- their finances – she is healthy and has both out a trace, and it is not necessarily the television travel programs and memories of past travels to live on. The quotation is length of the journey that determines strongly marked by the thoroughly posi- which is the case (Löfgren 1997). For tive attitude to life that Lindqvist con- Inger’s disappointment to be understand- siders to be culturally enjoined for the per- able, it must be interpreted in relation to son who wishes to hold a superior class the discursive ideal of today’s retirees. In position. A self-imposed victim identity comparison with other healthy, active, and would have been highly reprehensible affluent retirees, she experiences life be- (Lindqvist 1996). At the same time, her ing curtailed as a consequence of the fi- frustration is apparent at needing to think nancial terms. With this, her legitimate af- in terms of finances and no longer being filiation with the category of the third age able to disregard money. Hardest to accept diminishes and she becomes less credible is the financial situation when others in as a Mappie . 84 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

Change or Continuity – On Life as a structures intersect and in this way rein- Healthy, Active, and Affluent Retiree force their effect of superiority and inferi- The point of departure for this article has ority, exclusion and inclusion. been to make visible how the intersection To designate the category of retirees between age and class is expressed in talk- who have been studied here on the basis of ing of life as a healthy, active, and affluent the commonality of age – to talk about recent retiree. The aim has been to study “today’s retirees,” as is often the case in in what way this category portrays life as the media and popular science – rather a retiree through relating to the image of than in terms of class, makes it more po- today’s retirees – as Mappies in the third litically legitimate to talk about, both by age – but also to investigate how the de- those who are themselves included in the scription of retired life becomes a way of commonality and by others. At the same doing class. It can be noted that the ac- time, fissures and paradoxes have become counts of the Simrishamn retirees are in clear. Erik’s increasing health problems, clear accord with the discursive image of Lennart’s thoughts of a quiet life, Rolf’s how life in the third age ought to be lived, dreams of developing a hobby that is not at the same time that they find themselves about running a company, and Inger’s dis- in a socioeconomic situation that makes appointment at not being able to afford to them credible. On the surface, they pass travel as much as she had imagined are re- with ease as Mappies . The informants al- minders that a life in the third age is not a ready have in advance the symbolic capi- given for everyone. Trying to achieve a tal required for life in the third age but, as life as a Mappie involves trying to ap- I see it, not because they belong to the proach a highly placed ideal that presup- generation of baby boomers, which tends poses a certain degree of symbolic capital, to be offered as an explanation, but be- supplied in advance, but that also requires cause they have a certain class experience. forgoing things in the present. Succeeding Life as a Mappie is, as Inger puts her is a question of being healthy, and active, finger on it, based already on professional and affluent. I consider different types of life and is made possible not by the in- capital to presuppose each other. Cultural creased freedom of the position of retiree, capital in the form of meaningful occupa- but in spite of the position of retiree. As I tion does not become symbolic capital see it, life in the third age has to be ex- without access to economic capital. Econ- plained in terms of continuity, not change. omic capital, in turn, loses its value with- The most characteristic thing in the re- out cultural capital in the form of good tirees’ telling is not that they have stopped health. Without it, the retiree is irremedi- or started with things since they have re- ably sent on to the fourth age, spoken of in tired, but that life has gone on as before to the interviews as the Future. The concept such a great extent. The position of retiree seems abstract and indefinite, but for the and a superior class position place inter- informants it is something very concrete: a acting demands on the informants – that state of infirmity, sedentariness, and de- they be healthy, active, and affluent. In the pendence. Through this operation of stories of life as a retiree, different power thought, aging is always something they Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age 85

have before them. It is assumed that the 2 In the past year, a further dimension has be- possibility to act on their lives themselves gun to emerge in the talk about the new re- tirees, namely, fear of the costs that are ex- will end only when they have crossed the pected to follow once they are a little older threshold to the fourth age, something that (Bengtsson (ed.) 2010). “Nightmare scenario is a strong argument for their practice of as baby boomers grow old: Old-age liabilities forgoing things in the present. Torres and could double in 20 years” is a headline in Sydsvenska Dagbladet on September 29, Hammarström, however, in their study of 2010. very old people who require assistance, 3 The idea of generational shift is not new in it- show that they too place aging in the fu- self; younger generations have always had a ture (Torres and Hammarström 2007), need to define themselves by excluding the preceding one (see e.g. Rasmussen 1985, which speaks for the fact that what is ex- 2005; Blehr (ed.) 1993). What may be new is perienced as necessary symbolic capital that the talk about the new generation of re- for maintaining a certain position as a re- tirees as different originates to a large extent from the retirees themselves. The generation tiree is continually changing, rather than is creating itself through cultural and social that the position is rendered impossible. practices (Edmunds and Turner 2003) defin- ing itself as not excluded. Gabriella Nilsson 4 In Sweden, the concept has been launched by PhD the publicist Amelia Adamo, who says she Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, had long been looking for an expression that Ethnology with the Folk Life Archives was not associated with boring retirees and Biskopsgatan 7 senile seniors. In her translation, Mappie SE-223 62 Lund stands for Mogna Attraktiva Pionjärer (Ma- e-mail: [email protected] ture Attractive Pioneers) ( Expressen , Dec. 27, 2008). The concept of Mappie can be com- Translation: Anne Cleaves pared with the concept of Tweens (In-Be- tweens, between childhood and teen years). 5 A newly published study that should be men- Notes tioned is the anthology Ju mer vi är tillsam- This research was financed by the Centre for mans: Fyrtiotalisterna och maten (The More Lifestyle Research, Region Skåne. We Are Together: Baby Boomers and Food), 1 Among the wealth of Swedish popular- edited by the ethnologist Helene Brembeck science titles can be mentioned Malin Alfvén (2010). One of the informant groups studied and Kristina Hofsten’s Barnbarnsboken: för here is “well educated, financially well-off mor- och farföräldrar (The Grandchild Book: older urbanites” (p. 32), and the book has an For Grandparents) (2007); Alexander Da- interdisciplinary focus on the eating habits of nielsson, Claes Hellgren and Mats Petersson’s baby boomers. Anne Leonora Blaakilde’s Kom inte och säg att du är gammal (Don’t study of retirees who have moved to the Costa Say You’re Old) (2006); Ulla Holm’s Att gå i del Sol (Blaakilde (ed.) 2007b) can be count- pension är ingen barnlek (Retiring Isn’t ed here as well, even if the persons who were Child’s Play) (2006); Arne Jernelöv’s Frisk, studied did not necessarily belong to the cate- välbärgad – och uttråkad? (Healthy, Wealthy gory of healthy and affluent. – and Bored?) (2006); Rekordgenerationen – 6 Another important intersection that is evident Vad de vill och hur de tänker (The Record in the material is gender identity. The Mappie Generation – What They Want and How They position requires different types of argumen- Think) by Mats Lindgren et al. (2005); Lud- tation for the male and female informants, re- vig Rasmusson’s Åldersupproret (The Age spectively, in order to appear as legitimate. Rebellion) (2005); and Patricia Tudor-San- This is apparent especially when it comes to dahl’s Den tredje åldern (The Third Age) legitimizing the choice to move away from (2000). children and grandchildren, something that 86 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

will be discussed in more detail in a future ar- 12 An interesting paradox here is that it is the ticle and is also described to some degree al- wheelchair that symbolizes sitting still for the ready in G. Nilsson (2010). In the themes informants, when in fact it exists to increase dealt with here, the difference between the mobility for those whose mobility is other- male and female informants is not very great; wise limited. Even if they are sitting down , by the class aspect stands out at the expense of means of the wheelchair they would not have the gender aspect. to be sitting still (see Hansson 2010; Nygren 7 The ethnologist Mats Lindqvist reminds us 2008; Sapey et al. 2005). that narratives are not without a basis in reali- 13 It is a common conception that retiring is dif- ty. That they are attached to a fixed cultural ficult. This idea appears, for example, in the pattern for how life should be configured does title of the book by the psychotherapist Ulla not mean they are false. Rather, narratives can Holm, Att gå i pension är ingen barnlek (Re- be understood as a part of life itself (Lindqvist tiring Isn’t Child’s Play) (2006). Self-help 1996). books of this kind, addressed to recent re- 8 The dispositions that arise through experience tirees, are a genre that according to the ethnol- of superiority and inferiority are what ogist Charlotte Mannerfelt, has existed as Bourdieu aims at describing with the concept long as the retirement pension itself. The shift of habitus. In this article, however, I will talk to life as a retiree has been considered so ex- about it as experience. tensive that recent retirees have needed help 9 The article is based on a small interview study adjusting (Mannerfelt 1999:30). She describes that was carried out in Simrishamn during the how the books have always been disciplinary autumn of 2009. The title of the research pro- in nature, but in different ways, depending on ject was “Healthy, Active, and Affluent?” and the decade. In the past, the books were ad- alludes to the discourse on today’s retirees. dressed above all to the working-class popula- When I was looking for informants I told tion – they were the only ones who were “re- them that I was looking for healthy, active, tirees” in the sense we picture today – but to- and affluent recent retirees, but stated no cri- day all retirees are in need of guidance (Man- nerfelt 1999:39). teria for what this meant. Five persons, two women and three men, signed up at once. 14 This does not mean that all retirees want to keep working at any price. Many people who Thus, in the selection, it was the informants’ have had a physically wearing job long for re- perception of themselves that governed rather tirement. For others, the ideal of today’s re- than criteria such as age and income. For a tiree is financially problematic to live up to, more detailed description of the project and and they are forced into a cycle of supplemen- the implementation of the study, see G. Nils- tary work, perhaps hourly employment at the son (2010). workplace they have just left. For them, the 10 Mats Lindqvist, who has studied male cor- continued work does not function as a cultural porate executives in his book Herrar i capital. näringslivet: Om kapitalistisk kultur och men- talitet (VIPs of Commerce and Industry: On Capitalist Culture and Mentality), considers References the concept of class to refer more to theoreti- Alftberg, Åsa 2010: “The Practice of Ageing. The cal phenomena and structures, while the con- Experience of Beeing Old and the Significance cept of elite points toward a lower level of ab- of Bodies, Things and Places”. Ethnologia straction and to identifiable individuals’ exer- Scandinavica. A Journal for Nordic Ethnology cise of power. For this reason, he speaks of 2010. his informants as “the economic elite,” and Alftberg, Åsa and Lundin, Susanne (forthcom- what he studies is consequently the culture of ing). ”Ageing and health. Reflections on ‘ac- the economic elite (Lindqvist 1996:14f.). tivity’ and ‘normality’ in old age Sweden”. 11 Another aspect of health that emerges from Alfvén, Malin and Hofsten, Kristina 2007: Barn- the interviews is the genetic. If one’s parents barnsboken: för mor- och farföräldrar . Stock- have had a healthy old age, this is experienced holm: Prisma. as a source of security. This is discussed in Bengtsson, Tommy (ed.) 2010: Population Age- greater detail in G. Nilsson (2010). ing – A Threat to the Welfare State? A Case of Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age 87

Sweden. Heidelberg, Dordrecht, London, New Fors, Stefan 2010: Blood on the tracks. Live- York: Springer. course perspectives on health inequalities in Bildtgård, Torbjörn 2002: Hur maten blev en risk. later life. Stockholms universitet: Institutionen Medicinens bidrag till regleringen av det svens- för social arbete. ka ätandet. Uppsala: Sociologiska institutionen, Frykman, Jonas and Löfgren, Orvar 1979: Den Uppsala universitet. kultiverade människan . Malmö: Gleerups. Blaakilde, Anne Leonora 2007a: ”Löper tiden från Frykman, Jonas and Löfgren, Orvar 1992: Svens- Kronos? Om kronologiseringens betydelse för ka vanor och ovanor . Stockholm: Natur och föreställningar om ålder”. Jönsson, Lars-Eric Kultur. och Lundin, Susanne (eds.). Åldrandets bety- Gilleard, Chris and Higgs, Paul 2007: The Third delser. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Age and the Baby Boomers. Two Approaches Blaakilde, Anne Leonora (ed.) 2007b: Når pen- to the Social Structuring of Later Life”. Interna- sionister flytter hjemmefra. Resourcer og risici tional Journal o Ageing and Later Life , no. 2 ved migration i det moderne aeldreliv. Köpen- 2007. hamn: Gerontologisk Institut. Hansson, Kristofer 2010: Med rullstolen mot nya Blehr, Barbro (ed.) 1993: Femtiotalister – om kon- världar. En kulturanalytisk studie av habilite- struerandet av kulturella generationer . Udde- ringsträning i stadsmiljö med ungdomar som valla: Media Print. använder rullstol . URN:NBN:se-2010-53. Bourdieu, Pierre 1986: Distinction: A Social Cri- Hepworth, Mike 2000: Stories of Ageing . Buck- tique of the Judgement of Taste . London: Rout- ingham: Open University Press. ledge. Holm, Ulla 2006: Att gå i pension är ingen barn- Brembeck, Helene (ed.) 2010: Ju mer vi är till- lek . Stockholm: Prisma. sammans. Fyrtiotalisterna och maten . Stock- Hubbard, L. M. 1976: ”Retirement. Third Age or holm: Carlsson Bokförlag. Second Career”. Convergence. An Internatio- CFL Centrum för Livsstilsfrågor – Regional Life- nal Journal of Adult Education no. 3 1976. style research Center 2006. Ett livsstilscentrum Jernelöv, Arne 2006: Frisk, välbärgad – och ut- i Simrishamn. Kompetensutveckling i Region tråkad? Västerås: Ica Bokförlag. Skåne. www.skane.se/cfl Jönsson, Håkan 2002: Ålderdom som samhälls- Cruikshank, Margaret 2003: Learning to be old. problem . Lund: Studentlitteratur. Gender, Culture and Aging . Lanham: Rowman Jönsson, Håkan and Larsson, Annika Taghizadeh and Littlefield. 2009: “The exclusion of older people in disabil- Danielsson, Alexander, Hellgren, Claes and Pe- ity activism and policies – A case of inadvertent tersson, Mats 2006: Kom inte och säg att du är ageism?”. Journal of Aging Studies no. 23 gammal. Västerås: Ica Bokförlag. 2009. Edgren, Monika 2004: ”Ålders- och generations- KK-bladet nr 2, 2007: ”Livat efter 65. Nya pen- skillnad i ett intersektionellt perspektiv”. Socia- sionärer skapar ny tillväxtbransch”. la konflikter och kulturella processer. Historia Karisto, Antti 2007: “Finnish Baby Boomers and med människor i centrum. Skrifter med historis- the Emergence of the Third Age”. International ka perspektiv . Malmö Högskola. Journal of Ageing and Later Life no. 2 2007. Edgren, Monika 2009: Hem tar plats. Ett feminis- Katz, Stephen 2000: “Busy Bodies. Activity, Ag- tiskt perspektiv på 1970-talets sociala rapport- ing, and the Management of Everyday Life”. böcker . Lund: Sekel förlag. Journal of Aging Studies no. 2 2000. Edmunds, June and Turner, Bryan S. 2002: Krekula, Clary, Nervänen, Anna-Liisa och Näs- Generations, Culture and Society . Philadelphia: man, Elisabet 2005: ”Ålder i intersektionell Open University Press. analys”. Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift nr 2-3 Expressen 27/12 2008. ”Tid att skrota åldern”. 2005. Amelia Adamo. Larsson, Kristina 2007: ”The social situation of Featherstone, Mike and Hepworth, Mike 1991: old people”. International Journal of Social “The mask of ageing”. Featherstone, Mike, Welfare no. 1 2007. Hepworth, Mike and Turner, Brian S. (eds.). Laslett, Peter 1989: A Fresh Map of Life. The The Body. Social process and cultural theory . Emergence of the Third Age . London: Widen- London: Sage. feld and Nicolson. 88 Gabriella Nilsson, Age and Class in the Third Age

Lindgren, Mats et al. 2005: Rekordgenerationen – Rasmusson, Ludvig 1985: Fyrtiotalisterna . Vad de vill och hur de tänker . Stockholm: Stockholm: Norstedts. Bookhouse Publishing. Rasmusson, Ludvig 2005: Åldersupproret . Stock- Liliequist, Marianne 2009: ”Äldre glesbygdskvin- holm: Natur och Kultur. nor, bortglömda offer eller centralgestalter i de los Reyes, Paulina, Molina, Irene och Mulinari, lokalsamhället?” Kulturella perspektiv nr 1 2009. Diana 2006: Maktens (o)lika förklädnader. Lindqvist, Mats 1996: Klasskamrater . Stockholm: Kön, klass och etnicitet i det postkoloniala Carlsson Bokförlag. Sverige . Stockholm: Atlas. Lindqvist, Mats 1996: Herrar i näringslivet. Om Ronström, Owe (ed.) 1998: Pigga pensionärer kapitalistisk kultur och mentalitet . Stockholm: och populärkultur. Stockholm: Carlsson Bok- Natur och Kultur. förlag. Liukko, Anneli 1996: Mat, kropp och social iden- Sapey, B., Stewart, J. and Donaldsson, G. 2005: titet . Stockholm: Pedagogiska institutionen, “Increases in wheelchair use and perceptions of Stockholms universitet. disablement”. Disability and Society no. 5, vol. Lundin, Susanne 1992: En liten skara äro vi. En 20. studie av typografer vid 1900-talets första de- Skeggs, Beverly 1997: Formations of Class and cennier . Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag. Gender: Becoming Respectable . London: Sage. Löfgren, Orvar 1997: ”Att ta plats: rummets och Skeggs, Beverly 2004: Class, Self, Culture . Lon- rörelsens pedagogik”. Alsmark, Gunnar (ed.) don/New York: Routledge. Skjorta eller själ? Kulturella identiteter i tid Silvergenerationen, www.silvergen.org och rum . Lund: Studentlitteratur. Soukannas, Maria 2008: Den anonyma seniorkon- Lövgren, Karin 2009: ”Se lika ung ut som du kän- sumenten identifieras. Om identitetsskapande ner dig” Kulturella föreställningar om ålder processer i en marknadsföringskontext . Hel- och åldrande i populärpress för kvinnor över singfors: Skrifter utgivna vid Svenska han- 40 . Linköping: Institutionen för samhälls- och delshögskolan nr 185. välfärdsstudier, Linköpings universitet. Mannerfelt, Charlotte 1999: Det rätta pensionärs- Svensson, Birgitta 1997: ”Livstid. Metodiska re- livet. Ideal, moral och civilisation. FoU-rapport flexioner över biografiskt särskiljande och nr 1999:3. modern identitetsformering”. Alsmark, Gunnar Neugarten, Bernice 1974: “The Young-Old and (ed.) Skjorta eller själ? Kulturella identiteter i the Age-Irrelevant Society”. Neugarten, D. A. tid och rum . Lund: Studentlitteratur. (eds.) 1996: The Meanings of Age: Selected Pa- Sydsvenska Dagbladet 29 september 2010. pers of Bernice L. Neugarten. Chicago: The ”Skräckscenario när fyrtiotalisterna blir gamla. University of Chicago Press. Äldreskador kan fördubblas på 20 år”. Nilsson, Fredrik 2007: ”Kan man vara kry fast Thelin, Angelika 2009: ”Den tredje åldern – en man är ’normal’? – en diskussion om övervikt kunskapsöversikt”. Rapportserie i socialt ar- och klass”. ETN:Kry nr 3 2007. bete nr 1 2009. Institutionen för vårdvetenskap Nilsson, Fredrik 2011: I ett bolster av fett. En kul- och socialt arbete, Växjö universitet. turhistoria om övervikt, manlighet och klass . Torres, Sandra och Hammarström, Gunnhild Lund: Sekel Bokförlag. 2007: ”Hög ålder som hälsa och hot: Äldre Nilsson, Gabriella 2010: ”Frisk, aktiv och väl- människors erfarenheter”. Jönsson, Lars-Eric bärgad. Om livet som nybliven pensionär i Sim- och Lundin, Susanne (eds.). Åldrandets be- rishamn”. Forskningsrapport nr 6 2009, CFL:s tydelser. Lund: Studentlitteratur. skriftserie . Centrum för livsstilsfrågor. Region Trossholmen, Ninni 2000: Tid till eftertanke. Skåne. Kvinnligt pensionärsliv ur ett klass- och livs- Nilsson, Magnus 2008: Våra äldre. Om konstruk- loppsperspektiv. Göteborg: Skrifter från Etno- tioner av äldre i offentligheten . Linköping: In- logiska föreningen i Västsverige 32. stitutionen för samhälls- och välfärdsstudier, Tudor-Sandahl, Patricia 2000: Den tredje åldern . Linköpings universitet. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Nygren, Göran 2008: Skolvardag ned rörelse- Winter Jørgensen, Marianne och Phillips, Louise hinder. En etnologisk studie . Uppsala Univer- 2000: Diskursanalys som teori och metod . sitet: Forum för skolan. Lund: Studentlitteratur. A Common European Identity Cultural Heritage, Commemoration, and Controversies By Lene Otto

… in 2009 a reunited Europe will celebrate the through memory seems less contested. 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Communist Even though scholars in academia have dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe and discussed at length and have tried to de- the fall of the Berlin Wall, which should provide both an opportunity to enhance awareness of the fine the relations between memory and past and recognise the role of democratic citizens’ identity for years without reaching con- initiatives, and an incentive to strengthen feelings sensus, scholars in practical politics seem of togetherness and cohesion. to have less difficulty in that matter. One The quotation above is an excerpt from a can wonder whether the widespread con- text adopted by the European Parliament structivist or discursive approach to iden- in April 2009 on European Conscience tity, as for example formulated by Stuart and Totalitarianism. 1 This initiative adds Hall – “Identities are the names we give to to the long list of other initiatives over the the different ways we are positioned by, past two decades. In the aftermath of 1989 and position ourselves in, the narratives of “culture” and “heritage” have become the the past” (1994:394) – has been taken up battleground of the re/construction of in political practice exactly because it is “Europe” after the East-West divide be- easy to instrumentalise: will new stories cause of a widespread consensus that build new identities? After reading nu- communism was a period of history that merous policy papers in the field of heri- was spiritually and intellectually barren, tage politics, I will argue that the funda- and life in Eastern Europe during the era mental idea put forward is that cultural between the Second World War and 1989 identity and cultural heritage are contin- was lacking in spiritual, aesthetic, or other gent upon one another. The idea can be humanising qualities; it was a vacuum: a summarised as follows: cultural identity is cultural wasteland. based on acts of remembrance of some During the Cold War history appeared past events and experiences, and that to have lost much of its old power (Mac- which is remembered as important events Millan 2009:9). Since 1989 Europe has and experiences is constructed into the experienced the rebirth of history and a identity’s heritage; heritage takes in the search for historical reasons to fear, hate relationship between identities and re- or identify each other. However, what to membering. remember, the collective memories, are This scheme points to the reshaping of contested and during the past two decades historical memory as the natural answer to conflicts over the interpretation of the his- weak identities, and it may shed light on tory of the twentieth century have raged, why the resolution on European con- among other things due to different ex- sciousness was drafted in the first place periences and historical knowledge on and put to vote in the European Parlia- each side of the Iron Curtain (Hochschild ment. Like the quotation above, the other 2003, Judt 2007, Knigge & Mählert 2005, statements in the resolution are very brief, Kubik 2007, MacMillan 2009, Scribner but jointly they comprise a kind of re- 2005, Smith 1996). Nevertheless, the idea sponse to the previous twenty years of that the reconstitution of identities after heated debate on the cultural interpreta- the political rupture must come about tions of the history of the divided Europe.

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The objective of the resolution is to con- the totalitarian regimes were equally evil. tribute to an already established identity- Still, it seems that communism is more political agenda in Europe using state- evil than the other totalitarian ideologies, ments to explain the political context. A because it manipulated history. The inher- few more excerpts from the resolution can ent idea in the text is that post-communist serve as examples: countries seem to suffer from a lack of his- F. whereas the memories of Europe’s tragic past tory, they are short of memory. This idea must be kept alive in order to honour the victims, that the Cold War cut a former shared uni- condemn the perpetrators and lay the foundations versal European culture and heritage in for reconciliation based on truth and remem- two is much older, though; it was intro- brance, duced by intellectual dissidents such as H. whereas the dominant historical experience of Milan Kundera, who in his essay “The Western Europe was Nazism, and whereas Central Tragedy of Central Europe” from 1963 ac- and Eastern European countries have experienced cuses communism of having put an end to both Communism and Nazism; whereas under- civilisation in Central Europe, the former standing has to be promoted in relation to the cultural axis of Europe. He argues that double legacy of dictatorship borne by these coun- “the countries in Central Europe feel that tries, the change in their destiny that occurred K. whereas Europe will not be united unless it is after 1945 is not merely a political catas- able to form a common view of its history, recog- trophe: it is also an attack on their civilisa- nises Nazism, Stalinism and fascist and Commu- tion. The deep meaning of their resistance nist regimes as a common legacy and brings about an honest and thorough debate on their crimes in is the struggle to preserve their identity – the past century, or, to put it another way, to preserve their Westernness.” The essential tragedy is 10. Believes that appropriate preservation of his- that these countries vanished from the torical memory, a comprehensive reassessment of European history and Europe-wide recognition of map of Europe, according to Kundera, and all historical aspects of modern Europe will no longer were part of a common Euro- strengthen European integration; pean history. 15. Calls for the proclamation of 23 August as a Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the vic- Lack of History and Memory, Need of tims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, Heritage to be commemorated with dignity and impartiali- The assertion that Europe will not be unit- ty; ed unless it is able to form a common view 16. Is convinced that the ultimate goal of disclo- of its history has great political ramifica- sure and assessment of the crimes committed by tion in Europe (Judt 2007). The rift be- the Communist totalitarian regimes is reconcili- tween east and west was soon seen as ation, which can be achieved by admitting re- more than a question of money and power; sponsibility, asking for forgiveness and fostering it was also as one of historico-cultural re/ moral renewal. construction precisely because the post- No doubt, the idea is that the European communist countries and peoples suffered peoples need to remember their common from civilisational backwardness, a lack history of political violence, and that all of civilisation. The cure to heal the divid- Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 91

ed Europe was (and still is) seen as a ques- society and to attach those new nations tion of giving them back their European that have become detached during com- roots and history, so as to overcome the munism or that were never bonded in the so-called asymmetrical memory (Judt first place. I argue that a general process 2007). Understanding the problem as a of Europeanisation can be said to be well lack of memory, and the answer to the under way, because the very idea of Euro- problem as a question of raising historical pean heritage is suspended on much more awareness, also impinged on questions of than the rhetoric that is used to establish membership of the European Union. The interregional cooperation, to attract tour- Eastern European countries have been ists and to acquire funding; it is inter- subject to demands to remember past twined in many cultural practices, also in wrongs in certain ways; they are expected processes of remembering; memory is not to be “facing up to history” (Lebow 2006: a thing. I refer to collective memory as the 5). To demonstrate their commitment to varieties of forms through which we are democracy they must be willing to con- shaped by the past, public and private, ma- front their past and rewrite their history. terial and discursive, as well as harmoni- The EU enlargement process has proved ous and disputed. Because commemora- that recognition as a legitimate state re- tive imagery and practices occur in many quires a legitimate memory, one which is different places, it is not possible to assess in accordance with a European self-under- whether a common European significa- standing and with global rules. These tion is really generated (even if it were rules or expectations include acceptance possible to measure the extent and depth of political and moral guilt, genocide rec- of cultural meaning and identity). ognition, official apologies and the re- habilitation of victims. In this process Europeanisation as a cultural process is communism is constructed as Europe’s commonly associated with the European negative or “dark” heritage (Lennon and Union, but includes in fact the other Euro- Foley 2000). pean institutions, the Council of Europe I understand this process as “Euro- and the Organisation for Security and Co- peanisation of memory”, and as part of a operation in Europe. Europeanisation is wider preoccupation with ways of foster- not only about adapting to rules but also a ing senses of European values; described process of developing consciousness and as “cultural Europeanisation” (Shore awareness, including the shaping of cul- 2000) – or “the third wave of Europeani- tural practices and norms that make sation” (Karlson 2010), which have com- peoples in Europe become more European plemented the earlier economic and pol- by adapting to new standards. It is a long itical integration waves. Essentially it historical process as well as a contempor- means building a collective European ary process of cultural change and new identity on the basis of a collective mem- identity formation, intertwined with polit- ory. In such a concern, heritage and histo- ical change, but not only brought about by ry are envisaged as social glue that might the EU as diffusion of a set of ideas to be be used to stick together disparate bits of internalised. 92 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

A Council of Europe workshop visits a Romanian village in April 2007 as part of the project “Sharing Histories, Sharing Places: A Thousand and One Lives of Heritage in Europe”. The village is known for its multicultural heritage, materialised in seven different churches with active congregations. Photo: Lene Otto.

Fieldwork on Europeanisation tural encounter and is not limited to insti- The revision of history or the Europeani- tutional transfer of policies. sation of the memory of the recent past My approach to European remem- can be studied in many places. I have fol- brance policy has been to follow subjects, lowed Europeanisation of the post-com- concepts, and ideologies involved in the munist memory as discursive and material EU’s promotion of cultural heritage as practices on three arenas: (i) The defini- citizenship education and in various tion and handling of the European heritage Council of Europe programmes; one ex- in EU; (ii) Heritage management and the ample is “Values of Heritage for Society”, promotion of memorial activities by the especially the project “Sharing Histories, Council of Europe; and (iii) Remem- Sharing Places: A Thousand and One brance as nation building in museums of Lives of Heritage in Europe”, in which I communism in Eastern Europe. Even took part as a participant observer in April though this study of Europeanisation takes 2007 in Timisoara, Romania. I have also policy as its starting point, I believe that led various fieldwork trips to Poland, Europeanisation is achieved through cul- Lithuania, and Ukraine with students, and Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 93

have conducted fieldwork on the Internet. the integration, paying special attention to I have not gone into the various national the delineation of a common heritage. Ac- commemorative cultures in depth; instead cordingly, the Council has devoted itself I have performed case studies in several to a conscious, reflective, and universalis- post-communist countries. In particular I ing commitment to the Europeanisation of have been interested in the construction of European identity, including a promotion communist legacy, e.g. how communism of the use of culture and cultural heritage becomes an object of history writing and in reconciliation processes. The idea put heritage management and how commu- forward by the Council in its publications nism is commemorated and exhibited in and on its website is that a common Euro- museums (Otto 2008, 2009a, b). In this ar- pean identity is dependent upon a shared ticle I seek to analytically combine the po- European past understood as a common litical level, the EU cultural policy and the European heritage. It is important to no- Council of Europe’s activities and papers tice that this is not intended as a process of with the practice level where the contro- “homogenising” but rather as something versial material heritage is handled and in- equal to “unity in diversity”. It is often de- terpreted. Rather than analysing museum clared that the gradual introduction of a representations in detail, I have some standard and uniformly packaged memory more general considerations about the must not obliterate and discard the differ- narratives they produce. Memory is short- ences of local and national memories. hand for all these discourses and practices. With the adoption of the Faro Conven- tion in 2005 the agenda was set for shap- Memory and European Identity ing a common European identity through Politics cultural heritage. The convention states When viewed from the point of view of that Europe’s common heritage takes in the European Union, the process of Euro- “all forms of cultural heritage in Europe peanisation means two different yet fun- which together constitute a shared source damentally related processes: deepening of remembrance, understanding, identity, and enlargement. The enlargement pro- cohesion and creativity” (Faro Frame- cess is “real politics”, while the process of work Convention, 2005, Article 3). In the deepening the integration leaves room for subsequent years the Council has been ex- cultural policies and “identity politics”. perimenting with the role of the cultural This seems to have actually enhanced and heritage in gradually building a European strengthened the status and role of the citizenship. They have initiated projects Council of Europe. 2 The Council has a like “Cultural Identities, Shared Values rather discursive role in European politics, and European Citizenship” to shed light which during the Cold War period was on how multiple cultural belonging and thought to be the major weak point be- mutual recognition can go hand in hand cause of the absence of any kind of exec- with a new form of citizenship, one that is utive power, but since 1989 its role ap- open, plural and participative. One ex- pears to have been enhanced and strength- ample is the project I participated in: ened by the present focus on deepening “Sharing Histories, Sharing Places – A 94 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

Thousand and One Lives of Heritage in and the process through which the repre- Europe” which, according to the project sentation of the past assumes its particular description, “suggests an original percep- form, often involving engagement of the tion of the heritage that may contribute to senses, emotions, imagination, and the in- the ‘founding narrative’ of a Europe based tellect of the public. Commemorations, on diversity and on giving effect to the ba- understood as rituals and activities that sic values shared by its different popula- (re)produce memory, assign significance tion groups” (CDPAT (2007) 5:3). This to events and figures to create a heritage, a does not mean that their ambition is to set of shared historical experiences and at- create a master narrative or a common his- titudes that define and bond a community. tory textbook for all member states (al- In this capacity, public memory is part of though history teaching and the writing of the symbolic foundation of collective history books are important activities for identity, where the question, “who are the Council), but rather a more vaguely we”, is answered. The subtle relationship agreed-upon frame of reference to com- between cultural identity and remember- municate and negotiate conflicting memo- ing is explored, for instance, by the Ame- ries. This common frame of reference is rican historian John Gillis in his book needed to recognise distinctive national Commemorations: The Politics of Nation- narratives and memories, but also to mod- al Identity : “The core meaning of any in- erate the destructive differences of nation- dividual or group identity, namely a sense al memories by making them compatible of sameness over time and space, is sus- with each other. The Council’s ambition is tained by remembering; and what is re- in fact to extend the borders of Europe to membered is defined by the assumed iden- what can be considered Europe’s histori- tity” (Gillis 1994:3). He is a prominent ex- co-cultural roots. This is why memory has ponent of the non-psychological tradition become such a comprehensive strategy. in which memory is understood as some- At the most general level, memory per- thing which is activated between people tains to the actualisation of the past in and thus always inevitably culturally and some form of contemporary experience – socially mediated. Memory is first and a tourist’s visit to a historical site, a com- foremost moral and identity-building acts. munity’s celebration of an event in the Memory is also a word that covers both past, a new memorial, the release of a new collective, commemorative activities, and historical film or book, historical re-enact- personal experiences. In both cases narra- ments and many other types of events. In tives are produced to represent and shape this sense, memory is an invented tradi- identity by means of cultural idioms and tion often shaped by many individuals and tools at our disposal. groups over long periods of time. Memory The term collective memory always de- is related to the notion of “history” but is fines a collective self-image, and this broader because the professional histori- self-image is constructed according to his- ans are but one voice in the choir. Hence, torical and political challenges. The term the cultural production of public memory collective memory was first introduced by refers to both the medium of presentation Maurice Halbwachs. 3 He emphasised that Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 95

this term was not a simple metaphor. bered with your own body, while social Memory is in constant exchanges of im- memory is the meaning of the events, but pressions and opinions among members both are bodily experiences. This insight of the community with the effect that the was first put forward in 1989 by Paul Con- framework of collective memory confines nerton, who argues for the performative and binds our most intimate remem- nature of social memory; without bodily brances to each other. For him, a collec- practices, memory cannot be maintained. tive memory was not a mysterious fusion For example, the corporeal nature of the of individual minds or souls, but the prod- museum visit may well constitute the uct of continuous social interaction. Social memory of having experienced, for ex- interaction may be personal face-to-face, ample repression, even though it was not a but also mediated, symbolic communica- personal experience. The range of partici- tion via media such as television, history pation in a collective memory can be said textbooks, museums, monuments, com- to have widened considerably in our time. memoration rites, and more recently the Accordingly, memory can take many Internet. As an analytical term, “collective forms; it can be displayed in images, ob- memory” evolved in the 1980s and 1990s jects and narratives, condensed and frozen along with a discourse on collective iden- into monuments, represented in physical tities . Up until then, the term “identity” landscape or embodied through parades, had been mostly applied to individuals. rituals of remembrance and re-enactment; New discourses on both memory and in modern museums, not least the identity were backed up by a “constructiv- post-communist ones, all these forms of ist turn” in the humanities. This turn high- memory practice are often united, when lighted the role of cultural symbols such rituals of remembrance of different kinds as texts, images, and rituals in the forma- give life to the fixity and immutability of tion of identities, and acknowledged that exhibitions. This is identity politics in one the past is always reconstructed according sense, and even if it is not a result of dic- to the needs of the present. Reconstructing tates it can be seen as an element in the the past is a varying and open-ended broader memory politics, where European project, as nations and states enter into institutions redefine “cultural heritage” as new political alliances and constellations. part of a project to establish a common Thus, collective memory must be studied European identity, where memory is man- as the objectives and actions of individu- aged and Europeanised as a means of inte- als as well as institutions. People identify gration. and experience identity because of this on- I am not going to reveal the Europeani- going construction and narration; as sation project as an ideological one, in the Benedict Anderson argues, it is because sense of being false. In line with Peter we cannot remember or experience con- Novick, I understand collective memory tinuity in a direct fashion that we rely on to be always and inevitably grounded in narratives (Anderson 1991). Experiential current concerns, current self-understand- memory, on the other hand, means that ings, and current perceived needs (Novick you have experienced what is remem- 2001). In this field, whether we are re- 96 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

searchers, politicians, or mangers, we are memory it is claimed that “the dark shad- always actors and not only observers; we ows and bitter experiences are notably all have vested interests, political stances, absent from the commemoration agenda” and moral preferences, and hence have no (Pakier and Stråth 2010:2). This is hardly privileged access to knowledge of what is the case, if the preoccupation with cultur- a use and what is an abuse of the past, As al heritage and memory in European in- one person’s use is another person’s stitutions is studied more closely. In the abuse, Novick comes to the conclusion resolution “On European Conscience and that there is no Archimedean point from Totalitarianism” quoted above, there is which one can distinguish objectively be- also a proposal to make 23 August, the tween use and abuse of Holocaust memo- day of the signing of the Molotov-Rib- ry. This must be said to apply to memory bentrop Pact in 1939 4 – the secret pact in general and thus to the memory of com- about the division of Europe – an official munist rule. European commemoration day. The idea was first introduced in 2008 in the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, which was meant to recog- nise the crimes of the former communist regimes as deserving the same condem- nation as the crimes committed in the name of Nazism. 5 During the political process in the European Parliament the text underwent a number of changes be- fore its approval in 2009. The replace- ment of communism with totalitarianism Prison cell exhibited in The Memorial of the Vic- was a compromise, and it can be seen as tims of Communism in Sighet, Romania. By a means to equate crimes in order to transforming victim testimonies into nation-tran- make them become a common historic scending experiences such as expulsion, terror, and genocide, they become European or global experience. Including both Nazism and experiences. The Council of Europe supports communism under the banner of totali- such heritage initiatives economically and moral- tarianism is widely questioned, though, ly; the letter C embracing the European circle of not least because the role of perpetrator stars affirms that this museum and its exhibition on communism is “approved” according to Euro- and victim is reversible. Jews, recognised pean standards. Photo: Lene Otto. as victims per se, were in many cases also communists, and also because Nazi per- I. Harmonisation of Memory, the Work petrators, German as well as local, later of the EU turned into victims of communism. A Since the 1990s the EU has had as one of paragraph that explicitly asserts the their objectives to provide the enlarged uniqueness of the Holocaust was added Europe with a cultural-symbolic founda- in response to parts of the critique. The tion, e.g. finding common references in point is that it is no longer possible to history. In a new book on European create national myths unchallenged; an Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 97

increase in one identity necessarily im- thoughts on different topics. As part of plies a decrease in another, and all repre- their political work the MPs formulate ex- sentations of the past are assessed by planations for their point of view and indi- other European nations and minority vidual reasons for voting for or against groups, even globally. different political resolutions. I have cho- Again, it is important to repeat that the sen some quotations from various MPs Europeanisation of memory is not a diffu- who have voted either for or against the sion process, in which the EU is an anon- resolution, not as a representative analysis ymous political institution, a centre of but to demonstrate how contested the power which imposes ideologies on naive memory, and accordingly the resolution, European populations. Rather, the appar- really was: 6 ent comprehensive political will to re- Edite Estrela (PSE), from Portugal writes: member in general, and the commitment I voted in favour of the resolution on totalitarian to a systematic politics of commemoration regimes. I believe that Europe will not be united related to the European communist past in unless it is able to reach a common view of its his- particular, is the result of individuals’ en- tory and conduct an honest and thorough debate gagement and dialogue. For instance, the on the crimes committed by Nazism, Stalinism and fascist and Communist regimes in the past elected members of the European Parlia- century. ment are not anonymous officials; they must be accountable for their positions on Luca Romagnoli (NI) from Italy agrees, all policy issues, and their opinions mat- and explains why: ter, if they want the votes from their fel- I firmly believe that Europe must be made more low citizens back home in their national or aware of crimes committed by totalitarian and local communities of memory. Therefore, non-democratic regimes, because I believe that we the European MPs are not only supposed cannot consolidate European integration without promoting the preservation of our historical mem- to express the opinions of the political par- ory, provided that all aspects of Europe’s past are ties, they represent; their personal judge- acknowledged. I also approve the motion to de- ments matter, and anybody may use the clare a “European Day of Remembrance” for the Internet to find out what their representa- victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian re- tives are up to. Blogs are also widely used. gimes. Of course one might argue that everything Glyn Ford (PSE) is much more critical on the Internet written by a politician is an and articulate: official rather than a personal point of While I am in favour of the maximum objectivity view, but I still believe that a selection of in analysing Europe’s history, and while I recog- elected MPs’ views on a common Euro- nise the horrific nature of the crimes of Stalinist pean memory can give an impression of Russia, I am afraid that this resolution has ele- the cultural meanings these people attach ments of a historical revisionism that flies in the to the idea of cultural memory. Unlike in- face of a demand for objective analysis. I am not terviews where answers are formed in re- willing to equate the crimes of the Nazis, the Holocaust and the genocide that saw six million sponse to the fieldworkers’ agenda, the In- Jews, along with Communists, Trade Unionists ternet contains the informants’ personal and disabled die, with those of Stalinist Russia. formulations, when they put forward their This political relativism threatens to dilute the 98 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

unique nature of the Nazi crimes, and in doing so though it is hardly based on a common in- provides an intellectual underpinning to the ideol- terpretation of the recent past. ogies of today’s neo-Nazis and fascists, some of In spite of, or maybe because of, the ap- whom are with us here today. parent clashes of political ideologies in One of the Portuguese members, Pedro Europe, the Council of Europe contributes Guerreiro (GUE/NGL), is even more to the politics of memory on the grass- critical: roots level. By that I mean that they not This shameful resolution approved by Parliament only pass resolutions, but also encourage is part of the operation to distort historical truth commemorative practices and historical that is being undertaken by reactionaries and those consciousness, thus wrapping the political seeking revenge: the losers of the Second World project in humanistic vocabulary. War. They are the same people who are rehabili- tating in their own countries those who collaborat- II. Ambivalence of Remembrance, the ed with the barbarism of the Nazis, for example. The goal is to put neo-fascism in a good light and Work of the Council of Europe condemn communism. … Its goal is to erase the Even though the idea of a common herit- decisive contribution of the communists and the age is already present in the Council’s Soviet Union in defeating Nazism-fascism, their founding documents, it has become a role in improving the living conditions of the more reflective and more political objec- workers, their contribution to the liberation of tive in the new century, due to the afore- peoples from the colonial yoke and the role they mentioned Faro Convention “on the Value played against exploitation and war following the Second World War. … At bottom, its intention is of Cultural Heritage in Society” from 7 the criminalisation of communists, their activities 2005. Article 3 – “The common heritage and their ideals. of Europe” – reads: Along these lines but with more pathos a The Parties agree to promote an understanding of Greek member, Athanasios Pafilis (GUE/ the common heritage of Europe, which consists of: a. All forms of cultural heritage in Europe NGL) writes: which together constitute a shared source of re- No parliament, no parliamentary majority com- membrance, understanding, identity, cohesion prising the representatives and servants of the bar- and creativity, and b. The ideals, principles and baric capitalist system can use slander, lies and values, derived from the experience gained forgery to wipe out the history of social revolu- through progress and past conflicts, which foster tion, written and signed by the people with their the development of a peaceful and stable society, blood. No black anti-communist front can wipe founded on respect for human rights, democracy out the huge contribution made by socialism, its and the rule of law. unprecedented achievements and its abolition of Here, for the first time in a treaty instru- the exploitation of man by man. ment, the notion of the “common heritage The impression is that the views of the re- of Europe” conveys the idea that Europe’s cent past are not only divided in accord- diverse heritage can be managed as a po- ance with the borders between east and litical tool. The group of experts who drew west, but are contested in the light of a up the convention between 2003 and 2005 deeper political divide. The mere exist- expect that this new heritage approach ence of a debate at the EU level means that will foster a respect for fundamental we can talk about Europeanisation, even shared values that underpin a common po- Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 99

litical design for Europe, rather than en- Council of Europe in 2007 interfered in a courage revival of past conflicts. The con- conflict between Russia and Estonia over cept of heritage is taken far beyond the memory, caused by the Estonian govern- traditional notion of old buildings and his- ment’s dismantlement of the so-called toric sites to the more soft and indetermi- Bronze Soldier (and the alleged tomb) nate “enrichment of cultural life”. It is rec- that symbolised the liberation of Estonia ognised that objects and places are not, in by the Red Army. Terry Davis, Secretary themselves, what make cultural heritage General of the Council of Europe, met vital. They are important because of the the Estonian and the Russian ambassa- meanings and uses that people attach to dors to the Council of Europe, and after- them, and the values they represent, as ward he pronounced: stated by Robert Palmer, Director of Cul- I condemn any attempt to soil the memory of those ture and Cultural and Natural Heritage in who died in fighting the Nazis, but the Russian the Council of Europe (Council of Europe Federation should also show greater understand- Publishing 2009:8).This understanding is ing for the painful memories associated with the hardly original, but in a political frame- Soviet presence in Estonia after the war. Estonia work, this seems to be a significant change and Russia have different perceptions of their re- cent history. They are both members of the Coun- in heritage thinking and political focus. cil of Europe and can benefit from our pro- The value of heritage in social terms is its grammes on history teaching as a means of recon- ability to build societies or heal divided ciliation between and within countries in Europe. ones and build cultural, collective identi- Whatever differences the two countries may have, ties, as it is stated. they should be resolved through dialogue between To heal and to build is exactly what equals, based on mutual respect (http://www.coe.int/t/secretarygeneral/). heritage management is about – within post-communist countries and between The will or desire to remember the period new and older EU member states. The of communist rule in a European way is underlying argument is also that to forget also nourished by the EU, as the resolution is disempowering because it erases the on totalitarianism indicates. The price of underpinnings of identity available belonging to Europe has been the appro- through remembering. Oblivion is con- priation rather than the refusal of a “trau- sidered unhealthy; communism must not matic past”. My argument here is that the be forgotten, but remembered as a Euro- European Union and the Council of Eu- pean experience that all Europeans can rope, among others, are actors in an ongo- relate to in the same way. The first reac- ing process of Europeanisation of histori- tions after the breakdown of communism cal events and memories which formerly were to tear down and demolish monu- tended to be more national. This brings us ments to the bigwigs of communism, but back to the concept of collective (or col- the Council of Europe worked against lected) memory, which justifies this po- such national reactions and for a bal- litical engagement with remembrance and anced remembrance in which the legacy heritage. Above I identified significant of this period has to be managed in cer- changes in heritage thinking and political tain ways. A recent example is when the focus in recent years, as heritage now is 100 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

seen as an element of the grand design to This, in a professional heritage context, build a united Europe and as a potential novel approach proceeds from the idea tool to be used to help create peace and re- that much of the tension between popula- solve conflicts. This shift from working to tions that co-exist is due to insufficient safeguard heritage to working on the knowledge of their respective cultural tra- meaning of heritage is in line with a holis- ditions, and to disregard of the relation- tic definition of cultural heritage. The new ships which have grown up between them principle is that the preservation of this through time. From this standpoint, the heritage is not an end in itself “but has the proper route for advancement is via “re- object of furthering the well-being of indi- membrance management” which will en- viduals and the wider expectations of so- able the individuals and groups who live ciety” (Council of Europe Publishing in Europe to take collective spiritual pos- 2009:10). Holistic, yes, but also an instru- session of all heritages. The heritage of mentalist conception of heritage in which past conflicts should be taken into ac- the idea of the utility of heritage is vital: count, besides that constituted by mo- “in conflict resolution, in economic regen- ments of openness, freedom, and progress. eration, in education for citizenship, in the This is where the humanistic wrapping search for sustainable development” becomes obvious. “Human rights” and (Council of Europe Publishing 2009:17). abuses against such rights offer a relevant In several publications the Council of Eu- problematic and entry-point with which rope dedicates itself to “creating a com- people can be reached in different ways. mon experience as Europeans by con- By focusing on problems common to all structing a shared field of memory with mankind, such as resistance and suffering the purpose of creating a shared, demo- under Fascism/Nazism and Communism, cratic and peaceful future”. It is particular- when such memories address ideas and ly clearly stated by the German political ideals that transcend their particular philosopher Peter Wagner in one of the places of genesis and enactment, those ex- periences are made into something lived publications: and shared. Heritage is promoted as an en- The question to be addressed appears seductively abling power; as a force for democracy in simple: How can the politics of “cultural heritage” Europe. contribute to the creation and stabilisation of a Eu- ropean identity? To answer this question it is nec- I am convinced that it is fundamental essary to engage “culture” and “heritage” in their that the new narrative, one supposed to relation to “identity” and to relate these three bring about European unity and include terms to the space and meaning of “Europe.” As the recognition of humans, can only be at- this report will argue, the necessary definitions tained through the dilution of a general and connections can and should be made in terms concept of human, and as respect for hu- of a Europeanisation of collective memory and man rights. A widely used way of achiev- shared experiences based on the founding prin- ing this is by shaping a common European ciples of the Council of Europe: “the protection and promotion” of the “ideals and foundational heritage as human stories and lived expe- principles” that constitute the “common heritage” rience, especially experiences of violence; of its members (Council of Europe 2010:9). the attractiveness of this humanising of Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 101

A popular or spontaneous memory site in Timisoara, Romania, in memory of some citizens who died in the revolt against Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. Photo: Lene Otto. history is that it is an alternative to tradi- can be seen as a more human-scale ap- tional political history and history of proach which also merges well with the ideologies, which potentially generates idea of a shared identity endorsed by the conflicts. Apparently it is easier to agree politicians of Europe. In contrast, another on a common history of human suffering; strategy to successfully leave the past as suffering is no longer specific to one cultural wastelands behind is nation build- group or one nation, but becomes a com- ing, including the shaping of a distinct na- mon experience that all Europeans can tional history and heritage. Eastern Eu- identify with. Its priorities have shifted to- rope is not more or less passively becom- wards safeguarding values and rooting ing Europeanised. New cultural identities them firmly in people’s minds. That the cast in the well-known national mould are Council of Europe now gives prominence also a viable practice; as was the case in to the building of a more human and more the nineteenth century, museums of cul- cohesive Europe shows the Council as a tural history play an important role in this more political actor. process, as they become responsible for Thus the Council of Europe’s vision of the material and intangible legacy of com- a Europe bonded by culture and heritage munism. 102 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

III. Cultural Heritage and Nationalism, identity creation. “In contemporary East- the Work of Museums ern Europe, museums are frequently em- It is a common experience of Eastern Eu- ployed as a means of creating historical ropean societies that their history and past authenticity to render communist terror under communism was falsified and re- tangible and the related interpretation of written or even destroyed in order to con- the recent past credible” (Apor 2010:241). struct an ideologically homogenised his- This is in accordance with the now classic tory (Niedermüller 1998:172). So, one work by the French historian Pierre Nora, foundation of the new memory discourse who analysed how historical events have is that the misinterpretation of the histori- been produced in concrete form. In his Les cal truth must be corrected. “Historical Lieux de Mémoire (1984), Nora argues truth” and “historical reality” are repre- that these representations – the sites of sented as entities which are the political memory – are inauthentic substitutes for antithesis of communism. The assumption living traditions – the social milieux of is that the truth will heal both individual memory. The social environment where souls and the collective spirit, and become the event would be part of everyday mem- the moral basis of the new society to ory has disappeared. In contrast, I see an- come. In this way national memory be- other tendency, the development of new comes a moral duty, a means of effecting museums which are both sites of memory an internal transformation in the hearts and museum; they are not substitutes for and minds of the former communist citi- living traditions, but they become part of zens, and thereby undoing the normal everyday memory practices. Many post- corruptions of communism. Memory is communist museums promote an active needed to protect and heal society, and engagement with the past and they play an “break the amnesia pact between the re- active role in the discursive production of gime and the nation, a pact upon which memory and in the healing of collective communism rested” (Eyal 2004:21). The trauma. Discourses work through a partic- discourse of the communist past which ular cultural form, which can be verbal, has been created in the social and political ritual or visual as in texts, historical com- space of post-communism also influences memorations and exhibitions (Nieder- and organises people’s common under- müller 1998:172), but most often they are standing of themselves and their past. In a permutation, as in the museums I refer to this process museums play an important in the following, which all deal with the role as co-producers and mediators, be- discourse of trauma, as regards genocide, cause they hold a strong symbolic power violence, terror, and suffering. This is ap- through not only narrating but also mate- parent in their names: The Genocide Mu- rialising, visualising, and ritualising the seum (in Vilnius), The Terror House Mu- past (Knigge & Mählert 2005). seum (in Budapest), and The Memorial of The use of material relics and the con- the Victims of Communism in Sighet, Ro- struction of metaphors and narrative struc- mania. These three museums seek to serve tures for the telling of the past is an impor- a liberating as well as a therapeutic func- tant element in the process of national tion by drawing out memories rather than Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 103

repelling them. In the following I draw on This new role of museums has been my earlier analysis (Otto 2008, 2009a, b) thoroughly considered in Paul Williams’s in a generalising way, rather than investi- book, Memorial Museums , about the glo- gating the museums separately. bal rush to commemorate atrocities. Wil- Much research has confirmed that liams sees memorial museums as playing struggles over public memory involving an important role in the shaping of public historical trauma, genocide, and human historical consciousness. He proclaims rights violations abound in Eastern Eu- that morality is a topic that hangs over all rope (and the world). The American memorial museums, whether representing scholar Andreas Huyssen (2003) even disasters associated with fascism, commu- uses the term “trauma discourse” about nism, imperialism, or industrialism (Wil- contemporary uses of the past. He notes liams 2007:160). Others have also identi- that, since the 80s, we seem to consider fied the emergence of these new “mu- the whole history of the twentieth century seums of conscience”, which deal with under the sign of trauma: “The privileging subjects such as genocide, slavery, apart- of trauma formed a thick discursive net- heid, civil rights, and crimes against hu- work with those other master-signifiers of manity (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2002:59). the 1990s, the abject and the uncanny, all A moral museum is no longer a mere of which have to do with repression, spec- storehouse for exhibits and collections, tres, and a present repetitively haunted by but also a centre for research, and an or- the past” (Huyssen 2003:8). The discourse ganiser of different activities, such as of traumatic memory has encouraged the hearings and commemorative ceremonies. spread of ideas about ”healing” and “grief They have become catalysts for national work” on a collective level, including the recognition and spaces for witnessing, de- idea that every citizen needs to grieve af- bate, reflection, healing, and are as such ter the end of a repressive political regime, closely related to processes of national, even if they never actually directly experi- cultural revival and commemoration. enced violence. The idea is that the world These museums have a historic mission, has to be remade through suffering in the they know that they are making history, forms of testimony and witnessing for ex- and especially that exhibiting atrocities is ample in forums of truth commissions and an act of conscience – of making right his- trials. This process also “involves the torical injustice and misinterpretations moral engagement of others by making (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2002:57). the victim’s suffering visible” (Humphrey The three museums I refer to are all me- 2002:144). Museums as institutions of morial museums, i.e. buildings in which collective memory take active part in this former atrocities took place. They were remaking of the world. Museums are cata- founded to commemorate communism as lysts for a cultural process of remember- a violent event and to honour the memory ing and revisiting the past, and they play of victims of communism. For this, trau- an important role in “the allocation of re- ma is a much used metaphor for political sponsibility and the politics of blame” oppression, and “traumatic memory” is (Antze & Lambek 1996: xxi). used as an interpretive framework in the 104 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

exhibitions. The public memory of politi- social groups that were forgotten in the of- cal repression is given more permanent ficial history are reinterpreted as central in shape in the museum settings, because the a new and truer history. The three mu- materiality of the museum is more persua- seums pay special attention to the personal sive and moving than a history book. stories of deportees, who become the core Hence, they are arenas for the formation of the narrative. Documentary texts such of collective memories of experiences as autobiographies, portraits, diaries, life with political violence, and they must story narratives and memories are used to manage the balance between aestheticis- correct or restore the manipulated history. ing traumatic memory and offering a place They are not simply memories but testi- for historical reflection to its visitors. To monies (Agamben 1999). A testimony is a attain this goal at least two strategies are specific kind of memory, told by wit- used: one is to work in the service of truth nesses. The first-person account has a cer- by facilitating a space for the silent wit- tain kind of legitimacy, and survivor testi- nesses of the past as a kind of Holocaust monies are also known from Holocaust survivors, opening up to a now global ho- museums. Nothing seems too painful or rizon of Holocaust remembrance. Another too emotionally provocative to deal with. is to externalise the communist past, pre- The idea seems to be that, as psychothera- senting it as an alien phenomenon im- py aims to help individuals get unstuck by posed by a foreign force (the Soviets) bearing witness to their suffering, so mu- against the nation’s will; the nation’s suf- seums can heal the nation’s collective fering is explained as the result of ill will identity, but potentially these narratives of on the part of “others”. Both strategies fa- suffering could be in conflict with the Eu- cilitate a national identity as a community ropeanisation ambition, because the iden- of suffering. tification of perpetrators inevitably leads to political conflict in or between nations. Bearing Witness A way to steer clear of counteracting the A true representation of the national histo- ongoing process of building a European ry is one of the most important political Union on a common memory is to trans- and symbolic demands of post-communist form the victim testimonies into nation- museums. It is a widespread strategy to transcending experiences such as expul- aim at a symbolic restoration of history, sion, terror and genocide, not infrequently meaning the recovery and representation with a little help from the Council of Eu- of missing historical experiences. Truth rope. The Council supports such heritage and memory are seen as necessary for the initiatives, i.e. museums exhibitions, therapeutic process, and the recollection economically and morally and it gives its of past evil seems to be a crucial source of official imprint, the letter C embracing (or empowerment. The idea that memory squeezing?) the European circle of stars, heals through truth has provided the ra- in many of the new post-communist mu- tionale for this exhibition strategy. Bear- seums, to affirm that the exhibition is “ap- ing witness has become a central obliga- proved” according to European standards. tion for memorial museums. Events and Using museum representations as a Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 105

therapeutic tool is a creative process a reconstruction of a national memory in which imposes meaning on otherwise in- terms of victimhood. Such reparative nar- coherent suffering and also a way of ratives of the terrible things that happened breaking the silence. The downside of this to the nation are conceptualised as trauma is that it may disempower the people by narratives in the museums (as per their institutionalising the position of victim names). To recognise one’s history as a (Judt 2007). The exhibitions may seem re- history of abuse or terror, or even as geno- liable and reasonable, but through this cide or a national holocaust, is a rejection process of recognition of individual suf- of responsibility. According to Andreas fering a new definition of victim has come Huyssen (2000:24), the Holocaust often into being, which only infrequently com- functions as metaphor for other traumatic plies with the victim status codified into histories and memories, and the global cir- law. Victim status is accorded simply culation of the Holocaust as a trope certi- against the background of an experience fies its use as a prism through which we of politically motivated injustice suffered may remember other instances of geno- in the past. Because the term “victim” cap- cide. 8 In his article “The Competition of tures the helpless psychological position Victims”, analysing memory politics in of a subject during torture and terror, the Ukraine, Wilfried Jilge has pointed to the construction of identity through victim tendency in post-communist countries to may enforce a continued victimisation construct “national Holocausts” and thus role. The problem is, on the one hand, that award their nations victim status and posi- this staging of victimisation may subject tion themselves as morally superior people to feelings of helplessness, and on (2006:51). This of course, is in conflict the other hand, that the historical context with the view that the role of the victim in and macro perspective vanish behind indi- the West undeniably belongs to the Jewish vidual fates and particular life worlds, as people. In Budapest as well as in Vilnius, pointed out by Niedermüller (1998:174). post-communist and Jewish museums Rather than foregrounding social and po- have been involved in conflicts over these litical contexts, the biographical perspec- issues. In the Terror House Museum in tive on history emphasises the human be- Budapest (founded in 2002 by right-wing ing as an individual, but the experiences of Prime Minister Orbán as part of his elec- the individual are also reduced to a gen- tion campaign) the exhibition portrays eral human suffering, a universal victim- Hungary solely as the victim of foreign hood. occupiers hardly recognising the contribu- tion that Hungarians themselves made to Political Oppression as a National the regimes in question. It is emphasised Holocaust throughout the exhibition that the Hungar- What apparently often happens while ex- ian population were victims of a forced plaining the ambiguities of history in exhi- socialisation with values that were totally bitions is that the new national identity di- alien to them, and it is overlooked that the rects the responsibility for failure away victims of Stalinism were often former from oneself. This strategy also feeds into collaborators with National Socialism. 106 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

The Jewish museum, on the other hand, that the historical Holocaust trauma is ma- questions the legitimacy of making a par- terialised in the post-communist museums allel between the Nazis’ short, but effec- with the use of artefacts such as barbed tive eradication of 600,000 Hungarian wire, shoes, and a cattle wagon to provide Jews, and 44 years of political repression a symbolic connection to the Holocaust. of the Hungarian population. The com- Such victims’ objects have almost become parison is not found to be appropriate, icons heavily influenced by the example even though it is in agreement with the of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial European ambition to remember in terms Museum, known for its display of camp of common human experiences. In line objects and items found at the site after be- with that, the Council of Europe has exer- ing plundered from the victims of mass cised its influence through the profession- extermination on their arrival: suitcases al body European Museum Forum, which with nametags still attached, shoes, hair- in 2004 nominated the Terror House Mu- brushes, mirrors, glasses, toothbrushes, seum as Museum of the Year. The judges’ jewellery, and clothes. The use of victims’ report on the museum reads: artefacts in the three museums of commu- The House of Terror in Budapest arouses strong nism is highly reminiscent of Holocaust feelings in its visitors, as it housed the headquar- displays; thus telling us that what hap- ters of the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross Party be- pened in Eastern Europe was genocide, fore the Second World War and later the political rather than the murder of political ene- secret police of the Communist regime. Each room has its own environment, with theatrical ef- mies. The statement on the historical na- fects mixed with original pieces, the philosophy ture of communism as terror and violence being closer to a contemporary art installation is based largely on a comparative evoca- than a conventional museum display with show- tion of fascism. The promoters of this in- cases and text panels. The uncompromising por- terpretation may believe that this com- trayal of recent history has generated strong po- parison establishes their history of com- litical debate in Hungary as many people who are still alive have experiences of the House of Terror, munist dictatorship as a genuine European both as interrogators and those who were brought event. to the building for questioning. It was felt by the EMF Committee that the presentations in the mu- seum were founded on sound research and suc- ceed in keeping alive the memory of a series of terrible political and social experiences in Hunga- ry without sensationalising them (http://www.eu- ropeanmuseumforum.org). In spite of criticism from the Jewish Dia- spora and many other institutions and in- dividuals, the memory of the Holocaust has come to play an important role in the The communist legacy is not only difficult, but post-communist discourse, in the scholar- can also serve as a resource in many ways. Per- haps the contours of a common communist herit- ly memory debate, as well as in the exhi- age industry are beginning to emerge? Commer- bition design in museums. An example is cial sign in Cracow. Photo: Lene Otto. Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 107

Communism as Cultural Heritage criticised, but what we also see now is that The considerable body of previous schol- past events are judged ever more harshly arship on memory of communism usually in historical and legal terms. Using the documented the disorderly status of evo- word “genocide” has become an accepted cation of the recent past and tried to ex- way of talking about and exhibiting re- plain this with reference to malfunctions pression in post-communist museums, to of historical consciousness in the region. characterise a broad spectrum of repres- In contrast, I have viewed the contem- sive actions such as political repression, porary politics of commemoration with Sovietification, deportations and collec- regard to communism in Eastern Europe tivisation. 9 When the past is remembered in relation to the historical and cultural- as genocide or terror, it closes up the pos- political conditions generated in Europe sibility to analyse and understand commu- as a whole. nism as a system, because such attempts In recent memory the historical period will inevitably be seen as a defence of between the Second World War and 1989 genocide. This interpretation strategy is has become a cultural wasteland charac- supported not least from the USA and is terised by crimes against humanity not exclusively an Eastern European phe- through revitalisation, instrumentalisa- nomenon. 10 And just to make sure, there tion, and transformation of the communist have been great wrongs in the past, of heritage, partly in order to meet the expec- course, and cultural history museums tations of how to memorialise and conse- should set out to understand what hap- quently to affirm a collective European pened and why, and not be satisfied with identity. On a national level, the promo- museums that replace event history with tion of cultural heritage as suffering may theatres of trauma. have some severe side effects such as dis- European cultural institutions have empowerment. Both Huyssen and Wil- taken upon themselves the task of turning liams point to the problem that, when entangled memories into shared memo- memory is exclusively understood in ries. When I have suggested in this article terms of pain, suffering, and loss, human that an element in the Europeanisation agency is denied. They also agree that the process is to create a shared memory, I do approach to history as trauma does not not claim that this means that a homo- help much to understand the political genising view of history is imposed on the layers of memory discourse in our time. member states. Rather, I have explored the And as noted by Williams: “The expan- political discussion about possible trans- sion of those who consider themselves af- national standards for national memory fected possibly adds to the viability of me- constructions. The EU and the Council morial museums worldwide, as they come promote standards on the basis of practical to serve a global, cosmopolitan culture communication and mutual negotiations sympathetic to loss” (Williams 2007:165). across borders. The standards are meant as The cultivation of an image of one’s pragmatic guidelines for international own people as victims of violence and the agreements concerning the peaceful coex- rejection of responsibility has often been istence of collective memories. My analy- 108 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

sis shows that, to arrive at these standards, exactly what Russia does by every means, what is needed, according to institutional for example, when it threatened to shut off rhetoric and activities, is the adoption of the gas pipelines because the Estonian humanistic values, referred to as European government removed the monument to the rather than universals, but also a deeper Red Army. Then there is the still unre- knowledge, recognition, and internalisa- solved conflict over the Russian exhibi- tion of the perspective of the respective tion in Auschwitz Museum, where the other. This also means that there is an ob- Polish museum director refuses to ac- vious need to identify and abolish prob- knowledge the Russians’ use of the word lematic and pernicious memory strategies “Soviet citizen” about people who had this that still persist or have been revived in re- label because their country had been occu- cent years. In European institutions it is pied. This is one of the dilemmas in the hoped that, if such cognitive practices are otherwise laudable ambition to build cul- introduced especially in border regions, it tural identities through cultural heritage, will have a helpful effect, making memory as a way to integrate the former commu- constructs more permeable and inclusive, nist countries. In spite of that, the third thereby neutralising the aggressive poten- wave of Europeanisation relies heavily on tial of nationalistic memory constructs. the apparently less fraught concept of On the other hand, it may also be prob- “shared cultural heritage” in politics and lematic if a sense of community at the Eu- practices of memory. Heritage and the ropean level must be founded on universal canonisation of history have thus achieved suffering or victimhood, which seems to a new high status, and are creating new re- be the case when an abstract term such as gimes of “truths” to create an imagined totalitarianism is put on the agenda as in community. the historical argument to make 23 August Lene Otto into a European Remembrance Day, or a Associate Professor, PhD European lieu de mémoire . The memory Faculty of Humanities Section of Ethnology of shared suffering – all the peoples of Eu- University of Copenhagen rope have suffered because of wars and Njalsgade 80, political decisions – can provide a power- DK-2300 Copenhagen S ful link, but it does not necessarily result e-mail: [email protected] in European cohesion, because one na- Notes tion’s victimhood must imply another na- 1 European Parliament resolution of 2 April tion’s role as perpetrator; and one and the 2009 on European conscience and totalitari- same person may play both roles, and the anism : victims or heroes of one period can be- http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/get- Doc.do?type=TA&reference=P6-TA-2009- come the perpetrators of the next. Another 0213&language=EN&ring=P6-RC-2009- consequence may be that in the process of 0165. constructing a common identity we create 2 The Council of Europe was founded on 5 May an Other who is the antithesis of Europe, 1949 by ten countries; it now has 47 mem- bers, including most countries of the former namely Russia, which must defend the So- Eastern Europe, Russia, all the Nordic coun- viet legacy against “Europe”, and this is tries, and Turkey. The Council is built on po- Lene Otto, A Common European Identity 109

litical-cultural criteria of belonging. Article 1 Communist holocaust, as against only 11 mil- of the Council’s founding document states lion victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Right- that membership in the Council rests and is wing organisations in the United States, repre- built on the “ideals and foundational princi- sented for example by the Heritage Founda- ples,” summarised as the “common heritage” tion, have also worked to get the United States of its members. The Council of Europe seeks to erect a statue to commemorate “victims of to develop throughout Europe common and communism, tragically numbering more than democratic principles based on the European 100 million, struck down in an unprecedented Convention on Human Rights and other refer- imperial communist holocaust through con- ence texts on the protection of individuals. quest, revolution, civil wars, purges, wars by 3 That Halbwachs today is esteemed as the proxy, and other violent means”. In 2007, a pioneer of social memory studies may be due monument, “Victims of Communism Memo- to his constructivist stance, and it also ex- rial in Washington DC, was unveiled. plains why his concept is considered useful for scholars who seek to explore memory as a References process rather than an essence. Agamben, Giorgio 1999: Remnants of Auschwitz. 4 An agreement officially titled the “Treaty of The Witness and the Archive . New York: Zone Non-Aggression between Germany and the Books. Soviet Union”, signed in Moscow 23 August Anderson, Benedict 1991: Imagined Communi- 1939. It was a non-aggression pact between ties. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but in Nationalism . Revised Edition. London & New addition the treaty included a secret protocol York: Verso. dividing Northern and Eastern Europe into Antze, Paul & Michael Lambek (eds.) 1996: German and Soviet spheres of influence, re- Tense Past. Cultural Essays in Trauma and spectively. Memory . New York & London: Routledge. 5 “The Prague Declaration on European Con- Apor, Péter 2010: Eurocommunism. Commemo- science and Communism” (also known as the rating Communism in Contemporary Eastern Prague Declaration) was signed on 3 June Europe. In A European Memory? Contested 2008 by several conservative European politi- Histories and Politics of Remembrance , ed. cians, former political prisoners, and histor- Malgorzata Pakier & Bo Stråth. New York: ians, including the prominent Vaclav Havel. Berghahn Books. The declaration called for condemnation of Connerton, Paul 1989: How Societies Remember . and education about communist crimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6 From: “Explanations of votes” in “Texts Council of Europe publications 2001: Forward adopted” on the European Parliament’s web- Planning. The Function of Cultural Heritage in site, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/. a Changing Europe . 7 Council of Europe Framework Convention on Council of Europe publications 2010: The Role of the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society, Culture and Cultural Heritage in Conflict Pre- Faro, 27 October 2005 (“the Faro Conven- vention, Resolution, and Reconciliation. The tion”). Council of Europe Approach . 8 The Ukrainian parliament, for example, has Eyal, Gil 2004: Identity and Trauma. Two Forms adopted a law recognising the Holodomor of the Will to Memory. History and Memory 16, famine in the country in 1932–33 as genocide 1: 5–36. implemented by the Soviet. Fogu, C., & W. Kansteiner 2006: The Politics of 9 According to the legal definition of the UN Memory and the Poetics of History. In The Poli- Convention, genocide is “a systematic effort tics of Memory in Postwar Europe , ed. R. N. to eradicate the whole of or a large part of a Lebow, W. Kansteiner & C. Fogu. Durham & group of people solely by reference to their London: Duke University Press. group membership”, whereby the elimination Halbwachs, Maurice 1992: On Collective Memo- of individuals with regard to political affilia- ry . Edited and translated by Lewis A. Coser, tion or belief is not covered in the convention. Chicago & London: University of Chicago 10 American media and conservative organisa- Press. tions often repeat that 100 million died in the Hall, Stuart 1994: Cultural Identity and Diaspora. 110 Lene Otto, A Common European Identity

In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theo- Kundera, Milan 1963: The Tragedy of Central Eu- ry , ed. Patrick Williams & Laura Chrisman. rope. The New York Review of Books . Cambridge: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Lebow, R. N., W. Kansteiner & C. Fogu (eds.) Hochschild, Adam 2003: The Unquiet Ghost. Rus- 2006: The Politics of Memory in Postwar Eu- sians Remember Stalin . New York: Mariner rope . Durham & London: Duke University Books. Press. Humphrey, Michael (2002): The Politics of Lennon, John & Malcolm Foley 2000: Dark Atrocity and Reconciliation. From Terror to Tourism . London: Continuum. Drama . London: Routledge. Light, Duncan 2000: Gazing on communism. Huyssen, Andreas 2003: Present Pasts. Urban Heritage Tourism and Post-communist Iden- Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory . Stan- tities in Germany, Hungary and Romania. ford: Stanford University Press. Tourism Geographies 2(2):157–176. Huyssen, Andreas 2000: Present Pasts. Media, MacMillan, Margaret 2009: The Uses and Abuses Politics, Amnesia. Public Culture 12.1: 21–38. of History . New York: Profile Books. Jilge, Wilfried 2006: The Politics of History and Niedermüller, Peter 1998: History, Past, and the the Second World War in Post-Communist Post-Socialist Nation. Ethnologia Europaea 28: Ukraine. In Divided Historical Cultures? World 169–182. War II and Historical Memory in Soviet and Nora, Pierre 1984, 1986, 1992: Les Lieux de Mé- Post-Soviet Ukraine , ed. Wilfried Jilge & Ste- moire . Paris: Éditions Gallimard. fan Troebst. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Ost- Novick, Peter 2000: The Holocaust and Collective europas 54, H. 1, 51–82. Memory. The American Experience . Blooms- Judt, Tony 2007: Postwar. A History of Europe bury. since 1945 . London: Pimlico. Otto, Lene 2008: Kommunismens eftermæle. Mu- Karlsson, Klas-Göran 2010: The Uses of History seer og erindringspolitik i Østeuropa. Nordisk and the Third Wave of Europeanisation. In A Museologi 1–2:5–32. European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance , ed. Malgorzata Otto, Lene 2009a: Kommunismens ubekvemme Pakier & Bo Stråth, pp. 38–55. New York: kulturarv. Kamp, karneval og kontemplation. In Berghahn Books. Materialiseringer. Nye perspektiver på mate- Kavanagh, Gaynor 2000: Forgiving and Forget- rialitet og kulturanalyse . ed. Tine Damsholt, ting: Museums and Trauma. In Museum 2000. Dorthe Gert Simonsen & Camilla Mordhorst, Confirmation or Challenge? ed. Per-Uno pp. 143–174. Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Ågren. ICOM Sweden, Swedish Travelling Ex- Otto, Lene 2009b: Post-Communist Museums. hibitions and the Swedish Museum Associa- Terrorspaces and Traumascapes. In The Power tion. of the Object. Museums and World War II , ed. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 2002: The Mu- Esben Kjeldbæk, pp. 324–361. Edinburgh: Mu- seum as Catalyst. In Museum 2000. Confirma- seumsEtc. tion or Challenge? ed. Per-Uno Ågren. ICOM Pakier, Malgorzata & Bo Stråth (eds.) 2010: A Sweden, Swedish Travelling Exhibitions and European Memory? Contested Histories and the Swedish Museum Association. Politics of Remembrance . New York: Berghahn Knigge, Volkhard & Ulrich Mählert (eds.) 2005: Books. Der Kommunismus im Museum. Formen der Scribner, Charity 2005: Requiem for Communism. Ausinandersetzung in Deutschland und Ostmit- Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. teleuropa . Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Ver- Shore, Cris 2000: Building Europe. The Cultural lag. Politics of European Integration . London: Kubik, Ian 2007: Review Essay. Historical Mem- Routledge. ory and the End of Communism. Journal of Smith, Kathleen E. 1996: Remembering Stalin’s Cold War Studies 9(2), pp. 127–133. Victims . Ithaca: Cornell University Press. The Ephemeral Act of Walking Random Reflections on Moving in Landscapes of Memory (Loss) By Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch

Human activities become inscribed within a land- Locality does not equal stasis. In fact, scape such that every cliff, large tree, stream, motility is an essential way of perceiving swampy area becomes a familiar place. Daily pas- and of developing a sense of locality. sages through the landscape become biographic encounters for individuals, recalling traces of past Movement makes us aware not only of our activities and previous events and the reading of bodies but also of how our bodies interact signs – a split log here, a marker stone there with phenomena in the environment. The (Tilley 1994:27). ability to find one’s way and to know how to move within a place are significant Much has been written and said about the factors for feeling at home and feeling symbiotic relationship between memory attuned (Österlund-Pötzsch 2010). The and landscape. Some studies have drawn geographer Edward Relph (1976) talked attention to the ability of landscapes to act about this condition as feeling inside a as storage and prompter of memories, place, i.e. a sense of being enclosed and at while others have been more concerned ease. The feeling of outsideness, on the with how landscape features long gone are other hand, is marked by strangeness and preserved in memory. In this article I aim alienation. As individuals experience to discuss a few aspects of the relationship varying combinations and levels of inside- between memory and landscape by intro- ness and outsideness, different places take ducing a third element – that of move- on different identities for them. ment. In his seminal article “How to Get from Travelling and moving have always Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of been part of human existence. However, Time” (1996), the philosopher Edward S. in modern times there seems to be an ever Casey distinguished three kinds of bodily increasing number of people in transit, in- motion pertaining to place. The first case cluding immigrants, refugees, migrant is staying in place . Here the body stays in workers, tourists, and international busi- one place with only the minimum amount nessmen. In an article dealing with the of movement, such as a slight rotation of ambivalence and tension that can be a part the head. The second case of moving with- of transnational travel, Tom O’Dell in a place entails movement within a cir- (2004) uses the term cultural kinesthesis cumscribed space, such as walking around as a way of exposing the moral frame- in a room or a courtyard. Thirdly, moving works and interpretations surrounding between places denotes travel between mobility. Travel and mobility, O’Dell ar- different places (Casey 1996:23). It is the gues, are part and parcel of daily life and second instance of movement that is my identity production. This emphasis on our predominant interest in this article. Even sense of motion, I believe, is crucial to un- though the examples discussed here most- derstanding the manifold ways in which ly concern places larger than a single we construct basic ideas of home, belong- room, they can still be considered as cases ing, and purpose. However, my intention of movement within a place. The sense of in this article is not to look at transnational being-in-a-place is not solely connected movement but to deal with movement in with small localities, but may also refer to the “micro” perspective of place. larger areas, as might be experienced

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 112 Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking

when taking a walk in a vast forest. Nei- well as the loss of, or radical change of, ther does an intimate experience of locali- places. The point of departure is the ty need to be connected with the vicinity premise that, through our spatial prac- of home or everyday life, as is often tices, we create and recreate landscapes presumed. We may even travel great dis- and that landscapes are always multi- tances in order to experience one particu- dimensional. In addition, walking in lar locality. landscapes involves the weaving and tell- Motion indicates change. Wanting to ing of stories, not least biographical ones. experience new places is a powerful mo- tive for travel. But we also travel to re- Catching the Ephemeral member – we return to places connected Those walks did now like a returning spring with our past or visit places of collective Come back on me again. When first I made remembrance or touristic nostalgia. It is Once more the circuit of our little lake not necessary, of course, to travel far in or- If ever happiness hath lodged with man der to experience change in landscape. That day consummate happiness was mine. Even if we live our whole lives on the From The Prelude (Wordsworth 1805:132). same street, a time span of fifty years In artistic expression, the act of walking might have changed our neighbourhood has been a source of inspiration, a method almost beyond recognition. of working, as well as a motif in itself. In this article, I will discuss a few Perhaps this was most remarkably the case eclectically chosen aspects of the ephem- during the late eighteenth and the early erality, as well as the traces, of moving in nineteenth centuries, when a particular different landscapes of memory. My ex- sense of walking became a prominent fea- amples stem from my own fieldwork on ture of the aesthetics of the time. Thinkers walking practices 1 as well as a selection and writers such as Rousseau, Goethe, of artistic and literary sources. I will look Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, at how walking can connect us with the Hazlitt, and Keats, to mention but a few, historical layers of places, how land- were not only dedicated walkers but also scapes in some cases are deliberately wrote dedicatedly about their walking. charged with meaning, and how the Wordsworth, in particular, has become spaces “in-between” may offer opportu- associated with a peripatetic mode of Ro- nities for personal interpretations and mantic literature, in which the walker is leaving of traces. My aim is to acknowl- placed in the same ideological rural land- edge how the physical act of walking scape (previously) inhabited by the farmer may create landscapes of memories, how (Wallace 1993:11, 166). A popular motif we experience and remember our sur- in Romantic writing was a return to land- roundings from the unique perspective of scapes of the past. In poems such as our own bodies, and how bodily memory Wordsworth’s “Lines Written a Few is essential for both individual and social Miles above Tintern Abbey” and Cole- memory. I am also interested in cases of ridge’s “This Lime-Tree Bower My change and loss – such as the loss of Prison”, the poet-walkers find joy and memory, failing bodily capabilities, as strength in their vivid memories of land- Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking 113

scapes they have previously traversed (see Perhaps this theme was interpreted most e.g. Poetzsch 2006:144). poignantly by the German artist Caspar A related and likewise dominant theme David Friedrich, whose well known of Romantic poetry is the reconciliation of paintings often depict a solitary wander- nature and person. The physical act of er, or wanderers, seen from behind as walking, here, works as a reconnection they direct the viewer’s gaze to the land- with nature as well as a reconnection with scape they are contemplating (Siegel a communal past (Wallace 1993:17). 1978:13f., 24f., 26). Poetry for Wordsworth is a landscape of Towards the end of the nineteenth cen- memory, as the literary critic John Elder tury, walking as a mode of artistic aesthet- observed. It is within this landscape an in- ics emerged again. However, this time the dividual may discover a circuit of recon- landscape was decidedly urban. In the ciliation (Elder 1985:10). The actual pro- 1860s, the flâneur was described by the cess of walking connects the physical Parisian poet Charles Baudelaire as a de- reality with the imaginary: tached observer of city life. Over a half a Just as the wastelands and the wilderness are century later, the literary critic Walter reconciled through the earth’s circuit of soil- Benjamin saw the flâneur as a figure of the building decay, the landscape and the imagination past. Nevertheless, by tracing the geogra- may be united through the process of walking. The phy of flânerie he came to develop a sim- mind’s flicker of attention from the earth to its ilar method of observing and registering own associations seems on one level to have an in- the layers of past and present city life escapable binary quality. But mental sunlight and clouds are also born out under a larger sky in the (Tester 1994). Benjamin and other meandering circuit of the poet’s walk. Walking flâneuristic chroniclers of the rapidly becomes an emblem of wholeness, comprehend- changing society of the 1920s and 1930s ing both the person’s conscious steps and pauses held a deep fascination for the cityscapes and the path beneath his rising and falling feet they explored through their meandering. (Elder 1985:93). Anke Gleber has suggested that “the The idea of walking as a way of commu- flaneur is the precursor of a particular nicating and becoming one with nature form of inquiry that seeks to read the his- was not confined to the works of English tory of culture from its public spaces” Romantic poets. That someone would (Gleber 1999:4). 2 suddenly be overcome by wanderlust The relationship between landscapes, and consequently set course into a pri- memory and walking has continued to be meval forest was a common scenario in a source of inspiration and investigation in contemporary German literature. Walk- contemporary art. One of the best-known ing was considered a paramount means representatives of this is the English artist of engaging in the sublimity of nature as Richard Long, whose work, covering over well as the material traces of history, four decades, has walking in nature as its both central concerns of the Romantic main theme. One of Long’s first and per- Movement. In art, the motif of wander- haps most famous works of art is A Line ers admiring a spectacular waterfall or a Made by Walking (1967) in which the art- gloomy ruin gained notable popularity. ist had walked back and forth on a grassy 114 Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking

field until a clear straight path appeared. Leaving Traces In other works, he has in various ways While walking is in itself a transitory act, documented his walking in different types it does at times leave traces. Certain land- of landscapes. Circles of stones or twigs scapes are more visually revealing in this are a recurrent geometrical theme. Long respect than others. Thick mud and wet himself describes his art as consisting of sand, for example, will show the foot- “the very act of walking itself” (Careri prints of traversing walkers for a while, 2002:122). However, in his works it is the whereas a concrete pavement usually tells traces of his walks that we behold. Still, in us very little (litter and graffiti excluded) the eye of the viewer, these traces manage of who has traversed it. With a snowfall to capture the ephemeral act of walking, everything changes. In a landscape cov- since, in the words of the anthropologist ered in snow it becomes very clear what Tim Ingold, “thanks to their solidity, fea- routes people favour and where someone tures of the landscape remain available for has chosen to take a shortcut or walked inspection long after the movement that off-road. In places frequented by many gave rise to them has ceased” (Ingold pedestrians, pathways will soon form that 2000:198). most people subsequently will conform to

In a snow-covered landscape both popular pathways and individual routes will clearly show. Photo: Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch. Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking 115

for easier walking. Snow gives us away, it walking a spiritual dimension (Österlund- tells stories. But these are narratives that Pötzsch, fieldwork material 2007–2011; melt away. As with the footprints in the see also Schrire 2006; Peelen & Jansen sand, a rain shower will soon erase all 2007). tracks. The Camino is a landscape of memory. There is something intriguing about The idea of connecting with pilgrims past footprints and their evidencing of some- as well as pilgrims future is a central one having walked by (cf. Ingold 2004: theme of the pilgrimage. Many pilgrims 333). The allure extends to the common wish to leave some kind of physical trace image of walking in someone’s footsteps. 3 of their own walking, for example by This imagery is often evoked in the con- building a pile of stones as a route marker text of old pilgrim routes, not least in the by the road or by adding a stone to an al- revived and increasingly popular pilgrim- ready existing marker (Peelen & Jansen age to Santiago de Compostela, el Camino 2007:83). Rituals such as this reconfirm de Santiago . The example of the Camino the Camino de Santiago as a unique space, might seem to concern travelling between which entails movement through histori- places towards a goal. However, for pil- cally layered places rather than movement grims the Camino constitutes a separate from one place to another. space apart from the world “outside” (Pee- len & Jansen 2007:79, 81). Ulrica, a young woman from Helsinki, commented on her Santiago pilgrimage experience by saying, “the goal was not paramount for me, but the actual road where I walked and what I experienced en route”. In this, she reflects a general ten- dency among present-day Camino pil- grims to emphasize the act of walking rather than the arrival as the “true” goal of the pilgrimage. Not all Camino pilgrims make the pilgrimage for religious reasons. Nevertheless, in interviews many modern pilgrims still described the awareness that they were walking a medieval pilgrimage route as powerful. Siv, another Finnish Santiago pilgrim, remarked that to her one of the most fascinating aspects of the pil- grimage was thinking about the many The ubiquitous shell iconography found along the people who had done the same before her. pilgrim route to Santiago enhances the experience Some pilgrims even felt that walking in of the Camino as a space of its own. In the photo, the feet of a group of pilgrims in Sarria, about the footsteps of previous pilgrims created 118 km from Santiago. Photo: Susanne Öster- a bond through the ages that lent the act of lund-Pötzsch. 116 Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking

Often walked routes in nature not only frequently sparked riots and violence be- make footprints but visible footpaths, tween Protestant and Catholic groups. The which stand as clear declarations of habit- marches are justified by their proponents ual patterns of movement. The practice of as a demonstration of cultural heritage. continually walking a path is simultan- The anthropologist Dominic Bryan has eously a way of securing one’s right to use pointed out that the parades are in them- that path. In common law, and other cus- selves a fighting ground for political am- tomary laws, active pedestrianism has the bitions. The symbolical and political func- power to maintain a public right of way. tion of the marches has changed through- Subsequently, the practice of walking may out the years depending on the interests of preserve parts of old landscapes against different participating factions (Bryan change and can serve as a way to maintain 2000:6f., 155). traditional borders (Wallace 1993:10; Another recent example of where walk- Adams 2001:192; Olwig 2008:87). ing along and across boundaries has be- Performative acts of walking, such as come part of political rituals can be found processions and inspection rounds, are of- in the Basque country. Nationalist and ten used to ritually demarcate borders. In pro-independence movements have ar- Britain, and elsewhere, there are old cus- ranged large marches to cross the French- toms pertaining to walking along bounda- Spanish border as a symbolic statement ries, such those of parishes, as a way of regarding the unity of the greater Basque keeping the memories of the boundaries country. As a way of counter-demonstra- alive – an important matter in times when tion, the authorities similarly use ritual as maps were rare. Traditional perambula- a marker of territorial sovereignty. Bi- tions, known as “Beating the Bounds”, are annually the boundary stones along the still carried out in some English and Pyrenean borderline are checked in a rite American parishes annually, mostly dur- involving state representatives from both ing Rogation Week or on Ascension Day the French and the Spanish side. This re- (Hole 1944:57f.; Ryden 1993:26ff.). gional demonstration refers back to the Territorialization of social control is ex- traditional Basque ritual of walking along ercised by the police patrolling boundaries the village limits as a reconfirmation of but also, employing the same strategy, by boundaries (Leizaola 2000:41ff.). Through gang members striving to exert their influ- the physical act of walking, specific vi- ence over a neighbourhood (see Gieryn sions of a landscape may be reinforced. 2000:480). Marching “traditional routes” The performances and footprints of ritual as a means to maintain or contest borders movement act to keep memories alive and make political statements is not un- while at the same time effectively con- common in places of conflict. During the firming place identity. controversial annual marching season, Protestant parades are routed through Remembering through Landscape Catholic districts in several Northern Irish To at least some extent every real place can be re- towns. The parades, which have been ar- membered, partly because it is unique, but partly ranged since the eighteenth century, have because it has affected our bodies and generated Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking 117

enough associations to hold it in our personal ously providing mnemonic access to a col- worlds (Bloomer & Moore 1977:107). lective past (see Zerubavel 1994:94). The In her study of the classical art of memory, narration is aimed at visitors as well as the the historian Frances A. Yates (1966) dis- city’s inhabitants. As these types of en- cussed how skilled public speakers in an- vironments are best experienced on foot, it tiquity created striking images in their is hardly surprising to find that attempts to minds which they then visualized in famil- increase pedestrianism have become part iar environments such as a specific street of developing the social and cultural capi- or a building. By mentally moving tal of many cities. Certain districts, such through these places and regarding the en- as “old towns” and gentrified harbour visioned scenes, chains of associations areas, often tend towards the ultra-per- would appear which helped the rhetor to formative and take on the qualities of recall speeches and orations of great large open-air museums. 4 length. The method is described in detail M. Christine Boyer has described the in the manuscript Rhetorica ad Heren- contemporary city as the City of Spec- nium from the first century BC. tacle, reduced to the play of imagery con- The art of memory is a highly devel- nected with the selling of lifestyles. Fol- oped cognitive mnemonic method. How- lowing Maurice Halbwachs, she contrasts ever, the same basic principles that ensure history, a uniformly fixed past, with col- its efficiency are at work when an ordi- lective memory, i.e. the multiple memo- nary stroll suddenly becomes a trip down ries that exist as long as they are part of memory lane – details in the landscape living experience of a group or individual. arouse associations with narratives and Our personal memories of places visited, concepts. A similar technique was used, Boyer contends, arise from a horizontal for example, by sixteenth-century Italian juxtaposition of different images, not one landscape architects, who created grand synthetically produced vision (Boyer villa gardens saturated with allegorical 1996:32, 51, 66f., 375). messages contained in statues, fountains, Urban architecture and monuments are and monuments. Substantial learning was not the only features of landscapes that required by the visiting strollers to inter- take part in processes of remembrance. pret and associate correctly while making The Danish anthropologist Kirsten Hast- their way along the garden path (Schama rup has studied the Icelandic landscape as 1995:275). In a much less coherent man- a part of local memory and a sense of Ice- ner, this narrative effect is often aimed for landicness. She points out that, more so in the creation of city spaces. Monuments than material structures, it is mental im- are intended to give testimony about im- ageries and social practices that link mod- portant people and events in the city’s his- ern Icelanders with their ancestors who tory, and the architecture of official build- walked along the same paths. The social ings conveys messages of power and func- and the natural world constitute a whole tion. City spaces are strategically created (Hastrup 2008:53, 73). to be admired and, to act as a thematic Moving in the landscape on foot physi- commentary on the city while simultane- cally connects us with the earth and cre- 118 Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking

ates an “emblem of wholeness”, to refer ries and storytelling. Seemingly neutral back to the words of John Elder. In mo- buildings, streets, signs and other objects tion, the kinaesthetic interplay of tactile, in the cityscape are inscribed with mul- sonic, and visual senses fuels the per- tiple stories. However, the messages are ceptual engagement of emplacement ambivalent and may be interpreted and (Feld 2005:181). A strong sense of place read differently by different people. How is likely to influence our memory of we experience places is largely dependent events. This would be supported by neuro- on our previous knowledge, collective biological studies that show long-term memory, and personal history. Places are memory and spatial navigation both to be always understood in relation to each connected with the same part of the brain, other (ibid.:27). The longer we have lived the hippocampus. Experiments that meas- somewhere, the more we become aware of ure the way in which memories of places the palimpsest-like quality of that place. that are formed during exploration of an Knowledge and memory can help us read environment and then later retrieved have some of the layers of stories inscribed in demonstrated that memory of place is not the landscape, even layers no longer vis- composed of isolated locations but rather ible (cf. de Certeau 1988:108f.). sequences of connected locations (Stern- Are memories always part of our berg & Wilson 2006:239f., 241). There- everyday movements? In fieldwork on fore, it is perhaps in the act of walking that everyday walking practices in the city of we most vividly realize the decisive role Helsinki, most of the interviewed walk- of place for memory and the embodiment ers felt that whether a walk became a of memory. “walk in memory” depended on the set- Places connect the body with memory ting, the company one had, and one’s (Casey 1987:182). Even our appreciation mood. Thea grew up in central Helsinki of landscapes seems to be longer lasting in the 1940s but has lived most of her life when connected not only with aesthetic in a residential area in the western part of pleasure but also with memories of human town. She walks daily and mostly in the incidents (Tuan 1974:95). Memories be- vicinity of her home. Although she has come tied to specific landscape details. In lived in the area for over forty years, she this way, places, and the patterns of move- does not connect her neighbourhood with ment connecting them, become linked memories. “History is new here. It is the with the creation of personal biographies. old things that one prefers to remember,” But places also develop their own histo- she explained. However, certain places ries based on the events that have taken where she lived as a child always make place there (Tilley 1994:27, see also Le- her recall things: “It is still the case that wicka 2008:213). if I go walking in the southern parts of Not even in the human-made landscape town I have my memories there.” Vivi, of cities can every aspect be officially who also has moved away from her child- controlled and managed. The city is where hood environment in central Helsinki, people live their lives and, consequently, feels the same. She regularly meets up constitutes the stage for subjective memo- with an old friend to walk around the Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking 119

The landscapes of our child- hood tend to hold special im- portance for our reminiscing. Here, two young boys in a Helsinki streetscape in the early 1900s. The Folk Culture Archives, The Society of Swedish Literature in Fin- land. Photo: Gustaf Sand- berg.

Kaivopuisto Park. “It is terribly nostal- woman in her mid-thirties, described how gic. I like walking there very much,” she she had walked through a residential area commented. The experience that our she and her husband had moved from a childhood tends to create the strongest year previously: images in memory is observed in the Then it hit me very powerfully that we used to live mnemonics guide Rhetorica ad Heren- here – and now we don’t […] and suddenly I re- nium . “Things immediate to our eye or membered a lot of things about what it was like to ear we commonly forget, incidents of our go to the playground with my two-year-old daugh- childhood we often remember best,” the ter. Then it just felt like “we are exhausted and we anonymous author of this classic work have to go to the playground”, you know, the stated ( Rhetorica ad Herennium , III, drudgery of everyday life. Now it all of a sudden xxii). took on a golden shimmer as I was walking there. It was like a closed chapter. However, places that are tied to periods relatively close in time may arouse nostal- Revisiting places where we have lived not gic feelings and memories if they stop be- only makes us aware of the passage of ing part of our everyday lives. Henna, a time, but often also involves a meeting 120 Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking

with a former self – connected with a cer- (Melberg 2005:106). However, one tain time, place and set of circumstances should be careful not to turn porosity into (see Wilson 1997:128, 131). Environ- a picturesque vision of authenticity, warns ments in which we move on a daily basis the literary critic Svetlana Boym. Porosity do not seem to evoke memories to the exists in any city, reflecting time and his- same extent as places revisited. As we go tory as well as techniques of urban surviv- about our everyday lives, the historical al. Boym describes porosity as a spatial layers of landscape may be present in our metaphor for time. Because of the improv- minds but are not always foregrounded isational character of porosity, attempts to unless something draws our attention to create total visions of the city always aim them. In these cases our place memory to destroy it (Boym 2001:77, 80). In mod- works first and foremost as tacit place ern city planning there is a tendency to knowledge (cf. e.g. Gardiner 2006), in produce gentrified and sanitized city other words, an awareness of matters such spaces. In this aesthetic framework, the as where to best cross the street, where we downgraded, the devalued and the disturb- can take a short-cut across a backyard and ing become a nuisance and are expelled what park trails tend to get flooded in from sight and social sensibilities (Boyer heavy rain. Although necessarily depend- 1996: 411f.). ent on our ability to remember, everyday But even the most well-planned cities know-how is seldom perceived as memo- contain cracks and openings. Certain as- ry. If we are separated from the environ- pects and places are disregarded, while ment in time and space, this taken-for- others are not used in the intended way granted place knowledge may receive (Saltzman 2009a:12f.). The Swedish eth- memory status, and may even become tied nologist Katarina Saltzman has studied to specific events and develop into narra- the everyday life that takes place in urban tives. fringe areas. Saltzman notes that fringe areas tend to be seen as mundane to the Gaps, Loopholes, and Porosity point that they often are completely over- “There is a crack in everything. That’s looked as landscapes. However, peri- how the light gets in,” reads a lyric by the pheral places may have great significance Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard to individual people and be closely con- Cohen. 5 Cracks, gaps, loopholes and the nected with life stories and memories. The spaces in-between have fascinated many fact that fringe areas often do not have any observers of movement in urban spaces. designated function opens these places up In the essay “Naples”, which Walter Ben- for an array of different activities and in- jamin wrote with Asja Lacis, the term po- terpretations (Saltzman 2009b:24, 26). rosity is used to describe a lack of borders Due to the attempts on the part of city the authors experienced during a visit to authorities to control public spaces and Naples. They found a tendency of dissolv- create city density, many people have ing borders between the old and the new, come to perceive in-between and over- between finished and decayed buildings looked places as “free-zones”, filled with and between the private and the public potential for creativity and change (cf. Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking 121

Saltzman 2009a:14; Zintchenko 2009:83). the dimension in which random historical Individuals thus take advantage of the evidence might unexpectedly turn our city porous, multidimensional aspect of cities walk into a visit to a landscape of memo- and make their own traces in the land- ry. scape. The way people organize their own lives while moving around in their every- day environments has been described by the ethnologist Elisabeth Högdahl among others. Following de Certeau’s theory of how people use their everyday practices tactically, she outlines how people in two very different places, Malmö in Sweden and Cape Town in South Africa, use loop- holes in order to negotiate city space. In a lucid way, Högdahl’s study show how city landscapes are made through an intricate interplay between material conditions, prevailing rhythms, and people’s memo- ries and knowledge connected with the place (Högdahl 2003). A city is always more than its official surface. The literary critic Rita Paqvalén, co-author for a cultural-historical city guide to the Helsinki of women ( Kvinnor- nas Helsingfors , 2010), points out that the The artist Heidi Lunabba leaving an ephemeral trace in the form of a portrait in flour as part of city consists of a multitude of layers and a guided walking tour based on the cultural- voices, even if many of them are sup- historical guidebook Kvinnornas Helsingfors pressed or marginalized (cf. Zerubavel (“Women’s Helsinki”, 2010). Photo: Susanne 1999:84). Getting to know a place and Österlund-Pötzsch. moving in it is a way to become aware of the gaps. Paqvalén underlines: “The more The Fluidity of Landscapes one learns, the more one sees that there “Now where is Regulus, or Romulus, or are layers, and that there is always some- Remus? The previous Rome stands only thing seeping out from beneath the present in name, we hold bare names,” 6 remarked official façade” (interview 12 May 2008; the twelfth-century Benedictine monk see also Österlund-Pötzsch 2010). Bernard of Cluny rhetorically in his satir- The marginalized may find refuge in ical poem De Contemptu Mundi . What is the porosity of landscapes. Porosity con- in a name? Is the name the only thing that tains the graffiti on the wall, the ware- is eternal about the Eternal City, or would house that is no longer in use, and the old Rome by any other name still be Rome? barn that has not yet been torn down to While Karl-Marx-Stadt likely is perceived make way for new development. This is as the same town as Chemnitz by its in- 122 Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking

habitants, the previous city of Königsberg war, people were killed on the battlefield, can arguably be said to share little more in death camps, or as civilian “casual- than geographical location with the ties”. Individual buildings and whole dis- present city of Kaliningrad. If one visits tricts were razed to the ground. An exten- Place de la Bastille in Paris one finds an sive displacement of people was another opera house and a large roundabout cen- of the many profound consequences of tred on the July Column but no remains of the war. Many people had their houses the old fortress intimately connected with destroyed or were otherwise forced to the city’s history. leave their homes behind as national bor- Names are an attempt to fix things. The ders were redrawn. One of the areas act of naming a place is a means of con- heavily affected by forced migration was trolling, organizing, and exhorting power. the region of Silesia in present-day Po- Bestowing an official name is consequent- land, which up until the end of the Sec- ly a highly political act, reflecting contem- ond World War had a substantial German porary ideals and conditions. Moreover, population. The Silesian Germans were place-names are often used to commemo- among the approximately 14 million eth- rate. The street, square, or park that is nic Germans displaced from their homes named after a specific person, or other in Eastern Europe to be resettled in either phenomenon, is simultaneously trans- of the two post-war German states. In formed into a space-as-monument. But we many parts, the resettlers were unwel- also use place-names to orientate our- come and seen as foreigners (Lewicka selves in landscapes. Colloquial naming 2008; Lundén 2009). The previous Ger- practices often reflect local history and man communities in Silesia were for the place identity. In a fundamental way most part repopulated by Poles from the names create landscapes, the archaeolo- eastern parts of Poland who had lost their gist Christopher Tilley observed. Place- homes through the Soviet takeover. The names become captured in social dis- Polish migrants arrived in houses and courses and act as mnemonics for the his- farms organized in a strange and unfamil- torical actions of individuals and groups iar way. There was an extensive cultural (Tilley 1994:18f.; see also Hastrup 2008: gap between the new settlers and the 61). We relate to place-names on many land. This gap was not easily bridged as different levels. Michel de Certeau gave the German communities, who could the example of how our walking can be have acted as mediators to the technical controlled by proper names by referring to and symbolic meanings of the landscape, a friend who during his visits in Paris were gone. Moreover, there was a preva- found himself drifting towards street lent belief among the settlers that the ter- names that reminded him of his home ritorial changes were not final and that it town (de Certeau 1988:104). did not pay to invest in the present home. The Second World War caused drastic The first generation of settlers thus failed changes in the European social land- to reconstruct their communities in the scape. Places not only changed names, new territory, which resulted in “non- they changed populations. During the communities” marked by a general feel- Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking 123

ing of indifference (Mach 2001:68; Le- construction was straight and she had hap- wicka 2008:209). The memories and at- pily trundled along. tachment to the land was missing, the Seemingly contradictory, the first revis- landscape devoid of meaningful layers. it to their old home was perceived as tragic The sisters Marta and Anna were born because nothing had changed . The traces in the small town of Strehlen (Polish of human interest and maintenance were Strzelin) in the Prussian province of lacking and the house was in decay. The Lower Silesia in the 1930s. The family, home was no longer cared for and the spir- consisting of the parents and eight chil- it of the place was seen as missing. The dren, was forced to leave their home second visit, on the other hand, was de- twice, the first time in 1945 and the sec- scribed as a positive experience precisely ond time in 1947, when they left for good because there had been change. In a man- to be resettled in GDR. The old house was ner of speaking, things had now reverted taken over by a Polish family whose home to how it used to be – the home was seen had been destroyed by the Soviet army. to be in good hands and taken care of. De- Marta and Anna returned to visit Strehlen spite describing their old home as a in 1980 and then a second time together “closed chapter” in their lives, seeing the with their brother twenty-eight years later house in good condition still made the sis- in 2008. Anna was too young to have any ters happy. Marta was reminded of a time personal memories of the old house, but as a child when she witnessed the house she had seen it in small black and white being built – thus connecting her old photos. Her impression on the first visit memories of the house with the present was that the house looked just like in the owners’ reconstructions. pictures but completely dilapidated. Marta When Marta returned to her childhood concurred; the first visit was a great disap- home thirty-three years after having left pointment. “They had done nothing to it, her first reaction was that everything stave off the decay,” she said. “Nothing seemed like a miniature. Their old house had changed, it seemed like even the cur- was smaller and the distances between tains were the same. No paintwork.” How- the houses in the street were much short- ever, the second visit turned out to be a er than she remembered. The place was pleasant surprise. The second generation, familiar but also strangely dissimilar. the children of the family, had now taken over the place and had done extensive re- Bodily Memory construction and renovation work. “It was All experiences in life, especially experiences of as if they had won the lottery and invested movement and settlement in three-dimensional it all in the house,” Marta remarked. Many space, are dependent on the unique form of the memories returned as she stood watching ever present body (Bloomer & Moore 1977:37). the old house. She remembered how as a Returning to a place we have not seen child she had followed her grandfather since we were children often gives us a and father in building the veranda of the sense that everything in that place some- house. Every now and then they had how has shrunk. The big hill we used for walked out to the street to check that the sledging is no more than a slight incline, 124 Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking

and the enormous tree that offered a spec- ability to remember details about our sur- tacular view of things below turns out to roundings. be a very moderately sized maple. While However, motility is not a self-evident our body memory of the place is vivid, the quality. Loss of mobility will radically change in perspective makes it simultane- change our interaction with the world and ously the same and a different place. cause profound disruption of time and It is through the perspective of our own space. Not being able to walk and main- body that we meet the world. We adapt to tain an upright position will not only di- moving in different environments. A per- minish one’s autonomy but also how one son who has spent all her life in a large is treated by others (Toombs 1992). In city with concrete surfaces will probably some cases of amnesia, the ability to navi- find walking in the uneven terrain of a gate previously familiar environments mountain forest initially very challenging. might be impaired even if the capability to Contrarily, someone used to walking steep walk and move is intact. Memory loss and mountain roads tends to overcompensate disorientation problems are characteristic by lifting his legs too high and leaning for- of dementia, and people afflicted often ward when newly arrived in a flat street show “wandering behaviour”, i.e. move- landscape. ment without purpose. Our ability to perform specific body An ethnographic research project re- movements can improve with training that garding people in the early stages of de- involves integration of proprioceptive sig- mentia, conducted by the Spanish Red nals. Proprioception is our unconscious Cross, explored how the patients’ free- perception of movement and spatial orien- dom of movement could be enhanced by tation arising from stimuli within the body using a tracking system via mobile itself. In other words, it is the sense that phones and GPS to determine the posi- makes it possible for us to execute move- tion of a subject and in this way being ments without constant visual cues – such able to monitor whether the patient was as being able to move in the dark. In stu- moving within a “safe zone”. For people dies where participants were asked to in the initial stages of dementia the new locate landmarks using only visual infor- technology offers an opportunity to re- mation (while sitting) and through a com- cover autonomy and to avoid institution- bination of visual and proprioceptive in- alization and locked doors. One of the formation (while walking), it was demon- greatest benefits of the project was found strated that participants pointed to land- to be the possibility for the patients to in- marks more efficiently when walking, as habit their neighbourhoods once again, they then could access the proprioceptive thus facilitating the persistence of social information about the environments and affective relationships (Tirado et al. (Yamamoto & Shelton 2005:140f.). Thus, 2009). Being part of a community means our skill in negotiating and moving in dif- inhabiting a space of familiar practices ferent landscapes is dependent on our and continuing everyday use of space (de sense of proprioception, and, moreover, Certeau, Giard & Mayol 1998:148, Tira- our sense of proprioception improves our do et al. 2009). In this, maintaining pat- Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking 125

terns of movement emerge as a key as- Conclusion: Movement as Dwelling pect of dwelling. [T]he lived body is conterminous with place be- In some cases our body memory re- cause it is by bodily movement that I find my way mains when other memory capacities fail. in a place and take up habitation there (Casey The life-writing scholar Nicola King re- 1987:180). lates the case of a man with Alzheimer’s The point of this article has been to give a who forgot where he parked his car but few examples of how our sense of move- was able to get back home by walking, as ment, O’Dell’s cultural kinesthesis , is a his body remembered the route although vital dimension of dwelling and everyday he could not remember the address. King life. Taking a walk means having to phys- (2000:27f.) points out that different events ically respond and adapt to our surround- are remembered in different ways and that ings. However, the way we relate to the some seem to be remembered only “in the landscape through which we move obvi- body”. “The centrality of our body memo- ously also takes place on a mental level. ry comes home to us most vividly precise- Through our senses we are constantly in- ly when such memory fails us”, as Casey terpreting the milieux we encounter. Fa- (1987:146) stated. Habitual body memory miliar as well as unfamiliar details may is deeply orienting. It is our habituating give us associations or awaken memories. actions which help us in “getting the lay of Consequently, it has often been recog- the land” and situating ourselves in differ- nized that walking has a narrative dimen- ent landscapes (ibid.:151). sion (see e.g. Solnit 2000). Whereas “nar- Since bodily movements are accompa- rative” in this context should not be per- nied by sensations, embodied practices ceived as the production of full-length co- provide a particularly effective system of herent stories, one can clearly distinguish mnemonics, claimed the anthropologist a poetic form of narration embedded in the Paul Connerton. Body memory is not only process of taking a walk – a fragmentary, vital for personal memories but also for episodic, and disjointed narrativity, which social memory. Embodied memory is at times links up with larger and more transmitted through social interaction complex stories. such as community rituals and social Place and memory are in constant dia- habits, which, in turn, work as legitimat- logue. Walking is one basic way of inter- ing social performances. The body is also acting with place. It is through movement essential for the capacity to remember that we primarily organize and perceive landscapes. In fact, human spatial memo- places. A walk through a familiar land- ry is powerful exactly because it has scape holds a potential for identity confir- bodily self-awareness as its frame of refer- mation. If we have a personal relationship ence. Because our bodies are already con- with the places we pass on our perambula- stituted with directionality (up–down, tions, a walk may even take on the charac- left–right, front–behind) we are able to re- teristics of a self-biographical narrative. member the life spaces we are emplaced Walter Benjamin stated that a description in as oriented in certain directions (Con- of a city related by a person who has nerton 1989). grown up there will doubtlessly be remi- 126 Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking

niscent of a memoir (Benjamin 1999:262). 3 The motif of footprints is popular in folk leg- A physical walk can thus be accompanied end. A variation on the theme of magical foot- prints appears, for example, in the English by a walk in our inner selves. As pointed Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas”. On out by Orvar Löfgren (1997:35), among the night of St Stephen’s Day, the noble King others, physical and mental landscapes al- Wenceslas is walking around giving alms to the poor. When his page complains of the cold ways overlap as we cannot separate mem- – “Sire the night is darker now. And the wind ories and associations from our present blows stronger; fails my heart, I know now movement in a landscape. how, I can go no longer” – the king simply By moving in places we also come answers, “Mark my footsteps, good my page, Tread thou in them boldly; thou shalt find the across gaps, borders, and restrictions, and winter’s rage freeze thy blood less coldly.” while potentially delimiting, these may of- And, indeed, when the servant walked on in fer opportunities for personal creativity as his master’s footsteps he found heat emanat- ing from the ground the saintly feet had we find ways to deal with them. “What the touched. maps cut up the story cuts across,” de Cer- 4 The experience of walking in a museum and teau claimed (1988:129). By the nature of in a “themed” town district is often strikingly its subject, this article has, quite deliber- similar: not least in how the visitor’s walking is directed. In galleries and museums, the visi- ately, been a rambling excursion in a rich tor is led by the placing of walls and the shape field. In the end, the conclusion arrived at of the building (Unwin 2000:135). The walk- is simply this: aspects of movement, land- ing in popular tourist areas in the city is guid- ed by arrows and signposts; some places even scape, and memory, taken together, con- have recommended routes marked in the stitute a very powerful triangulation to our street surface. Through signs and placement, sense of self. the visitor’s gaze is directed towards the star sights. Besides touristic entertainment, a walk in an old neighbourhood, as well as a visit to a Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch museum, may also be a way for someone to Ph.D. establish a quasipersonal contact with their Folkloristics collective past (see Zerubavel 1999:94). Åbo Akademi University 5 Lines quoted from “Anthem” on the album FIN-20500 Åbo The Future (1992). e-mail: [email protected] 6 Nunc ubi Regulus aut ubi Romulus aut ubi Re- mus? Stat Roma pristina nomine, nomina Notes nuda tenemus . 1 Fieldwork 2007–2011, for the research pro- ject “Space, Rhythm, Ritual” within the joint research project “Nordic Spaces in the North References and North America: Heritage Preservation in Adams, P.C. 2001: Peripatetic Imagery and Peri- Real and Imagined Nordic Places” (see www. patetic Sense of Place. In Textures of Place. nordicspaces.org/ & http://nordicspaces.com/). Exploring Humanist Geographies , ed. P. C. The interviewees (about 30 persons) have Adams, S. Hoelscher & K. E. Till. Minneapolis: been found through recommendations and University of Minnesota Press. snowball sampling. The persons quoted in the Benjamin, W. 1999: Selected Writings Vol. 2, ed. text have been given pseudonyms. All quota- M. W. Jennings, H. Eiland & G. Smith. Cam- tions translated into English by the author. bridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univer- 2 Walking as a critical tool was further devel- sity. oped by the Situationist International in the Biström, A., R. Paqvalén & H. Rask (eds.) 2010: 1950s and 1960s, and later by the Italian Kvinnornas Helsingfors. En kulturhistorisk Stalker urban art workshop, among others. guide . Helsingfors: Schildts. Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, The Ephemeral Act of Walking 127

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Introduction and closely related to the characteristics of Feature films embody a complex sociocul- film production but that, at the same time, tural significance that, with thorough and permits the identification and analysis of systematic analysis, can offer knowledge the cultural patterns that are enacted in about personal identity, social interaction, films. Thus, whilst an ethnographic ap- societal structures and individuals’ ways of proach sheds light on the social practices living (Aervold & Huus Larsen 2009). It is and cultural circumstances embedded in a this recognition that forms the point of de- film, technical aspects in the creation of parture for this article on the methodology the film, such as, for example, staging, of film ethnography. Feature films can be lighting and editing are examined from the understood in different ways and regarded perspective of film theory. The underlying as having a duality in the nature of their im- rationale in combining ethnography and pact. On the one hand the plot and narrative film theory is that the more technical as- structure of a feature film is transparently pects of film production have a decisive exposed to the audience on a direct level role to play in determining how ethos, without the demand of any reflection on the world views, cultural patterns, pathos and part of the audience as a prerequisite for un- lifestyles are acted out on screen. derstanding, and where the purpose is The purpose of the article is to present simply to gain enjoyment from watching the outline of a research methodology that the film and, for a period of time, to be can be used in the sociocultural study and transported away from the here-and-now. analysis of feature films. It is important to However, on the other hand, feature films differentiate the proposed method, “film can also, at the same time, and on a more ethnography”, from other approaches to indirect level, expose different types of per- the study of film, such as “the ethnogra- sonal identities, patterns of social interac- phy of film”, “film as ethnography” and tion, societal structures and lifestyles (Bell “visual anthropology”, all of which in- & Hollows 2006; Brodén 2008). In order to volve the researcher initially filming the be able to access sociocultural conditions in object of analysis and, thereafter, employ- feature films on a more indirect level, a re- ing ethnographic methods as a means of flective scientific analysis is required. The revealing cultural patterns in the reality aim of this article is to propose and outline captured on film (e.g. Crawford & Turton a research method – film ethnography – 1992). Instead, film ethnography uses fea- that can be employed for the generation of ture films as its empirical material and has knowledge about sociocultural conditions the explicit aim of combining film theory in feature films (cf. Barsam 2004; Bolas with ethnographic analysis in its examina- 2009). tion of the cultural patterns that are em- In the article the research method that is bedded in the film. The method outlined in proposed combines components from this article can be used by ethnologists, Clifford Geertz’s ethnography with a film theorists and researchers interested in range of aspects from film theory. The how feature films both mirrors and create ambition has been to create a research social and cultural dimensions in every- methodology that is both coherent with day life.

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 130 Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography

Ethnography and a Sociocultural preferences that relate to the ways in Analysis of Feature Films which people should be and should be- The compounding together of “social” have or, in other words, how the individ- and “cultural” is based on the notion that ual should live her life and conduct herself social interaction always takes place in a in social interaction with others. Thus, in cultural context that is comprised of arte- essence, this type of analysis involves facts and the natural environment, and in putting into words the often implicit per- which the later contributes by forming the spectives on individuals and society that, character of person-to-person interaction. alongside the primary purpose of product If this rationale is applied to the ambition marketing, explaining reality and enter- to combine ethnography and film theory tainment, are inherent in advertising, into an integrated research methodology, science and film (Qvarsell & Torell 2005; then it follows that the meaning attached Söderberg 2002). to the norms, values, attitudes and ap- The sociocultural aspects of feature proaches that the actors in a feature film films can be studied in a meaningful way give expression to will always be a conse- by means of ethnography’s agenda of quence of, and gain a depth of significance close scrutiny and attention to detail. The in relation to, the mise-en-scène, clothing, ideas of anthropologist Clifford Geertz are automobiles, buildings and other artefacts rooted in notions of the performativity of that the audience are presented with on the language. He employs a linguistic ap- screen. At the same time, the characters proach in his analyses and argues that the whom the actors portray also gain identi- purpose of an approach based on the study ties by means of the camera angles and of language is to provide access to the movements that have been deployed, the conceptual world of representations lighting set-ups chosen, the ways in which through which phenomena are brought to the actors’ portrayals are pieced together life. This thus makes it possible to under- in the cutting room and, indeed, the styles stand how individuals and groups concep- of music and sound effects that the charac- tualize and understand their world and ters’ presences in the film are juxtaposed their actions. Thus in film ethnography with (Barsam 2004). study is directed towards the ways in Sociocultural studies of, for example, which actors and actions are brought to advertising, science and feature films of- life in a film. Specifically, the focus of the ten seek out implicit or explicit expres- analysis is on the ways in which the char- sions of ideals, norms and values that are, acters in a film conceptualize and under- to differing extents, indicators of that stand their world and their actions. How- which is regarded as the “right” or “good” ever, whilst the focus of Geertz’s ethnog- way of living in the contemporary or his- raphy is on written and oral language, film torical context that is in focus. Such an- ethnography encompasses a wider spec- alyses can, for example, reveal what a trum of discursive elements, such as, for good, healthy, sound and normal life com- example, sound effects, digital animation, prises. The ambition of such analyses is, the use of colour, photography, camera not infrequently, to make transparent the angles and sequencing that are more cine- Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography 131

matographic in nature. A fundamental press experiences, as well as functioning belief of particular importance in film as guides by means of which actions are studies is that a film’s cinematographic regulated. These systems form reposit- character, along with its narrative struc- ories in which future sources of informa- ture, plot and intrigue, together comprise tion that can be used to discern, under- its meaningful content. With the adoption stand, evaluate and indeed manipulate of a more ethnographic approach, one the world can be stored. It is against this could argue that a film’s cinematographic backdrop that film ethnography ap- character contributes in the formation of proaches film as a system of symbols the conceptual world of representations drenched with meanings that the charac- through which phenomena and events are ters in the film experience, interpret and brought to life on screen. The use of film understand, and which they use to ex- ethnography as a method by which to press their experiences and guide their study social and cultural aspects in feature actions. Film ethnography focuses thus films thus involves not just a focus on on film as a system of information in roles, dialogues and environments in the which the lives of the characters are por- form of interiors and exteriors, but also trayed. It also studies how characters has an additional focus on how cinemato- conceive of this verisimilitude – the real- graphic technologies create the meaning ity of the film – that they populate, as content of a film. This broader spectrum well as how they understand, evaluate of discursive elements of a cinemato- and manipulate it. graphic nature, together with the casting, script and setting of a film, constitute a Ethos and World View in Feature cinematographic discourse (Bodén 2008). Films As Geertz makes clear, the determina- Two central concepts in Geertz’s theoreti- tion to make experiences meaningful and cal approach are Ethos and World View . to endow them with content and logical Geertz uses the term “ethos” to encapsu- consistency, are features characteristic of late the moral, aesthetic and value-related modern societies in the Western world. aspects of a culture, whilst its knowl- In order to cloak experiences in meaning edge-related aspects are captured in the and to position lived situations in an term “world view”. A people’s ethos is the overarching experiential structure, tone, quality and characteristics of the people, as linguist Kenneth Burke’s ex- lives that are led. It is the nature of a plains, make use of symbols. According people’s collective moral and ethical de- to Geertz symbols, in the form of meta- meanour. Ethos includes the attitudes that phors, contain meaning. Symbols func- a people have towards both themselves, tion in a manner that encapsulates knowl- and the world that their lives reflect. edge about what the world is, and what it World view, in contrast, reveals how means to be a person living in the world. things are in a truer form of reality. It com- Systems of symbols are drenched in the prises conceptions of the natural world, meanings people experience, interpret what it means to be a person, and the fun- and understand and are used both to ex- damental qualities of society. Thus world 132 Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography

view encapsulates a people’s most cohe- of living with their perception of the fun- sive ideas about order and logical consist- damental nature of reality. They summate ency. a people’s collective knowledge on what Geertz argues that a system of holy life is about and, in this way, form patterns symbols relates a clearly defined under- in a culture. Cultural patterns are de- standing about what the world is to aes- scribed as systems of integrated symbols, thetics and morals. Further, he suggests as figures of collaborating entities that are that the totality of holy and culturally co- historically constructed, socially main- hesive symbols will, in any culture, al- tained and individually applied. The dif- ways be limited. Further, despite the fact ference between types of cultural pattern that it is thought to be theoretically poss- lies in the symbolic strategies that are used ible for a people to create a values system within such respective patterns as a means without an antecedent ontology it appears, of defining and differentiating the situa- however, never actually to happen. In- tions that they represent. By making use of stead there is a dominant tendency to syn- different cultural patterns, such as, for ex- thesize ethos and world view. Between the ample, religions, sciences, philosophies tried and tested ways of living (ethos) and and ethics, humans, according to Geertz, the presumed understanding of the struc- create order and meaning in the events and ture of reality (world view), lies the repre- circumstances encountered in daily life. sentation of a simple and fundamental They form templates for the organization consequentiality. Together ethos and of interaction between people and provide world view function so as to make each a systematic and cohesive map of what, in other complete as well as lending meaning many instances, can be a problematic and to one another (Geertz 1973). In film eth- complex social reality. Cultural patterns nography it is therefore of central impor- form a matrix of collective consciousness. tance to both analyze and describe those In studies of film using a film ethno- aspects of ethos and world view that a film graphic methodology it is thus of central projects. It is also important to study how importance to analyze how a film forms, those attitudes, value judgments and and gives expression to, moral, ethical and morals that the film encompasses are re- value-related aspects of life which, in turn, lated to the way in which the film portrays involves the study of tone and quality to- the characteristics of the natural environ- gether with the nature of the characters, ment, the society and the people that their roles in the film and the ways in populate it. which they live their lives. Equally impor- tant is the need to analyze the world view The Bringing to Life of Cultural that the film gives expression to. This in- Patterns in Feature Films volves studying the ways in which the Geertz broadens the scope of his argument film portrays the characters’ identities, the about the nature of systems of symbols by characteristics of the society in which the introducing the notion of sacred symbol film is set and conceptions of the natural complexes. According to Geertz, systems environment. Further, a third central area of holy symbols synthesize people’s ways of focus for a film ethnographic methodol- Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography 133

ogy is the study of relations between ethos ed as a feature film creates, among the au- and world view in a film. Such a focus in- dience, the powerful feeling that the ac- volves scrutiny of the relation between the tion taking place on the screen has an in- way of life that the film portrays and the herent verisimilitude. One important assumptions and understandings about the question that needs to be addressed con- structure of reality that are also conveyed. cerns the characteristics of this perceived Film ethnography can, thus, be said to in- reality and the ways in which this can be volve the study of the ways in which cul- accomplished by means of the analysis of tural patterns are brought to life and given the devices used to mediate the narratives, expression in film. characters, values, rules of conduct, iden- Film ethnography can be used to gener- tities, interactions, situations, feelings, ate knowledge about the ways in which, as emotions and intellectual representations a form of cultural expression, films portray in the film. Film ethnography also encom- people’s lives and personal identities. The passes a contextualization of the film that method can also be used to analyze ways in is studied, and which involves its being re- which the world is perceived, understood, lated to social, political, moral, ideologi- evaluated and manipulated by the charac- cal and aesthetic aspects within the con- ters in a film. Further, it also makes it poss- temporary social reality in which it is pro- ible to describe how film can function as a duced. The perception of the film as an tool by which people living in modern object of study additionally encompasses Western societies can create meaning and cinematic contextualization, which means order in the events of their lives. The that the film must be analyzed in relation method can be used to describe how film to other films that, stylistically or themat- can function as a blueprint for organizing ically, are closely related to the production social life and human interaction (Sigurd- in focus. Such cinematic contextualization son & Axelsson 2008; Brodén 2008). can also encompass attempts to articulate An important point of departure for perspectives as to its creators’ artistic in- film ethnography is that a film can be tentions (Bolas 2009). ascribed a significance and importance that extends far beyond its creators’ artis- Pathos – Feature Films Generate tic intent. Films that are analyzed are re- Emotions garded as cultural force-fields, or indeed Together with Geertz’s concepts of ethos, cultural repositories, in which a range of world view and cultural patterns, the cate- different societal circumstances and con- gory of pathos needs to be understood as ditions are portrayed and find expression being of central conceptual importance in (cf. Eriksson 2005). The ethnographic film ethnography. The category of pathos study of film can thus be compared with is of importance in the sense that, as form the discourse analysis of texts in that it in- of empirical material, film is unique in at volves a “close reading” of the “what” and least one sense; namely its capacity to “how” of the narrative. It therefore in- strikingly portray and mediate different volves the study of paradoxical situations emotions. The total design of a film can where something as fictive and construct- mediate a feeling or atmosphere that, in 134 Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography

conjunction with feelings, forms a central bel 1981; Lööv 1989; Chaney 1996). The aspect in what here has been introduced as concept of “lifestyle”, in the sense that it is the fundamental emotional tone of a cul- used in the method, involves both moral ture. The method has, as its central ambi- and aesthetic preferences. Lifestyle also tion, the study and description of the feel- encompasses perceptions about appear- ings and emotions that are expressed by ance and presentation, as well as notions the film and which constitute important about how people ought to live their lives components in different cultural patterns. and how they ought to conduct themselves It also involves the study of the impact, in social situations. Geertz’s concepts of tone and the nature of emotional expres- ethos and world view can, together with sions in feature films. The study of a pathos, be grouped together in the concept film’s impact and its tone do not simply of lifestyle if, that is, the characters’ ac- concern the music as such. Rather, it in- tions are also included in the analysis of volves the analysis and description of the the lifestyles that are portrayed on the overarching atmosphere that contributes screen. The psychologist Alfred Adler in creating the expression of the film coined the term “lifestyle” at the end of which, in its turn, generates feelings. Ele- the 1920s as a means of providing a con- phant Man directed by David Lynch cept that embraced an individual’s occu- (1990) can be regarded as an example pation, living accommodation and family. where the black and white photography, a Adler’s ambition was to try and sum up a sound characterized by the grinding of in- person’s way of living by means of a de- dustrial machinery and a dim, misty twi- scription of his or her lifestyle (Adler light, all contribute in the creation of a 1929). In globalized late industrial society dystopia that envelops the film. This, in its the consumption of different products turn, generates feelings of alienation and forms a central component in the cultural loneliness that are central to our under- construction of the different lifestyles that standing of the film’s narrative and its are possible for the individual. Consump- protagonist. Feature films also have the tion of different products makes it poss- capacity to portray and mediate different ible for the individual to create, modify feelings to the audience. At the same time, and thus individualize personal identity feature films also possess a striking emo- (Wheaton 2004; Shields 1992; Jansson tional intensity that can mean that emo- 2001). Different consumption behaviours tions are generated in the viewer. Thus in and the ownership of commodities can be film ethnography, both impact and tone, regarded as catalysts for different life- as well as emotions and emotional expres- styles. Further though, in addition to the sion, are seen as central foci of study in the fact that commodities fashion individuals’ overall ambition of identifying and de- personal identities, they have also gained scribing cultural patterns. an important existential significance: the consumption and ownership of artefacts Feature Films Expose Lifestyles provides meaning to the lives of people in A central concept in the research method- the Western world. The analysis of life- ology of film ethnography is lifestyle (So- styles concerns the study of relations be- Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography 135

tween consumption and the ownership of notion that sociocultural aspects of a fea- products, everyday occupations and per- ture film gain form and content via cine- sonal identity (Söderberg 2002). Coupled matography, sound design, editing and to Geertz’s concept of ethos, which is con- other associated techniques of film pro- cerned with the morals of groups and indi- duction. The way in which a feature film viduals, the concept of lifestyle is of im- is produced in technical terms in the sense portance in that the lifestyle of any indi- of the use of different camera angles, vidual is often regarded as mirroring the lighting, colour, scene-length and the person’s values, attitudes and manner of mechanisms by which scene-shifts are ac- acting (Bell & Hollows 2006). A person complished creates meaning in the film. who has a specific lifestyle can, based Thus the form is more than a mere coating upon the type of life that he leads, be as- that holds the feature film together. Ra- cribed a template of values, moral and po- ther, it has a direct function in creating litical opinions (Blyton 2010). Lifestyles meaning that is inherently related to the thus concern the relationship between an film’s intrigue, characters and narrative individual’s external attributes such as, a) (Dix 2008). In the adoption of a sociocul- behaviour and habits, housing, place of tural analysis of feature films it is there- residence and social relations, and his/her fore imperative that technical aspects of internal qualities, such as, b) values, ideo- the film’s production such as (a) cinema- logical stance, morals and attitudes. Films tography, (b) form and narrative, (c) can be regarded as central exponents for mise-en-scène and (d) editing , and the different possible lifestyles, and a film ways in which such techniques – whether ethnographic analysis of lifestyles thus fo- directly or indirectly – mediate ethos, cuses on how relations between a charac- world views, cultural patterns, pathos and ter’s external attributes and inner qualities lifestyles in the scenes that are played out – and the development of such – are por- and the characters that are portrayed on trayed in a film. screen, are carefully studied.

Techniques of Film Production Create Sociocultural Meaning (a) Cinematography Having described how a film ethno- What though is cinematography? An im- graphic methodology is informed by the portant aspect of cinematography is the central ethnographic concepts in the work photographic techniques that determine of Clifford Geertz, such as ethos, world the way in which the film is shot. This in- view and cultural patterns, as well as pa- cludes the length of the takes, the camera thos and lifestyle, a number of other im- angles, camera movement, zooming-in portant concepts drawn from film theory, and zooming-out, and the lighting set up. and are equally as important as founda- It concerns the type of visual language tions of film ethnography as a research that the makers of the film use to develop methodology, will now be introduced. and maintain the narrative and create The guiding principle of combining eth- meaning in the film. Issues involve nography and film theory is rooted in the whether the photography contributes to 136 Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography

the telling of the story, and the ways in tion between the structure of the film and which lighting, camera angles, camera its narrative is the way in which the cast of movement and the transitions between characters in a film and their inter-rela- scenes support and/or contribute to the tions convey meaning in relation to the narrative. It concerns the way in which se- film’s intrigue (Barsam 2004). quences in the film are related to lighting, lens type and whether the film is in black (c) Mise-en-scène and white or colour. It also involves the way in which a take is visualized, its com- The entire world of reality in a film con- position and depth, the camera angles that sists of events, characters, objects, scenes, are chosen and the way that the camera light and lighting. The analysis of a film’s moves when shooting the scene. Cinema- reality can be made by looking at its tography also encompasses the speed and mise-en-scène, a term which, in French, length of a take, as well as the types of means “putting something on a stage”, special effect that are added in post-pro- and in film theory refers to a film’s “stag- duction. Here focus is on the ways in ing”. In terms of the production and an- which camera angles, camera movement alysis of film, the mise-en-scène consists and lighting form explicit or implicit of everything that is placed in front of the meaning (Barsam 2004). camera during filming and how these dif- ferent elements are arranged. It also in- cludes light and lighting, whether the film (b) Form and narrative is shot in colour or black and white, and How is the narrative of a film structured? the tones that are chosen. The practical ar- Is it, as in Pulp Fiction , directed by Quen- rangements that form the mise-en-scène tin Tarantino (1994), fragmented, non- include the actors’ costumes, hairstyling sequential and constructed of what ap- and make-up, as well as their positioning, pears to be a non-linear chronology or is body, manner of speech, posture and it, as in Tom Tykwer’s movie Run Lola movements. Another important aspect Run (1999) a reversed chronology that be- contributing to the forming of the mise- gins at the “end” of the narrative? The re- en-scène is the contextual positioning of lation between form and narrative con- the stage, which includes the environment cerns the ways in which the intrigues in in which it is situated, as well as the spatial the film provide form and structure to the arrangement of, for example, walls, furni- manner in which the “story” is told. Is it ture, lamps and other aspects of the in- the case that elements of the intrigue recur terior (Van Sijl 2005). It is also about the and, if so, with what frequency? And in types of environment that are utilized in what way can the film be understood the film and the ways in which such set- based on these recurring elements of in- tings contribute to the meaning that is con- trigue? Form and narrative also concern veyed in the narrative. The entirety of the so-called “flash-backs” and “flash-for- different aspects of mise-en-scène that to- wards” that are used to create meaning in gether form a film can be termed the a film. Another central aspect in the rela- film’s design and this encompasses, in ad- Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography 137

dition to environments, artefacts and ac- question is how the editing of a film tors, the lighting and the colour schemes creates visual and emotional connections that are used in the film. The question of between what can be perceived as things analysis thus concerns the ways in which that bear no direct relation to one another. a film’s design can contribute to the un- This involves the study of how spatial, folding of the film’s narrative. It thus in- temporal and visual relationships are volves the study of the relation between created between takes. It also involves the design and narrative. analysis of the film’s rhythm, which, in An important aspect of interpretive film turn, can mean directing focus to the tem- analysis is the need to study the sum total po between different scenes. A central of a film’s forms of expression, its style, part of the analysis of how a film is edited and the totality of its methods of portrayal. involves the way in which relations be- The totality of the different modes of ex- tween takes create atmospheres and feel- pression encompasses, to a greater extent, ings. Furthermore, in an extension of such the composition of scenes with regard to an analysis, it becomes possible to study lighting, sound, camera angles, camera the relationship between atmospheres and movement and the transitions between emotions that editing creates, and the scenes, rather than the substance in the cir- film’s narrative (Barsam 2004). cumstances that make up the film’s narra- tive. A central question thus involves the Concluding Example – Roy Anders- way in which the totality of a film’s modes son’s Cinematography and the of expression and its design contribute in Exposure of Depth in the Individual’s providing a narrative of events. This Existential Situation therefore involves an attempt to describe The underlying rationale in combining the relationship between the film’s narra- ethnography and film theory, as suggested tive and its design. It also involves the in this article, is that the more technical as- ways in which the totality in the design of pects of film production have a decisive the film contributes in making the envi- role to play in determining how ethos, ronments in the film appear as real and world views, cultural patterns, pathos and credible and, thus, address the question as lifestyles are acted out on screen. The ap- to how verisimilitude is established. The proach adopted by the director Roy An- totality of a film’s expression is, thus, dersson is an example of how cinemato- more about how the narrative is presented graphic techniques play an active part in to the audience than what is said. creating sociocultural meaning in a film. Andersson is often highly preoccupied by the use of images and is less concerned (d) Editing with complicated dialogue in the films When it comes to the editing or the that he directs. His view is that an interest- post-production of a film, when all of the ing scene in a film ought to be regarded as takes are fused together to create a whole, what could be termed a “living still”. In and when sound and perhaps computer such a scene the characters do not need animations are added post-production, the lines since their presence alone in front of 138 Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography

the camera is wholly sufficient in ascrib- of cinematographic elements, as exempli- ing meaning to the event. Such a scene is fied by the way in which Andersson views carefully constructed in the positioning of his film-making, involves the analysis of the actors in relation to the framing pro- the ways in, and means by which, the “un- vided by ceilings and walls. If the actors clothing” of culture and convention takes are properly positioned within the room place, as well as describing what it is that then this alone is sufficient to convey is unclothed and how this is involved with meaning. If the actors are captured in the and relates to other situations. Within film right way by the camera, the scene can say ethnography it is therefore of the utmost something about the situation without a importance that existential dimensions word needing to be uttered. Andersson is that are expressed either directly or indi- thus dedicated to portraying the individual rectly by the actions of the characters on in the room or environment in which she screen become the subject of analysis. finds herself. The spatial spheres that people occupy during their lives can, as Supplement – Research Questions for Andersson sees things, reveal much about Film Ethnography their situation in the world. According to Set against the backdrop of the presenta- Andersson, the environment colours the tion of an agenda for film ethnography person and, in a sense, “captures the de- above, a number of research questions of coding of the person”. By allowing what central importance that involve an inter- might otherwise appear to be trivial dia- pretive film analysis with a focus on social logues to be performed in highly complex and cultural aspects can now be formulat- environments, Andersson illuminates the ed. These questions engage with themes deeply existential dimensions, or what he such as personal identity, the fundamental calls “the unconscious in the dialogue”, in characteristics of social relations and so- the scenes that audiences are presented ciety’s emotional keynotes. with on the screen. The specific cinemato- graphic arranging of the spatial context of 1 What moral values do the characters in the the scene can reveal the unconscious ele- film give expression to? ments of the dialogue which, according to 2 What aesthetic preferences are given expres- Andersson, means, in its turn, that the sion by the characters in the film? 3 What is the nature and tone of the lifestyles characters in the scene are “unclothed”. that the film’s characters give expression to? Thus, in Andersson’s films, people are un- 4 What attitudes do the characters have to them- clothed by culture and convention and ap- selves, social relations and society? pear openly, in a minimalist fashion, and 5 What personal identities are mediated in the film? with an archaic existential vulnerability 6 What lifestyles are mediated in the film? that, primarily, conveys suffering and 7 What ethos and pathos does the film as a loneliness. Suffering and loneliness also whole give expression to? appear to be central themes in the films 8 What world views are expressed in the film? Songs from the Second Floor and You, the 9 What characterizes the verisimilitude and the reality that the film presents? Living (Andersson 1995, 1997). Thus film 10 How is the “mise-en-scène” presented to the ethnography, which takes specific account audience? Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography 139

11 What is characteristic of the cinematographic Chaney, David 1996: Lifestyles . London: Rout- structure of the film? ledge. 12 What is characteristic of the film’s overall Cornell, Drucilla 2009 Clint Eastwood and Issues method of presentation? of American Masculinity . New York: Fordham 13 What is characteristic of the film’s ideological University Press. context? Dix, Andrew 2008: Beginning Film Studies . Man- 14 What feelings does the film convey and how chester, UK: Manchester University Press. are they conveyed? Eriksson, R. 2005: Landsflykt i skuggvärld – En 15 What are the emotional keynotes of the cul- analys av reklam för psykofarmaka. In Reklam ture that is portrayed in the film? och hälsa – Hälso- och livsideal i svensk reklam 16 How does the film tell the story that the audi- från 1800-talets mitt till 2000-talets början . Ro- ence are presented with on screen? ger Qvarsell (ed.). Stockholm: Carlsson Bok- förlag. Rikard Eriksson Fashion at the Time of Fascism: Italian Modernist Associate professor Lifestyle 1922–1943 . 2009. Bologna: Damiani Faculty of health, nutrition and management Editore. Akershus University College Film Studies: An International Review . 1999– N-2001 Lillestrøm 2007. Manchester: Manchester University e-mail: [email protected] Press. Framing Film. The History and Art of Cinema. References 2000–. New York: Peter Lang. Bell, David & Hollows, Joanne (eds.) 2006: His- Frykholm, Joel 2009: Framing the Feature Film. toricizing Lifestyle. Mediating Taste, Consump- Multi-reel Feature Film and American Film tion and Identity from the 1900s to 1970s . Al- Culture in the 1910s . Stockholm: Acta Univer- dershot: Ashgate. sitatis Stockholmiensis. Berglund, Stig-Arne 1998: Val av livsstil. Pro- Guneratne, Anthony R. 2008: Shakespeare, Film blemungdomars sätt att hantera verklighet och Studies, and the Visual Cultures of Modernity . konstruera identitet . Umeå: Umeå universitet, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Institutionen för socialt arbete. Hill, John & Church Gibson, Pamela (eds.) 2000: Bjerre, Thomas Aervold & Huus Larsen, Torben Film Studies. Critical Approaches . Oxford: Ox- 2009: Cowboynationen. Westernfilmen og det ford University Press. moderne Amerika . Odense: Syddansk Univer- Höglund, Anna 2009: Vampyrer. En kulturkritisk sitetsforlag. studie av den västerländska vampyrberättelsen Blyton, Paul (ed.) 2010: Ways of Living. Work, från 1700-talet till 2000-talet . Växjö: Växjö Community and Lifestyle Choice . Basingstoke: University Press, Acta Wexionensia, Humanio- Palgrave Macmillan. ra, 193. Bolas, Terry 2009: Screen Education. From Film Jansson, André 2001: Senmoderna livsvärldar. Appreciation to Media Studies . Bristol: Intellect Om mediekonsumtion och kulturell identitet. In Ltd. Identitetens omvandlingar. Black metal, mag- Braudy, Leo & Cohen, Marshall (eds.) 2009: Film Theory and Criticism. Introductory Readings . dans och hemlöshet , pp. 121–151. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Johansson, Thomas & Miegel, Fredrik 1992: Do Brodén, Daniel 2008: Folkhemmets skuggbilder. the Right Thing. Lifestyle and Identity in Con- En kulturanalytisk genrestudie av svensk krimi- temporary Youth Culture . Stockholm: Almqvist nalfiktion i film och TV . Stockholm: Ekholm & & Wiksell International. Tegebjer. Johansson, Thomas & Sernhede, Ove (eds.) 2002: Bruzzi, Stella 1997: Undressing Cinema. Cloth- Lifestyle, Desire and Politics. Contemporary ing and Identity in the Movies . London: Rout- Identities . Göteborg: Daidalos. ledge. Kabir, Shameem 1998: Daughters of Desire. Les- Bunton, Robin, Nettleton, Sarah & Burrows, bian Representations in Film . London: Cassell. Roger (eds.) 1995: The Sociology of Health Kaplan, E. Ann (ed.) 1998: Women in Film Noir . Promotion. Critical Analyses of Consumption, New expanded ed. London: British Film Insti- Lifestyle and Risk . London: Routledge. tute. 140 Rikard Eriksson, Film Ethnography

Karaminas, Vicki 2009: The Vampire Dandy. Sigurdson, Ola & Axelson, Tomas (eds.) 2005: Reconceptualising Masculine Identities in Film och religion. Livstolkning på vita duken . Fashion, Cinema, and Literature. Lambda Nor- Örebro: Cordia. dica. Tidskrift för homosexualitetsforskning Smyth, J. E. 2010: Edna Ferber’s Hollywood. 2009(14):2/3, pp. 124–159. American Fictions of Gender, Race, and Histo- King, Geoff 2009: Indiewood, USA. Where Holly- ry . Austin: University of Texas Press. wood Meets Independent Cinema . London: Sobel, Michael E. 1981: Lifestyle and Social I. B. Tauris. Structure. Concepts, Definitions, Analyses . Lindell, Ingrid 2004: Att se och synas. Filmutbud, New York: Academic Press. kön och modernitet . Göteborg och Stockholm: Söderberg, Johan 2002: Kampen om ytan. Kon- Makadam. sumtion och hedonism i Sverige 1914–1945. In Lööv, Thomas & Miegel, Fredrik 1989: The No- Förbjudna njutningar , Peder Aléx & Johan Sö- tion of Lifestyle. Some Theoretical Considera- derberg (eds.), pp. [148]–178, 297–303, 330– tions . Lund: Lunds universitet, Forskningsrap- 334. porter i kommunikations-sociologi, 15. Svensson, Ingeborg 2007: Liket i garderoben. En Maktens psykologi. Några utdrag ur Alfred Adlers studie av sexualitet, livsstil och begravning . uppsats i Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit . 1929. Stockholm: Normal. Mörck, Magnus 2009: En reva i kostymen. Tasker, Yvonne 1998: Working Girls. Gender and Maskulinitet, mode och makt. Modets meta- Sexuality in Popular Cinema . London: Rout- morfoser. Den klädda kroppens identiteter och ledge. förvandlingar , pp. 286–307. Teaching Film and Media Studies. 2003–. Lon- Nestingen, Andrew 2008: Crime and Fantasy in don: British Film Institute. Scandinavia. Fiction, Film, and Social Change . Seattle: University of Washington Press. Tigges, Leann M. 1998: Constructing Gender and Palmer, Gareth (ed.) 2008: Exposing Lifestyle Rural Lifestyles in the American Heartland. In Television. The Big Reveal . Aldershot: Ashgate. The Social Construction of Gender in Different Petersson, Lars, Pettersson, Åke & Granath, Tho- Cultural Contexts , Gun-Marie Frånberg (ed.), mas (1998). Medieboken. Manus och dramatur- pp. 143–155. gi för film . Malmö: Liber-Hermods. Wager, Jans B. 1999: Dangerous Dames. Women Quarterly Review of Film Studies . 1997–. Pleas- and Representation in the Weimar Street Film antville, N.Y.: Redgrave Pub. Co. and Film Noir . Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Roth-Lindberg, Örjan 1995: Skuggan av ett Press. leende. Om filmisk ironi och den ironiska berät- Wersäll, Britt-Louise 2008: Manlighetsideal, telsen . Stockholm: Fisher. livsstil, moral. Avtryck i populärpress från Sernhede, Ove & Johansson, Thomas (eds.) 2001: 1900-talets början. In Förbistringar och för- Identitetens omvandlingar. Black metal, mag- klaringar. Festskrift till Anders Piltz , pp. 687– dans och hemlöshet . Göteborg: Daidalos. 694. Lund. Shields, Rob (ed.) 1992: Lifestyle Shopping. Sub- Wheaton, Belinda (ed.) 2004: Understanding ject of Consumption . London: Routledge. Lifestyle Sports. Consumption, Identity and Dif- Short Cuts. Introductions to Film Studies . 2000–. ference . London: Routledge. London: Wallflower. Biographical Notes

Carl Jacob Gardberg 1926–2010

of Iceland and former director of Iceland’s Na- tional Museum, made a state visit to Finland in early 1972, Gardberg and his wife were asked to act as hosts. In 1961–72 Gardberg was associate professor of Nordic Cultural History at Åbo Akademi and in 1969–72 also at the Finnish-language Turku University. He was a popular lecturer who reached out to both language groups. In 1972 he was appointed director-general of the newly founded National Board of Antiquities. His task was to reorganize the Finnish museum system and create a regional museum administra- tion. Gardberg had the experience for this. In Åbo Historical Museum expert help was given to mu- seums in the region long before this. When he re- When the state archaeologist emeritus Carl Jacob tired in 1992, Finland had a full network of pro- Gardberg passed away on 31 May, the Finnish vincial museums. museum world lost one of its pillars. C. J. Gard- C. J. Gardberg filled his time as a pensioner by berg began to work at the Historical Museum in writing. He jokingly said that writing for him was Åbo as a 19-year-old and took part in the work of a continuation of the work of a guide: to explain restoring Åbo Castle. His work resulted in the things so that people will understand. Together doctoral dissertation Åbo slott under den äldre vasatiden in 1959 . In the course of his research he with the photographers Kaj Dahl and P. O. Welin established a wide-ranging network of contacts he published several popularizing works. His pil- with the Nordic countries, Poland, and Estonia. grimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain led One important teacher was the Estonian in exile, to a book about medieval roads and journeys Professor Armin Tuulse in Stockholm. there, but linked to his own personal experience. In 1960–72 Gardberg was director of Åbo His- His participation in the anniversary publication torical Museum. In winter 1963–64 he took part for Åbo Cathedral in 2001, Nationalhelgedomen , in UNESCO’s Scandinavian project in Nubia, made the Middle Ages and the Dominicans in where certain areas were investigated and ancient Åbo topical again. This led to the book Veritas – monuments were moved so that the Aswan Dam sanningen in 2005. could be built. In 1965, on Polish initiative, in Right up to his death he was active in various preparation for President Edward Ochab’s state museum organizations, the Finnish Museum As- visit, an exhibition about Katarina Jagellonica sociation, ICOM, and particularly the Scandina- was mounted at Åbo Castle. The exhibition vian Museum Association, whose meetings and opened a small crack in the Iron Curtain: it sub- excursions were so important for him that he did sequently became possible for Polish researchers not miss a single one. to visit Finland. When Kristján Eldjárn, president Solveig Sjöberg-Pietarinen, Åbo

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 142 Biographical Notes

Per-Markku Ristilammi, Professor in Malmö

gy of alterity; this should be done through the use of things like hybrid identities, with the emphasis on movement and the idea of evolutionary development. Per-Markku Ristilammi takes a great interest in concepts, metaphors, and their polyvalent uses, as he has shown in several articles on urban eth- nology proceeding from different aspects of gaze and motion. In his latest book on the limits of the city, Mim och verklighet: En studie av stadens gränser , he twines many of the threads from this earlier research. His experience as a researcher has also led him to the things created by the new Öresund region, where he focuses on the events that symbolize the coming of a new era to the region. With today’s interplay of surfaces and backdrops, where it is Per-Markku Ristilammi (born 1958) received his difficult to grasp the underlying reality, Ristilam- training at the Department of Ethnology in Lund. mi’s method is to focus on currents in the econ- He has developed into a highly innovative re- omy and global phenomena in an attempt to get at searcher. His research has focused on the suburb impenetrable features of our culture. His distinc- as an expression of modernity and marginality, tive brand is an unusual capacity for combination on urban spatiality and specific spaces in differ- and an ability to find strange phenomena and ent periods, on various kinds of movements, tackle them in a fruitful scholarly way. events, and technological phenomena. After gaining his doctorate, Per-Markku Risti- His doctoral dissertation Rosengård och den lammi was research assistant 1994–1998 at the svarta poesin: En studie av modern annorlun- Department of Ethnology in Lund and external dahet (1994) set the tone for his future research. lecturer at Copenhagen University until the end This study of modern alterity in the Malmö of the 1990s. Since 1999 he has been lecturer in suburb of Rosengård comprises the theoretical ethnology at the Department of International Mi- knowledge that was emerging then, but Ristilam- gration and Ethnic Relations at Malmö Universi- mi takes the discussion further by rooting the ty, and sub-dean of the section for Culture and ideas in his empirical material. In the article “Me- Society at Malmö University since 2008. mento Rosengård” (2006), written twelve years He was appointed professor of European eth- after the dissertation, he pleads that the individual nology at Lund University in 2010, but turned in modernity, in the name of purity and equality, down the position in favour of a chair at Malmö freed from his or her social inheritance and ethnic University in the same year. background, cannot serve as the basis for a strate- Anna-Maria Åström, Åbo Biographical Notes 143

Thomas O’Dell, Professor in Lund

part of Lund University. Here he had a central role in building up research on tourism. Much of his earlier career was presented in Ethnologia Scandinavica 2009 when he was made professor at Campus Helsingborg. As Tom O’Dell returns to his old department and the Lund chair in European ethnology, he brings with him his experiences of migration and globalization studies in Malmö as well as research on tourism and economy and culture in Helsingborg. Mobility has been a constant theme in Tom’s research. More recently he has worked on one of the most mundane but also neglected forms of mobility, that of the daily commute. Another cen- tral field has been the study of what has been la- belled “The Experience Economy”. Among the several books he has edited on this theme is Ex- Tom O’Dell grew up in the USA and studied an- periencescapes: Tourism, Culture and Economy thropology before he came to Lund as a Ph.D. from 2005. His latest book is a study of a rapidly student. His dissertation Culture Unbound: Ameri- growing industry: Spas and the Cultural Econ- canization and Everyday Life in Sweden was de- omy of Hospitality, Magic and the Senses (2010). fended in 1997. It is a fascinating study of how ideas about and experiences of the USA have In a current project he is looking at the ways in created a platform in Sweden for utopian and dys- which ethnography is used in different settings, topian images of the future since the late eighteenth inside and outside Academia, and together with century. In his book he shows how the label of Robert Willim he is editing a special issue of Eth- Americanization hides very complex and contradic- nologia Europaea (2011:1) on “Irregular Ethnog- tory cultural processes. He looks at how images of raphies”. America gradually became a part of everyday life, Tom O’Dell returns to Lund as a researcher especially during the twentieth century – in every- who has constantly widened his research field but thing from jeans to American cars. has also been active in organizing new forms of After working as a teacher and researcher in the interdisciplinary research and opening up new Department of Ethnology he took up a position in sectors of the labour market for ethnologists. He the Department of International Migration and is full of creative energy and enthusiasm. It is Ethnic Relations, Malmö University, and later good to hear his highly contagious laughter in the moved to the newly established Department of department corridors again. Service Management at Campus Helsingborg, a Orvar Löfgren, Lund 144 Biographical Notes

Cecilia Fredriksson, Professor in Helsingborg

Adolphus Academy for Swedish Folk Culture. Fredriksson has followed up her interest in con- sumption, taste, and aesthetics in a number of ele- gant smaller works, in her own research projects on fashion, and in her design of a special course on fashion and trends at Campus Helsingborg. She also has much experience of research on cul- tural aspects of genetics and gene technology, having stimulated the study of how the bounda- ries between nature and culture are blurred with the aid of new technology in ways that are some- times ethically dubious. Fredriksson has exten- sive interdisciplinary experience, and her in- volvement in cross-department development of education and research deserves special mention. She has great scholarly curiosity and has enthusi- astically approached new research areas such as organizational culture, commerce, and sustain- Cecilia Fredriksson was promoted to professor of ability. The running themes are retail trade in re- ethnology at Campus Helsingborg, Lund Univer- lation to experiences and value-creating pro- sity, in 2010. She was born in 1961, took her doc- cesses, and research affirming the social and cul- torate in ethnology at Lund University in 1998 tural dimensions of consumption. At present she and gained the title docent in 2007. She is head of research at the Department of Service Manage- is leading the projects “Future Clusters: Sustain- ment, where she was lecturer until her promotion. able Development in Coastal Communities”, a Fredriksson’s main theoretical interest is in cul- major Nordic collaborative venture, and “Sus- tural aspects of consumption. Her dissertation, Ett tainable Shops”, about the creation of value for paradis för alla: EPA mellan folkhem och för- “green” products. förelse from 1998, examines the era in the con- Cecilia Fredriksson is a pioneer in ethnology. struction of the welfare state when consumption Ever since her dissertation she has played a cen- became a leisure pursuit and an excursion to the tral part in the development of the cultural theory department store became a tourist attraction. She of consumption, emphasizing in particular the skilfully highlights consumption as an important links between consumption, production, aesthet- experience in the acquisition and construction of ics, and experience. She is also one of the trail- modernity, dealing with themes such as the blazers in the work of formulating research on spaces, categorizations, tempo, and aesthetics of trade by cultural scientists with the focus on de- consumption. This well-written dissertation was sign and the retail trade. awarded a prize in 1998 by the Royal Gustavus Helene Brembeck, Göteborg Biographical Notes 145

Birgitta Meurling, Professor in Uppsala

posed, as is typical of ethnological research. In addition to a theoretical discussion of gender, she touched upon reflexivity in a way that was quite new at that time in Nordic ethnology. In 1997 she received a prize from the Royal Gustavus Adol- phus Academy for Swedish Folk Culture for her dissertation. After the Ph.D. she widened her perspectives in a praiseworthy way. The multidisciplinary textbook she edited, Varför flickor? Ideal, själv- bilder och ätstörningar (2003), includes her in- troduction dealing with socio-cultural perspec- tives on eating disorders and the body and her own article on anorexia nervosa. Here she was again covering new ground. She continued study- ing eating disorders in another volume she co- edited, Nytänkande och eftertankar: Kön, kul- turella föreställningar och livsvillkor (2006). Birgitta Meurling received her Ph.D. in European Meurling has also combined her interests in Ethnology at Uppsala University in 1996, where gender with museum studies. She co-edited a she has been teaching and doing research since volume, Det bekönade museet: Genusperspektiv i 1997. In 2003 she was appointed docent in Eth- museologi och museiverksamhet (2005). Lately nology at Uppsala University and in 2007 docent she has broadened her perspective to include edu- in Folkloristics at Åbo Akademi University, Fin- cation. She is a co-editor of a book Skolvardag land. och framtidsambitioner: Etnologiska perspektiv Her main field of expertise is gender, and with- på utbildning (2009), to which a wide range of out doubt, she is one of the pioneers of the field in authors, including some from outside Sweden, Nordic ethnology. She has published both mono- contributed. The idea of the book is excellent, graphs and articles and edited several volumes. combining cultural analysis and the study of edu- Several of her books are used as textbooks in uni- cation. versities, including some outside Sweden. Many Birgitta Meurling has also been active in writ- of her numerous administrative tasks include im- ing reviews and popular articles and giving talks proving teaching in various ways. aimed at the general public. From the 1980s on- Meurling’s Ph.D. dissertation, Sarons liljor? wards, she has reported about her research results En etnologisk studie av prästfruars könskonstitu- in radio programmes. Several museums have ering (1996), introduced a new path in Nordic benefited from her input of gender perspectives, ethnology. Theories which were very fresh at the as she has evaluated their collections and/or rep- time were combined with strong empirical mate- resentational practices from a gender perspective. rial. The past and present were dialogically op- Hanna Snellman, Jyväskylä 146 Biographical Notes

Ella Johansson, Professor in Uppsala

den”. This project covered a time span of 1,000 years, brought together a large group of Swedish and Nordic researchers from various disciplines, added an international network of scholars, and set high ambitions to involve the local population in the area under study. In her dissertation Skogarnas fria söner (Free sons of the forest: A study of masculinity and mo- dernity among loggers in Northern Sweden 1860–1940, 1994), as well as in her contributions to the collections of essays Skogsliv (Life in the forests, 2000), Periferins landskap (Landscape of the periphery, 2002) and Män i Norden (Men in the Nordic countries, 2006), Ella Johansson com- bines a thorough command of general social and cultural theory with a profound knowledge of pre- and early industrial culture in the boreal district. Adding her keen eye for ethnographic de- Ella Johansson received her Ph.D. from Lund tail and her creative analytical skills, the results University in 1994. She served as research assist- are bound to be innovative and highly original. ant at Umeå University, and in 2001 she was a re- In her position at the Multicultural Centre, Ella search fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Ad- Johansson expanded her research towards the vanced Study in Uppsala. She was appointed as- sociate professor at Lund University in 2003. study of migration and ethnicity. Her studies in During the years 2002–2005 she held the this field include topics like the managing of Dag-Hammarskjöld-Gastprofessur at the Nord- identity among women from the province of Da- europa-Institut, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. larna working in Stockholm in the nineteenth In 2005 she moved on to the post of research di- century, national connotations of the art of swim- rector at the Multicultural Centre, Botkyrka. She ming, and the issue of relating to nature. Her pub- was appointed professor of European Ethnology lications also include papers on the theory of at Uppsala University in the spring of 2011. science and methodology. A large proportion of Ella Johansson’s re- A considerable amount of Ella Johansson’s search concerns modernity and social change, work has been published in international journals with a particular focus on masculinity, landscape and collections of essays, from early on in her and nature. She has been a member of several career. Her network is well established among in- interdisciplinary research groups working with ternational as well as national scholars and in- these topics, and was herself the leader of the cludes long-term relationships with the sector of project “Flexibility as tradition: Culture and sub- museums and heritage. sistence in the boreal forests of Northern Swe- Barbro Blehr, Stockholm Biographical Notes 147

Fredrik Nilsson, Professor in Malmö

takes place among small savers in the IT society. In recent years he has left these research fields and headed into completely new ones, such as rock’n’roll, smuggling, and respectable women. He has just finished the book I ett bolster av fett: En kulturhistoria om övervikt, manlighet och klass. This study has a temporal perspective of 200 years, showing in a surprising way how a phenomenon like overweight can shed light on the changing meanings of masculinity, on the creation of social deviants, and on how perceptions of health and well-being have changed in recent centuries. Nilsson’s research initially concerned the cultural dynamics of boundaries and how global flows are reflected in local everyday life. He then developed several new areas concerning popular music and gender formation, both male and female, and has touched on topics such as religion and health. A re- Since spring 2011 Fredrik Nilsson has been profes- current theme of his research is what modern society sor of ethnology at Malmö University. He took his has meant for people’s lives and how different cul- doctorate in Lund in autumn 2000 with the disserta- tural processes shape their identities. In a number of tion I rörelse: Politisk handling under 1800-talets works he has expanded on his critical perspective on första hälft , an innovative study of how people are society with a theoretical and methodological linked together and achieve political change. The awareness that shows great familiarity with new aim was to find answers regarding how different angles on the ethnological research field. His re- possibilities for political action are shaped. The time search is broad in scope, ranging from the classics is the first half of the nineteenth century and the of ethnology to the significance of political action in place is that of Scandinavianism (the student move- history and problems of integration and boundaries. ment in Copenhagen, Lund, and Uppsala), as well as A theme running through all of Nilsson’s works that of the peasantry in Skåne. People were bound is his interest in understanding and explaining polit- together in various processes by strategic communi- ical processes and people’s capacity for action and cation technologies, which Nilsson interprets with change, the potential of democracy, solidarity, and the aid of different theories, including Virilio’s con- boundary crossing from the perspectives of cultural cept of vector. He is thus able to show the overall analysis. He obtained his empirical material during significance of communication, movement, and his previous career in the Öresund region, but he has boundary crossing for political action. since tackled completely different fields. With his By 2003 Nilsson had already published a new analytical historical perspective, he alternately asks book, Aktiesparandets förlovade land , as the result questions about the past and the present. of a research project that also led him to a visiting Nilsson is one of the too few Swedish ethnolo- research fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. gists today who do research in cultural history and This book focuses mainly on the present day, and are not afraid to interpret historical source material. the politics, movement, and communication now Birgitta Svensson, Stockholm Reviews

New Dissertations In all the cases presented by Ericsson, people who are acknowledged and celebrated for having personal skills are at the same time, and often Besieged People – Besieged Places through the very same comments constituting the Urban Ericsson , Belägrade människor – Belägrade celebration of their skills, contextualized by the me- rum. Om invandrargöranden och förorter. Etnolo- dia as being questionable citizens. In other words, it giska avdelningen, Uppsala universitet, Etnolore 30, is consistently indicated by the media that it is be- Uppsala 2007. 192 pp. Ill. English summary. Diss. cause of their extraordinary personalities that they ISBN 978-91-506-1919-5. have managed to leave the suburbs and gain not only personal success but also membership in the
Based on Swedish newspaper articles and inter- Swedish community. views/e-mail correspondence with publicly known In his analysis Ericsson refers to a wide range of Swedes of immigrant descent, Ericsson sets out to de- poststructuralist thinkers whose approaches and construct Swedish notions of immigrants and suburbs. conceptual frameworks enable Ericsson to con- The author convincingly shows how the concepts vincingly articulate his argument. However, this re- of “immigrant” and “suburbs” are embedded in a viewer sees a paradox in the fact that all the people complex power relation founded on fantasies, fears referred to in the thesis, due to their public success, and senses of superiority. However, this relation, it constitute an exposed presence rather than an ab- is argued, is far from being only visible or explicit. sence. Furthermore, the people mentioned all have On the contrary, Ericsson argues, it is often ex- strong statements and responses to stigmatization pressed through a haunting absence. and speak from a position where their responses can What is absent in the Swedish media representa- be uttered with a certain authority. tion of immigrants and suburbs are matters of be- The reason for this paradox is most likely to be longing. In extreme cases references to Sweden are located in the choice of methods. Adding participant even deliberately removed. As an example Ericsson observation and ethnographic fieldwork to inter- illustrates how a picture of a Turkish male immi- views and discourse analysis might be a way to in- grant sitting next to a Turkish and a Swedish flag in clude also the mute stigmatized people in a future a Swedish suburb was edited in such a way when it research project. was used in a newspaper that the Swedish flag did Mark Vacher, Copenhagen not appear in the picture. The consequence of this removal is an image which, according to the author, appears aggressive and challenging to Swedish readers. Reproduction of Contemporary Monarchy Deliberate, distorting and misrepresenting as it is, Mattias Frihammar , Ur svenska hjärtans djup – re- this kind of editing is easy to criticize and dissociate produktion av samtida monarki. Carlsson Bokför- oneself from. What is much more subtle are the lag, Stockholm 2010. 214 pp. Ill. English summary. many cases where not even the editor is aware of the Diss. ISBN 978-91-7331-328-5. fact that something is being left out. Through a number of examples Ericsson shows how journal-
Mattias Frihammar defended his doctoral disser- ists, when asking sport stars, artists and TV hosts tation in ethnology at Stockholm University on 11 about their ethnic and cultural background, are not June 2010 – just eight days before the celebration only asking questions but implicitly questioning the of Crown Princess Victoria’s wedding in Stock- respondents’ relation to Sweden. This happens, for holm. There is speculation as to whether Friham- example, when a football player who was born in mar is kicking himself for not including this spec- the Swedish suburb of Rosengård is asked if playing tacular event in his dissertation about present-day against the Croatian national team is particularly monarchy, or was he perhaps glad to be able to difficult for him, or when a hostess on a national mark the end of his study before this massive and television show is admired for doing her job despite long-planned event took place? Like it or not, the the fact that her parents immigrated from Greece royal family is a never-ending story, and every day and that she grew up in a suburb with a relatively sees new stories being invented and new angles on high concentration of immigrants. old stories being found. The wedding celebrations

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 Reviews 149

could of course have been included as an element play. Over 2,000 diaries were collected on that occa- in the dissertation about the reproduction of sion, where people described how the day would be contemporary monarchy, but Frihammar’s focus is spent, and what thoughts they had in connection not on what the royals get up to, but how royalty is with the wedding. It was characteristic that people always created through complex cultural processes reflected on their own feelings, which often involve and in very different contexts. The reader therefore both ironic detachment and profound fervour, does not feel the absence of the wedding in the whether people were sitting in front of the television book, which instead gives us new tools for under- or standing along the route of the royal coach in Co- standing the diverse forms in which royalty is ex- penhagen. In 2010 it was time for the Swedish mu- pressed. seums to pick up the baton, initiating studies all over The study of royalty has long been in the situa- Sweden in connection with the wedding of Crown tion of falling between different stools: Either it was Princess Victoria. Here too there was collection and the historian’s domain to study the monarchy and documentation. It may be hoped that it will be poss- the changing political significance of royal persons ible in the future to compare the material from the in different social systems, or the focus was on the different Nordic projects and continue working on sensational press with its inquisitive interest in the the topic in theoretical and methodological terms. doings of these elevated figures. In ethnology there With Mattias Frihammar’s dissertation the rele- has been virtually no research about royalty. But vance of the topic has been placed on the agenda in that is corrected with this dissertation, which not a new and convincing way. only has the ambition of analysing the many expres- At the centre of the dissertation the author won- sions of royalty but also of explaining the role it ders about a significant paradox: that the widespread plays in many people’s everyday lives and in to- popularity of the monarchy challenges the demo- day’s society. Royalty is viewed here as a construc- cratic ideal of equality in a Nordic welfare state. tion, a process, which is constantly reproduced How can this anachronistic social phenomenon, through different forms of practice. How is royalty with inherited privileges and a constitutionally es- filled with meaning in relations between people, in- tablished hierarchy, arouse such strong positive stitutions, and artefacts in different contexts in Swe- emotions? And how can it be explained? The main den? The dissertation thus deals with the ways in problem posed by the dissertation is thus to investi- which royalty always has to be translated into ac- gate and explain what people do with royalty, and tions, reflections, and objects if it is to become a what royalty does to people. reality. The title of the dissertation, Ur svenska hjär- In recent years the documentation of royal events tans djup (“From the depth of Swedish hearts”), has begun to occupy some Nordic researchers. In alludes to the first line hailing the king in the connection with the wedding of the Norwegian Swedish royal anthem from 1844. The strong po- Crown Prince in 2001, an interdisciplinary team col- sition of the royal family is by no means solely a lected material about the celebrations and about Swedish phenomenon; it can be found in many what people did on that occasion. Video recording Western European democracies. Even in countries of parades and tributes in the streets and of private that lack a monarchy, royals in other countries are parties in the home to watch the television broad- a popular subject of media interest. The disserta- casts were supplemented with questionnaires, chil- tion considers how different actors outside the dren’s drawings, and so on. This material gave in- royal sphere help to create the framework around sight into the complex emotions expressed by many royalty and thus fill it with meaning. Through pen- Norwegians. Inspired by this project, a great many etrating and empathetic fieldwork, Mattias Fri- museums and cultural institutions in Denmark hammar is able to bring out what is taken for joined to document how the wedding of the Danish granted, and also the great meaning of small Crown Prince was celebrated in 2004 in public, pri- things. What makes the book so interesting from vate, and virtual spaces. Here too, the focus of the an ethnological viewpoint is the combination of study was not on the royals but on the staging of the many different types of material and many differ- celebrations in various contexts, where the court, the ent analytical levels. Frihammar himself has pro- media, and the general public each had a part to duced his material systematically, proceeding 150 Reviews

from the overall problem he set himself, through less to read about the way people deliberate about qualitative interviews and especially participant discreetly arranging toilet facilities for the royals observation, part of it in a municipality that was during their visit. preparing a whole year for a royal visit. He attend- Mattias Frihammar concludes the fifth chapter, ed various events and performed fieldwork, for in- the title of which is another line from the royal an- stance, in a royalist club and also in a republican them, “A united and simple song”, with a discussion one, took part in the celebration of the Swedish of concept such as monarchy and royalty, of rela- national day at Skansen, in the king’s birthday, the tions between royalty and everyday life, and ends by opening of parliament, and Victoria Day on reflecting on how one can explain the stability of the Öland. In addition he has used material in the form monarchy in today’s society not as an anachronism of questionnaires, radio and television broadcasts, but as a rational adaptation. yearbooks, articles, and in particular artefacts. Fri- From a Danish perspective there are many points hammar also emphasizes the flexible element – or of similarity in the way the royal dynasty functions, “the mobile searchlight” to use a classical ethno- and in the massive cult of the royal family, but there logical expression – as a deliberate analytical are also some differences from the situation in Swe- strategy, when an opportunity was offered to cap- den. In this respect the dissertation can also be read ture unexpected and unpredictable moments. as a contemporary ethnography of everyday life, The result is an outstanding document, taking the where we follow everything from the royal palace to temperature of a contemporary phenomenon that the outside loo at the summer cottage. It is the great cannot be explained exclusively as tradition, but merit of the dissertation that it is able to analyse must be viewed as a constant process. With humour complex cultural processes, and that it convincingly and a sense of detail, the author leads the reader combines the elevated with the banal, the large and through analyses of individual and private contexts, the small, all as parts of the same structure. The eth- towards more collective activities and public per- nological stance makes it possible to bring many formances. After an introduction comes a chapter on different phenomena together – rituals in the public “Materialized royalty”, devoted to the study of arte- space, objects hidden away in the home, and so on. facts that are associated in one way or another with By taking Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory as royalty. For instance, Frihammar describes the cus- his starting point, Frihammar is able to bring the tom of having the king’s portrait in the outside study of power relations and meaning creation into toilet; he also looks at the objects in the home that the network of actors – human and non-human – people have kept, for one reason or another – objects around the monarchy. Simple things derive their that carry stories of meetings and contacts with meaning from the extraordinary, just as magic de- members of the royal family. For instance, cigar- rives its meaning from the commonplace, the frame- ettes and handkerchiefs that the king has used be- work signals the extraordinary, and so on. come significant souvenirs, elevated to the status of The dissertation is brilliant reading, well written relics charged with royalty. In the third chapter, and full of humour, besides all the knowledge and “Meetings and rehearsals” we see how a municipali- insight it coveys. Despite its limited and specific ty makes ready for a royal visit. Frihammar follows premises, the dissertation not only puts modern life the preparations step by step, recording in detail the in Sweden into perspective, but also other welfare deliberations of the actors. At the centre is the de- states with monarchies. And one can ask oneself tailed planning that takes account of all the possi- whether the very fact that we have monarchies with bilities that can arise during the royal visit. The special privileges is the exception that helps to con- fourth chapter, about “The nation’s bodies”, is firm the cohesion of the rest of society. Not least of centred on official arrangements with royal partici- all, the dissertation shows how cultural scholars can pation on the national day at Skansen, Victoria’s contribute new insight into society through the study birthday, and divine service in connection with the of the banal and overlooked things, and how even opening of parliament. The royals have to be there, the most insignificant object acquires its meaning in in a purely physical sense, but otherwise there is no the context. Last but not least, the dissertation is particular royal contribution to these events, which praiseworthy for analysing how the study of the re- follow a rather stereotyped programme. It is price- production of the monarchy ties various relations Reviews 151

and processes together in an insightful way. With Anne Heimo’s research sources include the Mattias Frihammar’s dissertation we learn about material she has gathered during her field work where the monarchy is headed, but we also learn (primarily interviews conducted between 1988 something about ourselves. What seems trivial and and 2000); written contributions to archives; the banal is held up as a social phenomenon and a cul- recorded interviews of individual interviewers tural process. It is majestically done! and dialect collectors, as well as notes from fami- Lykke L. Pedersen, Copenhagen ly archives related to the events of 1917–1918; documents related to the topic in public archives; and academic as well as non-academic studies. History and the Ongoing Process of Inter- The multi-levelled nature of the research sources preting the Past allows the author to compare the various means Anne Heimo , Kapina Sammatissa. Vuoden 1918 of presenting common historical knowledge – paikalliset tulkinnat osana historian yhteiskun- testimonies of eyewitnesses, notes from the nallisen rakentamisen prosessia. (Rebellion in Sam- period, studies, narrations based on memories, matti. Local Interpretations of the 1918 Finnish etc. For instance, in connection with the events of Civil War as Part of the Social Process of History- the Finnish Civil War in 1918, she asks how the Making.) Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toi- study thereof differs from narration; which traits mituksia 1275, Tiede. SKS, Helsinki 2010. 295 pp. are common to academic and non-academic stu- Ill. English summary. Diss. ISBN 978-952-222- dies and which differ; or what are the particulari- 192-6. ties of local knowledge in the general historical context.
Anne Heimo’s study, entitled Rebellion in Sam- Finnish muistitieto-studies are associated matti, is devoted to multi-leveled reporting on the with both memory studies and the study of pop- Finnish Civil War of 1918 and is based on events in ular images of history. The emergence of this the Sammatti region of South Finland. The point of trend in Finnish folklore studies in the 1990s departure for her study is social historian Raphael was based on methods that were previously used Samuel’s view of history as a social form of knowl- simultaneously in various scientific fields, as edge. Based thereon, the treatment of history is not well as on international scientific trends such as simply limited to academic studies or educational cultural memory studies, popular memory theo- literature, but the creators of history can include all ry, oral history research, and ethnohistory. How- members of society. The (current) dominant per- ever, interdisciplinary and international co-oper- spective in society determines the policy for the ation in the 1990s has resulted in a situation treatment of the past. The author stresses that the so- where researchers using the same keywords of- cial process of history-making is not limited to the ten do not understand each other (especially if presentation of facts. The process of reinterpreting they based their activities on traditions formed the past is ongoing, and it finds expression in vari- within the framework of different scientific ous presentational forms (studies, memoires, mu- fields) while scientists with similar research in- seum exhibitions, art, etc.). The author’s attention terests may not use the same terminology (e.g. moves from historical events and their interpretation researchers of memory and popular history). [A to the interpreters – what are the goals, means of ex- similar problem is faced by researchers of mem- pression, skills, and cultural backgrounds of the in- ory-based interpretations of the past in Estonia. terpreters, as well as the relationship between the This has created the need for interdisciplinary presenters of history and their audience and vice research projects, including the project entitled versa. In the Finnish scientific context, Anne Heimo ‘Practices of Memory: Continuities and Discon- positions her study in the fields of folklore studies tinuities of Remembering ’ (ESF 8190), which is and muistitietotutkimus. (The Finnish-language con- financed by the Estonian Science Foundation, in cept of “ muistitieto” refers to the knowledge based which ethnologists, sociologists, historians, and on memory [ muisti – memory, tieto – information, folklorists are participating and the objectives of knowledge]). Internationally, it is related to radical which include the comparison of internal meth- oral history and memory studies. ods and terminologies of the scientific field in 152 Reviews

the interdisciplinary context.] Anne Heimo has what past events can be studied through narrations. seen a need to explain the mutual connections The author demonstrates that the analysis of the in- between the similar concepts and research fluence levels of narration (e.g. silence, emphasis, trends, and she has subsequently positioned her etc.) support the comparative analysis of various study into this rather complicated research pic- types of sources. ture. She does not consider where and under The conflict that appears in the local identity de- what circumstances one or other research trend serves special attention – on the one hand for local got started to be important, but rather how and residents the place identity of Sammatti is related under what conditions these various research to harmony and the idyllic, because Sammatti is means start to converge. the home of Elias Lönnrot, the creator of the Finn- For the purposes of research, the author di- ish national epic Kalevala ; on the other hand, the vides the textual material being analysed into gravity of the events of 1918, when Finns did so three levels. Firstly, the same topic, e.g. the much harm to each other, must be recognised. women killed in 1918. This is further divided Anne Heimo shows that when explaining the vio- into subtopics, e.g. the stories about the women lence related to the events of 1918 in Sammatti, the who were killed from the viewpoints of the par- concepts of “us” and “others” are sharply differen- ties to the conflict, the so-called Reds and Whites. tiated. Brutalities are associated with the actions of The second principle is to differentiate the types those who came from elsewhere, thereby persuad- of source texts, e.g. contemporary entries in ing the listener that their own people would not act calendar-notebooks, the press and fiction, memo- in this way. This opposition ( us vs. others) as a ries, answers to questions, etc. This forms the ba- possible means of depicting the conflict is an at- sis for separating the material into chapters. The tempt to restore the balance in the feelings related third is the means of depicting the events, e.g. the to place identity. winner and the loser as depictions of certain Anne Heimo’s treatment of history is more roles, “us” versus “them”, the stereotypes of ene- philosophical than historiographical. Her ap- mies and heroes, etc. Culturally set schemes are proach assumes that history is culturally created used in these descriptions, and therefore, the in social intercourse, or rather an interpretation of given means of depicting the conflict are related the past that is being continually created. Such an to the depiction of conflicts generally. The com- approach suits the multi-level nature of the mon trait for all three levels is the differentiation sources and is somewhat inevitable. On the one of the viewpoints of the parties to the conflict – hand, the historical presentations and images of the Reds and Whites. For instance, in their history being examined are not independent phe- stories, the Reds try to show the arbitrariness and nomena isolated from each other; rather they are cruelty of the Whites as the victors. The Whites mutually related. On the other hand, quite a large try to explain why things occurred and what situ- number of special studies have been devoted to ation provoked the actions. the different aspects of the Finnish Civil War of From a comparison of academic and non-aca- 1918 in the past fifteen years. Therefore, Heimo’s demic research, it appears that both strive towards decision to focus less on historical presentations objectivity. Facts are found to confirm the argu- and more on the mutual connections of these mentation of one’s statements. However, academic presentations is justified and timely. historical research is differentiated from other A large amount of space in Anne Heimo’s mono- modes of research by the use of a significantly graph is devoted to the story of the development broader source base and the diversity of the re- of the given scientific trend. Firstly, this refers to search methods that are employed. Yet, if the inter- the emergence of this research trend in Finnish pretation of the past is based on memory (e.g. rec- folklore studies and her treatment can be under- ollections of those who participated in the events stood to be a summary of a research period. Sec- or other subjective genres), in this case the ways of ondly, by forming an overview of the research influencing the listeners differ from those used in trends in memory studies and (popular) history in studies. What is remembered, what is concealed, the second half of the 20th century, Anne Heimo what is believed – these aspects begin to affect also puts the international scientific landscape in Reviews 153

order, by pointing out the connections between the Judith Butler. As de Beauvoir and Iris Marion various trends in the context of the Finnish scien- Young have argued, the female body in a male- tific space. dominated society is defined as the Other, and Tiiu Jaago, Tartu women do not have the same access to subjectivity, autonomy and creativity as men. According to Young, women often experience their bodies as be- Feminine Possibilities ing more fragile or open to objectification. How- Karin Högström, Orientalisk dans i Stockholm. ever, objectification can have enjoyable sides, if the Femininiteter, möjligheter och begränsningar. Acta situation is otherwise based on equality and respect, Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Studies in as the philosopher Martha Nussbaum claims. Hög- Ethnology 4, Stockholm 2010. 302 pp. English sum- ström illustrates both sides of being an object/objec- mary. Diss. ISBN 978-91-86071-34-9. tified and an active subject in her analysis. Femininities – and in some cases masculinities –
In this dissertation submitted to the Department of that are performed and experienced in Oriental Ethnology at the University of Stockholm, Karin dancing are seen as aspects of habitus, and also as Högström explores the appeal of Oriental dancing modes of cultural capital. The sociologist Beverley for women of Swedish or other Nordic descent. Skeggs has written on class and gender, and Hög- How do they “seek, create and defend values such as ström draws on her concept of respectability to femininity, authenticity, empowerment and respect- valorize the ambivalence concerning the value of ability in and through their dancing?” How does the femininity performed in Oriental dance. The Orien- dance change them? The book is based on ethno- tal dancers in Sweden are mostly middle-class white graphic research among Swedish dancers in Stock- women with a good education and an established holm, where she has conducted participant observa- position in work life, while Oriental dancing with its tion in dance classes, shows and festivals, and inter- glittery and often revealing costumes, flirtatious views among the dancers. Also, she uses her own gestures and sensual movements has connotations of experiences as a dancer as a starting point for further “cheap” working-class femininity, or even of sex exploration. work. Thus seeking for respectability in their danc- In the first chapter Högström creates the theor- ing is an issue for many, even though these etical and methodological setting for the study. women’s respectability is not threatened in their Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of habitus as so- everyday life. cialized and often unreflected norms or tendencies In the second chapter, the author guides the read- that guide behaviour and thinking works as the start- ers through the world of Oriental dancing as it has ing point for Högström’s analysis. With the concept been described and researched by previous scholars, of habitus it is possible to highlight the interplay of and explains how Oriental dancing is practised in structures and agency that takes place in Oriental Stockholm. The following chapters are based on the dancing. To emphasize the subjective side of the original ethnographical material and Högström’s de- dance experience and to show how dancing trans- scriptions, analysis and interpretation of it. forms the body and its dispositions, Högström turns Chapter three focuses on the Middle Eastern to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea of Body Schema. dance class, and we can read how the beginners When dancers learn new movements in dance les- work hard to learn the appropriate movements, ex- sons, they simultaneously modify their Body Sche- pressions and attitudes. The gradual transformation ma according to the visual, aural, kinaesthetic and of the dancers’ habitus and Body Schema is emotional aspects available in the dance class. By well-documented and argued, and this aspect makes learning a new style of moving and also experienc- it the most exciting part of the work. The dancers ing one’s body in a new way as hyper-feminine, for see Oriental dance as a profoundly feminine practice example, one’s habitus may gradually change. due to its movement qualities, the body parts used Femininity or femininities are understood as con- and the emotional expression. However, it is not just structions not necessarily related to biological or one kind of femininity that is performed or ex- anatomical sex. These ideas concerning gender are pressed, but many. The teachers transmit these drawn from Simone de Beauvoir, Toril Moi and qualities of expression and movement by showing 154 Reviews

and verbally by using a lot of metaphors. The dance tered when dancers meet people with a background lessons are experienced as free zones from the daily in the Middle East or when dancers travel to Egypt, duties and the objectifying male gaze. Lebanon or other countries where belly dancing is The fourth chapter brings us from the intimate practised. dance class to the student shows, where dancers of The ambivalence created in the encounters with all levels show their skills in a safe and supportive potentially conflicting views, for example, concern- environment. In the student shows it is easier to ex- ing the position of women in the Middle East, is perience oneself as an attractive and hyper-feminine handled with several strategies. One of them is to dancer and even play with the fantasies of the Orient generate alternative explanations for such behaviour than in more public and professional venues. For ex- that does not fit with one’s own values. According- ample, the Oriental dancers performing in restau- ly, a common tactic is to relativize the practices un- rants emphasize their professionalism and want to der suspicion by comparing them with practices tak- keep their private persons separate from the role of ing place in Sweden, as in the case when honour-re- Oriental dancer. They also think that there is a need lated violence is aligned with other types of violence to defend themselves against prejudices concerning in Sweden. A central concept of the research is posi- Oriental dance, and the educational work that the tively loaded Orientalism, which also serves as a dancers have done has succeeded at least up to a way to cope with differences. It may include posi- point. tive and stereotyped views of the other, such as With her rich and detailed ethnographic material, highlighting the warm communality of the Middle Högström shows that Oriental dancers in Stockholm Easterns. Simultaneously, one’s own society is con- need to balance on the one hand with the view of sidered to be a cold community with lonely individ- belly dancing where the performing dancer is seen uals. Thus, Orientalist attitudes actually say more merely as a sex object, and on the other hand with about “Swedishness” than about the Other. the dancer’s own view and experience of the dance The dissertation creates a complex view of the form as an empowering and fun way of moving, values of Oriental dancers, which Högström de- which makes them feel like active, strong and beau- scribes as a continuum between fantasies, hopes and tiful women with subject status. This ambivalence is needs concerning the ideas of the Middle East or dealt with by various strategies: downplaying those Orient and experiences and “facts” of the realities of aspects of the dance that can be interpreted as sex- that area. The picture is completed in chapter six by ualizing and objectifying, emphasizing the authen- taking a look at Egyptian dance, which is a dance ticity of the dance as an ancient tradition in the style very different from Oriental dance. Egyptian Middle East or distancing oneself from the hyper- dance was developed by London-based Suraya Hilal feminine or sexual aspects with irony and playful- and it shares some movement qualities and expres- ness. sive elements of modern dance. Egyptian dancers In the fifth chapter, Högström demonstrates how distance themselves even more from the Orientalist Oriental dancers often become more interested in figure of belly dancer than Oriental dancers, for ex- Middle Eastern cultures as they become more in- ample, by wearing simple, covering dresses with a volved in the dance practice. In Stockholm this at- headscarf. This contrast brings the class aspect to traction can be catered to in various Middle Eastern the study: the femininity that is represented in the restaurants, which offer regular belly dance per- Oriental dance is rated by Egyptian dancers as too formances, and in clubs with Middle Eastern dance glittery or superficial, which is interpreted as bad music. These venues create space for a performed taste when compared with middle-class femininity Orient with exotic decoration, food, music and with a certain dignity, class and style. dance, where the idea of Orient as exotic, warm and Even though the study under review is very con- mysterious can be consumed without the risk of be- vincing in its argumentation, its range of empirical ing confronted with unintelligible cultural differ- material and the output of the rich, even contradicto- ences. These venues may also fail in not being Ori- ry values and views that the Oriental and Egyptian ental enough; too much light, not enough glamour, dancers hold, one must add a critical note about the too skinny a belly dancer without the right kind of theoretical outline of the dissertation. There must be expression. The “real” Middle East is also encoun- a good reason for Karin Högström not to explicitly Reviews 155

position herself in any well-established schools of enon we study. I would agree with Sedgwick that thought such as phenomenology or feminist theory. we must not lose sight of the possibilities of trans- What is explicit is that the central theoretical con- formation and change in affective and emotional en- cepts come from certain thinkers (Merleau-Ponty, counters – of which Oriental dancing is one ex- Bourdieu, de Beauvoir, Young, Skeggs, Nussbaum), ample. but the theoretical linkages between those concepts The book thoroughly covers the ideas and values and the line of thought are implicit. that dancers relate to their activity, and the more de- For example, a more thorough examination of the scriptive phases interlace beautifully with the more relationship between Bourdieu and phenomenology theoretical interpretations of the studied phenome- would have given strength to Högström’s argument non. The argumentation is easy to follow, and the about how to balance the view of the human subject bodily aspects of dancing really come to life. Hög- as an intentional, conscious agent and the view of ström writes in a respectful way about her research the powerful hold of structures on human subjectivi- subjects but is also able to keep a critical distance to ty. the views the dancers present in the interviews and The writer seeks to make a contribution to the un- other dance-related events. derstanding of gender, or more explicitly the con- I would recommend this study to students and struction of femininities in the field of Oriental scholars interested in embodied and kinaesthetic as- dance. Well-known feminist writers such as Simone pects of human lives, who seek to understand cultur- de Beauvoir, Toril Moi, Susan Bordo, Iris Marion al change on an individual level. This book is a good Young, Beverley Skeggs and Judith Butler work as example of ethnography, where the author is able to a reference point for understanding the gendered make the studied phenomenon alive and moving character of dancing, but feminist theory is hardly without losing her analytical grip of the subject. mentioned in the book, which I read as a decon- Anu Laukkanen, Turku textualizing and dehistoricizing act. According to Högström, some feminists (or the feminist move- ment, in the singular) put too much emphasis on the Imaginary Weaving negative and repressive sides of women’s possibili- Anna Jakobsson, Experiencing Landscape while ties to act as subjects and resist the patriarchal sys- Walking. On the Interplay between Garden Design, tem. However, I find Högström doing sophisticated Sensory Experience and Medical Spa Philosophy at feminist analysis in her dissertation, as she critically Ronneby Spa. Swedish University of Agricultural takes into account the gendered character of dancing. Sciences, Alnarp 2009. 228 pp. Ill. Swedish summa- Högström explains her theoretical choices explic- ry. Diss. ISBN 978-91-576- 7414-2. itly only when discussing post-colonial theory. In the first chapter she tells how post-colonial theory at
Ronneby Spa and the garden surrounding it in the first seemed like a suitable and interesting frame- south-east corner of Sweden is the pivotal point for work for this study, but after doing fieldwork the this doctoral thesis from the discipline of landscape theory did not seem to fit with the “reality”. Accord- architecture. Using Ronneby Spa as an example, the ing to Högström, post-colonial research puts too main objective of the thesis is to contribute to a wid- much emphasis on the repressive and negative as- ening of knowledge about spas, about garden design pects of othering, exoticizing and negative Oriental- in the late nineteenth century, and about the consti- ism. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, in Touching Feeling tuents of landscape heritage. The approach is multi- (2003), calls this tendency in queer studies paranoid disciplinary, including cultural history and ethnolo- reading, which seeks to uncover oppressive systems gy but also the history of garden design and medical such as sexism, homophobia and racism. This is philosophy. The main research question is how the what I see that Högström seeks to avoid. As a re- past experience of Ronneby Spa can be analysed sponse to such repressive readings, Högström fol- and described and how the medical spa philosophy lows Magnus Berg’s view of positively loaded Ori- and ideas of garden design of the late nineteenth entalism. Sedgwick suggested that we should search century interplayed when it came to the design and for reparative readings that would also take serious- use of the landscape. ly the positive and enjoyable aspects of the phenom- This doctoral thesis is a heterogeneous affair in 156 Reviews

form, layout, and contents. The main corpus of the creates a lot of new paradoxes and discloses all the dissertation is a discussion (70 pages) based on four dimensions we cannot know and sense about other already published articles. These four articles, of people. My first objection to the chosen strategy is which two are in Swedish and two in English, are that the language in the description certainly not is included at the end of the present publication in their the language of a young Swedish lady in 1899. Not original layout. After a general introduction to the only is it in English, it lacks all the “flavour” of the history of Ronneby Spa and to the methodological past that you would find in any empirical source and theoretical inspirations for the thesis, the discus- from the period. Secondly, everything is described sion follows, supplemented with summaries of the with equal attention – even things that in those days four articles in several versions of varying length would have been taken for granted. Also, the genre throughout the dissertation. On top of this comes a of the text is very vague. Neither a diary nor a letter framework appendix including three previous stu- genre – which would naturalize a detailed descrip- dies that have been part of Jakobsson’s master and tion – is chosen. As such the text is flat and dead licentiate thesis. since no reader is implied but the reader interested The articles focuses mostly on the actors affect- in cultural history, and this kind of reader risks be- ing the design of the spa landscape: the doctor, the coming irritated because of all the small details that landscape architect and the gardener and also the are missing. One’s own historical imagination is spatial organization of the spa environment and the more or less spoiled. everyday practices of the visitors “ruled by routine On top of this, it is paradoxical that the sensory and ritual” in taking the waters and walking in the experiences beyond the visual – which Jakobsson garden and the surrounding landscape. With inspira- wants to recall via the imaginary weaving – are in tion from the phenomenological tradition as promot- fact very limited. This probably has to do with the ed by Merleau-Ponty and Ingold, the discussion fo- fact that such experiences are seldom textualized cuses on the sensory experience of the visitors and either in current or past texts. Sensory experiences its interplay with the contemporary ideas about gar- are most often tacit knowledge and there is a lack of den design and medical treatment and health in the concepts to describe them. Thus it is not surprising heyday of Ronneby Spa in the latter part of the nine- that Jakobsson’s experiment does not work convinc- teenth century. ingly. More successful is the visual imaginary As the articles are fine examples of cultural histo- weave of Ronneby Spa that covers the publication. ry, the focus in the discussion moves towards the This weave consists of a collage and thus an integra- question of how to work with the historically situ- ated bodily and sensory experiences of the visitors tion of two different pictures of the same view of the to the spa. As such the empirical rich material and landscape at Ronneby: a picture from 1877 and a re- the theoretical inspiration become means for “recall- cent photo taken from the very same angle. The ing” past experiences. Here the intuitive and em- weave displays an image of the populated past si- pathic competences of the researcher are called for. multaneous with an image of the unpopulated The ambition of reconstructing or imagining the present. To see them both at the same time means past sensory and bodily experiences of walking is understanding the heritage and the change of the enacted in what Jakobsson, with inspiration from landscape at Ronneby Spa, Jakobsson argues. To- Collingwood, calls “imaginary weaving”. This con- gether with the rich empirical material and thorough sists of a 15-page description written in the first per- analysis of the cultural history of Ronneby Spa pre- son, as if by a young lady visiting the spa in 1899. sented in the book, this picture sets the historical im- The person is fictive but she is typical of the visitors agination free. Though the dimension of materiality in that period. The text describes her actions and might have been integrated to a higher degree in the sensations during a visit to Ronneby. discussion, the thesis contributes to a deeper under- The wish to be able to “creep under the skin” and standing of landscape experience and how important experience the past or a present from “within that it is to incorporate bodily movement in any analysis culture” is very understandable and probably shared of past practices. by any ethnographer or cultural historian. But this is Tine Damsholt, Copenhagen not – at least to my taste – the way to do it as it Reviews 157

Danish in Fashion white Danish cloth nappies which had been dyed, Marie Riegels Melchior , Dansk på mode! En under- but that information, if anything, reinforced the søgelse af design, identitet og historie i dansk mode- physical sense of intimacy.) For us radical young industri . Danmarks Designskole/Kunstindustrimu- women, Danish fashion was also velvet, exotic pat- seet/Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, København terns, and embroidery. It was above all individual, 2008. 257 pp. Ill. English summary. Diss. ISBN and of great assistance in staging personal identity 87-92016-08-1. and style. The art of representing the interior through exter-
“Today I was dressed in Danish design as a trib- nal expressions is an expanding sphere of knowl- ute to Danish fashion and Danish women! There edge. There are many works in the field of fashion seem to be many Danish brands in Swedish shops – studies describing how personal or cultural identity thanks! And you might think that there isn’t such a is shaped with, or against, the changing practices of big difference between us Scandinavian countries, fashion. but I would claim that there is! I think I can see Marie Riegels Melchior’s dissertation, “Danish greater variation in clothes between women in Den- in fashion! A study of design, identity, and history mark than you do in Sweden (or is it just that the in the Danish fashion industry”, is nevertheless group of librarians is more varied in Denmark than relatively free of the psychologizing explanatory in Sweden? Although I thought there was a differ- models that are often used to describe the relation- ence in the city too…?). I still think that clothes are ship between individual and structure. It focuses in- more different and daring in Ålborg. For instance, I stead on Danish fashion as a phenomenon over time tried on a pair of trousers from Bitte Kai Rand that in a national and trade context. In its eight chapters looked really snazzy on the shop assistant – I had to the dissertation describes and analyses what is char- fold, button up, and pull into shape… Well, they acteristic of Danish fashion and how a “transnation- didn’t look so snazzy on me (although I suppose you al phenomenon” like fashion is made into something can’t blame the trousers for that) … but the thing is, specifically national through the practice of differ- the assistant was of my age and it didn’t look arti- ent actors. ficial – they were simply snazzy trousers for ladies Riegels Melchior is inspired in part by actor-net- of my age. I like a lot of the Swedish designs, but work theory and the way in which this theory is ex- the fact is that most of it just doesn’t work for a lady pressed by Bruno Latour, Annemarie Mol, and Jon of my age … well, Anna Holtblad perhaps, but she Law. By studying how Danish fashion has devel- is not exactly snazzy… I’m simply jealous of all oped since the 1950s – and how this is represented women in Denmark!” in the trade press and the media – and by studying This is how a woman in the Swedish “Malin fashion in the present, for instance by doing field- blog” describes her love of the mature Danish fash- work with Mads Nørgaard-Copenhagen, the author ion a few years into the 2000s. I found the blog dur- makes a convincing presentation of the complex ing my reading of Marie Riegels Melchior’s disser- construction of the phenomenon that is Danish tation about Danish fashion, when I did a search for fashion . this topic on Google. Danish fashions can undoubt- The impact of fashion is no longer regarded as a edly defend their place in Swedish women’s ward- strictly regulated relationship between centre and robes. periphery. The centralization of fashion, that is, As a teenager in the late 1970s I often went to when trends were set in Paris and then spread over Copenhagen to look for the radical aesthetic that we Europe and the world, has been replaced today by on the Swedish side of the Sound associated with decentralization , and many fashion theorists say that Denmark. “Danish” represented simplicity and different kinds of fashion arise in different places functional design, bright colours, and no great dis- and different contexts. (And the task of trend ana- tinction between male and female fashion. It was lysts is to go out and discover contemporary fashion natural and authentic as well. I particularly remem- so that production can keep up.) Riegels Melchior ber how genuine it felt as I wrapped those soft cot- defines this as a multicentric system, with several ton scarves with different accent colours around my fashion centres coexisting on a global market. The neck or over my head. (It was said that these were Danish example can thus be generalized as a reflec- 158 Reviews

tion of an international tendency in the fashion busi- design could contribute to cultural development, ness. By describing and analysing how the multi- economic growth, social welfare, and ecological centring of fashion is concretely expressed in the sustainability. Drives focusing on design are often a everyday practice of the fashion industry, she seeks result of strategic collaboration between culture and to contribute to “a more nuanced insight into the business, and in the light of what we today call the phenomenon of Danish fashion”. new economy , they can also be interpreted as a sym- The dissertation deals with the part of the Danish bolic union of culture and economics. The new fashion industry that produces ladies’ and gentle- economy is often defined as a cultural economy , but men’s clothes, and the evidence consists of histori- has also been described as an economization of cul- cal source material, interviews, and participant ob- ture . The talk of design propels the encounter be- servation. The study proceeds from Danish fashion tween the traditional outlook on work and new ways as a socio-material actor network in which both of representing production. things and people are important actors. In the em- The Danish fashion industry today is a globally pirical study the author outlines the history of the oriented export industry that simultaneously re- Danish fashion industry and how Danish fashion has quires a definition of the “identity” of Danish been described in the trade press and newspaper ar- fashion. The political project that is the Danish ticles. We follow the exciting fieldwork at Mads Fashion Institute is therefore trying to extract the Nørgaard-Copenhagen and learn how fashion and “DNA” of Danish fashion in order to establish Co- design are interwoven with different actors’ practice penhagen and Denmark as the world’s fifth global and ideas. fashion centre. An interesting section in the dissertation is the Marie Riegels Melchior’s dissertation is an im- sixth chapter, “With or without sequins – challenges portant contribution to research on current fashions and opportunities in a Danish fashion-design ex- and the fashion business. The industry needs to de- pression”, where the author analyses a specific ver- velop its knowledge of the significance of fashion sion of Danish fashion: bohemian individualism. for society, its organizational processes and the situ- Here the sequin serves as an analytical metaphor ation in this business with its demanding working and an important actor: “This little, often glittering, conditions, where many dreams and hopes are in- circular object of plastic or metal, decoratively sewn vested. To meet society’s demands for sustainability on to cloth and recognizable especially from the and political expectations, the capacity for self-re- dress of women from the Middle East and Asia, thus flection and quality assurance should be top-priority proved to be an eye-catching little thing in Danish competence. Riegels Melchior’s dissertation is close fashion.” The sequin became a symbol of individu- to the practice of the fashion industry and will hope- alistic and bohemian design in the late 1990s and fully provide the necessary insight. early 2000s. But in what way was it actually Fashion studies is a new theoretical academic Danish? Marie Riegels Melchior describes with ana- field that calls for constant development of knowl- lytical acumen how this design expression was in- edge and legitimacy. Riegels Melchior’s work sup- terwoven, both in her interviews and in the public plies important theoretical perspectives on several discourse, with specific values ascribed to “Danish- of the paradoxes of fashion. One of the most use- ness”. The link between Danish national identity ful, perhaps, is the analytical ability to demonstrate and values such as democracy, accessibility, and di- the complexity of fashion and the limits that can versity found concrete expression a few years later result when fashion is reduced to a single (nation- in the foundation of the Danish Fashion Institute in al) design expression. Danish fashion, after all, is 2005. much more than a small town in Jutland. Design and fashion have become important key Cecilia Fredriksson, Lund/Helsingborg words today for describing the production of goods and services. Politicians are hoping that the design, lifestyle, and experience industry will generate Viewpoints on the Sixties strong growth in the economy. In Sweden, for ex- Katja-Maria Miettunen , Menneisyys ja historiaku- ample, 2005 was proclaimed as “Design Year” by va. Suomalainen kuusikymmentäluku muistelijoi- the government, one of the aims being to show how den rakentamana ajanjaksona. Bibliotheca Historica Reviews 159

126. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki popsters in that each writer recalls the Sixties mostly 2009. 306 pp. Diss. English summary. ISBN from his or her own point of view. For the writers, 978-952-222-155-1. their common profession is the overreaching aspect. All three groups associate cultural change with
The subject of Katja-Maria Miettunen’s doctoral the Sixties. The radicals concentrate mainly on thesis is the image of the Finnish Sixties. It is a dis- theatre, and the writers recall debates sparked by sertation in history, and the source material consists certain books. The popsters create their own picture of published memoirs, autobiographies, autobio- of the cultural change with music at the core and graphical novels and interviews published in the phenomena such as fashion, stardom, fan culture, media. In all, the material consists of the published and alcohol and drugs. Out of line with the radicals reminiscences of 139 individuals. The diligence of and writers, popsters mention things such as the the work becomes concrete, for example, in the in- contrast between the urban and rural and media cul- dex of names, which will help the reader to find spe- ture. Miettunen points out that the narratives of the cific figures of interest. radicals, popsters and writers leave most of the Miettunen conceives an image as a general con- young people of the 60s out of their reminiscence. ception of what some past matter was like and what “The mass” of young people is left grey on the mar- significance it may have for the present. The starting gins of their image of the Sixties. point of the study is that such images are important One component of an image of the past consists because they mould conceptions of the past and its of events. The popsters and the writers describe the significance. One’s conception of the past has an im- events of the Sixties as incidents that happened to pact on how one views the present and the future. The take place at that time. The radicals’ accounts differ aim of the study is to find how the image of the past is from those of the other groups in that for them, cer- formed and what its relation is to real past events. tain events have become moments. A background Images of the past are not formed contingently and meaning is provided for these moments, and but through the activity of actors with motives of they are characterized as important turning points their own. Miettunen’s standpoint is that in seeing for both radicalism and the Sixties in general. The the past, an individual is not projecting the present moments are events which the narrators claim to on the real past but on the image of the past that she have felt particularly strongly about. The great mo- or he has conceived. The significance of past events ments in the image of the past are those events inter- is in the meanings attached to them at different preted to be so significant that they ought to be un- times. 'The Sixties' is not a reference to the decade forgettable. 1960−1969 but to a kind of mental landscape which An important device in building an image of the is not necessarily bound to the calendar. In the im- past is legitimizing one’s role as a constructor of age of the past the reality may be arranged in ways that image through personal experiences. The narra- other than chronologically. tors claim that only those who have experienced the Miettunen has grouped the reminiscences into Sixties should tell about it. Still, having lived in the three parts. The radicals, the popsters and the writers 60s is not the same as having experienced the Six- all have their own ways of making Sixties theirs ties. According to the narrators, the decade cannot from their own perspectives. For the radicals, radi- be understood unless one has oneself experienced it, calism and the Sixties are so closely connected as to and in the right way. The narrators link the concept be virtually synonymous. The ideas that the radicals of experience with the events in a straightforward associate with the Sixties include pacifism, toler- manner: they claim to recount the real past when ance of difference, solidarity with the Third World they describe their own experiences. For the narra- and the new leftism. The popsters claim that pop tors, their experience is something that has actually culture had an impact on many spheres of life and happened, and they seem to believe that the memory made the Sixties important. Both the radicals and of it has survived unchanged in their minds. popsters claim that Finland had been an isolated Miettunen’s research shows that narratives about country and present the phenomenon that they them- the Sixties are connected to life in the present. They selves represent as an important factor in ending this shed light on the particular present by showing what isolation. The writers differ from the radicals and has been considered to be worth remembering. The 160 Reviews

reminiscences participate in the building of the im- sertation, but are not woven into the analysis from age of the past as a part of a larger whole. The remi- the beginning. The English title ‘The Past and the niscing cannot be understood unless it is viewed as a Image of the Past’ is evidence of the author's not process in which each single text has its own par- completely developed theoretical thinking. The title ticular role to play. implies that there is ‘a real past’ even though in the The image of the past is a whole, and Miettunen’s text Katja-Maria Miettunen writes that the past is method has been to study it by breaking it up. Ac- but different views and representations of the past. cording to her, the image must be broken into its Tytti Steel, Helsinki components in order to grasp it. The narrative of the Sixties becomes concrete in the answers to ques- tions such as: When did the Sixties begin? How did Men’s Violence against Women it manifest? What were its significant moments? Gabriella Nilsson , Könsmakt eller häxjakt? Antago- Where did it end, and what did it signify? Words nistiska föreställningar om mäns våld mot kvinnor. such as novelty and change are keywords in the im- Institutionen för Kulturvetenskaper, Lunds univer- age of the Sixties. According to the radicals, the Six- sitet 2009. 275 pp. English summary. Diss. ISBN ties reshaped values and modernized Finnish socie- 978-91-6287-843-6. ty. The popsters put the emphasis on what the Six- ties meant to them personally. The writers, like the
“It’s an everyday occurrence that boys make a radicals, talk mainly about the changes in values and pass at girls. There is no doubt that it is not all right attitudes, but whereas the radicals stress the perma- to have intercourse when the girl says no. Of course nent nature of these changes, the writers often one should not commit assault, but it must be per- present them as transient. mitted to continue the flirting.” A Norwegian lawyer In exploring the margins of the image of the past, was quoted as saying this in the newspaper Verdens Miettunen points out how the image of the Other is Gang (8 October 2010). He was in the court of constructed. In the reminisces, the underground Sør-Trøndelag, defending his 25-year-old client movement, the hippie movement and Maoism are who admitted that he had undressed and had inter- relegated to the margins of the image, but neverthe- course with a 24-year-old woman whom he had less belong essentially to it. Also, phenomena such driven home from the town one evening two years as the structural change in Finnish society, the sex- previously. The client, however, said that it could ual revolution, the change in the position of women not be defined as rape because he stopped when “the and the liberalization of the alcohol policy are left inebriated woman did not want to have sex with him aside. An important way to give meaning to the Six- in the back seat of the car.” The lawyer pleaded for ties is to compare them with later periods and con- his client’s acquittal based on the quotation above. clude that they were better by all accounts. The nar- This statement shocked people, including the leader rators compare the Sixties especially to the Seven- of the Crisis Centre Secretariat, who thought that the ties, which are remembered as being dismal in all lawyer was trying to make rape seem trivial. The respects. The radicals have perceived certain fea- lawyer, however, thought that “the feminists have tures of the Sixties in later phenomena, for instance, monopolized the debate about rape in the media”, in various grassroots movements. According to and he said that “prominent forces in the women’s Miettunen, the wish to bring the Sixties back movement have won this debate”, but that he was demonstrates how the object of reminiscing is above willing to engage in discussion of “a difficult topic” all a mental epoch. The real decade cannot return, (Adresseavisen , 8 October 2010). but the Sixties of the image of the past can. This case was in the Norwegian media at the The dissertation excellently brings together the same time as I was reading Gabriella Nilsson’s dis- extensive and conflicting views of the 1960s, but sertation in ethnology, the title of which means would have benefitted from a more profound “Gender power or witch hunt? Antagonistic ideas theoretical deliberation. The concepts of nostalgia about men’s violence against women” (2009). It il- and identities are very briefly covered. For example, lustrates a central theme of her study: notions of the ideas of Maurice Halbwachs and Jacques Le male sexual liberty, women’s responsibility for their Goff are mentioned only in the very end of the dis- own behaviour, the power to define, antagonisms Reviews 161

between explanatory models of the connection be- the concluding chapter, Nilsson sums up parts 1–3, tween gender and violence, including the perception rounding off with the following question: What does that “feminists have closed up the debate” – themes it mean that violence is accepted as a part of many that are valid and relevant far beyond the Swedish male practices but is not considered acceptable for context that is the focus of Nilsson’s dissertation. women? Is there a link between this “legitimate” The starting point for Nilsson’s study is the con- male violence and men’s violence against women? troversial question of how to explain men’s violence The dissertation is a study of texts from the against women. In this issue there is an antagonism Swedish debate about the three phenomena of rape, between perspectives that study violence in relation incest, and physical abuse of women. We are intro- to gender and men’s power over women, and per- duced to scholarly texts and academic debates, pop- spectives that tone down the gender issue in favour ular science, official inquiries, parliamentary bills, of other explanations, for example biological, psy- reports, debate articles, and interviews in the media. chiatric, and individual psychological perspectives. The point is not to categorize the texts in specific Nilsson studies this antagonism as a struggle for the genres, but to use them in order to see how they are preferential right to define what violence is. With related to each other intertextually, and to ascertain the aid of thorough text studies, she shows how the how the antagonism can be found regardless of understanding of violence that is allowed to domi- boundaries between disciples and genres. Nilsson nate can be significant for the way society handles thus studies the function of these texts as tools in the violence both via professional practice and in juris- struggle for the right to interpret violence. The prudence and legislation. knowledge she produces is thus what can be ob- Nilsson’s dissertation is not just about rape. It tained through a close-up reading of these texts: the also deals with incest and abuse. She thus underlines sources can say how someone describes the situa- the potential of the cultural sciences to study not tions being studied, but they give no insight into only culture as an expression of “good order” and what it was “really” like, according to Nilsson. uncontroversial matters, but also topics that are rele- From the point of view of cultural studies, this vant to contemporary society and arouse debate. seems like a reasonable argument for demarcating Nilsson’s study is one product of the network “Gen- the source material; we study the media precisely as der and Violence: Historical and Cultural Perspec- an important source for folk ideas about a particular tives”, led by Inger Lövkrona at Lund University phenomenon. In addition, cultural scholars have had and financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ re- a fondness for the research interview – talking with search programme “Gender and Violence in the the people that the texts are about could possibly Nordic Countries” (2000–2004). have brought us even closer to the research field. The dissertation consists of an introduction, an- Nilsson could therefore have chosen to interview the alysis, and conclusion. The introduction provides an actors that the texts concern. This could have given account of methods, analytical strategies, and cen- interesting nuances and greater depth, but it would tral theoretical premises. The analysis is divided into have required a broader approach to data collection three parts: part 1 concerns the debate about rape in and analysis. And who really believes that inter- the period 1975–1977, part 2 deals with incest views bring us closer to “the truth”? Nilsson thus (1982–1996), and part 3 looks at abuse (1988– had good, solid arguments for her decision to con- 2000). Each of these three parts consists of three to centrate on texts. four sub-chapters, and each part concludes with a In the introduction she formulates the problem(s) summary of the chapter. Each part also begins with and the aim of the study cumulatively. Nilsson rea- a statement of the focus of the chapter and the kind sons her way to the questions she can ask about the of sources to be used. These statements work well, study object by connecting it to central analytical and are perhaps even essential for the reader, for this starting points: cultural analysis, discourse theory, is a dissertation with many actors – so many names, the gender perspective. “How are ideas made about debates, and inquiries are studied that it can be easy men’s violence against women?” (p. 17), “How are to lose track. The dissertation is dense and can ideas about men’s violence against women made sometimes be perceived as somewhat heavy in its through the struggle for the preferential right of in- language and thus not wholly accessible. In part 4, terpretation?” (p. 18), “How is hegemony estab- 162 Reviews

lished or maintained in the outlook on men’s vio- well have spoken about (dominant) discourse and lence against women through challenge and resist- counter-discourse? In that context the concept of ance?” (p. 19). She then formulates the aim of the subject position becomes central: from what posi- dissertation: “to study the practice in which antago- tion are ideas about violence articulated; how is this nistic ideas about men’s violence against women are position ascribed to or by the actor? articulated as challenge or resistance; how these The first analytical chapter centres on a series of ideas are made through the struggle for the preferen- articles in the newspaper Expressen and the debate tial right of interpretation and the establishment of about the report of a government inquiry into sexual hegemony in a particular gender order” (p. 20). crimes ( Sexualbrottsutredningens slutbetänkande , From a reader’s viewpoint, it may be objected SOU 1976:9). Nilsson shows how commission that strewing research questions in this way is an ob- members, expert positions, and science collaborated stacle to quickly grasping a more clearly demarcated in sense-making about rape and how it should be un- problem for the dissertation. At the same time, this derstood. We simultaneously gain insight into how way of pursuing the research questions, by constant- the commission to perform the inquiry was an op- ly linking back to the empirical point of departure portunity for criminology as a discipline to strength- for the study, illustrates and emphasizes the method en its position in the scientific field in relation to of cultural analysis through which the problem is forensic psychiatry and gender politics. We then see driven by the empirical material. Yet Nilsson also what happened when the commission’s view of rape has a clear premise for the dissertation, namely “the was challenged (and defended) in the ensuing media view that men’s violence against women is shaped debate. The liberal vision of sexual freedom had in a context where gender and gender differences been a goal in the context where the commission are understood as a gender order that legitimizes and started its work, but when it finished the inquiry the defends certain actions” (p. 20). climate had changed: the report was viewed as tak- The introduction also states the methodological ing a disparaging view of women, having prejudices and theoretical starting point for the study: Dis- about gender, and following an old-fashioned pat- course analysis and cultural analysis are central tern of gender roles. The women’s movement united methods, and theories of discourse, Bourdieu’s field in a protest which was submitted to the Ministry of theory, and gender are presented as important per- Justice. Nilsson shows how these events led to the spectives for the interpretations Nilsson makes. rise of an antagonism in the outlook on rape in the What makes this dissertation cultural studies ? What mid-1970s: the liberal vision was challenged by a can the chosen perspectives contribute in this field? gender perspective. Rape became a women’s issue. Nilsson herself claims that it is the focus on practice It is interesting to see the report as a catalyst for the that characterizes cultural analysis, with a micro- ability of the women’s movement to achieve unity perspective that opens one’s eyes to something more and formulate a critique. than just what is said: how is it said, and why ? Since Nilsson says in the introduction that she Asking such questions also enables studying any uses discourse analysis, one might expect this per- changes in the field. spective to be made more obvious and employed Other central concepts for the analysis of the more actively as an analytical tool. One could en- struggle for the preferential right of interpretation visage, for example, that she might analyse the ac- are resistance and challenge. Here it is worth notic- tual concept of “rape” as a fluid signifier, a sign ing that the term resistance is not employed in the that is particularly open for different meanings, way we are used to – to describe activities that which different discourses struggle to fill with marginalized groups perform to oppose the ruling meaning. It is possible that it could have had a power, but in the reverse direction. Challenge is more unifying effect on the analysis, especially used here to study the actions that are intended to since she also does this in the analysis of incest and bring about change, while resistance serves to study abuse. By studying the matter in terms of resist- the reaction that comes to the challenge. Resistance ance and challenge, special emphasis is placed on is thus studied as actions and strategies to prevent the processual aspect, which is interesting for Nils- changes and preserve the established order. The son who wants to see whether there are changes in concepts work well, but surely Nilsson could just as the fields she studies. But by also studying rape, Reviews 163

incest, and abuse as fluid signifiers it would be gender studies, politics, and the women’s issue. First possible to shed light on the struggle to define the Nilsson gives a good description of the division in meaning, a struggle that Nilsson wants to capture, women’s studies between the focus on social work and studying what is omitted versus what is per- and the vision of gender politics. She also provides a mitted in the discursive field would be a very suit- good introduction into the background to things that able tool for studying change. have aroused great attention in the Norwegian me- In the second part of the analysis, about incest, dia as well: the question of women’s/gender studies the media contribution is likewise central. The chap- and the ties to the design of policy and the produc- ter begins with a Swedish TV1 programme about in- tion of ideology. A central figure in Nilsson’s analy- cest. Two people, one from the women’s movement sis is Eva Lundgren, who is portrayed as a central and one from Save the Children, are central in the actor both as an opponent ex auditorio in 1988 dur- recent incest debate in Sweden. Much of the debate ing the psychiatrist Bo Bergman’s oral defence of concerns the question of incest as a women’s issue his dissertation on domestic violence, and in the cri- or a children’s issue. Nilsson demonstrates in inter- tique of another central pioneering study on the esting ways how incest as a women’s issue is per- abuse of women, Margareta Hydén’s study in social ceived as a different social issue from incest as a psychology from 1992. Nilsson also analyses the children’s issue. The adult women’s needs were not work of the commission on violence against women considered urgent, but by choosing the children’s that was set up by the then centre-right government perspective, the focus was shifted to incest in the to inquire into public measures against domestic present day, which called for rapid action. The ac- violence, and how this derived inspiration from tors’ perception of their own subject position in rela- Lundgren’s research, especially the theory of the tion to the right to express oneself and to be per- normalization process that violence underwent. Did ceived as professional is also considered. In the this perspective become an “institutional truth”? analysis of rape there are examples of the opinion The opposition that the directive encountered, with that not having personally been a rape victim was the result that it had to be adapted to suit the judicial important for being perceived as objective. In the field, meant that its potential to challenge the gender debate about incest, on the other hand, the represent- field in many respects disappeared. It is an interest- ative of the women’s movement was concerned with ing analysis that Nilsson undertakes when she asks – the fact that she was acting in her position as a vic- on the basis of the term “state feminism” – whether tim of incest. the fact that the gender-political analysis of men’s The fact that the children’s perspective had prior- violence against women was something the govern- ity in the interpretation of what incest was, meant ment supported became a limitation more than an that the issue of gender was of subordinate signifi- opportunity to implement directives. The controver- cance (except in the critique of what was subse- sy about Lundgren’s research and her alleged links quently called the “hysteria” about incest). Nilsson with the women’s shelter organization ROKS, interprets this as meaning that the children’s per- makes interesting and illuminating reading. This spective does not challenge in the same way as the chapter is not only of concern within academia but gender perspective. She nevertheless claims that the also has the potential to interest a broader audience. consequences were the reverse: the focus on the Nilsson then sums up her three thematic analyses. children gave an opportunity for gender politics. Have there been any changes in society’s view of The underlying gender conflict in the incest issue men’s violence against women in the period (1975– was concealed because on the surface it ended up 2000) she has studied? The debates about rape, in- being about urgent measures to help vulnerable, in- cest, and abuse of women all started as “dramatic nocent children. But in the hunt for urgent measures, revelations”, with good assistance from the media, masculine freedoms and rights could be restricted in of the dark and hushed-up sides of society. The way a way that would not otherwise have been possible. in which these topics came into public light pro- The third and final part of the analysis is about voked reaction and debate. physical abuse of women. This is not just an inter- Nilsson finds that the use of science is a shared esting analysis, but also an informative description factor in the struggle for the preferential right of in- of the controversies about scientific perspectives, terpretation in the field. This is the subject position 164 Reviews

the actors wish to occupy. Science has been used as ance to the gender- political outlook on men’s vio- an argument both to establish and to challenge he- lence that Nilsson detects in her sources be under- gemony in a field; it has connotations of objectivity, stood as a defence of men’s freedom of action? That rationality, and “truth”. Even within the gender-po- is Nilsson’s conclusion. She thinks that the struggle litical project, science has been used as an argument, against men’s abuse of women was a struggle over for example when people have questioned individ- the demands that could be achieved without too ual scientific contributions, as Lundgren did when much restriction of men’s freedom of action. she pointed out serious weaknesses in Bergman’s Nilsson also concludes that both women and dissertation about domestic violence, or when wit- men, both challengers and defenders of the hegemo- ness psychologists in the incest debate argued that ny, have contributed to this kind of adaptation. The their methods were scientific. struggle for the preferential right of interpretation Nilsson finds that there has not been any radical has always taken place within the framework of the change in the direction of a gender-political under- prevailing gender order, not as a revolt against it. standing of men’s violence against women in the pe- The actors have always submitted to the rules of the riod she has studied. As she has shown through her game. Here Nilsson talks of heterosocial action and analyses, there has been a political will to change. In adaptation to the structure of the demand system , the sense of discourse theory, change is always claiming that the challengers in the field have thus possible, and the very fact that there has been some contributed to reproducing the gender order and the movement in the field can be interpreted as a change power relations they have sought to change. This is – even if it feels like going back to the beginning particularly clear in Nilsson’s analysis of the subject again. Nilsson nevertheless has to ask a new ques- position in which the actors in the field wish to tion: Why has nothing happened? stand: “feminist” is a position that the actors find Nilsson finds evidence in her material which sug- disqualifying, even the women who are active in gests that it could be the actual gender-political per- gender politics. spective that provokes. Perspectives that understand Nilsson’s dissertation is detailed, based on rich the reason for men’s violence against women as an and multifaceted source material. In a review it is expression of differences in power between the sexes difficult to cover all the many interesting analyses tend to create separate groups: victims/women and and interpretations found throughout the disserta- perpetrators/men. This perspective ignores the view tion. In my opinion, this is a dissertation that should of the violent man as deviant, sick, alcoholic, or of a be of interest to more than just cultural scientists – different ethnic background; the perpetrator of vio- in jurisprudence, politics, and the professional as- lence can be “any man at all”. This group thinking sistance system – for its analyses of how ideas of about men is probably perceived as negative and un- gender can affect the way in which society handles fair. The antagonism when it comes to the issue of the problem of violence against women. When Nils- men’s violence against women should therefore be son, for example, shows how the debate about rape understood as more than disagreement about par- and incest became more legitimate and asks whether ticulars, Nilsson says; it must be understood as a fun- it may have to do with the fact that the greatest em- damental conflict between men and women. phasis in the debates was not on the gender issue, The relationship between resistance and chal- this should give us pause for thought. The conse- lenge in the outlook on men’s violence can therefore quences of the desire to use science in politics, and also be interpreted as an expression of a fundamen- the fact that science can also become ideology, are tal opposition between women’s and men’s scope other crucial insights. for action , according to Nilsson. This opposition The dissertation is, of course, written within a means that, if the scope for one of the categories Swedish context. In the use of textual evidence, increases, the scope for the other one decreases. Nilsson has chosen to make room for the debates Nilsson is thus able to explain that the struggle for about rape, incest, and physical abuse of women. greater legal security for women was followed by a For a group of readers not familiar with the entire defence of men‘s legal security, that the struggle for Swedish debate and central figures in Swedish pub- women’s sexual integrity was followed by a defence lic life, one could occasionally wish that Nilsson of men’s sexual freedom, and so on. Can the resist- had shown a bit more from her sources, for example, Reviews 165

if she could have given more insight into some of yliopisto, Turku 2009. 319 pp. 165 appendices. the texts and thereby also showed the reader how Diss. ISBN 978-951-29- 4055-4. she has analysed them. This could have given more depth and insight into the basis for the interpreta-
The doctoral dissertation of Raimo Päiviö, com- tions she makes. But this would probably have pleted at the Department of Ethnology at the Univer- forced her to choose just one of the three topics, sity of Turku in Finland, is an important piece of re- which would have been an obstacle to the compari- search focusing on a special rural economic phenom- son and the investigation of changes that is one of her enon in several parishes both on the Finnish and the aims. It would also have been good to see a more Estonian side of the Gulf of Finland and also on the detailed discussion of the relationship between poli- large islands in the middle of the Gulf of Finland. tics and media. The British criminologist Maggie Focusing in particular on the area 200 kilometres Wykes has studied this relationship as an “inter- east of the parish of Koivisto and to the west as far twined discourse”. Wykes analyses news texts about as to Porvoo, Sipoo and Helsinki, fishermen used to gender and violence in British media in relation to transport their surplus catch over to the Estonian concepts such as “news value” and “values” in coast to the comparably long area east of Tallinn British society. She shows how the media discourse and sometimes also to the west to Paldiski and some and the political discourse are in symbiosis or inter- smaller locations. On the Estonian coast the Finnish action, as the cases can be held up against the pre- fishermen met their trading partners, Estonian farm- vailing political forces. Perspectives like this could ers, who also had some surplus grain. The salted fish perhaps have been highlighted in this study. was exchanged for grain, mainly for rye, and it was Nilsson positions herself as a cultural scientist essential that both parties got what was necessary and feminist in her dissertation. I have read this in- for their households. It was a reciprocal act which teresting study with another thought in mind: What included certain traditional manners, such as shak- is the contribution of the cultural scientist? What ing hands, serving some ready-made fish and taking makes Nilsson’s dissertation a dissertation in eth- a drink of milk from a bottle or some spirits or beer. nology, not sociology or anthropology? Would it The word ‘sepra’, used for this partnership, origi- have looked different if she had written it in some nates from the Baltic languages and means a very other subject? The British cultural theorist John good friend, sometimes also a relative, society or Smith says that in post-modern times it has become guild. This tradition took place from the early common to perceive the cultural scientist as a kind Middle Ages until as late as the 1920s and 1930s. of interpreter, whose role can be to generate dia- The trading partners usually met twice a year, the logue and reflexivity between and within different first time just before Midsummer and the second social spheres. This is connected to the perception of time in the middle of September. Some of the is- the cultural theorist as a “bearer of discourses”, a landers who had a shorter crossing sailed sometimes supplier of ideas and reflexive critique. In my opin- a third time in the middle of November, and some- ion, Nilsson’s analysis of whether we have wit- times, during a bad year, the fishermen could cross nessed “gender power or witch hunt” is a disserta- the Gulf of Finland very early in the spring, already tion that fits Smith’s optimistic view of the potential at the end of April. There were also other provisions of cultural studies. to be exchanged; for instance, Estonian potatoes Sidsel Natland, Oslo were imported by Finns since the 1860s and Eston- ians since the 1870s and some firewood was export- ed to Estonia. The Estonians also fished on the Finn- What Finished off the Sepra Trade? ish side of the Gulf of Finland. Raimo Päiviö , Mikä tappoi seprakaupan? Suoma- Päiviö approaches his subject from a historical laisten ja virolaisten harjoittamasta vaihto- eli sepra- point of view, which he had found to be the best kaupasta, sen hiipumisesta 1800-luvun lopulta en- way to conduct research on a heterogeneous group simmäiseen maailmansotaan ja sen loppumiseen of fishermen living in a very wide area and farm- 1920- ja 1930-luvuilla. Turun yliopiston julkaisuja, er-fishermen, fishmongers and workers who en- Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, Sarja-Ser. C, gaged in fishing as a complementary source of Scripta Lingua Fennica Edita, Osa-Tom. 287. Turun livelihood. 166 Reviews

The most important question is expressed in the the border between Russia and Sweden was drawn title: why did the traditional reciprocal trade die out? towards the west, and in the 19th century, when both Päiviö continues by asking what kinds of factors were Finland and Estonia were part of Russia, the im- supporting the traditional structure of this trade be- portance of Tallinn increased. People from Fin- fore changes at the macro and micro level started in- land’s west coast, the south-western archipelago, the fluencing it and ultimately destroying it. In a wider Åland islands and of course the northern coast of the perspective, he is focusing on traditional rural econ- Gulf of Finland sailed their surplus supplies and omic self-sufficiency and changing over to a mone- firewood over to Tallinn. In explaining the reason tary economy. One of the interesting questions is: did for the popularity of Tallinn, Päiviö considers the the sepra trade change form during the centuries? politics of Swedish customs and the high rates it The empiric material – Finnish and Estonian cus- charged, which the islanders could not afford to pay tom diaries, interviews and previous research on the because of the lack of money in their households. subject – is approached very statistically. The author The rapid growth of St. Petersburg not only of- synthesizes the material through a process of argu- fered to the fishermen and islanders an opportunity mentation, which is one of the characteristics of the to sell their ordinary products in the city, but also an historical method and also connected to a causal in- opportunity to practise shipping. Since the early terpretation and explanation. 19th century some of the fishermen took advantage Päiviö begins by discussing the origin of this of this opportunity and began to transport stone for partnership trade. First, he focuses on the history of the builders of the city. In return, they brought rye the population in his research area, and he finds out meal. Shipping to St. Petersburg was busiest from that when the Swedish inhabitants settled in this dis- the 1860s to the beginning of the 1890s. Afterwards, trict at the beginning of the second millennium only larger ships were built and the number of skippers the barren coastline was left for them and the ex- decreased. change of fish for grain was the only prospects they Finally, in the last and summarizing chapter, had for earning a living. It also seems that exchang- Päiviö gives answers to his hypothetical questions. ing supplies with a partner had become established The ‘sepra’ trade declined beginning in the 1860s, by the 17th century. first in the western part of the research area, in the The bond between the partners was tight; for in- Finnish mainland parishes of Pernaja, Porvoo, Sipoo stance, people from Koivisto and also other parishes and Helsinki, and during the next decade in the east, used to carry their fish to the same traditional small in the mainland parishes of Koivisto, Virolahti, harbours on the Estonian coast. Sometimes the mar- Kymi and Pyhtää. In spite of this, the people living ket price of fish and grain would have been more on the islands continued the trade until the First favourable in Tallinn than in the small harbours of World War. One of the reasons for the collapse of Toolse, Mahu and Purtse. However, at the same time, this trade was the new industrially made fishing gear the coastal inhabitants used to sail over to Tallinn or used by the Estonian fishermen and Finnish island- Narva in their fishing boats and sell their fish, furs ers. There was an opportunity to earn one’s living and other supplies to the merchants. This information by fishing and selling the catch to Estonian markets is verified by documents from the 14th century, when and via Estonia to Russian markets. Päiviö also this so-called peasant sailing was regulated for the points to the industrialization of the Kymenlaakso first time by the state, and also in documents from the region, to the railway connection with St. Petersburg following centuries. From the state’s point of view, and to the growth of the city as factors influencing there were many uncollected taxes sailing away with the trade. People from Koivisto and Virolahti found these boats and there was also a danger that these it profitable to transport firewood, sand and stone to peasants would illegally engage in commerce with St. Petersburg, and winter fishing became particu- foreign goods, which only the bourgeois city mer- larly profitable. They did not have to take care of chants were allowed to do. Not only the supplies were marketing the fish; the fishmongers came to their regulated, but also the size of the boats, which could fishing grounds and transported the catch to Vyborg be no more than two lasts. or St. Petersburg. Political changes during the 18th century did not In 1917, the Russian border was closed and it was alter either of these rural trading systems, although necessary to find markets for fish within Finland. Reviews 167

The monetary economy was introduced among the well illustrated by fine art paintings as well as hand fishmongers in the 1870s. When the industrial drawings of cutting patterns and sewing techniques. processing of fish increased, more and more fish It is not always the case that, when you are were needed and the Estonian fishmongers came to obliged to read a book on textile and manufacturing the Finnish coast and archipelago to buy fish. The techniques, you find yourself eager to continue read- tradition had changed. Until the First World War ing without tiring of the endless detailed instruc- salted Baltic herring could still be exchanged in a tions. Yet in this case, Rasmussen has written not an traditional manner with a ‘sepra’ partner, but also explanatory instruction book, but the story of tailors, sold for money to other private partners or the fish- seamstresses and fashion in Sweden in the period mongers. 1770−1830. She calls it a textile and cultural histo- In his research Päiviö is focusing on the volume ry, but I would suggest adding, as a minimum, of transported fish and grain. He shows little interest fashion history; all three perspectives are seamlessly in explaining such macro level processes as the lib- interwoven in this dissertation. This enables Ras- eral ideas in politics, education and legislation mussen to tell the behind-the-scenes story of what which affected society in the 19th century. For in- happened when female fashionable dress changed stance the people were given the right to carry on so dramatically in style and construction around the any craft or trade, and the peasants had practised start of the nineteenth century. This is a well-known shipping on the Baltic Sea since the 1830s which phenomenon to anyone who has turned the pages of gave them new opportunities to fulfil their economic an illustrated fashion history book: a late eight- and material needs. From the maritime point of view eenth-century robe à l’anglaise , complicated and the monetary economy was in fact introduced even richly detailed and made of heavy cotton, is fol- earlier than at the fishmonger’s in the 1870s as lowed by a simply cut, early nineteenth-century em- Päiviö states. pire-style dress made of light materials such as In his last and summarizing chapter, referring to gauze or muslin. This is particularly notable for a Helena Ruotsala’s research on reindeer manage- time long before the speed of fashion cycles as they ment, Päiviö comes to the conclusion that the new change today! ways of using and spending money changed society, What Rasmussen pursues is a closer understand- patterns of ownership, home furnishings and the ing of why and how female fashion went from being need for education, but his line of deduction remains made by male tailors to being made by female seam- unclear for the reader. However, if Päiviö had also stresses at the same time as fashion changed. This paid more attention to the ethnographic material, he question of gender and the organization of work is would have been able to verify how the macro level of the highest relevance, as it has the potential to ex- processes changed the local community, rural econ- plain why, at the same time in history, fashion start- omy, life and manners and affected the ‘sepra’ trade. ed to be perceived as a female matter. Just two dec- Looking at the changes of ‘sepra’ trade from the ades ago, this was still an obstacle for the legitimiz- point of view of a local community would have ation of the field of fashion studies beyond just be- opened a whole new perspective on the subject. ing banal “ female stuff.” Ulla Kallberg, Turku To achieve this understanding, Rasmussen has consulted a vast archive of historical material (in- cluding handbooks of tailoring and diaries of Tailors, Seamstresses and Fashion fashion consumers explaining the process by which Pernilla Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och they procured their clothing). But what makes the modet. Arbetsmetoder och arbetsdelning i tillverk- story so interesting to read is its inclusion of the ac- ningen av kvinnlig dräkt 1770−1830. Nordiska mu- tual dresses that constituted the female fashion of seets handlingar 136. Nordiska museets förlag, the period. From the collections at the Nordiska mu- Stockholm 2010. 311 pp. Ill. Diss. ISBN 978-91- seet in Stockholm, Kulturen in Lund and the Textile 7108-538-2. Museum in Borås, Rasmussen has studied numerous dresses, their construction and how they were sewn.
Pernilla Rasmussen’s doctoral dissertation is an Based on this, and on material sources that cover fe- impressive work: well researched, well written and male dresses produced by both professionals and 168 Reviews

amateurs and made for both aristocratic and bour- arises when the material objects are turned into evi- geois women, Rasmussen has assembled concrete dence – into concrete proof. Current material culture evidence that conclusions drawn in previous studies studies have provided different solutions to this (based on British and French sources) do not apply problem. Generally, the point is that the object is to the Swedish case. The changing organization of never the answer, but can comprise parts of the labour and the increased division between male tai- answer. Rasmussen is clearly aware of this and lors making menswear and female seamstresses therefore always clarifies the context as she making women’s wear cannot be explained by progresses through her analysis. It could have been changing fashions and lower requirements for tech- rewarding, though, to undertake a more theoretical nical skills. approach and discussion in order to tighten the argu- Instead, Rasmussen shows that in Sweden, the ments and many important points made throughout changing organization of work was due rather to the the dissertation. However, the book is recommended changing conditions for the training system of tai- reading – in my opinion, particularly for scholars in- lors. Until the early nineteenth century, it was not terested in the field of fashion (and what lies behind uncommon for a woman to a have a divided ward- its glossy scene). robe, meaning that her outer dress (the fashionable Marie Riegels Melchior, Copenhagen dress) was made by male tailors and her linen un- der-dresses by female seamstresses. When the male tailors lost their monopoly on the training in cutting At the Hither Side of the Future and pattern construction, it opened the way for the René León Rosales, Vid framtidens hitersta gräns. training of female seamstress in a vital area for the Om maskulina elevpositioner i en multietnisk skola. creation of women’s fashion. Most interestingly, Mångkulturellt centrum, Botkyrka 2010. 342 pp. Rasmussen further sheds light on the fact that in Eu- English summary. Diss. ISBN 978-91-86429-03-4. rope, although at the time tailors were able to com- municate easily across national borders, there were
An article in Expressen , a Swedish tabloid, func- at least two different traditions for the making of tions as starting point for the ethnologist René León women’s fashion. The English-French tradition was Rosales’ dissertation. The issue of the article is the based on simple methods of cutting and sewing, low educational outcome among boys in the coun- while the German tradition was founded on a much tryside and boys with immigrant background living more complicated way of cutting and sewing. Since in multiethnic suburbs. The article gives a simplistic Swedish tailors did not normally travel further than picture in which ethnicity and gender play a central Germany for their training abroad, it was not sur- role. In the introduction, Rosales shows that this is a prising that the German tradition shaped Swedish widespread picture among Swedish authorities, e.g. women’s fashion to a much larger extent. In other the National Agency for Education, who have a words, it did not become technically easier to pro- great impact on the production of knowledge in so- duce women’s fashion when women entered the ciety through the educational system. Rosales is field of fashionable dressmaking in Sweden. How- critical of the fundamental approach, since a lot of ever, their knowledge and technical skills improved research shows that the most obvious factors for low through their training. This is a key point made by and high results in school are socioeconomic. By de- Rasmussen in the dissertation, leading her to con- scribing and analysing the everyday practices, Ro- clude that this insight challenges the perception of sales wishes to make the picture more complex. the development of fashion as aesthetically and Therefore, the aim of the dissertation is “to highlight technically homogeneous in a European context. At central conditions, norms and values, which enable least Rasmussen has her doubts. the staging of certain masculine pupil positions and The dissertation demonstrates very clearly that a hinder others, at a school located in the northern part material cultural perspective, the inclusion of ob- of the municipality of Botkyrka in the Greater jects, and the knowledge required to handle and un- Stockholm region during 2004–2005” (pp. 16 and derstand the craft of dressmaking, are essential re- 318). search components with the potential to clarify our Primarily, Rosales chooses to put his questions to understanding of our complex past. The danger the boys in school. How do they describe their posi- Reviews 169

tion as pupils? What do they think of their teachers fieldwork. He has chosen a “typical” area where a and school? What is their opinion of education? lot of families with immigrant background live, and This is followed by more general questions: What therefore the school has a multiethnic pupil popula- kind of structural conditions in society have an im- tion. Rosales has conducted participant observation pact on their position as pupils? From what kind of and interviews among boys in two classes during normative standpoint do the boys act and shape their school year four to six. Rosales gives the read- themselves as pupils in everyday school situations? er a glimpse of being in the field and the awkward- Chapter 1, “Introduction”, continues with a pres- ness and feelings that are involved. How do you ex- entation of theory, methodology and material. Ro- plain your role and your purpose to those whom you sales writes that he uses “tools from Foucault’s tool- are studying? Later in the text Rosales gets back to box” (p. 19). By using these “handyman” metaphors this and highlights its complexity in a situation Rosales also introduces a culture-analytical ap- where he is placed as an invigilator at a formal test proach which is fundamental in the study but is nei- and the pupils start cheating. Should he act and re- ther described nor explained. It might not be impor- port this or not? Rosales’ answer is that it is this tant to further explore this immanent cultural analyt- kind of interaction among the pupils he wants to ical understanding in this dissertation, but in other learn about and he cannot interfere. situations this ethnological “tacit knowledge” defi- The following Chapter 2, “The state as an inter- nitely has to be made visible. pellating apparatus”, contains an analysis of the It is a long time since I read such a well-formulat- governing document, the Curriculum for the Com- ed description of the central concepts, their mean- pulsory Education System (Lpo 1994) and statistics ing, and the analytical potential of the philosopher from the National Agency for Education. Rosales Michel Foucault’s scholarly works. Central con- distinguishes six different characteristics of the ideal cepts are power, knowledge and subject, all closely pupil: democratic, independent, culturally compe- related to institutions and science. Elaborating on tent, well-educated, curious and expressive. In the this, Rosales uses the philosopher Louis Althusser’s statistics he finds a problematic categorization into theories about interpellation, truth and apparatus. “pupils of foreign origin” and “pupils with a Swe- Also important is the way power works through dish background” which tends to normalize a dis- governmentality, techniques of discipline and tech- cursive homogenization of the discursive figures niques of the Self. “Swedes” and “non-Swedes”. The purpose of the The main aim is to understand the position as pu- chapter is to frame the concept and meaning of “pu- pil and Rosales deepens the understanding by ana- pil” and how it is formed by authorities, and conse- lysing the role of gender. Rosales uses theoretical quently, what kind of space is given the young boys approaches close to Foucault, the philosopher and to stage the position of the pupil. queer theorist Judith Butler’s concept of perform- Chapter 3, “Scenography”, continues with de- ance and the gender theorist Raewyn Connell’s dis- scriptions of the material conditions, rooms and cussion of “a culturally exalted form of masculini- places where the boys act as pupils. We get to know ty”. Kärbo School, the surroundings, classrooms, the In order to understand ethnicity, Rosales takes a furniture and even the noise in classroom. Every postcolonial perspective. Following the postcolonial inch of the school functions as a “sorting machine”. theorist Gayatri Spivak, Rosales underlines that he In the classroom, for example, class 6a is sorted is not giving voice to the boys in the text. He gives from class 6b. At the toilets girls are sorted from the reader an account of what he believes he has boys. On the notice board an article about low re- learnt from the children he has had the privilege of sults among pupils with a foreign background sorts meeting and interviewing. Rosales fulfils this ambi- “Swedish pupils” from “non-Swedish”. Rosales also tion through the text by using expressions like “I looks upon clothes as gendered and examines how think”, “I believe”, “I interpret”, to manifest the way masculinity is formed by different kinds of collec- he handles the interviews. Sometimes, though, this tive practices among pupils. creates a feeling of uncertainty and even speculation Chapter 4, “Choreographies”, investigates the which is troublesome. impact of ethnic and gendered hierarchies within so- At the end of chapter 1, Rosales describes his ciety, school and among peers. Rosales elaborates 170 Reviews

the idea of Kärbo as a place where ethnic segrega- shows how this position is shaped by governing tion is characteristic. In interviews the boys express documents, authorities and purposes, but also how knowledge about this. Individually they state that this is a position enabled among peers. Little re- they are Swedish, but they do not recognize their search has been done about the peer-centred rela- peers as such. Being Swedish is related to a tions from a power perspective. Yet, it has an im- “proper” language. Rosales scrutinizes movement mense impact on the pupils’ experiences and every- and gesture in the classroom and at breaks, where day situations in school. Rosales gives the reader football dominates and seems to be important in per- many “tools” to understand collective processes forming masculinity. among pupils and how the pupils themselves formu- Chapter 5, “Teaching”, deals with the core activi- late and reflected on them. ty in school, teaching and learning, from the per- Finally, Rosales is unnecessarily pessimistic in spective of the interviewed boys and from Rosales’ his conclusions. He has convinced me, as a reader of observations. The reader also gets the explanation of what he has learned from the boys, that they are the title: “At the hither side of the future”. Among self-confident and completely capable of managing teachers, principals and pupils the expected outcome their position “at the hither side of the future”. of school is “to become something” in the future. Kristina Gustafsson, Lund In chapter 6, “Language”, Rosales discusses lan- guages and their different status with the boys. There is a special language spoken among young Narratives of War in Finland people in Kärbo, with special word order mixed Sofie Strandén , ”I eld, i blod, i frost, i svält”. Möten with Swedish, Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic, which med veteraners, lottors och sjuksköterskors berät- is important in peer relations but might be a disad- tande om krig. Åbo Akademi, Åbo 2010. 427 pp. vantage in others. English summary. Diss. Chapter 7, “At the hither side of the future”, con- http://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/66195. cludes the results. Rosales gives quite a gloomy pic- ture of how the conditions, norms and values work
Sofie Strandén’s dissertation proceeds from nar- in society and school. They diminish the space of ratives of the war in which Finland-Swedish war movement and development among boys with a veterans, women’s auxiliaries, and nurses tell of foreign background. The structural conditions can their own experiences. She has material from ten in- be seen as the border behind which the boys act “at formants of each sex. The origin of the project is in- the hither side of the future”. teresting: a study of how people relate to Fänrik Rosales places his dissertation within three Ståls sägner (“The Tales of Ensign Stål” by Johan established research fields, IMER (international mi- Ludvig Runeberg) triggered “spontaneous” narra- gration and ethnic relations), studies of masculinity tion of people’s own war memories. This became and gender in school environment. What is the con- the topic of the dissertation, which thus proceeds tribution of Rosales? The chapter that deals with the from the informants’ experiences and narrative rep- curriculum is interesting, but since much has been ertoires rather than from the premises of the re- written already in the years around 1994 when Lpo search community. 94 was launched, it seems a bit out of date and re- The dissertation is divided into four parts. A brief dundant. Another problem is the choice of theories introduction is followed by part II, “The Interview which have been used in many studies about school as a Meeting”, which describes how the interview and education. The discussion of governmentality material came about and discusses the significance and techniques of the self is predicable. The compo- of the interview form. Part III, which fills most of sition of the dissertation could be more focused and the book, is entitled “Encounters with the War”, and the language sometimes gets unnecessarily compli- presents the empirical material grouped by certain cated. themes. Part IV, entitled “Mythologizing Narratives To sum up, the dissertation deals with an impor- about the War”, is a general discussion. tant topic approaching inequality in the educational The introduction states the aim of the disserta- system. Rosales makes many contributions. Most tion: “to study the narratives that veterans, auxilia- important is the analysis of the pupil position . He ries, and nurses told me about their experiences of Reviews 171

war”. Strandén is thus inscribed in the aim as the leads to a discussion about the anonymization of in- primary recipient of these narratives. formants and people who are talked about. This is a Oral history is then presented as the research problem when narratives are about known individ- tradition that Strandén applies. The growth of that uals, who sometimes are shown in a poor light in orientation is described along with its characteris- these stories compared to how they tend to appear in tics: the aim to be “bottom-up history”, the emanci- public. Here Strandén chooses to let the well-known patory ambition, the relationship between individual individuals be called by their real names, but she and collective memory. Her analytical premises are emphasizes that they appear as narrative figures, as stated here: the reflexive analysis of the interview constructions in the narration, and that the stories interaction and the thematic analysis of the inter- are retold as stories and not as statements about the view material. This leads to the formulation of some people with these names. questions: What is the encounter like between inter- The next chapter is about emotions in the inter- viewee and interviewer? Which actors occur in nar- view situation. One approach to this is through the ratives of war? Why do people find it important to interviewer’s own emotions, vis-à-vis the informant talk about war, in other words, what function do war and the events and experiences told in the narratives. narratives have? What do people not want to talk There is a lengthy discussion about the tendency of about? Are men’s and women’s narratives about the interview narrative to take on a therapeutic func- war similar? Can “a different narrative” about war tion, and of the position in which this puts the inter- be heard in the interview material? viewer. The concepts of “thought contact” and Part II is about “The Interview as a Meeting”. “emotional contact” are introduced to deepen our Here Strandén first presents the background to the understanding of empathy. project. She began the work as a commissioned Part III is where the author presents her empirical project from the Swedish Literature Society, to in- material, the narratives that emerged from the inter- terview men born between 1920 and 1960 about views. It consists of an introduction and four chap- their relationship to Fänrik Ståls sägner on the eve ters, each dealing with different kinds of encounters: of the bicentennial of Runeberg’s birth in 2004. It with the military service, with the body, with the turned out that the first interviews easily led to nar- Other, and with the time after the war. (The meta- ratives about personal recollections from the Second phor “encounter” ( möte ) is used both in the title and World War, and she decided to let this be the topic in the divisions of part III, which gives a unified ex- of her doctoral dissertation. She wanted to include pression yet also a slight vagueness, since these are women’s narratives and therefore looked for in- meetings between people and also meetings in a formants with experience of the women’s auxiliaries more figurative sense.) The introduction places the in the Lotta Svärd organization. There is a chrono- dissertation in relation to earlier research, which in logical list of interviews, with each informant separ- this context means in relation to the trends of “new ately and a comment on the distinctive features of military history” and oral history, and in relation to each meeting. In the group as a whole there are not folkloristic research on folk narratives of war. This only combat soldiers and women’s auxiliaries but is followed by contextualization in the form of a his- also an army chaplain and two nurses. With refer- torical survey which considers the Civil War, the ence to the way of listening and taking part in the White Guard, the Lotta Svärd organization, the dialogue, she calls her approach an empathetic inter- Winter War, and the Continuation War, and specifi- view . This involves mutual trust as an essential con- cally the two Finland-Swedish regiments, 13 and 61, dition for the narration: who the informant is as re- how wartime medical care was organized, and the gards ethnicity, gender, age; profession, and social patriotic idea as it was conveyed, for example, by context (the shared contacts that arranged the meet- learning Fänrik Ståls sägner in primary school. The ing). last two sections are largely based on the inform- She then goes on to discuss power and “un- ants’ statements. power”, reasoning about the power relations that The chapter about the encounter with military exist between the interviewer and the informant, in service (“Meeting the comrades” or “Meeting in the interview situation, in the transcription phase, community” would probably have been a more ade- and in the phase of analysis and interpretation. This quate title) is specified as dealing with how commu- 172 Reviews

nities were constructed, and hence also how bounda- civilian life, what is called “the silent time”. Impor- ries were drawn. Comradeship is the first major tant themes here are the weapon-hiding movement, heading. This includes youth community, gender the prohibition of the White Guards and the Lotta boundaries – here about the women’s encounters Svärd organization, individual after-effects of the with men – and the nursing training, as represented war, the period of left-wing critique of Finnish par- by two informants. Shared language and home dis- ticipation in the war, the period of redress that began trict, the horse as a comrade, religion and ideology – in the late 1970s, veteran activities, rehabilitation, here the national ideology – are other themes includ- and public remembrance. ed under comradeship. The last part of the book begins with a summary “Equality and personal responsibility” is the next of the conclusions in part III. The author then deals major heading, under which the author considers the with “narration as teaching”. Here the interpretation polarity between individual and organization. is that storytelling through certain recurrent typical Themes here are respect, trust, hierarchy, the ideal figures conveys values, a kind of folk morality. officer, and personal responsibility. The conflicts of Strandén constructs about twenty typical figures in Lotta soldiers with nurses, sexually coloured con- all. The most common female types are the virtuous frontations, and the people who ran away from mili- Lotta (with the whore as a counter-image) and the tary service are three themes that come together un- wicked stepsister/nurse (with Florence Nightingale der the heading “Threats to community”. as the counter-image). The most common male type In the chapter “Meetings with the body” Strandén is the steadfast soldier, with the cowardly deserter as uses two metaphors – the body as a tool and the the counter-image. Two ambivalent figures occur: body as an obstacle – as perspectives on the mate- the cunning and the honest trickster. The ultimate rial. Hunger, extreme cold, vermin, and exhaustion moral lesson conveyed in the narratives are the de- were among the strains that reminded people about fence of the home – the home as goodness, stability, the presence of the body. Other themes are the risk and security. The home is also a metaphor for the fa- of injury or death, sight and hearing as important therland. senses, incurring injury, treating people with This is followed by a discussion about lacking wounds and injuries, looking after the dead, and stories that are worth telling. The majority of the commemorating and honouring the fallen. women and a minority of the men did not have so The chapter about “Encounters with the Other” is much to tell, they thought, which Strandén interprets about ethnic others: Finns, Germans, and Russians. as a consequence of the fact that it is chiefly men For most of the informants, service in war involved who have been given space as tellers of war memo- leaving a Swedish-speaking district to fight in other ries and that their experiences have thus been in fo- parts of Finland, cooperating and being confronted cus and served as a model for the form a war narra- with Finnish speakers, and encountering both na- tive ought to have. Also, the women’s experiences tional community and Greater Finnish repudiation. were not as dramatic and thus not so appropriate for The German soldiers that the informants met seem retelling in a public context. like the opposites of the Finns in several stereotyped Finally, under the heading “War narratives as versions: as rivals for women, as enemies, as an in- oral history or cultural heritage?” the author dis- human war machine, or as wimpish soldiers who cusses why war narratives are considered so impor- could not endure the hardships. tant. Strandén’s answer is that war stories are a “Encounters with the Russian” is the longest sec- mythologizing narrative about the united nation and tion in the book. It spans older traditions about Rus- have therefore been set up as important cultural sians, aspirations for independence, the Russian heritage. Her interpretation of oral history is that the landscape, meeting Russians in battle, taking prison- concept captures non-accepted narratives; it need ers, the Russian army as a whole and as the superior not be the losers’ stories, but the point is that histor- enemy in the closing phase of the war. The presenta- ical events are viewed and described from a subordi- tion of all the nationalities is embedded in a histori- nate perspective, and war narratives are therefore cal and political context. different from the official historiography. The chapter “Encounter with the time after the It is thus a well-filled dissertation that Strandén war” deals with the transition from wartime back to has accomplished, with many positive sides. The Reviews 173

empirical material has an intrinsic value as docu- The stories are about historical events that all mentation of emotionally charged storytelling with a Finnish citizens are expected to know of, which powerful presence in societal life. The presence of gives the dissertation its special character. The large the interviewer in the empirical material is not just a empirical third part is arranged so that the narratives sign of authenticity but is also used analytically: she of personal experience are contextualized with the cites her own comments in the interview situation aid of existing historical research. Strandén has writ- and reconstructs what they were based on in her in- ten the introductions, excursuses, explanations of terpretative world. Both in the interview situation words and the like, which puts the individual narra- and in the written discussion, the analysis of the role tives in a historiography that is presumed to be well of her own emotions and prior knowledge is a known, and that she does not problematize to any means to clarify the pedagogical character of the great extent. I get the feeling that there is a “heavy narration (old to young) and what the official history discourse” of official and academic historiography has conveyed to her generation. The focus of the that is difficult to avoid: the informants’ narratives narrative analysis on typical figures serves as a tool become statements about Finnish history, and must in the cultural analysis. The dissertation gives room therefore be harmonized with the generally known for women’s experiences of war and discusses gen- narrative. Her justification (p. 109) is that a knowl- der differences in the narration. edge of the historical-political background is neces- The dissertation also gives rise to many ques- sary for understanding what the informants were tions. She mentions briefly that that she chose not to talking about. The decision to choose collective use performance analysis but reflexive and thematic themes as an organizing principle, rather than the in- analysis instead (p. 390). But I do not see this as a dividual narratives as wholes/performances, also matter of either/or: the perspective of performance places the international history in the foreground. analysis could have strengthened the dissertation, There is also a tension in the relationship between even in its existing arrangement, on some points. general statements about the war years and the per- The long part III (270 pages) is organized in the sonal experiences specific to each individual in the form of four overall themes. Here it would have group of informants. (On pp. 183–185 there is a been good to be informed why these themes were good discussion of how the individual’s history chosen: the last one is in the questionnaire used for need not coincide with that of the collective.) The the interviews, but the other three have emerged long “Historical contextualization” in the introduc- from the analysis. Furthermore, I wonder whether tion to part III, summing up the history of the war, is all the identified relevant themes and sub-themes are based on historical research, but in the final phase presented, or if there was a selection according to she uses her informants’ narratives about field hos- some criterion such as quantity, epic weight, or pitals and national sentiment as part of this context- agreement with established historiography. I like- ualization. This is relevant information for the con- wise wonder on what grounds Strandén selected the tinued reading, but it leads to methodological un- narratives, quoted directly or indirectly: did the clarity: do these particular narratives have a differ- overall themes precede the selection, or was it the ent ontological character from those subsequently other way round? (On p. 308 there is a clue: she presented under the four main thematic headings? mentions that several people told about the final At the same time, there is an awareness of war battles, but that these narratives were omitted be- stories as an established genre – one section is en- cause the theme of the section is the encounter with titled “Folk narration about the war”, but it is rather Russians.) Is it perhaps stylistic features in the short and chiefly geared to earlier research as a start- performance (the pitch of the voice, introductory ing point for the author’s own study. That telling phrases, and evaluative comments, the recollection war stories is a collectively marketable theme is of body language) that marked which narratives mentioned in several places: on pp. 237f. we hear were most emotionally charged? In certain cases it narratives about Veterans Day, the Day of the looks as if there has been what Dell Hymes (1975) Fallen, and the National Day as situations where war called “breakthrough into performance” when some narratives arise. Veterans Day was also close in time long narratives are quoted, for example, on pp. 168– when some of the interviews were conducted. On p. 172, 187–192, 205–208, 331–335. 319 we read that the informant had written articles 174 Reviews

in Vasabladet about the very recollections that had officers who refused to kill Finnish soldiers, p. 236: just been related in the interview. This is thus story- critique of Fänrik Ståls sägner , p. 240: critique of telling that also has an outlet in more public situa- the concepts of “heroes, heroism, hero’s grave”. tions. It is also storytelling that is situated in the These critical outbursts could have been discussed present, which is evident in a need to contextualize together, and in relation to the parallel tendency to recollections, as on p. 265, where the informant ex- identify with the national narrative as it is explicitly plains how the retold events could have been inter- expressed in digressions about patriotism as a unify- preted at the time. This could have been stressed ing force (pp. 132–135, 247), quotations from Fän- more clearly and linked to the meaning of the histor- rik Ståls sägner as comments and as reported ical context of 2004 for an understanding of the nar- speech. ratives – now all that is explicitly stated is the con- In the final chapter the question returns, what war text “1940s and earlier”. stories mean, posed as a question of “oral history” Strandén has identified the interview material as or cultural heritage. It is a pity that the term cultural “oral history”, which has consequences for the dis- heritage is introduced so late, and with so little sub- sertation as a whole. There is an ambiguity in the stantiation: there is a large amount of research and term “oral history”: it is used as a designation for theoretical perspectives that could have enriched the narratives on “historical” themes generated through discussion. Instead of viewing it as a matter of interviews or other situations, in a more general either/or, the perspective could have been: how is sense, and it also stands for an originally Marxist-in- oral narration a force that affects what is defined as spired strategy for historical research intended as cultural heritage? both supplementary and corrective/ alternative The dissertation asks questions that can help to knowledge. Strandén cites (p. 9) Michael Frisch develop the trend of oral history. What are the inter- (1990), who calls these tendencies, respectively, views supposed to provide? More details? “The folk “more history” and “anti-history”. (It may be added perception” – if so is it something that everyone ex- here that there is also great potential for developing presses? How frequently does a theme have to recur “meta-history” through interviews about historical to be brought up with reference to a quantitative cri- events.) terion? Sometimes it feels as if Strandén is waging a po- To sum up, the dissertation treats a rich corpus of lemic against dogmatic oral history – exegesis that empirical material about a topic that is of great in- long since ceased to be productive. Strandén main- trinsic weight as socially marketable narration. tains that she has not interviewed a group that is de- Strandén handles the risk that the material might fined as working class or left-wing sympathizers, take over, by emphasizing its specific origin and by which was the main tendency in classical “oral his- searching for underlying folk values that make the tory”. The dissertation also gives clear examples of narration meaningful. One strength is the pro- how storytellers can find themselves in different nounced awareness of the character of the inter- subject positions and how this affects the possibili- views as interaction, not just on the linguistic but ties for telling stories; during the war participants in also the emotional level. There is an insightful dis- the great national narrative, for several decades after cussion of interviewing as a practice in culture stu- the war in a subordinate position as bearers of dies, and her own feelings and prior knowledge be- shameful memories, in recent decades vindicated come a useful aid in the work. The dissertation also once again and able to talk in public without prob- links up with the field of oral history. Here one can lem. ask: What is the specific contribution of folkloristics At the same time, in the spirit of classical “oral to the study of narratives about the war – or other history”, there are several clear examples of how phenomena that are defined as interesting in terms oral narrative expresses a critique of the official line, of history? One answer is: folkloristics can put this for example, p. 134: “This is not Finland” – a reac- into relation to folk narration in general, as regards tion to the crossing of Finnish troops into the Soviet form, themes, morals, and tendencies, use and situa- Union in 1944; p. 163: “you shouldn’t obey the tional dependence. The dissertation is capable of do- people in authority”, p. 182: the famous national ing all this. hero appears as a drunkard inclined to rape, p. 190: Alf Arvidsson, Umeå Reviews 175

Stories about Drunks The author also discusses stories that maintain a Susanne Waldén , Berättad berusning. Kulturella social order and those which challenge it. Examples föreställningar i berättelser om berusade personer. of the former are warning stories that indirectly con- Etnolore 34, Uppsala universitet, 2010. 210 pp. Ill. vey notions of the “right” life by reflecting how ter- English summary. Diss. ISBN 978-91- 506-2131-0. rible things can happen to those who drink too much. The following story (narrated by Britt, 25)
Susanne Waldén deals with a quite rewarding and contains a cautionary element and also expresses entertaining topic in her thesis, stories about drunk- ideas of age (differences): “P awoke in the morning en people. The purpose of the study is “to investi- after a whole evening of drinking, blinked and gate social and cultural meanings of narratives about stretched (shows how he stretches his arms and intoxicated people and how they reflect normative peers with screwed-up eyes). He wondered where he knowledge and experience” (p. 12). The focus, in was and what had happened. Where was he? He other words, is on the stories as expressions of so- found he’d gone home to his parents and was lying ciety and culture, not the stories themselves. sleeping between them in the bed. He’s twenty- Waldén is inspired by various theoretical tradi- seven years old!” (p. 129). tions and researchers, e.g. Albert Eskeröd’s thoughts Features of provocative stories, according to on folklore, structuralism, Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas Waldén, are that they challenge the prevailing about the carnival, Michel Foucault, Antonio Gram- hegemony, create emotions and can lead to cultural sci’s concept of hegemony, and the gender research- change. However, the author is cautious in her opin- er Robert Connell (now Raewyn Connell). It may ion about the subversive character of these stories: seem as if the thesis is driven by conflicting episte- “Is the hegemony maintained in the narratives or is mological ideas, but the theoretical apparatus is used it questioned. I think that provocation is at the centre in a way that does not interfere with the readability. of these stories, there is no explicit vision of the fu- Whether it is the most appropriate theoretical as- ture. Their aim is to entertain, which does not make semblage is another matter, however. them particularly threatening” (p. 156). The basic data are drunk stories taken from ar- It is an extensive corpus of material that Waldén chives, collected through interviews and with the has collected and presents. Especially the discus- use of a survey. The secondary material consists of sions about the old stories seem to be built on a solid media material, stories from the Internet and a tele- empirical foundation, and the author can give many vision programme. The author also mentions that examples of drunk stories. This is also one strength she has used her own experience, and that it is there- of the thesis. There is a lot of knowledge to be fore important to problematize pre-understandings. gained just in assembling of all these stories in one However, it is not obvious how this problematiza- book. The study also makes it possible to under- tion is performed. stand how many different norms and values these After a couple of extensive introductory chapters kinds of stories can (re)produce. Drunk stories are, Waldén presents a vast array of stories. There are, in other words, much more than just stories about for example, older stories about a drunken priest, a drunk people. The entertainment value should not be constable and a sheriff, who violate the rules of be- underestimated either. It is quite fun to read about haviour appropriate to their position. Waldén finds the bizarre experiences attributed to drunk people – stories about more recent rulers in various media. even if some stories are also quite dramatic. Boris Yeltsin’s escapades are well-known examples On the other hand, the principles for the selection of this. Drunken politicians, police officers and mu- of material are not entirely clear. For example, when nicipal officials are also featured in the media. Waldén writes of stories about drunken contempor- Waldén writes about gender as a category, and ary rulers her data come from the newspapers Afton- how media reports of intoxicated people in power bladet and Expressen , during the period 1996–97. depend on whether they are men or women. The justification for this is that: “Certain topics were Women’s intoxication is associated with problems current in the media at that time, such as the many in the family and emotional life. Drunken male credit-card affairs where people in power had mis- rulers, however, are depicted without such allusions, used taxpayers’ money for personal gain” (p. 71). and without sympathy. However, despite this (temporal) empirical restric- 176 Reviews

tion, Waldén performs (indirect) comparisons with the writing process. Starting chapters (see e.g. pp. 105 the older archive material and arrives at the follow- ff) by briefly presenting the content under the chap- ing conclusion: “Stories about drunken priests are ter’s main headings before going into the detail of not as interesting today” (p. 71). Waldén is aware of each heading, may seem somewhat over-ambitious. this somewhat lame comparison, but she neverthe- However, despite some scholarly and structural less makes it. shortcomings, Waldén’s theses is well worth read- The integration of theory and material is not al- ing. As mentioned above, it is entertaining and can ways obvious. For example, Waldén discusses on a be viewed as a solid review of a variety of stories theoretical level how the meanings of masculinity about drunken people. It can also serve as an inspi- depend on both class and time aspects. However, ration for how other types of stories can be under- when she deals with concrete drunk stories some stood regarding their social and cultural impact. “traits”, e.g. the ability to drink a lot, seem to be Bo Nilsson, Umeå more general signs of (a positive) masculinity, both past and present (p. 86). To what extent this drink- ing habit really is a class- or age-bound behaviour is Things that Matter not discussed in direct relation to the presented em- Margrit Wettstein , Livet genom tingen. Människor, pirical data. This despite the fact that Waldén short- föremål och extrema situationer. Brutus Östlings ly after, referring to a story on this theme, writes: Bokförlag Symposion, Stockholm/Stehag 2009. 155 “The way in which the drunk is portrayed varies de- pp. Ill. English summary. Diss. ISBN 978-91-7139- pending on the person’s sex, age, social position, 831-4. sexuality and nationality” (p. 86). In other words, the way in which some of the stories actually de-
What roles do objects take on in the process of pend on categories like these remains uncomment- dealing with sorrow in extreme situations? This is ed. The effect of this is that the rich theoretical ap- the central question in Margrit Wettstein’s doctoral paratus is not fully used to improve our understand- dissertation. Her study is based on individuals’ ex- ing of the material. periences of traumatic situations which have However, there are also examples where Waldén changed their lives forever. Wettstein’s interest is successfully combines theory and the material in an focused on how these individuals try to organize enriching way. This is most obvious when she per- their lives afterwards and how everyday objects of forms a kind of reasoning where she allows “tradi- no great monetary value can become invaluable to tional” ethnological and cultural analytical thinking them in this process. to permeate the text. One example is when, with the The material for the study consists of eleven aid of archive material, she discusses what is un- people’s stories of grief and loss. The stories are usual about drunken children: “Children thus be- grouped around two human tragedies that ir- come attractive motifs for projections of the most revocably changed history and the lives of mil- important and most shocking things. They trigger lions. The first group of stories concern people norms and values as regards sexuality, alcohol, who survived the Holocaust or were forced to flee drugs and other things that can be compared to eth- Nazi persecution. The second group consists of nological dynamite” (p. 92). This example also re- people who lost relatives in the attack on the flects another aspect of Waldén’s handling of theo- World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001. ry. She “recycles” older ethnological thinking, and Both situations brought about profound personal sometimes she does it in an interesting, independent tragedies as well as a long-lasting collective sor- and bold way. At a time when many ethnologists are row. However, in the present work very little is turning to social scientists and others for inspiration, said about general or collective grief, here the fo- this is well worth noting. cus of attention is on how individuals deal with Unfortunately there are a lot of unnecessary repeti- personal feelings of loss. tions in the thesis. Perhaps the author has had the am- The fieldwork behind this study stretched over a bition to help both the reader and herself with the period of four years, 2004–2008, and covers a wide structure and becomes a bit too “pedagogical”, or range of materials such as interviews, conversations, maybe the repetitions are traces of old scaffolding in fieldwork notes and observations, correspondence, Reviews 177

archive materials, art work and literature. The au- context it is the owners who instill the objects in thor’s account of her fieldwork process is thorough question with value – it is the owner’s interpretation and constitutes an important part of the study as a of the object that make it act as a link between the whole. past and the present. At the end remains the question The dissertation is divided into an introduction of what happens to these objects after their owners and four chapters. The chapters are called “Move- are gone. Is it possible for someone else to perceive ment”, “Loss”, “Pain”, and, finally, “Re- creation”. the power of a personal “linking object”? The author The theoretical perspectives are not contained in one leans towards the conclusion that it is difficult to specific chapter but are interwoven into the text transfer the feelings for the object to the next gener- throughout. Two concepts, “Rite of Passage” and ation. “linking objects”, are discussed already in the intro- The real strength of this dissertation lays not so duction and referred to on several occasions. much in its theoretical advancement as in its meth- Wettstein is especially interested in the transitional odology, the integrity of the fieldwork and the in- stage of rites of passage, the stage referred to as sightful close reading of people’s personal stories of “liminality” by the anthropologist Victor Turner. loss. In this the author has been sensitive to the char- She points out that people’s progress through this acter of her material. By not opting for distance and passage is not always smooth or, sometimes, not clinical analysis Wettstein’s study opens doors even completed – some might remain in the transi- otherwise closed. In the same manner as a good tional phase or experience a series of transitions. museum presentation makes us see objects in a new Another important concept is the idea of transitional light, this study both asks questions and gives or linking objects (Winnicott 1971/2003). As the au- answers but also lets objects and stories speak for thor later demonstrates, the “linking object” can be themselves. imaginary or a memory of an incident. Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, Helsinki The chapter “Movement” deals with some of the drastic changes the September 11th attack and the The Voice as an Instrument Nazi persecutions gave rise to. Traumatic changes Ingrid Åkesson, Med rösten som instrument. Per- throw people into a state of uncertainty in which spektiv på nutida svensk vokal folkmusik. Svenskt they have to find their footing. This is the theme of visarkivs handlingar 5. Svenskt visarkiv, Stockholm the following chapter, “Loss”, which contains the 2007. 354 pp. Ill. English summary. CD. Diss. ISBN individual case-studies and is by far the largest 978-91-9770-131-0. chapter. We are introduced to eleven people, five who survived or fled from the Holocaust and six
Ingrid Åkesson’s doctoral dissertation surveys who lost close relatives in the attack on the World the situation of vocal folk music among active Trade Centre in 2001. Nine of the people the author singers in today’s Sweden. As a broader context met herself, two of the portraits (Nelly Sachs and the dissertation sheds light on the way Swedish Thomas Mann) have been written based on archive folk song has developed from the days of peasant material and literary sources. The portraits are of culture to the revitalization movement of the 1960s somewhat uneven length. The personal portraits of and 1970s and on to part of our post-modern media Holocaust survivors Nelly Sachs, Lenke Rothman, culture, where “folk singers” are musicians with Thomas Mann and Roald Hoffman are more de- varying degrees of professional training who per- tailed, whereas some of the accounts by relatives to form music on stage, record CDs and cross musical victims of the WTC attack are more succinct. It is boundaries. Åkesson identifies three phases in the clear that the author has been highly sensitive to the development of Swedish vocal folk music: the first degree of which her contributors have been willing is what she calls “tradition”; the second was the re- to expose themselves and their feelings. vitalization in the 1960s and 1970s, inspired by the In the chapter entitled “Pain”, the concepts of international folk music revival, and the third transition and linking objects are discussed more in phase, which she calls “the vocal wave”, began in depth against the background of the life stories in- the second half of the 1980 and is still in progress. troduced in the previous chapter. In the final chap- The vocal wave, according to Åkesson, is charac- ter, “Re-creation”, Wettstein underlines that in this terized by an emphasis on distinctive musical fea- 178 Reviews

tures (hence the title meaning “With the voice as offers background information about the history of an instrument”) and influences from other musical the vocal wave which is very interesting for a reader genres. In practice it is often a question of crossing who is outside this context. According to Åkesson, boundaries. The same processes have affected all however, the chapter is only a “sketch for a history”, spheres of folk music, since institutionalization, since it does not apply the historian’s source criti- professionalization, and medialization have also cism or methodology. I would have preferred it if contributed to the vocal wave, during which folk this otherwise good chapter had been based solely ballad singing has developed into the versatile on reliable, critically scrutinized information. form of music-making that the author calls “vocal The fact that Åkesson herself has been active as a folk music”. Today’s vocal folk music comprises, singer, arranger, and archivist in folk music since alongside ballads, many kinds of musical expres- 1987 – thus during the 20-year period that the vocal sion, from lilting fiddle tunes to herding calls and wave has existed – gives her a great deal of inside experimental use of the voice in the subculture of knowledge, which strengthens the relevance of her folk music. The aspects that still link today’s vocal research on this wave. The reader gets the impres- diversity to the old tradition of folk song, accord- sion that Åkesson knows from personal experience ing to Åkesson, are the way songs are passed on by exactly what she is writing about. She could also ear and the melodics and performance practice of have included herself in the group of informants and traditional music as ideals. done analytical auto-observations of her own career The book begins with an introduction to the topic and changes in her music-making. At the same time, and a theoretical background. To succeed in carrying Åkesson’s close position to the research topic has out the study has required clarifying a number of mul- made it more difficult to write a report whose many tifaceted scholarly concepts, such as tradition, folk dimensions can be assimilated by readers without song, revitalization, the establishment of genres, mu- prior knowledge of the field. I would have liked to sical paths, subculture, creativity, cultural heritage, see a clarification of the role of “the performer’s and canon. Most of these – usually ambiguous – con- perspective” in her methodology. cepts are well explained. I particularly liked Åkes- The subsequent analytical chapters deal with em- son’s way of handling the term “tradition”, which is pirical material from fourteen present-day folk sing- so difficult that my own teacher once recommended ers. The informants were chosen to give a fairly completely avoiding it. Åkesson says that “the tradi- equal representation of two different generations of tion” is both a discourse and a cultural heritage in the Swedish folk singers: the older ones, most of whom form of material factors, tunes, repertoire, singing were born in the 1950s, started during the folk re- styles, and role models. The use of the word “dis- vival, while the younger ones, born in the 1970s, course”, however, does not lead to a strict discourse have been active only during the current vocal wave. analysis of the material, most of which consists of in- Åkesson has interviewed these singers and analysed terviews. The concepts she describes are not all of their recorded repertoire. She considers their choice equal value in relation to the research problem; for of repertoire, their singing style and other vocal example, the concepts of canon and cultural heritage techniques, their way of adapting lyrics and melody, do not ultimately occupy such a central place in the and their performance and arrangement. The book analysis of the empirical material. also includes descriptions of each informant’s dis- This is followed by a brief description of the de- covery of and career in folk singing, which enables velopment of folk music in Sweden from the collec- the author to fulfil her aim of analysing how the tors in the early nineteenth century to their genres, practitioners’ musical background is significant for arenas, functions, performers, and their repertoires their attitude to the tradition. For an outsider like me in different settings from the nineteenth century to it is difficult at times to know what kind of singers the 1960s. This account is based on earlier research, she is writing about. I would have appreciated some and the focus is on vocal folk music. The author information about the individual informants and then has a 35-page “historiographical sketch” of the their background; this could have been presented in vocal wave from the 1980s to the present day. In tables, which would have made it easier to follow this chapter Åkesson also proceeds from her own the discussion of the singers’ way of relating to the experiences in the field of folk music. This chapter tradition. Reviews 179

Ten of the fourteen singers are women, which the sical curiosity and delight that guides the singers in author says corresponds roughly to the proportions their way of recreating, reshaping, or innovating. of female and male practitioners. According to But how free are the individuals in their action? To Åkesson, Swedish vocal folk music began to flour- what extent is it the culture and society that makes ish chiefly as a female pursuit, as it has also been in music through them? The discourses and evalua- the past. She compares the situation with that in Fin- tions of folk music no doubt affect an individual’s land, where it is likewise mostly women who are choices. Yet one may assume that medialization and folk singers – with the notable exception of Heikki professionalization have affected the distinctive Laitinen, who has been the best known folk singer character of the vocal wave. The expectations nour- in the country in the last forty years. Although ished by the audience and the music industry, and Åkesson does not explore in depth why it is mostly the need that professional musicians feel to arouse women who sing, by considering their impact on the interest in the media, to win listeners and names, position of vocal folk music in Sweden, nor whether most likely play a part as well. The field of folk mu- the Swedish gender structure (inequality, power re- sic has its own gatekeepers (we have them at least in lations, attitudes, gender roles) plays any part in folk Finland), people who have more power than others music, I think that the role of gender in Swedish folk to decide what should happen in folk music and can singing is examined well within the framework of thereby influence the popularity of certain develop- the questions asked in the study. For some unfortu- ments. And finally: in what way has Sweden, as a nate reason, it is only when a study concerns a fe- nation with its culture policy and music education, male pursuit that it is customary to presuppose that affected the development of vocal folk music during the gender aspect is treated somehow. It is still not the studied period? When viewed from these angles, automatic to presuppose a gender analysis when a the field is perhaps not as free for singers to do what- study concerns only men. ever they like, for the sheer joy of making music. The study focuses on investigating the attitude of It can be said that all kinds of music – with the ex- the selected singers to the folk music tradition. This ception of ritual music – are somewhere in between is also the main problem that the study seeks to tradition and innovation. This is part of the character answer: how these performers choose, arrange, and of music, whether it is a question of art music, tradi- perform their musical material, and what guides tional music, that musicians simultaneously must op- their choices. erate within the framework of the genre and search The dissertation builds on a research model that for new modes of expression. What varies from one regards the musicians’ attitude to tradition from genre to another is how people relate to innovation. three perspectives: recreating and reshaping what is Different genres permit, encourage, or perhaps even called the tradition, and innovating within it. The require innovation to varying extents. As Åkesson research model “recreating-reshaping-innovating” notes, creating something new or reshaping some- works fruitfully in the study. It is no doubt useful thing old need not in itself mean freeing oneself from and will be employed by other scholars in the future. the rules, especially not in traditional music, which is One good aspect of this research model is that it often learned by ear. guides the researcher’s gaze towards the details of This otherwise praiseworthy book, which is also the music-making, in this case the song and the Åkesson’s Ph.D. dissertation, lacks a summary of singing. the research questions and a discussion of the find- The analysis – especially of singing styles and ings in terms of the conceptual, methodological, and vocal techniques – is conducted as comparisons be- contextual premises of the analysis. Although the tween the two different generations, the singers of answers to the research problem can be found in the the revival and of the vocal wave. At the same time, chapter containing the analysis, I would have liked the individual perspective is very strong in the dis- to see a final chapter dealing with what the per- sertation: the author considers what she calls the formers’ generation and musical background mean subculture of vocal folk music primarily as the for their attitude to tradition, and whether the rela- project of the individuals. The singers each decide tionship between stability and change in today’s whether or not to follow the tradition, they reshape vocal folk musicians is different from the revival and renew it. According to Åkesson, it is sheer mu- generation of singers. 180 Reviews

According to Åkesson, the word “Swedish” in The presentation shows that Åkesson has a profound the title of the dissertation refers to a linguistic defi- knowledge and understanding of her research topic. nition of Swedishness. The dissertation looks at The text is well-written and logically structured, al- characteristics and trends in Swedish vocal folk mu- though there are a few perhaps unnecessary repeti- sic in Sweden (if there are any immigrants who sing tions. The author describes and justifies all her Swedish folk songs, they are not included) and in choices thoroughly, and reflects on her own position passing also among Swedish-speaking people out- as a researcher. The study identifies similar tenden- side Sweden. Although Swedish minority groups in cies in Swedish vocal folk music to those found, for Finland and Estonia are mentioned, the dissertation instance, by Britta Sweers ( Electric Folk: The is basically only about the situation in Sweden: the Changing Face of English Traditional Music , 2005) informants are Swedes and the findings about their in England and Juniper Hill ( From Ancient to attitudes to the tradition also concern Sweden only. Avant-garde to Global: Creative Processes and In- Swedish-language folk singers in Finland and Esto- stitutionalization in Finnish Contemporary Folk nia do not take part with the same intensity in the Music , 2006) and Tina Ramnarine ( Ilmatar’s Inspi- subculture of folk music in Sweden; for example, rations: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Chang- the medialization and professionalization have taken ing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music 2003) in place at a different speed in the other countries. Finland. At the same time, Åkesson presents fea- As a whole Ingrid Åkesson’s study is an impor- tures that are distinctive for the development of tant Swedish addition to the research on the devel- Swedish vocal folk music. Judging by this study, for opment of traditional music in Europe in recent dec- example, it seems that singers in Sweden have great- ades. It is highly informative, describing a fascinat- er appreciation for the continuity of the tradition, ing subculture and a phase in Swedish musical so- while in Finland one can also speak of a break in the ciety in an interesting and thought-provoking way. tradition – at least in the circles influenced by the The book also includes a CD that illustrates very folk music department of the Sibelius Academy. well the musical aspects that the author writes about. Pirkko Moisala, Helsinki Book Reviews cause the museums are part of the structure of socie- ty and therefore should represent and reflect society. In society as a whole, gender issues are included in The Gendered Museum policy on many levels. The museum branch is char- Det bekönade museet. Genusperspektiv i museologi acterized by female-dominated jobs, which means och museiverksamhet . Inga-Lill Aronsson & Birgitta that one should expect that gender issues would Meurling (eds.). Skrifter utgivna av institutionen för have gained ground in the daily museum work. On ABM vid Uppsala universitet 2005. Vol. 1. 265 pp., the contrary, the editors wonder whether museums, Ill. ISBN 91-631-5547-8. with their many female employees, become custod- ians of the patriarchal structures in which women
Why is feminist scholarship almost absent from are seen as natural caregivers, even when it comes to museum and heritage studies? That question has collections and artefacts. Museums seem to repro- puzzled the editors of this book. Feminist theory and duce the patriarchal structures when they really research have influenced myriad academic fields should make them visible and challenge them. over the past few decades. It is remarkable, there- The first article by Katarina Ek-Nilsson is about fore, to note that feminist scholarship is almost ab- the images of Selma Lagerlöf and August Strind- sent from museum and heritage studies. The authors berg that are produced when these authors become explore various indications of that absence in very different museum settings, rather than seeking to heritage. She clearly shows how values of feminini- find possible reasons for it. The goal of the authors ty and masculinity have determined the image of the of this edited volume is to transfer understandings two authors, rather than what they really were like from gender studies into the museum field by ad- or what their writings convey. The article is a dressing discussions about gender, and pointing out well-written introduction to the writers as well as the complexity of gender in relation to the museum, their museums. based on observations and experiences from mu- Wera Grahn, in her article “From everyday arte- seum visits and work experience. In the chapters the facts to museum facts”, writes about a project on authors move from gender representations to a con- homeless women in Stockholm. Grahn clearly sideration of gender as an object of museum exhib- shows how a museum’s collections and texts easily itions and studies. reproduce categorical images of sex, which is an in- It is not their aim to offer an overview of museum sight that all museum employees should carry with history, but rather to point to particular meetings them in their daily work. Her inspiration mainly that involve relations of power, expressed through comes from Latour’s writing on modernity. gender, or to biased construction of “male” and “fe- In the article “Gender and identity in South Afri- male” in different museums practices. Themes of can museums”, Juliette Leeb-du Toit inserts the gen- gender equality run throughout the book, which der perspective in a somewhat greater context of seeks to bridge the gap between topics as different power and ethnicity or race, as she shows how mu- as activism, social inequality and education. The seums in South Africa have challenged the apartheid seven chapters in this volume each propose a differ- regime by contributing to an indirect criticism of the ent and non-exhaustive approach to gender studies apartheid system. Many familiar approaches and and the prospects for that subject in the museum perspectives have been rephrased or completely dis- field. appeared, and new ones have arrived. Thus, the mu- Besides an analysis of gender and gender per- seums have come to play a more explicit political spectives (supplemented by a bibliography of litera- role when the exhibitions deal with narratives of ture relating to gender, museums and cultural herit- gender and different ethnic groups. Already in the age in an appendix), the introductory chapter dis- 1960s, museums began to collect artefacts from dif- cusses why it is important to understand that mu- ferent ethnic groups in the country, which contrib- seums are gendered. According to the editors, the uted to more equality between black and white purpose of the book is to “decode and deconstruct artists. the museum field and its organization”. They note Graziella Belloni focuses on the more modest but that gender imbalance within the museums is still not less important educational activities in mu- not regarded as a relevant issue, which is strange be- seums. Especially museum educators have opportu-

Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 41, 2011 182 Reviews

nities for gender-constructivist work, when they
Between 2004 and 2007 the Centre for Consumer teach young children about gender as a historical Science at Gothenburg University ran the project rather than a natural category. In the article “The “The Multidimensional Food Consumer: Values and whole story?” Mary Ahlsén, Johanna Berg and Kris- Behaviour of Consumers 55+”. An interdisciplinary tina Berg pose 20 sets of questions to those design- group of researchers studied how the baby-boomers, ing an exhibition or those examining an existing born in the 1940s, view food and meals, and what one. This is a tool to create awareness of the values they expect of their imminent retirement. A series of that are shaped, and as such is a tool that one can reports have been published, and now this book, apply in all kinds of museums. Eva Persson, in the which rounds off the project and presents it in a article “Towards gender thinking”, reports on exhib- freer form where the informants are also allowed to its that touched on gender issues during her years in speak. the museum sector. She is especially interested in “The 1940s people”, as the baby-boom gener- developing new visual means to shape gender con- ation is known in Sweden, account for a good mil- sciousness. The concluding article is a conversation lion of the total population of nine million, so the between the book’s two editors and Catherine Kall- generation is interesting if only for its size. But there ings Nilsson about the process of building a prison is more to it than that. This was the generation of museum in Gävle. liberation, the first who became teenagers, the first The book as a whole raises the question whether who grew up in a consumer society, and the gener- one should solve the gender debate (or the lack of a ation that represented rebellion – not all of them, of debate in museums) by focusing just on women and course, but the ones who set the tone had such an their histories rather than that the gender perspective impact that nothing remained as it had been before. should permeate the museum. Even though the ex- Consequently, their entry into life as a pensioner amples are informative, it would have added to the must be different from that of previous generations. value of the book if the discussions had also touched It was also a happy choice to focus on something as upon more general issues of gender politics. It is a ordinary as food, and to proceed from meals, which fact that new heritage policies serve to promote gen- intertwine so many threads: enjoyment, socializing, der equality and that gender equity, through heritage nutrition, health and illness, economy, environment, and culture, is today acknowledged, as a lever for and so on. development in international policies. The title of The study comprises about 70 households di- the book is politicizing, which means that one vided into three groups: city dwellers, new Swedes, would expect a critical analysis of museums and ac- and villagers. The many informants have been inter- tivities. The articles, on the other hand, help to dem- viewed individually and in groups; they have kept onstrate that heritage and museum policies and prac- diaries and in different ways documented their tices can only claim to be inclusive and comprehen- everyday life. Each person has been followed from sive if they recognize and initially take into account childhood up to the life they lead today, thus illu- the specific involvement and position of women at minating how historically conditioned our food ha- all these levels. The result is a series of articles that bits are. The book is thus about the food history of are interesting, although not always about gender. It the last half century, which has seen great changes is an open question whether the editors want the mu- from self-sufficiency to the global food market. seums to work in a more action-oriented and politi- All through the book there are descriptions of the cizing way. Should museums become the new informants’ outlook on tradition and innovation, on battlefields on which to fight for gender equality? gender roles, family and communities, on new tech- Lene Otto, Copenhagen nology and new purchasing habits. The affluence that came to Sweden in these years, and the opportu- nities this gave the individual, is also described here, Baby-boomers and Food but also the negative side in the form of pollution, Ju mer vi är tillsammans. Fyrtiotalisterna och ma- health problems, and worries about illness. The ten. Helene Brembeck (ed.). Carlsson Bokförlag, chosen methods prove to be highly fruitful, as the Stockholm 2010. 208 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-91-7331- authors go through the themes citing individual nar- 298-1. ratives told by people who stand out as complete Reviews 183

persons with a past, a present, and desires for the fu- breeds, and evidently with Linnaeus as a source. ture. This paints a much more nuanced picture than Brummer discusses their usefulness for different what can be shown in marketing studies and trend forms of hunting. He presents the “partridge dog”, a surveys. pointer used for hunting partridge and other young The study is ethnological but it also brings in nu- fowl. The most docile were almost white in colour, trition, domestic science, technology, economy, de- we are told. The greyhound was best suited for sign, and marketing studies. Unfortunately, the plains, where it could be sued for hunting hare and branch of scholarship known in the Anglo-Saxon fox. The dachshund-like “hans” was used for hunt- world as “culinary history” has not yet reached ing fox, otter, and badger. Bird dogs barked at the Sweden. This could have enriched the project, since fowl, but could also be used to chase hare. The hunt- it proceeds from the kitchen and from concrete ing dog, finally, can vary in appearance, chases all analyses of the culinary art, its taste and style, to manner of animals, and should never be allowed to open up the meal and bring in all the social activities run loose. Brummer urged hunters to look after their that are necessary to create it (see Kenneth F. Kiple dogs well. It was entirely the hunter’s own fault if (ed.), The Cambridge World History of Food I–II, the dogs were incompetent and unsuitable. Instead 2000, II pp. 1367ff). they should have good food, adequate care, and be Else-Marie Boyhus, Maribo trained from an early age. On cats, by contrast, he had nothing to say. This indoor hunter with its taste for mice and small birds was of no interest to Brum- Reprint of an Old Hunting Dictionary mer. M. H. Brummer, Försök Til et Swenskt Skogs- och This reference book is not only about hunting. As Jagt-Lexicon. Kungl. Skogs- and Lantbruksakade- the title indicates, the forest is also covered, with in- mien, Stockholm 2010. 159 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-91- formation about different kinds of wood and uses 85205-95-0. for the forest. Alder, elm, birch, beech, oak, fir, spruce, and so on are treated in varying degrees of
The snipe is “rather desirable for its tasty meat”; detail. The introductions to this reissue, written by the wolf not only causes “considerable damage to the author Kerstin Ekman, along with the forest the farmer’s stock, but also chases and kills a great ecologists Roger Bergström and Kjell Danell re- deal of elk and deer” and should therefore be shot spectively, provides the required biographical in- off by the game-keeping staff; squirrel meat “is formation and the background in the history of eaten in some places, is said to be tasty, very like ideas. chicken”; and “Each autumn a couple of Royal It is pleasing that books of this kind, which can Hunters come over from Denmark to Halland to be tricky, albeit not impossible, to find in antiquar- hunt falcon there.” ian bookshops, are made available to a wider audi- These are a few random but interesting quot- ence, and we may hope for more reprints like this, ations from the head gamekeeper Magnus Hendric now that the Academy seems to be in spending Brummer’s “Attempt at a Swedish Forestry and mood. The value of these references works as Hunting Dictionary” from 1789, a classic among sources is perhaps limited, since they are often com- hunting literature, now reprinted in slightly modern- pilations of other people’s work, rather than based ized language. It is entertaining reading. There is, of on the author’s own experience, but they neverthe- course, much that is of interest for anyone who less give some insight into the way people back then wants a glimpse of eighteenth-century attitudes to viewed the landscape. The format makes them game of all kinds. Ownership, legislation on hunt- handy as introductory literature. Read the entries in ing, and forms of trapping are treated under various Brummer’s dictionary about deer parks, about headwords. Moreover, the entries for “Allmänning” places where animal corpses were laid as bait, or (common land) and “Allmoge” (common people) about the gun trap used for hunting bear. These give provide a useful introduction to the society of the fascinating insight into aspects of cultural history time. On the subject of dogs we read that without about which we know little today. Handbooks by them “a hunter cannot achieve anything”. A great Brummer and people like him are of course highly deal of space is in fact devoted to dogs of different valuable for anyone interested in the ideas behind 184 Reviews

the land-based industries of the eighteenth and nine- that is to say, imported originals. Individual painters teenth centuries. If nothing else, they are good as kept every picture they came across, and through in- general education. The book belongs to the category heritance and purchase they could accumulate large of useful reference works to have close to one’s collections. One example is the Visdal collection in desk. Vågå, from which several generations of painters Ingvar Svanberg, Uppsala copied. From this collection the former conservator at Lillehammer Museum, Tord Buggeland, has sift- ed out various layers of pictorial originals, either in Folk Art in Gudbrandsdalen the form of free-standing motifs, or as assembled Tord Buggeland , Figurmaling i Gudbrandsdalen fra picture sources. The latter include G. Hertel’s edi- Roma til Vågå . Andrésen og Butenschøn, Oslo tion of Cecare Ripa’s famous work Iconologia 2009. 194 pp. Ill. English summary. ISBN 978-82- (originally published in Rome in 1592), later pub- 7964-230-9.; Tord Buggeland , Folkelige tresnitt lished in Augsburg around 1760. Of the 200 copper- som kistebrev i Gudbrandsdalen. Årbok for Gud- plates, 34 belong to the Visdal collection. A later brandsdalen 78, 2010. stratum of originals is the lithographs produced in three large picture factories in Neuruppin north-west
Research on folk art has had a stronger position in of Berlin. No less than 22,000 motifs, most of them Norway than in the other Nordic countries. For a biblical, were spread from there. This was greatly couple of generations there has even been a chair of assisted by the fact that the texts were printed in this subject in Bergen. Norwegian folk art is prim- Danish and Swedish. The foreign lithographs in the arily association with wood carving, but also with Visdal collection constituted the foundation for fig- painting. The term rosemaling , literally “rose paint- ure painting in Gudbrandsdalen, according to Bug- ing”, has been a counterpart to the genre of kur- geland. bitsmålning or “gourd painting” in Sweden, refer- To the extent that it has been possible, the author ring to the free representation of vegetative ele- has demonstrated how these continental originals ments. What is less known is that Gudbrandsdalen were copied in Norwegian paintings. He also goes also had a rich tradition of figure painting, copied into greater depth by examining some of the most from copperplate engravings and lithographs. This prominent painters in Gudbrandsdalen: Peder Olsen form of decorative painting sought to keep as close- Veggum (1768–1813), Rasmus Garmo (born 1800), ly as possible to the originals. In the Academy of Syver Valde (1821–1898), Hans Sokstad (1829– Art in Christiania (and its predecessor), copying was 1894), and Ola Jakobsen Kvam (born 1810). Of an important part of the education, and the same was greater general interest, however, is the closing true of the laugskonst or “guild art”, the painting chapter of the book, with a large number of paint- done by craftsmen. From there it spread to decora- ings and their originals. The book is printed in a tive painters in the countryside, especially in Gud- beautiful, picture-friendly format with a large brandsdalen. number of colour illustrations. Although conservative by nature, Gudbrands- A special category of picture is the “chest prints”, dalen had a geographical location that made it easier hand-coloured single-sheet prints intended for past- here than in other parts of Norway to adopt features ing on the inside of chest lids. A double sheet com- from urban art. Another powerful contributory fac- bining Jesus and the ten lepers with the ten virgins tor was the prosperity of the peasant culture here, belonged to the Visdal collection. Perhaps this was which in turn left its traces in a highly developed ar- why Buggeland, alongside the study of the figure chitectural culture which also gave work to interior paintings, started an inventory of these woodcuts in painters. People in Gudbrandsdalen also traded in Gudbrandsdalen. A total of 63 have been registered cattle and other commodities, resulting in further to date. In Årbog for Gudbrandsdalen for 2010 there contacts with Christiania. are reproductions of 29 of these, and the rest will be The largest group of figural motifs are pictures published in subsequent issues of the yearbook. Of from the New Testament, along with portraits of these woodcuts, 24 were printed by Johan Jørgen royals. Figure painting depended on the availability Høpffner in Copenhagen, who worked in the period of models in the form of woodcuts and copperplates, 1720–1759. The other five were published by Tho- Reviews 185

mas Larsen Borup, who was active 1756–1771. Sev- In the last decade materiality has played an in- eral of Høpffner’s prints were not registered by creasingly prominent role in ethnology and culture V. E. Clausen, so Buggeland’s catalogue is a valu- studies in a broad sense, although an interest in ma- able complement. Unlike the case in Sweden, how- terial culture has always existed in this field. In Ma- ever, these chest prints were not copied by folk terialiseringer a group of Danish researchers with painters in Norway, which is why Buggeland has backgrounds in ethnology, cultural history, and mu- not included them in his book, instead publishing seology make interesting contributions to this re- them separately. Through his catalogue, Tord Bug- search tradition. The volume is ambitious in its ap- geland shows that the Danish chest prints also had a proach: the authors want to present new theories of significant market in Norway. materiality, and also to provide concrete examples Nils-Arvid Bringéus, Lund of how these can be used in analyses of different kinds of empirical material. Apart from this, there is the aim that the book can be used in teaching. Do Materiality and Cultural Analysis they succeed in this? Materialiseringer. Nye perspektiver på materialitet In the introduction the editors emphasize that the og kulturanalyse. Tine Damsholt, Dorthe Gert Si- volume has been written using a special “lens”: the monsen & Camilla Mordhorst (eds.). Aarhus Uni- participating authors apply a process perspective ac- versitetsforlag, Århus 2009. 204 pp. Ill. ISBN 978- cording to which materiality is assumed to do some- 87-7934-493-8. thing with the world and at the same time material- ity is something that is done in specific cultural and
One rainy day in summer I stepped into the tourist historical contexts: “This book, in short, is about information office in Karlsborg. The staff recom- materiality as something that is mobilized, translat- mended a visit to the huge fortress that was mostly ed, stabilized, joined, or incorporated in networks – built in the nineteenth century. They said it was best without any sovereign creating or acting subject be- to join a guided adventure tour, which would be hind it” (p. 15). The term materializations under- both exciting and informative. But if I had any lines the processual perspective that permeates the claustrophobic tendencies or might be disturbed by volume as a whole; it should be understood as an smoke or the noise of cannon fire, I should refrain! “active verb” (p. 15). The warning, however, enticed rather than deterred The editors begin, as they should, by placing the me, so the following day I joined a group of other volume in its context in the history of scholarship. tourists in the adventure. With agile steps the guide The papers are shaped on the basis of a theoretical led the group into the dark, cramped passages in the field that is introduced under the headings “Materi- walls of the mighty fortress. Dummies with alization as process and agency”, “Materialization old-fashioned wigs and uniforms from the nine- as relation, network, and rhizome”, and “Material- teenth century were placed at points along the route, ization as performativity”. The editors admit that speaking to us from hidden loudspeakers. In one these concepts cannot be entirely separated, but they room there were mechanical rats scurrying across direct the focus towards different problems. Authors the floor. There was a little smoke and cannon fire such as Arjun Appadurai, Daniel Miller, Donna along the way, but there was scarcely and cause for Haraway, John Law, Bruno Latour, and Judith But- worry. Even though no such emotional reaction was ler are discussed in the introduction and are also provoked, the participants were affected in other used in the analyses, mostly in a lucid and stimulat- ways. When we got back out into the daylight, ing way. The papers inspired by Actor Network smiles could be seen on some people’s lips, while Theory (ANT) deserve particular praise here, as others asked the guide intelligent questions about they convincingly show that ANT can be fruitful in the history of the fortress. Something had evidently cultural analysis. happened in the darkness. With this experience fresh In concrete terms, the papers range over several in mind, I began to read this fascinating book about different and seemingly disparate empirical fields, materiality, the title of which means “Materializ- or should we say spaces? For the papers are spa- ations: New perspectives on materiality and cultural tially rooted while simultaneously problematizing analysis”. to some extent how spaces are created. In a highly 186 Reviews

stimulating chapter, “Airspace”, the historian time. These exist in parallel and are related to dif- Dorthe Gert Simonsen shows how the establish- ferent materialities and performative actions. ment of the aeroplane in the early twentieth centu- Well, do the authors manage to steer the boat ry affected the formation of national airspaces and safely into port? Does the content match the initial how this formation followed different cultural ambitions? There is always a risk that edited vol- logics. Simonsen asks how air could become umes like this give a disparate impression and that space, and also how these new spaces affected the the contributions are of varying quality. In the book organization of “geographical land”. In “The geog- the editors have succeeded in minimizing this risk. raphy of wine” the ethnologists Jon Frederik Høy- It is true that a considerable number of theories, rup and Anders Kristian Munk investigate how the metaphors, and concepts are presented, but they are liquid properties of red wine are shaped, stabilized, used in a thought-provoking way and generally ex- and negotiated in relation to space, terroir : “Fol- plained lucidly. The book can well be used in teach- lowing the bottle of wine is as much a question of ing, and it also deserves to be read by established seeing it change as of seeing the world change cultural scholars, whether or not they have left the around it” (p. 73). In the ethnologist Tine Dams- linguistic turn behind them. holt’s auto-ethnographic contribution, “In the Ha- Karlsborg fortress was never finished. It was pro- mam”, we follow a group of conference partici- claimed outdated at the start of the twentieth centu- pants into a Turkish bath. This is a fascinating and ry. Today it seems like a materialization of an in- sensitive description of how gender is constituted credibly expensive and meaningless investment in and negotiated situationally in relation to different defence; interestingly, this failure seems to be any- spaces, and also in relation to things such as towels thing but an inconvenient cultural heritage. Materi- and seats. In “Museums, materiality, and presence” alizations never cease to fascinate. Camilla Mordhorst analyses an exhibition at the Fredrik Nilsson, Lund/Malmö British Museum. She focuses particularly on a “pill table” that shows the quantity and variation of tab- lets that a man and a woman consume during a life- Who Invented the Single-Family Neigh- time. An important point in this paper is that the bourhood? exhibition is able to create a sense of different di- Peter Dragsbo, Hvem opfandt parcelhuskvarteret? chotomies coexisting in the materiality, and that Forstaden har en historie. Plan og boligbyggeri i the visitor (the author) cannot maintain a protective danske forstadskvarterer 1900–1960 . Museum Søn- analytical distance to the exhibits. The exhibition derjylland, Haderslev & Danish Center for Byhisto- is about “ourselves and not ‘the others’” (p. 137). rie, Århus 2008. 274 pp. Ill. ISBN 987-87-88376- In the paper “The inconvenient cultural heritage of 09-8. communism” the ethnologist Lene Otto also ap- proaches the museum world, but with her interest-
In this book the ethnologist Peter Dragsbo tackles ed directed towards the awkward cultural heritage. the task of describing the history of Danish subur- Based on a number of examples from Eastern Eu- bia. Proceeding from a number of suburbs that rope, Otto analyses how the communist heritage Dragsbo has studied, the book seeks to paint an (such as statues of Lenin and other prominent lead- overall picture of the development of suburbs in ers and heroes) are used and presented in a kind of Denmark in the period 1900–1960 by illuminating politics of memory, and the reactions and emotions the central guidelines in urban planning during this aroused by the cultural heritage. She examines car- time and the most prominent housing environments nivalesque activities as well as vandalism and in the suburbs, in the form of estates built by hous- more contemplative practices. Her main theoretical ing associations, garden cities, social and municipal point is that materialities function as both artefacts construction projects, and the typically Danish resi- and actors. Finally, in “The materialization of dential neighbourhoods consisting of single-family time”, Astrid Jespersen and Torben Elgaard Jensen detached houses ( parcelhuse ). The author has cho- discuss how time is materialized, stabilized, at sen to define the term suburb ( forstad ) from an eth- present-day doctors’ offices. The authors work nological/anthropological perspective, as a function with two concepts of time: finished and unfinished of the way industrial society draws a boundary be- Reviews 187

tween home and work; the suburb thus constitutes a When the people who had leased allotment gardens specific type of urban environment. were able to buy the land as private property, they The book begins by focusing on the growth of ur- then began to build small houses in these allotments. ban planning from the start of the twentieth century. This then gained momentum after the First World Even before the Town Planning Act of 1938, which War. After 1945 this kind of construction was in- is often considered to mark the start of modern ur- creasingly regulated by the local authorities, while ban planning in Denmark, Peter Dragsbo shows that home owning simultaneously spread to a broader there was extensive planning in Danish towns. From spectrum of society. Concepts such as “detached”, the 1890s to the outbreak of the First World War, “owner-occupied”, and “single-family” house thus there were urban engineers in different parts of Den- became merged in Denmark in the second half of mark who, influenced by the German theorists the twentieth century. The development of the Joseph Stübben and Camillo Sitte, laid the founda- parcelhus , according to Dragsbo, can be regarded as tion for modern urban planning in Denmark. The ba- the conquest of urban environments by the middle sic idea of the modern urban plan is the division of class. Similar observations have been made about towns into different areas which separate industrial the development of housing in Sweden and Finland buildings from housing, the creation of green spaces by Leif Jonsson in his book Från egnahem till villa: and playgrounds, and the organization of traffic Enfamiljshuset i Sverige 1950–1980 and by Kirsi flows through radial roads and ring roads. In addi- Saarikangas in Model Houses for Model Families: tion there were aesthetic elements such as the con- Gender Ideology and the Modern Dwelling. The struction of boulevards, avenues, and monumental Type-Planned House of the 1940s Finland buildings. In the 1930s Danish urban planning Peter Dragsbo says that the history of the suburbs gained momentum, led by modernist architects, the can also be viewed as a struggle between the differ- labour movement, and the Social Democratic Party. ent social classes for dominion over the urban space. In many towns the local authority bought up land to The development has gone from a bourgeoisie use for green spaces and public institutions. The dominating both their own and the workers’ hous- Town Planning Act of 1938 ruled that all towns with ing, to a working class increasingly trying to create more than 5,000 inhabitants had to draw up general its own domains with a design marking a breach town plans, and the period from the end of the 1930s with the capitalist town, and together with urban to the start of the 1950s has been perceived as the ideologists establishing a new ideal in the form of heyday of Danish town planning, as exemplified in the welfare town. Peter Dragsbo points out, how- the book through descriptions of the development of ever, that from the 1970s there has been a re-evalu- several Danish towns in this period. ation of the suburb, which has been criticized for The second part of the book focuses on the differ- lacking history in comparison with older neighbour- ent types of buildings in Danish suburbs. In the hoods in the town centres. twentieth century the development of new housing In this book the author seeks to refute this view areas was characterized by two types of private con- by showing that the suburb actually does have a his- struction, in the form of detached houses/small tory of its own. The book gives a detailed descrip- houses and multi-storey blocks, especially as work- tion of the development of the suburbs in terms of ing-class housing. Collective building at the start of social policy, with many examples from different the twentieth century was characterized by the for- Danish suburbs. In addition, it is richly illustrated mation of housing associations that started provid- with photographs and maps of the neighbourhoods ing workers’ housing in the form of small-house discussed. In that respect the author succeeds in his neighbourhoods, influenced by English garden endeavour to present the history of suburbia. What I cities. At the end of the First World War the munici- miss, however, is the grass-roots perspective that is pal authorities also started acting as building con- so typical of ethnology. The book is based on copi- tractors because of the housing shortage that had ous material from what Michel de Certeau would arisen in the war years. The typically Danish single- call the structural level, that is to say, Peter Dragsbo family neighbourhoods were a development of the describes how the suburbs have been constructed as use of allotment gardens by less well-off people on an urban space from a municipal and societal per- the outskirts of towns in the early twentieth century. spective. In my opinion, however, this is only half 188 Reviews

the story. The suburbs are also created by the people Other aspects of the total history culture also pro- who live in them, through the inhabitants’ practice, duce, employ, and communicate history. In a time which does not always have the same purpose as the when the fascination with history is greater than structures and institutions that create the urban practically any time since the Second World War, spaces of the suburbs. The inhabitants of Danish this non-academic use of history is of particular in- suburbs remain anonymous in this book. It would be terest, not least for the way it can illuminate how interesting to let these people’s voices be heard in history tacitly functions as a reference point for order to get an idea of the impact they have on the identity formation, both as life-history and in cultur- design of the suburbs and the meaning they ascribe al communities. The personal and identity-seeking to the environment in which they live. This would relation to history is crucial here, with an expansion require further studies of the Danish suburbs, which in commercialized and mass-media experiences of we may hope will result in more publications about history and increased investments in history by both suburbs and their inhabitants, in Denmark and in the states/regions and businesses. This takes place, for other Nordic countries. There is no doubt, however, instance, in the form of events in what is called the that Peter Dragsbo has done thorough work in this experience economy: historical festivals, tourism, book by charting the growth of the Danish suburbs the design of the urban space, and marketing and and their significance as a distinct urban space. “branding”, for example, in music, food, literature, Christina Haldin, Mariehamn/Åbo personal life-staging, regionalism, nationalism, transnationalism, and internationalism. These initia- tives entail certain research challenges, for example, The Use of History with regard to other types of communication than Negotiating Pasts in the Nordic Countries. Inter- the written word and oral narrative tradition. disciplinary Studies in History and Memory . Anne Normally the use of history is synonymous with Eriksen & Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.). Nordic Aca- the struggle for history and is thus associated with a demic Press, Lund 2009. 314 pp. ISBN 978-91- conflict perspective. History is thus used when par- 85509-33-1. ticular groups in set situations and times seek to create a special awareness of history in the recipi-
History is constantly changing, because we are ents. The use of history is then synonymous with a constantly asking new questions about it, and using selective, relevance-determined use of unsystema- it in new ways. While history still means looking tized history with a view to creating order, exegesis, backwards, our backward vision changes all the legitimacy, and opportunities for identification. The time, for it is determined by the purposes we have latter can concern either an individual or collective for history here and now – and in the future. History identity in a person, a region, or a nation. has a Janus face, pointing both backwards and for- Whether it takes place in an institutional frame- wards. work or more or less casually, what is highlighted or In recent years history has been changing its face omitted in the use of history will be linked to a spe- more than ever. In “the old days” history meant cific awareness of history, which can be coloured by documenting, understanding, and explaining. Today the use of history in earlier times. This is the dia- it also means investigating issues such as: Who uses logic principle, which along with the conflict per- history? Historians, novelists, politicians, journal- spective has such a central place in this book. ists, schoolchildren, and Mrs Johansson in Söder- In the Nordic countries, research on the use of köping? What is history used for? To pursue conflict history is most highly developed in Sweden, with or to bring about unity? In what contexts is history Denmark and Norway as runners up. Finland is a used? Is it for a scholarly article, an “interesting” bi- special case in that it has been dominated by three ography, a film for cinema or television, popular en- major problems: the Swedish heritage, the civil war lightenment, a computer game – or as a justification of 1917–18, and Finland’s actions before, during, for going to war? These and other major questions and after the Second World War. are considered in this book. In almost every instance it has been a matter of a The use of history concerns not only the way it is struggle for history, and a struggle for the right his- used in scholarship, as exemplified in this volume. tory. Whoever controls the view of the past also Reviews 189

controls the present and the direction of develop- constantly reminded of the Nazis’ bestial crimes, ment into the future. The conflict perspective has Kverndokk nevertheless questions the felicity of this thus predominated. enterprise, and he could have gone one step further It is – implicitly – a response to this conflict trend and pointed out that Auschwitz has attained such a that we see in this volume. The idea behind it is position in the history of memory that there is a risk fruitful: to adopt a dialogic attitude to history. Histo- of forgetting the other murder camps in Central and ry is negotiable. When challenged either by direct Eastern Europe and the victims who were killed antagonists, by a tradition handed down from gener- there. ation to generation, by a collective mentality that Erling Sverdrup Sandmo’s article about, a place has crystallized in a “basic narrative” or a normative deep in Sognefjorden in Western Norway, likewise prescription, one engages in a dialogic negotiation concentrates a great deal in its pages. His family has about and with history, where one nuances, modi- had a summer house here for generations; both Kai- fies, and reflects. This is the concerted outlook en- ser Wilhelm and King Oscar II stayed here, and this visaged by the papers in this volume. It starts with is one of the great lieux de mémoire in Norway, with an article by the Norwegian Helge Jordheim, which roots going back to the legendary sagas of the serves as a common foundation by setting the agen- Middle Ages. Otherwise they are best treated in this da for this alternative way of looking at the use of volume by Jón Viðar Sigurðsson’s fine article about history. how the Icelandic aristocracy used this type of saga Jordheim’s article is clear and unambiguous, as a way to position themselves vis-à-vis Norway, to demonstrating his thorough familiarity with Rein- establish a negotiating stance with historical roots in hart Koselleck’s view of the use of history, on relation to the Norwegian kings. This is very well which Bernard Eric Jensen also relies heavily in his done. contribution to the volume. Jordheim’s article, with Sandmo is, as always, an elegant stylist in his ar- its analytical acuity, is of such quality in general ticle, but he also tries to juggle too many balls at the terms that it could be included in many studies of same time. He makes a distinction between, on the historical awareness and cultural encounters. On the one hand, an official history that is constantly open other hand, despite the Koselleck heritage, we are for negotiations and challenges, and on the other not spared the use of Axel Honneth, the unofficial hand a closed, private, and defensive history, based European champion in “sweetness”, who has even on authenticity and permanence, but he simultane- been able to turn 1848 into a “sweet” happening. ously shows that the relationship between these two In this context, however, Jordheim’s article does approaches is constantly in movement. At the same not work so well. Most of the other papers make a time he brilliantly demonstrates the major issue of desperate attempt to relate to the negotiation per- whether history is definitively dead and left behind spective that he applies. Very few succeed in doing us, or continues to live amongst us. Fortunately, we so. Yet in the articles that are most independent of are not given an explicit answer to this tricky ques- him, his basic outlook proves to be particularly in- tion, but by posing the problem he is able to indicate spiring. Among these I must single out the papers by a field of study that is not present in Jordheim’s the Norwegians Kyrre Kverndokk and Erling Sverd- article: whether the use of history brings obligations rup Sandmo. Both these articles are problem-con- or is only for decoration and intended to be placed scious, provoking thought and debate, even if they on a plinth or in a museum. In other words, the old do not answer all the questions that they raise direct- Nietzsche classic. This problem is also present in ly and indirectly. Bernard Eric Jensen’s article, but unfortunately it is Kyrre Kverndokk analyses the result of the oblig- not taken up again in the editors’ otherwise sensible atory trip to Auschwitz undertaken by Norwegian Afterthoughts. schoolchildren, and he is successful in his elucida- Among the other papers, I find it thought-provok- tion of this delicate subject, which appeals to a spe- ing that the best articles in the volume are by those cific attitude to the Holocaust, with considerable that do not use Jordheim’s negotiation perspective, normative dimensions; pupils are expected to be but instead the classic hegemony approach. Here I emotionally affected, and preferably brought to am thinking primarily of Karen Skovgaard-Peter- tears. Without questioning in any way the need to be sen’s and Anna Wallette’s well- written essays 190 Reviews

about Danish and Swedish historiography in the Turunen uses the theories of Bourdieu, Latour and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which both Münich to show more than just the surface of this adopt a conflict perspective and thus ascribe less side of cultural production. weight to negotiation than to struggle. They demon- In the second chapter, “Produce cultural herit- strate in precise and well-considered terms what a age”, attention is focused on the cultural environ- conflict outlook can achieve in exposing efforts to ment, saving and branding different culturally spe- influence people and protect one’s own interests. cial places and ideas around them. The article by When viewed in this light it is vexatious – and Sami Louekari, ’Satakunta as a presentation of land- puzzling – that the term hegemony is only intro- scape’, draws a picture of landscape as a form of duced very late in Jordheim’s article. cultural production. The article introduces land- The strength of this book is its challenge to a tra- scape as a subjective idea and as representations. It dition of Nordic research on the use of history. The analyses how and from what kinds of starting points editors have been ambitious, and the result of their landscape is produced as a physical subject as well efforts is a highly readable book. It is not complete- as different cultural representations. Identity is one ly successful, however. This may be due to genre of the key elements in this text. Louekari empha- conventions: that it is difficult to make a collective sizes the communicational aspect of identity in his volume coherent, but it may also be an effect of the analysis of what and how the websites are represent- topic being too calculated and sophisticated. But ing rural districts via pictures. there should be no doubt that it the book can be The third chapter, “Cultural production and digit- recommended as a supplement to the prevalent tra- al community”, deals with the subject of digital cul- dition – especially for advanced readers. ture from community games to game theories and Niels Kayser Nielsen, Aarhus aspects of individual participation and affection for Eurovision Song Contest voting. The article by Pauliina Tuomi, ’Taking a part, making a differ- An Introduction to Cultural Production ence? Eurovision and possibilities of interactive me- Kulttuurituotanto. Kehykset, käytännöt ja prosessit. dia technologies’, is also a very current topic. Tuomi Maarit Grahn & Maunu Häyrynen (eds.). SKS 230. writes about interactive technology, especially the Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki 2009. 362 pp. ISBN 978-952-222-173-5. alliance between television and mobile phones. This article is a critical turn in speaking about the possi- bilities and illusions of affecting real change
Maarit Grahn and Maunu Häyrynen have edited through the use non-free phone and MSN voting this excellent book about a multi-faceted topic of cultural production and the research of it. Structural- systems in popular television shows. Tuomi uses ly, it includes fifteen articles and three chapters, qualitative content analysis as her analytical ap- each of them concentrating on different topics and proach. The article is also an introduction to typical points of view. themes in the subject of digital culture studies. The first chapter, “Framework of cultural produc- This book is a suitable reader for anyone interest- tion”, includes theoretical and social articles from ed in cultural production. It is especially useful for cultural politics to Pierre Bourdieu`s very popular students, since the book offers numerous examples. field theory and cultural change to regional develop- It links many topics and points of view to larger ment. The article by Risto Turunen deals with one questions and phenomena of society, history and of the most current issues of culture and cultural contemporary life. It does not construct an entire production today. ‘Book production and cultural history or serve as a theoretical guide for a topic. Its change’ is concerned with the dominant position of purpose is to introduce the topic of cultural produc- literature in culture and those challenges which new tion and put it on the map of important contem- forms of media and digitalization bring to the field. porary phenomena, and to pose new questions to Turunen writes from a national-historical point of readers and researchers. In its entirety, this book is view about how the position of literature has works well and is an informative collection of inter- changed in Finland, but also about how book pro- esting articles. duction has changed strategies throughout history. Tiina Käpylä, Turku Reviews 191

A Swedish Peasant’s Diary in this case they do seem to get in each other’s way. Anders Gustavsson, Bondeliv på 1800-talet. Med ut- In such a short publication, 136 pages in all, there gångspunkt i en bondes dagböcker och brev. Novus simply is not enough space for all three purposes: Forlag, Oslo 2009. 136 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-82-7099- the analysis, which is perhaps primarily intended for 535-6. Gustavsson’s own students; description, which is perhaps aimed most at a broad readership; and il-
Peasant diaries are a favourite source for many lustration, which perhaps most of all either ex- ethnologists with an interest in cultural history. In presses a fondness for Bernhardson’s paintings or Scandinavia, especially in Sweden and Denmark, concerns the publication of yet another source: we have a wealth of these diaries, whether of the tra- paintings as a source, although this matter is not ad- ditional type with records of the weather, the day’s dressed. Of the author’s stated analytical purpose, work on the farm, and special events such as births for example, very little is delivered, only some con- and deaths, or the slightly later, more personal cise introductory passages about peasant diaries, diaries, which often contain reflections on everyday micro-history (virtually only as a word), and the life, political matters, and occasionally even what it Scandinavian tradition of ethnological study of is like to be a (Christian) human being. For a cul- diaries, mostly mentioning the collection in the Nor- tural historian looking for something deeper than diska Museet, Stockholm, and Swedish editions, mere records, peasant diaries are often one of the with a brief reference to the existence of Danish few sources available. Elsewhere in Europe schol- parallels. The large, multifaceted Swedish and per- ars, particularly those working in the tradition of haps especially Danish work on peasant diaries is micro-history, draw attention to the Scandinavian mentioned only sporadically, the extensive English sources from time to time. research is totally absent, and not a word is said It was thus with high expectations that I started about the “the dissolution of the old peasant cul- reading Anders Gustavsson’s book on “Peasant life ture”, a debate that was the subject of many ethno- in the nineteenth century”. This is a brief, context- logical congresses and projects for a period of near- ualized, richly illustrated publication of one ly thirty years, based partly on diaries from the nine- source, the diaries and letters of the Bohuslän peas- teenth century. This would of course be all right if ant Jakob Jonsson (1795–1879). The topics of the the sole stated aim had been to publish a source with diaries and letters are divided into what the author commentary. But with the stated purpose, what is calls “cultural themes”, which serve as the head- delivered seems somewhat meagre. ings by which the book is organized. For example, The idea of mixing illustrations from the time there are chapters about outdoor work in the course with the paintings is something I do not understand. of the year, gender differences and social division I think that Bernhardson’s paintings disturb the style of labour, the farm economy, the relationship be- of the book, besides which they are not particularly tween local and regional, and so on. But according close to the world of the diary as such; most of them to the author, the purpose of the book is not to pub- were painted in the 1920s. This is not improved by lish a source; as he says on page 14, his aim is “to the fact that the book itself is not very attractive. elucidate the question of how a collection of dia- Yes, I know that aesthetics is a matter of taste, but I ries supplemented with letters can help cultural shall express my opinion anyway: The pages are scholars to penetrate and analyse the way of life sometimes made up with violent clashes of colour, and conceptual world of a bygone time”. The aim and the text is constantly broken up by irritating is thus (also) cultural analysis. And on the illustra- italics. The practice of referring to the diaries by tion pages the expected photographs of place, stating the page number in parentheses referring to family, and scenes from everyday life are mixed an earlier, incomplete edition of the material is not with paintings of folklife by Carl Gustaf Bernhard- particularly reader-friendly; a simple, old-fashioned son, a Swedish painter with whom the author al- note would surely have been more suitable here. If ready has a close relationship through other edi- the aim is to reach a broad audience by publishing tions and studies of Bernhardson’s work. the paintings, this layout is not successful, but in an As suggested, I see three aims in this book; al- edition of a source for study purposes, then of though these are not necessarily mutually exclusive, course scholarly stringency requires all these paren- 192 Reviews

theses. The person responsible for the layout is not ciety, and how it then declined somewhat in the named, but Novus Forlag could be expected to do twentieth century, but has begun to attract attention better. once again in recent years. When modernity gained Despite these critical remarks, I fully understand momentum in earnest in the middle of the last centu- the reason for publishing the diaries and letters. It ry, the handling of the dead was crucially rational- may be stigmatized work to undertake source publi- ized, as were burial rituals. Most of this was closed cations, but they certainly facilitate further research. away in the private sphere and professionalized by Diaries and letters are rarely the easiest kind of undertakers. The recent new focus on death is pre- sources to read, so for that reason alone a book like sumably connected to the fact that terminal care has this relieves a researcher’s work on the primary ma- become a subject of attention. A proper survey of re- terial. In that part of this book’s purpose one can search history is provided by the grand old man of feel secure in Gustavsson’s hands. In addition, the ethnology, Nils-Arvid Bringéus, in his article about book could be used as source material in seminar his sixty-year study of the topic. We learn a great exercises for students, but a teacher will need other deal here about the cultural history of funeral rituals texts to explain the genre. And I also understand, over the centuries, right up to modern times. acknowledge, and support the ambition that ethnolo- In the next section we can read two articles about gy should still be a discipline that is capable of both death in the Middle Ages. Stina Fallberg Sundmark historical and contemporary studies. writes about the host, holy water, oil, and candles in Mikkel Venborg Pedersen, Copenhagen theology and popular piety in the Middle Ages. Al- though the Reformation changed a great deal, it is interesting to see how certain actions and ideas sur- Death As Reflected in Culture Studies vived for a very long time. Audun Kjus writes about Döden speglad i aktuell kulturforskning . Anders death and punishment in the oldest Norwegian laws. Gustavsson (ed.). Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi The third section in the book is about death in Adolphi CVII. Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien early modern society. Anders Gustavsson paints a för svensk folkkultur, Uppsala 2009. 214 pp. Ill. vivid picture of how a farmer on the west coast of ISBN 978-91-85352-80-7. Sweden experienced death and burial around the middle of the nineteenth century. He does so by ana-
Death is everywhere. The topic can be ap- lysing this farmer’s diaries, a unique source mate- proached from any number of angles. This volume rial. contains twelve articles about how people have dealt Birgitta Skarin Frykman writes about working- with the processes of death and funeral rituals, espe- class funerals in Gothenburg. Here we get an inter- cially in bygone Nordic culture. The articles go back esting survey of what burials as social markers have to a symposium held at the University of Oslo on looked like for more than a hundred years. In the 22–24 October 2008, with lectures by representa- past it was important to have a decent public funeral tives of different subjects, such as ethnologists, his- with a lot of guests. When the economic status of torians, cultural historians, scholars of religion, soci- the Swedish working class rose in the early twen- ologists, and theologians. Although a great deal of tieth century, they copied the funerals of the better- culture-historical material is presented here, the ar- off people. Workers now had to have a hearse, a ticles do not cover all sides of the topic of death. We procession, a large gathering of friends and ac- learn almost nothing, for example, about the history quaintances, and a lavish feast. The more prosper- of cremation, or of how dissidents and members of ous people subsequently reacted by adopting some- free churches have been buried over the years. Yet thing that had been considered shameful before: there is a great deal of interesting knowledge to be strictly private funerals. Today it is quite common to found here. Unfortunately, I cannot summarize all have quiet funerals with only the next of kin present. the articles in detail, so I shall highlight some Few people retain negative perceptions of private themes that I consider important. funerals. Generally speaking, funerals have become In his introductory article, Michael Hviid Jacob- more private and individualized. sen gives us a brief history of death. He shows how In her article Ilona Kemppainen analyses death death was a very common theme in pre-modern so- notices in Finland from the nineteenth century to the Reviews 193

present day. Death notices became common at the but perhaps that will come in a subsequent, more start of the twentieth century, and the cross was a concerted study. frequently used symbol in them. In Finland the cross Nils G. Holm, Åbo still seems to be more common than in, say, Swe- den. The rule that the family does not write the obit- uaries printed in the newspapers seems to have been Temporality Unsynchronized relaxed in recent years. Today we find that sons and Tidens termik. Hastighet och kulturell förändring . other close relatives can describe the deceased per- Anna Hagborg, Rebecka Lennartsson, Maria Vall- son. The rule that only prominent figures in society ström (eds.). Boréa Bokförlag, Umeå 2009. 211 pp. get obituaries also seems to be changing. Now virtu- Ill. English summary. ISBN 978-91- 89140-62-2. ally anyone can have an obituary, at least in the lo- cal press.
Tidens Termik (The Thermals of Time) is a col- The fourth section in the book is entitled “Death lection of essays on speed and cultural change writ- in a multicultural and changeable society”. Eva M. ten by Swedish ethnologists. It covers many subsets Karlsson writes here about the dying body in termi- of temporality, including travel and mobility, mem- nal care. Mirjaliisa Lukkarinen Kvist discusses who ory, loss and destruction, progress, stress and in- is supposed to tend the grave after a death. Migrants ertia, spatial, material and embodied transform- to Sweden from Finland often seem to prefer to be ations, to mention just some of the ways these es- buried near their new home in Sweden, despite says approach the main theme. otherwise strong ties to their childhood home and its “Perhaps speed is the foremost sign [signum] of local culture. An important question in this connec- our times”, the editors propose in the introduction tion is who looks after the grave. Proper care is best (p. 19). In that case it is curious how little work has ensured if one is buried in the place where one’s been done on this topic since Modernist and Futurist children and grandchildren live and work. celebrations of speed swept the turn of the last cen- With the increased immigration of Muslims, the tury. Radical developments in transportation and question of burial places for them has also become communication throughout the twentieth century topical, not to say acute, in our Nordic societies. have no doubt accelerated the pace of modern life, Cora Alexa Døving writes in her article about the but this seem to be the taken- for-granted point of establishment of a Muslim cemetery in Norway. We departure for cultural studies of technology, cosmo- find more about cemeteries in Anne-Louise Som- bility, migration, media, etc., rather than a topic in mer’s article about graveyard culture in Denmark. itself (but see Hartmut Rosa, Beschleunigung: Die Ingeborg Svensson concludes the book with her ar- Veränderung der Temporalstrukturen in der Mo- ticle about national mourning. She states that collec- derne , 2005, and John Tomlinson, The Culture of tive grief after major disasters – the tsunami in Thai- Speed , 2007). Paul Virilio’s oeuvre readily comes to land and the sinking of the Estonia – creates a col- mind, with its analysis of speed as absolute power, lective community that unites different groups in so- as destruction of spatial extension and temporal dur- ciety, at least for a time. ation, and with Virilio’s prophecies of doom as ab- I find the book important in many ways. People solute speed merges with the weapons of war. But need to have some perspective on death and burial if apart from Virilio’s “dromology”, ubiquitous speed they are to have a correct perception of today’s has received only scattered comments in sociology trends. The entire theme is a good reflection of ten- classic , à la Simmel and Bauman. dencies and changes in society at large. It is slightly Hence this collection of sixteen essays on speed surprising that there is no example of research on and social change is a welcome publication. Gener- this theme by any sociologist of religion, given the ally, the essays are well written and suggestive in existence of that subject in Sweden. As it is now, the their analysis of various temporal phenomena in a articles provide “tasters” of different themes associ- modern Swedish setting. Arranging the essays in ated with death, but one is left with the feeling that clusters to review their joint contribution, however, the treatment is sometimes a little too short and is a rather hazardous endeavour. The cases, ques- summary. In dealing with these themes, a firmer tions, periods, theories and results in these essays grasp of sociological theories would be desirable, stand wide apart, defying an organizing principle. 194 Reviews

Gendered, ethnic or national identities are on the spaces of travel, constructed by the multiplicity of agenda in some of the essays. The change in male individual and social intentions and experiences; it identities suggested by Agneta Lilja through a col- all adds up in the concept of travel fever. lection of obituaries of Swedish engineers through- As already indicated, the range of issues studied out the twentieth century, or by Birgitta Meurling’s in this volume is broad. A non-exhaustive adden- micro-historical analysis of two brothers in a landed dum to those mentioned above could be: the instant noble family navigating industrialization and tech- decisions that have to be made at auctions; the nological development in the 1930s, shows the am- change of a forest after a storm; the history of a bivalences of change as the men honour progress at Swedish glassworks; the memories of Fanny Falk- the same time as being the shepherds of tradition. ner who was a mistress of August Strindberg. They Gendered ambivalences and difficult navigations all also connect to the question of change in a broad are also predominant in the protagonists of Lena sense. But granted that nothing escapes time, all Gerholm’s narrative of male immigrant workers in phenomena – from things to feelings, form concepts Sweden, where the relations between change and to spaces, and from bodies to experiences – are tem- stability are caught up in other parameters as well: poral. They change, at one pace or another. Nothing tenacious ethnic identities, spaces of economic and can be excluded from this scenario. The broad head- religious affiliation, and the place of women sup- ing leaves the reader with the eerie feeling that the ported from afar in transmigrational families. volume could also be about, say, “Space and Identi- We need to think globally and develop concepts ty” without notable changes to the selection and that can differentiate between men’s and women’s content of the essays. lives in a transmigrational world, Lena Gerholm From the introduction to Tidens termik , it is never concludes. Perhaps we also need to take into ac- clear what the relations are between speed (the ac- count the national habitus in academic reflections celeration of movement through space) and the con- usually allergic to the outbursts of “banal national- cept of change (a relational difference between two ism”. Jonas Frykman’s embarrassment at the occa- or more states). Are they invariably linked? There is sion of a self-congratulating Swedish sports team, not mention of whether, or indeed how, we are to singing the national anthem on board an aeroplane, consider the relations between mechanical time to is an example of the imbalances of power between be measured by the watch, and existential time to be different countries’ national templates. While these experienced by subjective memory and expectation, two interesting essays obviously relate to transna- though the essays refer to both indiscriminately. The tional spaces and movements made possible by editors explicitly do not want to give an account of speedy communication, they do leave the reader temporality (p. 19), nor, it seems, did they want to guessing about their inscription in the main topics of focus and sort the essays out. Perhaps we need to ig- the volume, as do some of the other essays in the nore the promises of the title and instead enjoy the book. volume for what it is: “a cross-section of Swedish Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren treat the subject of ethnology today, presented in an accessible form speed and change more directly through variations that lets the writing flow” (p. 20). When viewed as on temporality and movement. Ehn reflects on tem- such, we have 16 essays by accomplished ethnolo- porality through the rhythm, pace and embodied gists introducing contemporary Swedish ethnology practices of different temporal segments – a moment in interesting and creative ways through the study of materialized in sculpture, a ten-minute make-up rit- a broad range of phenomena. They are of necessity ual, an hour-long walk through the city. Orvar Löf- temporal, though neither synchronized nor them- gren discusses the tension and excitement in travel, atically restricted by the caption. the nervousness caused by being in transit both Dorthe Gert Simonsen, Copenhagen physically and mentally, as manifested in the central hubs of transportation: the train station and the air- port. The historical changeability, the traveller’s Swedish Ethnologists and Folklorists “fantastic capacities of simultaneity” in the manage- Svenska etnologer och folklorister . Mats Hellspong ment of movements, feelings, fantasies, huge & Fredrik Skott (eds.). Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Aka- crowds and a reluctant body (p. 173), and the hyper- demien för svensk folkkultur, Uppsala 2010. 296 pp. Reviews 195

Ill. (Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi 109.) ing with matters of interest here, it is often regarded ISBN 978-91-85352-83-8. as almost impossible to be updated, to say nothing about keeping an eye on history. Consequently, a
On the 6th of November 1932, three hundred book like this is valuable. years after the Swedish King Gustavus II Adolphus Thirty-five scholars from Sweden, all deceased, fell in the Battle of Lützen, the Royal Gustavus were chosen for this biographical collection. The Adolphus Academy (Kungliga Gustav Adolfs editor admits that it is possible to question who was Akademien) was founded in Uppsala, Sweden. This important enough to be selected, but the principle academy is one of eighteen scholarly academies in was that the entire field of folklore and folklife stu- Sweden. The members represent several universi- dies should be represented. Consequently, we find ties, archives, and other institutions dealing with pioneers from the nineteenth century, even before folk culture, and they come from different areas of there was a university discipline for these fields of academic disciplines covering the study of Swedish research, we find university professors from the folklife. Ethnologists and folklorists are obvious, twentieth century, people who worked at museums, but students of dialects, folk art, folk music, history, and people who led their active lives as archivists. and so forth, also have their representatives in the The first biography is about Gunnar Olof Hyltén- academy. It publishes the periodicals Saga och sed Cavallius (1818–1889), the last one is about Bengt (1934–) and Arv, Nordic Yearbook of Folklore R. Jonsson who died in 2008, so the book covers (1946–), Ethnologia Scandinavica, A Journal for some 170 years of Swedish folklore and folklife Nordic Ethnology, and, since 1996 also Svenska matters. landsmål och svenskt folkliv which originally, since Each biographer worked according to set direc- 1904, was published by the Archives for Dialect and tives. Each biographee’s life, education and employ- Folklore Studies in Uppsala. Moreover, it gathers ment, his/her scholarly works and their reception are specialists for projects on specific topics which are common topics in all articles. It is a good thing that reported in separate publications. the biographers have assessed their forerunners’ One of these is a biographical handbook about achievements and contributions in relation to the Swedish ethnologists and folklorists. The initiative time in which they were active. How often we read came from one of the Grand Old Men of Swedish and listen to anachronistic critique of former schol- ethnology and folkloristics, Nils-Arvid Bringéus, a ars! The authors have had the opportunity to give former professor at Lund University in Sweden. It is their contribution a personal colour. Certainly this true that a couple of biographical books were pub- was possible and fruitful in those cases when the lished in the 1970s and 80s, and monographs about biographer knew the biographee personally. certain individual scholars have been written, the The biographical collection is almost consistently most recent being Bringéus’s about Carl Wilhelm arranged chronologically according to the birth date von Sydow in 2009, as an issue of FF Communica- of the person in question. This way of organizing tions. I also suppose that the comprehensive Swe- the articles gives an overview of how ethnology and dish biographical dictionary, Svenskt biografiskt folkloristics have developed in Swedish scholarly lexikon mentions several of the persons of interest history. The articles are quite short, just a couple of here as well. However, this is a handbook specifical- pages, but still more comprehensive than generally ly for representatives of the two disciplines of eth- in biographical handbooks. Thanks to the principles nology and folkloristics, which makes it possible to by which the material is arranged within the articles, describe everyone’s contribution in more detail and they give the reader more information than just with relevance particularly to the field of research. some points about a person’s academic career. The reason for this book is the opinion that, for the I found the book interesting to read. Perhaps I sake of identity, it is important to know how one’s was more captivated by the general, implicit de- discipline grew, developed and was profiled through scription of Sweden as an academic country than by the achievements of active individuals. In our time, the different biographies. This certainly has to do when ethnology and folkloristics have rapidly with the needs a reader has. I was not looking for in- changed and the number of university departments formation about different persons, but I had to arrive has grown so that there are quite a few people deal- at an opinion about the book as such. I appreciated 196 Reviews

getting a brisk overview of the kind of persons who of the conference theme was to highlight different became academics during two hundred years, and aspects of the ongoing European development what the prerequisites for an academic career were. I projects and to discuss ethnology as a curriculum in enjoyed seeing how the topics of interest within the relation to the supra- state levels that are now disciplines have changed. There were also descrip- emerging in Europe, with the EU and its influences tions of the kinds of privation young academics had on economy, politics and culture. The theme under- to suffer. In other words, I got an impression of how lines that political processes are closely related to academic life was arranged and how people reacted cultural processes, and another aim was to stimulate and reasoned when they felt unfairly treated and a debate about European integration since the Sec- how they overcame their problems. This book is not ond World War. However, the participants’ ambi- only a collection of separate biographies. It is also a tion to lift ethnology from a national level to a Euro- document of matters of Swedish cultural history, the pean context was tentative and unaccustomed, and it history of two academic disciplines that were al- is much easier to say “I analyse a subject from a Eu- ways closely connected to society and environment. ropean perspective” than to prove it in arguments Each article contains a portrait of the biographee and reflections. In spite of the EU’s aspiration for and references for further reading. The authors of unity, cultural diversity in Europe is not vanishing the biographies are presented briefly as well. I miss and we are very much studying cultural processes in an alphabetical list of the biographees’ names. It the making. The organizer therefore sought to high- might have been practical to be able to look, for in- light what the concept of process means, and by ex- stance, for Louise Hagberg, the first woman to be tension what a European process means for us as mentioned, by the first letter of her surname, H, in- ethnologists when we analyse and synthesize. At the stead of reading the list of contents and finding her end three senior researchers have given their per- between Nils Keyland and Martin P:n Nilsson be- spective on the conference and looked at it in retro- cause her date of birth was between the dates of spect. These parts of the book are the best, although those two gentlemen. too short, only 25 pages, and it would have added Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Åbo much value to the book if it had been extended in- stead of having the brief, postcard-style form it has now – especially since several of the conference European Cultural Processes contributions have been published in different jour- Kulturelle processer i Europa. Indlæg fra den 29. nals. For example, contributions to the session on Nordiske etnolog- og folkloristkongress . Flemming “Knowledge Institutions” can be found in the Swe- Hemmersam, Astrid Jespersen & Lene Otto (eds.). dish journal Kulturella perspektiv (no. 3, 2003) and Etnologiske studier, vol. 13. Museums Tusculanums contributions to the session “EU – Unity and Plural- Forlag, Københavns universitet 2010. 294 pp. Ill. ity” have been published in the journal NordNytt Mixed English and different Scandinavian lan- (2004). Since this book reprints 18 different contri- guages. ISBN 978-87-635-0505-5. butions, it is not possible in this review to comment on or mention them all. For a reader, eight years af-
Some of the contributions from the 29th Ethnolo- ter the conference, however, the contemporary ex- gy and Folklore conference in Helsingør (Denmark) pression in the contributions is visible and I there- in spring 2003 have now been published in this vol- fore choose here to look at this and the three retro- ume. It is inspiring reading and it raises questions spective texts. about the contemporaneity of ethnology. The con- The conference contributions discuss different ference was held in 2003, just two years after 9/11, phenomena in Europe, but this does not imply that and also at the time of the US-led invasion of Iraq. European cultural processes are discussed in the This affects the contributions and conclusions. conference papers. Even if a presented example is The book is divided into three parts with different taken from a European context or area, it does not texts: plenary lectures (7 texts), session papers (11 mean that it is an expression of a European process. texts) and an appendix with the conference looked at One gets the impression that findings from a local in the rear-view mirror (3 texts). In the foreword one context are taken and pressed into a European con- of the organizers, Lene Otto, explains that the idea cept box, but could frankly be placed in any cultural Reviews 197

box, with the aid of just a few changes to words or Aren’t we all scavengers of cultural clashes, receiv- headings. An idea for future conferences would ing our pay cheque from cultural conflicts? This therefore be to force the authors to sum up in 10 or book shows that ethnology is slowly, but uncondi- 20 lines how the conference theme is relevant to the tionally, drifting/moving to investigating what polit- text they have just presented. An impression is that ical science, the supra-state systems and manage- the conference listener in 2003, like a reader today, ment buzz words do to the individual’s values, must find out on his or her own in what way the pre- thoughts and deeds in relation to a new European sented text is an example of the theme of European society. That is new; it is exciting and needs to be cultural processes . This is of course not satisfactory. further discussed in a more explicit way. Approaches that obscure the analyses of European Richard Tellström, Grythyttan processes are evident in ethnology’s love for concepts and definitions related to culture which sometime makes the texts get stuck in a swamp of cultural, dis- Danish Views of Food and Drink cursive, postcolonial and other concepts. Culture is Syn på mad og drikke i 1800-tallet. Ole Hyldtoft sometimes discussed as a form, shape or expression, (ed.). Museum Tusculanums Forlag, Copenhagen sometimes as an idea and value, and a question can be 2010. 296 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-87-635-3264-8. raised whether ethnology is a semiotic science and not so much interested in how people think, relate and
The major Danish research project “Food, Drink, make things. As a delegate at the conference, and and Tobacco in the Nineteenth Century: Patterns of now as a reader, my impression is that the different Consumption, Culture, and Discourses”, led by Ole texts obscure the overall theme. But it is perhaps im- Hyldtoft and Arne Astrup at Copenhagen Universi- possible to watch, analyse and discuss a cultural pro- ty, has now published its second volume. In my re- cess when you’re right in it? view of the first publication, Kost og spisevaner i In three new texts three senior researchers sum up 1800-tallet , I wished for more analyses of the dis- the conference, and it is clear that the conference courses about food and meals. My plea was evident- themes relating to political science cry out for dis- ly unnecessary, for this publication about outlooks cussion. The EU’s strong interest in culture and on food and drink was already nearing completion. what culture can do for the EU forces ethnology to The essays in this volume deal with themes relate to policy making. Anna-Maria Åström from which all concern the ongoing struggle between Finland writes that the congress should have origi- groups in society and between individuals to define nated more from a local perspective instead of let- what a proper healthy meal should consist of. The ting the EU hover above the conference, since the first theme to be focused on is health. Guided by people-related processes in Europe are under way at Signe Mellemgaard, we follow one of the pioneers, a local level. The conference’s vagueness in the Eu- the dietician and physician J. C. Tode, who became ropean theme is discussed by Birgitta Svensson an influential writer in the 1770s. Tode had strong from Sweden, who argues that the conference raises views about what was healthy food. Some of his just one question, whether Europe is close to or far recommendations, such as not eating too much, too away from us. From Denmark Lene I. Jørgensen fatty food, or too late at night, can be recognized sums up and emphasizes that ethnology is at a cross- from present-day magazines. Other advice, such as roads where the question of the curriculum’s useful- his claim that duck, goose, and spices are unhealthy, ness is highlighted, pointing out that the processual feel more alien to a reader today. Like other writers thinking can shift the subjects’ direction towards a and advocates of healthy food at that time, he more economic and political perspective. showed an almost obsessive interest in digestion. A feeling that lingers is that the conference took This brings to mind the Kellogg brothers on the place in a fateful time. It is clear that that ethnology other side of the Atlantic a few decades later. Few not only does contemporary research but also uses foodstuffs were healthy or unhealthy in themselves; the subject to make contemporary comments. As a it was their combined effect on the digestion that cultural researcher, one may ask if cultural conflicts was significant, and the most important thing of all should be regarded as a problem or if, on the contra- was regular bowel movements – the proof of a ry, they create an interesting research field for us. healthy diet. Tode stands out as a typical representa- 198 Reviews

tive of the bourgeoisie that was growing in strength women, the later books are less so. Gold’s interpre- and importance at this time. This also applies to his tation of this is that the role of the woman as the infatuation with the good wife and housekeeper. She gentle ruler of the kitchen and the home was then guarantees a healthy life by ensuring that hygienic, taken for granted so that it no longer needed to be well-cooked, simple, unadulterated food is served to said. The emergence of the national identity is no- the master of the house and the servants. ticeable through the constant talk of what is con- Anita Kildebæk Nielsen then gives a survey of sidered palatable to Danish to and foreign taste Tode’s successors in the nineteenth century. Sev- buds. When recipes for foreign dishes are given, it is eral of them were clearly influenced by the ideal- not uncommon for the author to make them more ization of nature in the romantic era. The cause of Danish. The author of the Danish housewife’s culi- many of people’s problems was that they had dis- nary catechism, Den danske Husmoders Køkken- tanced themselves from nature, and the solution lay Katekismus , for example, justifies the existence of in getting back to a natural way of life. Farmers the book with the fact that other cookery books seek and artisans were the ideals, since they differed out foreign dishes rather than trying to achieve from the bourgeoisie and the nobility by suffering Danish tastes, and that many Danish dishes are fewer health problems associated with eating. omitted. The loss of the “empire”, that is, Schles- Sticking to what was produced locally was another wig-Holstein and Norway, also had an impact on the theme of this critique of civilization. Meat was dishes. The clearest effect is the reduction in the use suitable for Danes, but exotic fruit and spices were of spices when the loss of the Norwegian merchant not – they could exert a negative influence on the fleet made them harder to obtain. Here we glimpse balance of the body. It is difficult to avoid drawing how the Danes made a virtue of necessity: the sup- parallels to today’s debate about diet and health, ply of spices was diminished, so they were classed since both natural food (whatever meaning is at- as non-Danish and therefore unnecessary and dis- tached to that concept) and locally produced food tasteful. are held up by leading health debaters as the path Caroline Nyvang, in a partly overlapping survey to better health. of Danish cookery books, notes a transition from a Besides ideas about what we should eat, the book pioneer phase at the start of the century to a golden also focuses on ideas of how food should be cooked. age for housekeeping books in mid-century. Then, Here too we see an increased interest during the at the end of the nineteenth century, the flow of nineteenth century, made possible by the spread of cookery books stagnated since the market was satur- books among all strata of the population. A not in- ated. It can also be observed that general household significant portion of these publications were cook- handbooks gave way to books containing nothing ery books, which are examined in two articles by but recipes. The growth of knowledge of nutrition Carol Gold and Caroline Nyvang. Carol Gold sees a and chemistry in the nineteenth century is evident development from books aimed at professional from the cookery books. The chemical kitchen is an cooks to books for home cooking. In the latter cate- interesting subgenre that was popular in the mid- gory she sees two genres, those which explicitly nineteenth century, a counterpart to today’s molecu- seek to educate housewives in good domestic sci- lar gastronomy. ence and those which lack moral overtones, merely The struggle for the preferential right to inter- wishing to share good recipes. Cookery books pret what was good food also concerned individual changed during the nineteenth century. Gold finds constituents of the meal. In the concluding empiri- three main reasons for this: the changed role of cal examples, Svend Skafte Overgaard lets us fol- women; the emergence of a Danish national identi- low “the battle of the sauce”. What should be the ty, and the loss of the empire. The changed role of consistency of a proper sauce, and how large women was closely associated with the firm link should a helping of sauce be? The popular notion that the bourgeoisie established between woman and that a sauce should be thick enough to stick to the the home – an institution that was portrayed as one potatoes, and that there should be a lot of it, was of the foundations of society. Whereas cookery contrasted with the ideas of the French-trained gas- books in the early nineteenth century were often tronomists, who preferred thin sauces in small concerned with emphasizing the role and duties of helpings. The position of sauce is undeniably inter- Reviews 199

esting from a structuralist viewpoint. Since a Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2009. 308 pp. Ill. proper Danish meal consisted of meat, potatoes, ISBN 978-91-7331-252-3. and sauce, the sauce was the substance that tied the components of the dish together. The sauce was
Maja Jacobson’s book is a solid and richly il- more than an accessory; it was a guarantee of the lustrated work about the language of clothing and cohesion of the food culture. These are truly about clothes as a mirror of culture. Since the book tenacious structures. Discussions of the thickness is not an academic dissertation, little space is de- and character of the sauce were just as inflamed voted to theoretical discussion, the presentation of during my time in restaurant kitchens in the 1980s current research, or the like, although the author as in the hundred- year-old source material cited by highlights studies by the historian of colour Michel Overgaard. The thin sauces of the new French cui- Pastoureau, the historian of costume François sine, preferably without flour, were recommended Boucher, the textile-dye researcher Gösta Sand- by most cooks with any ambition, but there was a berg, and some other researchers. Yet scholarship popular resistance in favour of the creamier con- is ever- present, with source references and back- sistence of thickened sauces. The thickening ground discussions, with explanations of the con- method was also a topic of heated debate in the cepts used and the purpose of the research. In addi- nineteenth century. Should the flour be mixed with tion, Jacobson not only has a doctorate in ethnolo- butter, or with milk or water? The debaters were gy but also a background in the clothes world, hav- convinced that the choice of method affected di- ing a technical education in the field and gestion and thus health. Here the old domestic sci- experience of working with tailoring and textile ence teachers’ experience clashed with the new de- education; this was obviously a great asset to her baters who invoked new scientific findings in an when she wrote the parts of the book dealing with attempt to introduce a new view of the role of the twentieth century. sauces in Danish food culture. And the debate has Maja Jacobson has also written two previous continued since then. works about the symbolic language of clothes, Klä- In an afterword the Belgian Professor Peter der som språk och handling: Om unga kvinnors an- Scholliers surveys new tendencies in European his- vändning av klädseln som kommunikations- och torical research on food. Scholliers says that the identitetsskapande medel (diss. 1994) and Gör klä- disciplines of economic history, history, and eth- derna mannen? Om maskulinitet och femininitet i nology separately pursued successful historical unga mäns bruk av kläder, smycken och dofter studies up until the 1980s, but that they very sel- (1998). These deal with clothes in our own time, dom used each other’s findings. The 1990s saw with retrospective glances at earlier years in the more cross-fertilization between the disciplines twentieth century. her most recent book, the title of when historians took a greater interest in cultural which means “Colour Makes the Man”, on the other dimensions. This collection of essay is in itself hand, takes us on a longer journey in the history of proof of what Scholliers says. It brings ethnolo- ideas, with ample scope to put fashions into their gists together with historians and intellectual his- historical contexts, both far back in time and in re- torians as well as the historian of chemistry Anita cent decades. Kildebæk Nielsen, who works at the Technical With the colour of our clothes, the author ob- University of Denmark. It augurs well for future serves, we send different messages to the people food studies that the interdisciplinary approach that around us. How we choose to dress affects the first has become so successful in the Anglo-Saxon tra- impression we make and the way we are received. dition of food studies has now begun to make an The language of clothes and colour is symbolically impact on Scandinavian research. charged communication which evokes emotions and Håkan Jönsson, Lund signals economic, religious, and social status and belonging, and in some cases also gender. Jacobson considers colour from a more physiological perspec- Colour and Clothing tive, showing certain biological factors that affect Maja Jacobson , Färgen gör människan. Om färg, how colours are perceived. But she also shows how kläder och identitet från antiken till våra dagar. the availability of material, which is regulated by 200 Reviews

things like climatic or economic factors, by trade chooses excessively conspicuous accessories to go contacts or dyeing techniques, has had a significant with the virtually obligatory dark suit. More decora- influence on the use of colours and the way they are tive clothes simultaneously became a female pre- valued in different periods. Society’s laws and the serve when the woman’s role was changed as well. church’s attitudes, creating taboos and ideals, are Many parallels can be drawn here to the books writ- other factors that have regulated the colour of ten about women’s role in the nineteenth century. I clothes. think that Maja Jacobson’s book is an interesting The book offers the reader a wide perspective on complement, particularly because it gives slightly the cultural history of colours and clothes, their role more emphasis to the man’s role, not just as some- in society. The author has an interesting and knowl- thing taken for granted in relation to a woman’s role edgeable analysis of how clothes, colour, and identi- that is the primary object of analysis, but as some- ty are interlinked, and how fashion and colour can thing that was also clearly in development and is characterize different periods and ethnic groups. As worth a study in its own right. At the same time, one Maja Jacobson also points out, the associations can also glimpse in the book the role played by class aroused by a particular colour are not the same in differences in the nineteenth century, even though the West as in Asia. This is one factor that influ- the perspective here is less striking than for the pre- ences how films can be exported over the world and vious centuries. to what extent the same pictorial message functions This is a book about colour, especially in clothes. in different cultures. Yellow is not the same thing in Yet to me it feels even more like a book about how ancient China as in European history, black is not the differently dressed people we meet or can study the colour of mourning in every culture, and a man in historical source material communicate with us – in colourful clothes is not perceived in the same way both consciously and unconsciously. today as during the Renaissance. We cannot even be Maja Jacobson’s book offers the reader a fine op- too sure that everyone in the same community reads portunity to consider clothes and colours from all the codes in the same way, or that the interpreta- many, partly parallel, perspectives, skilfully tackling tion is the same in different contemporary genera- a broad and demanding subject. If the book perhaps tions or groups in society. does not entirely succeed in answering the question By linking knowledge about relationships be- it asks, about how people have judged clothes tween material, society, and different groups in so- colours in different periods and how this reflects so- ciety, we can both broaden the perspective on life in ciety and Zeitgeist, it at least succeeds in making different historical periods and find a new way to me, as the reader, take up the question as an analyti- view clothing signals in the society around us. After cal tool and a new way to regard the phenomena. All reading this book in depth, I feel equipped to regard fashion and all clothes colours, as the study shows, old church murals, medieval jesters’ clothes, and to- may be seen as important expressions of their socie- day’s fashion trends in a new way. It is also interest- ty and their time, and by analysing changes in the ing to be able see a pattern in the way that trends use of clothes one can also learn more about move- change over periods of varying length: colours and ments and development in society as a whole. styles often occur as reactions to each other, and a Maria Ekqvist, Åbo style often acquires its meaning in relation to the distance it has to a previous trend. I found it especially interesting and informative The Ambivalence of Home to read Jacobson’s description of the nineteenth cen- Homes in Transformation. Dwelling, Moving, Be- tury as a period that shaped many of the things that longing. Hanna Johansson & Kirsi Saarikangas are “old truths” for us today. That was when men in (eds.). Finnish Literature Society. Helsinki 2009. authority started wearing dark suits, and the colour- 386 pp. ISBN 978-952-222-088-2. ful men’s clothes that had once been the norm now became a deviation. Before the nineteenth century a
The book Homes in Transformation: Dwelling, man could have a gaudy silk outfit, but then the dis- Moving, Belonging was set in motion in the interdis- creet and uniform style caught on, remaining so ciplinary research seminar Gender and Space at the strong today that it is still controversial if a man Christina Institute, University of Helsinki, between Reviews 201

2000 and 2004. The idea was concretized within the family ideal by analysing the shift from the active research projects Social production of space (2000– housewife ideal to the wage labour motherhood of 2002) and Representing and sensing nature, land- the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the representa- scape, and gender (2007–2010), both funded by the tions of queer families at the turn of the 21st centu- Academy of Finland. ry. The writers examine how the ideas and practices The writers approach the ideas of multilayered, of home, homemaking, and domesticity are con- lived space through the notion of home. They dis- structed both by the repetitions of representations cuss home as a spatially open structure that changes and by silences and invisibilities, the things that are over time instead of as a spatially demarcated and left hidden. fixed structure. The essays in this book explore Minna Sarantola-Weiss analyses both how home both as an idea and location in a variety of modern life came to be materialized in the Finnish contexts. Homes in Transformation focuses on home and how it was narrated through the texts and home as a site of daily familial life – although the visual imagery in the interior decoration magazines understanding and combinations of family vary. of the 1960s and 1970s. Each chapter addresses the transformations of home Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen explores how even as in- and its meanings through a particular combination surance was promoted as a way to control and of materials, methods, and theoretical definitions. govern the border between private and public life, The chapters bring forth the inseparability of be- and safety and danger, home insurance still laid pri- longing and moving in the processes of homing. vate and public spheres reciprocally together. In From different angles, they analyse how homes and Finland the 1950s was largely characterized by the their meanings are formed in representations, reconstruction effort after the Second World War, thoughts, social and emotional relations, daily rou- but it was also the time that welfare state gained a tines, habits, gestures, and movements from material foothold and the new economic subject, that is, con- to immaterial spaces. While all the chapters are sumer subject, was born. voices in one discussion and the lines of connection The milestone discussed by Anna Moring is the between different chapters might have been drawn notion that homosexuality was decriminalized in in a number of ways, our choice has been to group Finland as late as 1971. Her article “Domestication them according to four themes: 1) the ideals and into Heteronormativity. Figurations of the Queer-In- meanings of home shaped by and through represen- habited Home in Finnish Magazines and Papers be- tations, 2) processes of and the agency in homemak- tween 2002 and 2005” shows that at the beginning ing, 3) familiar and unfamiliar elements at home, of the 21st century, queer homes were discussed and 4) negotiation of the boundaries of home. more openly, albeit that the viewpoints of hetero- In the first part, “Representing and Constructing normative nuclear families still governed the discus- Home and Domesticity”, the contributors focus on sion. the constituting nature of home in different visual The second part has the title “Homing, Moving, and textual representations and discourses. Through Belonging”. Here the contributors outline the com- analysing Finnish interior decoration and popular plex meanings of home and home place by explor- magazines, Insurance advertisements, furniture, and ing the movement between homes in time and place. other home items, the essays here explore Western They also juxtapose the points of view of different domestic ideals from the late 19th century to the ear- agents, such as suburban inhabitants and outside ex- ly 21st century. Both the middle-class home ideal perts, the partners of young couples, and children based on the heterosexual nuclear family model and and adults. They raise questions concerning the the separation of private and public reached their agency and the active and creative aspects of home- peaks during the 1950s and early 1960s. Having the making. analysis of the nuclear family ideal as their starting Kirsi Saarikangas explores lived suburban spaces point, these essays explore the genealogy of the nu- by analysing inhabitants’ written remembrances clear family model as a unit of habitation. They also alongside the public debate and the visual features analyse the ideologies of homemaking since late of the suburban environment of the Helsinki Metro- 19th-century bourgeois society. In addition, these politan Area from the 1950s to the 1970s. She dis- essays explore the disentanglement of the nuclear cusses how suburbs have become multilayered and 202 Reviews

meaningful home places − a feature that has been ders, meanings, and structures are constantly in a rarely connected with suburbs − as well as the role state of constituting, changing, and becoming. that women and children have played in the creation Minna Ruckenstein considers everyday home- of social networks in the new environment and in making and violence against women in Finnish the processes of homing. The viewpoint challenges homes by analysing interviews with the victims of the dichotomy between the active production of domestic violence. She focuses on the processes and space by planners and its passive consumption by moments that disrupt, rearrange, and reject the con- users, arguing that inhabitants, too, are creators of tinuous spatial meanings of domestic space. their environment and its meanings. Hanna Johansson approaches the gendered notion Monique Eleb explores how heterosexual couples of home and spatiality by analysing the oeuvre of negotiate the differences between each other’s con- the Finnish artist Outi Heiskanen (b. 1938). In Heis- ceptions of home and interior decoration as they es- kanen’s works the notion of dwelling is continually tablish a common home in France. She approaches present. They put into question several long-termed home as a prism which allows the observation of the binaries such as matter and form, ground and struc- inhabitants’ relationship to the world as well as their ture, inside and outside, presentation and representa- values, dreams, and aspirations. The negotiations tion, art and life, nature and language, feminine and and tensions between differing tastes and one’s own masculine; all concepts that have served Western space at home are connected with the couples’ per- metaphysics. sonal histories, social and cultural backgrounds, or In his article “Exilic Life and the Space of Be- habitus. Home is both a place to affirm one’s identi- longing” James Tuedio sees both home and home- ty and to slowly transform it. lessness as central philosophical motifs and essen- Artist Lea Kantonen depicts cultural encounters in tial concepts in the intellectual debate of the late the children’s art workshops that she conducted to- 20th century Critical Studies movements. He starts gether with her husband Pekka Kantonen in the late with the idea of home as a shelter and eventually 1990s. She asks what kind of meanings and values draws the reader into the uncanny and exilic dimen- children from different cultural backgrounds (Finland sions of home and identity. and Estonia) attach to home and how the spatial prac- In the fourth part, “Moving Boundaries of tices, cultural meanings, and representations of home Home”, contributors discuss the transformations of are encountered in children’s narratives. the ideals of home at the turn of the 21st century and Laura Huttunen discusses the meanings of the the blurring of the boundaries between home and diasporic home through ethnographic fieldwork car- work, the shifting of the idea of home from the in- ried out among Bosnian refugees living in Finland. side and the outside and gendered meanings of these She states that the Bosnian refugees’ notion of home changes. Computers and new information and com- might be best described by their relationship to mul- munication technologies in general form a point at tiple homes and houses. The ruined and later recon- which the changes and the blurring of public/private structed family houses in Bosnia are homes in the relations converge. Simultaneously, the borderline symbolic sense of belonging. Simultaneously, the between private home space and public space is ea- refugees have established a homelike relationship to gerly protected in the practices of daily life. Com- their new apartments, which provide the contexts of puters and laptops have also changed the meanings daily life in their new home countries. of home and helped to create new rooms of one’s The contributions in the third part, “Strangely Fa- own, spaces within spaces. miliar Homes”, consider homes as contradictory Irene Cieraad compares the domestic ideals of the places in which meanings are not fixed beforehand, late 1960s and early 1970s radical student genera- but are constantly negotiated. The border is seldom tion to those of their offspring at the turn of the 21st clear between home and outside of the home or be- century. In contrast to their parents’ rural ideals, the tween privacy and publicity. Home as a safe retreat, current student generation prefers a city apartment as a space of belonging, can suddenly turn out to be as their near future home. Most students imagine ominous, dangerous, and full of violent moments themselves as part of a heterosexual family with and acts, which engender a strange oscillation be- children, living in the countryside. tween belonging and unfamiliarity. Home, its bor- Susanna Paasonen considers the domestication Reviews 203

and familiarization of the Internet, which is most tion of media as “the communication of information clearly visible in terminology such as home pages, and ideas in words and images”, extended to cover guest books, and virtual homes. In addition to the all types of sources that say something about a per- spatial metaphors of travel and analogies with the son, in this context a royal, it is possible to display a settlers, the figure of home is central on the Internet. broad spectrum of centuries of interaction between Eeva Jokinen examines how computers and the monarchy and media. Additionally, this approach Internet rearrange homes and even generate new shows how our narratives about a topic are built up spaces of one’s own and new common public and constituted in general terms. places. Mobile phones have changed the logic of se- The articles are loosely arranged in chronological curity and engendered constant border crossing be- order, but the perspective changes depending on the tween home and the world outside. While domestic author’s discipline. This confirms that the relation- space is still most often considered and idealized as ship between royalty, the media, and the people is a secure and private space, the demands of being complex, as is particularly evident from the Norwe- constantly available and the constant stretching be- gians’ relationship to their royal family, with com- tween intimacy and publicity define both home and moners achieving the rank of queen and crown prin- work spaces. Through mobile phones and the Inter- cess. Instead of commenting on each article in the net, inhabitants are within the reach of work life volume, I have chosen to focus on the concepts of even at home. values and power that I see running through all the Anyone concerned with matters of home and articles. dwelling will find several interesting angles in this A perspective that is applied in several articles is study as well as a glimmer of hope that many issues that of national values. The historian Magnus which may seem insoluble at the moment can be re- Brodell considers many monuments erected to solved with the passage of time. Swedish kings in the nineteenth century. Through Teppo Korhonen, Helsinki the analysis of what the different monarchs repre- sent, he shows that it is not just a matter of mediat- ing values of the past but also modernity and inno- Media and Monarchy in Sweden vation. The monuments are a part of the nation- Media and Monarchy in Sweden. Mats Jönsson & building that created shared histories and a shared Patrik Lundell (eds.). Nordicom, Göteborg 2009. platform for the future. Another aspect of the nation- 154 pp. Ill. 978-91-89471-77-1. building project is patriotism and national honour, values associated with masculinity. That is the topic
After having been virtually choked with royal of the article by the historian and film scholar Tom- stories in both visual and print media when Crown my Gustafsson, who analyses the interest that the Princess Victoria of Sweden married Daniel West- Conservative Party and the military had in further- ling, it required an extra effort from me to tackle this ing such values in the years after the First World collection of articles about the symbiosis between War, when the Social Democrats were reducing the monarchy and media in Sweden from the fifteenth Swedish armed forces. The author uses the film Karl century to the present day. Luckily, it proved benefi- XII to show how these values were illuminated cial and interesting! through the portrayal of the warrior king. Researchers in different branches of cultural National values are closely connected to identity studies have joined here to analyse the relationship and community. The film scholar Mats Jönsson ex- between royalty and the media in Sweden. Not sur- amines how the media in the 1940s built up the rela- prisingly, the initiative results from the massive con- tionship between the royal family and the ordinary temporary media interest in European royalty, at a Swedish family. This was done by presenting the time when the institution of the monarchy has prac- royal family intimately, by focusing on home and tically no political importance. The authors repre- family, by showing that the royal family is “just like sent disciplines such as history, media studies, eth- us”. In the 1940s it was important to encourage the nology, and political science, which gives a variety sense of community against the external threat of of perspectives and methods. war, and to be able to defend Sweden and the wel- By using Peter Burke’s and Asa Brigg’s defini- fare state in a critical time, money was needed. A 204 Reviews

campaign was started to collect money for a defence cess to newsworthy events, such as royal wed- loan, for which the royal house of Bernadotte also dings”. acted as surety. There are many more perspectives in Media and Gender is the perspective in Tommy Gustafs- Monarchy in Sweden than those I have taken up son’s article about patriotism and masculinity. Ce- here. This is a really interesting book! What I miss cilia Åse looks at femininity as it appears in royal is a greater focus on the public, on ordinary Swedish families. She uses the media presentation of Queen citizens and the interaction between monarchy, me- Silvia as an example, showing how it is a conserva- dia, and the average Svensson. For it is he/she that is tive ideal of the woman’s role and place that pre- the consumer of the presentations of royal personal- vails. Here it would be interesting to glance across ities. Which individuals or groups sustain which val- the border to Denmark and how Queen Margrethe ues, and why? In my opinion it is extremely interest- has performed her dual role as both monarch and ing in a time when European monarchs no longer woman. It would also be interesting to see how have any political power, but when ordinary citizens Sweden’s crown princess will perform hers! nevertheless support their monarchy. “Any exercise of power requires the production Ann Helene Bolstad Skjelbred, Oslo of meaning that conveys and confirms the legitimacy of that power. Power must take a form before it can be conceived and understood; it must Transcultural Music be symbolized before it can be acknowledged and Sven-Erik Klinkmann , Från Wantons till Wild respected,” writes Patrick Lundell. This perspective Force. Nya sound i en gränsstad. Gidlunds förlag, could also be applied to Louise Berglund’s article Möklinta 2010. 503 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-91-7844- about Queen Philippa and her altar in Vadstena Ab- 797-8. bey. Here it is religion and morality that are the im- portant values, values on which there is too little
This is a tour de force as memoir. For those of emphasis, in my opinion. In Norway we have seen us who sat in Fondis’s Cellar in Vasa on the west in recent years how these values are discussed in coast of Finland in the early 1970s, sipping Lah- public as regards Princess Märtha Louise’s courses den Erikois beer, before we carried on down to the teaching how to communicate with angels, and water to do modern dance in the Strampen Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s religious interests. pavilion or over the Vasklot Bridge to Hotel This is not Lundell’s perspective, however. He Rantasipi, where there was a Polish band with a points the searchlight at how the monarchy and the poster from Solidarity hanging behind the drum- press legitimate each other. After having read both mer, this book about musical life in and around his article and the two articles by Mattias Friham- Vasa c. 1960–1990 is a find. We were young and mar and Pelle Snickare, it feels natural to conclude in love, with a bold outlook on existence, believ- that the power over mediation no longer lies with ing that life and history belonged to us in an al- the royal family but with the media. Whereas the most Hegelian hybrid. We were forever buying monarchy today has symbolic power, the media and records in Lindroos’s music shop in Handelsespla- journalists have established and are constantly ex- naden and then sat listening to them with good tending their power base. Journalists act like family friends and sweethearts. History and life history members conveying great events (such as weddings) were merged in an exalted, optimistic union. For to the public and making the public a part of a fami- us there was no great difference between Tasaval- ly event. Through modern technology, the media lan Presidentti from Finland, Arbete och Fritid conquer and consolidate their power basis. They do from Sweden, Juice Leskinen from Juankoski in so by being present and showing off the major royal Savolax, the Animals and Chris Barber from Eng- events in the most modern way. Kristina Widestedt land, and Swedish dance-band music, which was continues this theme in her article about royal wed- best for dancing to. It all led forwards. Only a dings when she writes: “Rather than satisfying the small minority of us also listened backwards, to royals’ demands for respect and subordination, the Brahms and Bach. media increasingly strive to simultaneously create It is this universe, with a special focus on popular and satisfy a public demand for rapid and stable ac- culture, that Sven-Erik Klinkmann tackles in this Reviews 205

book. He is very well equipped to do so. He is of the ten, American west coast – and not least a heavy right age to study this period, Vasa is his home emphasis on rhythm & blues as a distinctive feature town, and he is interested in music and knows the that a great many of the local bands were particular- subject as well as anyone. And let it be said right ly fond of. from the start, that this is an extremely good book The synchronic aspect is also well represented in and a magnificent analysis of the overall subject: this section – and it is probably here that the book music and youth culture in a town that is (culturally) has its greatest value in terms of cultural analysis on the border between Sweden and Finland. The au- and theory. Klinkmann has a truly observant eye for thor then divides this into a series of themes which culture in general and music in particular in a transi- can be further personified through portraits of and tional borderland like the Finnish Österbotten, with interviews with some of the typical and prominent Vasa as the local capital. There are several contrasts: figures in Vasa’s popular music life, especially in between Swedish and Finnish, between British and the 1960s and 1970s. American on the one hand and Finnish and Fin- He begins with the later. In long transcripts of in- land-Swedish on the other. In places these contrasts terviews with musicians and arrangers of all kinds are portrayed rather dramatically, as when bands we gain insight into the music culture of the time, from Vasa travelled east into the Finnish-speaking the preferred tastes, the forums, and the social set- parts of Österbotten with a repertoire of dance-band ting. This fills roughly the first half of the book. It is music from Sweden, which was so familiar to them- intense, informed, micro-oriented, and rich in mem- selves, and were met with angry calls to “play some ories. Some of these interviews were conducted and Finnish tango for God’s sake”. Elsewhere in the are recorded in broad Vasa dialect. There is a huge book the presentation is more low-key, as when we amount of detail to immerse oneself in, with a local are informed that Finnish music as a rule was less flavour all the way down to street level, as we are suitable for dancing, with more radical and “freaky” shown around the different parts of Vasa, with a cer- lyrics – at times with polemical attacks against tain fondness for the old working-class neighbour- Swedes. One of Klinkmann’s great merits is that he hoods of Kappsäcken, Vöråstan, and Brändö, with points out how Swedish-Finnish relations in Finland lovely old wooden houses, eccentrics, and football are characterized by harmony on the personal level heroes from the time when IFK Vasa were big in at the same time there is a latent conflict that can Finland. It is here that Klinkmann’s book has its break out at any moment. As a researcher he does greatest local interest, probably functioning best as a not have a romantic notion of consensus. Christmas present for Grandfather. One good point here is that the author covers not Of more general interest in this first – stereotyped only Vasa but also brings in the whole field of Fin- – section is the dimension of material culture sur- land-Swedish dance and music culture. The subordi- rounding the radio waves: how people could spend nate themes here include the culture surrounding the all night turning the dial on the radio to find Radio dance floors at the beaches of Österbotten, such as Luxemburg or somewhere else that was playing A Karperö, Åminne, Rörgrund, Fagerö, etc. Young Whiter Shade of Pale . Finland-Swedes made the pilgrimage in “dance On the meso level where the author considers the buses” to the events arranged here by the vigorous different themes, the vision is further extended. One youth clubs along the coast. Another theme is the of these themes is the diachronic development of difference within the Swedish-speaking part of Fin- musical taste and style in Vasa. Even though the land as regards (musical) culture; it is clear that book is somewhat disorganized, one can clearly gain Stockholm is not the capital for Finland-Swedes in an impression of the development from the 1960s Helsinki and Åbo as it is in Vasa, and that Sweden ragbag, when nuances were not important. Remains does not serve as a reference in southern Finland as of swing jazz had no trouble coexisting with Paul it does up in Österbotten. Anka and Elvis, Cliff Richard and Bobby Darin, On the macro level, which focuses on the music Swedish family pop, Finnish hits, and the new and youth culture of this borderland in a broad “barbed-wire” music. A stylistic pot au feu , which sense, the author with his firm grasp of the empirical by the 1970s and 1980s was gradually differentiated evidence and his immense knowledge both of the lo- into more regular styles: rock and beat, Swedish top cal musical scene and of global youth culture, is 206 Reviews

able to tackle significant issues: cultural encounters treatment of a problem that is of interest for history, and border problems. ethnology, and folkloristics; the author is well As regards the first, he has page after page of ex- equipped to elucidate this. pressions of cultural encounters between the local This does not affect the overall judgement that and the global. Perhaps cultural encounter is not the this book is highly readable, with an enormous right word, if it entails a perception of these cultures breadth and multiple layers, which means that it can as closed systems. Klinkmann does not fall into that reach several different readership segments and dif- trap; on the contrary, he has a sharp eye for the di- ferent branches of scholarship. In some respects it is versity that characterizes any “culture” even before about 200 pages too long and ought to have been it meets another so-called “culture”. He views cul- heavily edited if it were intended chiefly for an aca- tural encounters as hybridizations and processes that demic audience. At the same time, it must be stated can be either conflictual in character or zones of cul- that the author’s sense for in-depth empirical evi- tural understanding. dence – the reason the book is so long – simultane- These hybridizations – and here he approaches ously gives the work its scholarly weight. The au- the second major problem – are connected to the thor’s consistent outlook on borderlands and cultur- fact that the borderland studied here has open and al hybrids is presented with immensely weighty ar- porous boundaries, accepting both similarities and guments. differences. Besides identifying certain border typ- On the other hand, it can hardly be denied that the ologies, he argues that boundaries do not mean en- characteristic verbosity that dominates the book is closure and control, but also, in certain conditions, simultaneously what prevents it from seeming like can give grounds for self-reflection and broader af- the scholarly masterpiece that it ultimately is. It is in fective horizons, thus helping to make a territory, the top European class in cultural studies of border- that is, an abstract space, inhabitable. Boundaries land problems, an impressive masterpiece with sharpen one’s sense of difference, while simultane- far-reaching perspectives not only for Vasa and Fin- ously having a societal and social centripetal force. land, but also for Europe with its many borders. It In reality it is quite banal: without boundaries there would be a pity if it were to end its days as a coffee- can be no boundary crossing, nor any boundless- table book. It ought to be translated into English or ness. German – but what would happen to the amusing In the light of this, one may wonder whether Vasa dialect? That would not be easy to render in a Vasa and Österbotten constitute a marginal area in different language, and in the final analysis that is Finland or in reality one of the most central places in perhaps what makes this book so subtle: that it this nation, in that the border here is open. It is refuses to make a rigid distinction between particu- therefore sad that the author is forced to observe – larism and universalism. correctly – that the region is rather invisible in rela- The invisibility that the author mentions with re- tion to the Swedes in Sweden, to the Finns, “and gard to popular music in Österbotten will no doubt even to some extent to the southern Finland- continue even after this work, at any rate when Swedes” (p. 415). viewed in global perspective. Although we often There is yet another theme concerning the macro hear talk nowadays of globalization, it is mostly level. Using a term borrowed from the folklorist only hot air, which raises the question of how global Matti Kuusi, Klinkmann describes popular music globalization really is. When all is said and done, it culture as an expression of a special genre that could is hardly anything other than an Anglo-Saxon mo- be called “poplore” – in contrast to traditional folk- nopolization of culture, which excludes anything not lore. This highly interesting topic, which ultimately written in English, and therefore finds it easy to concerns the interface between folk culture and praise ideals of boundlessness. Just as we witnessed popular culture, would deserve more elaboration. a flourishing growth in the phenomenon of cultural Where is the switch from one to the other? Who are democracy, especially in Britain, at the start of the the agents? Are there special institutions in the two 1990s, today one can consider the same problem categories? Are mass communication and mediali- with regard to cultures that do not use English. Even zation the decisive factors, or is something else in- relatively large languages like Swedish, Hungarian, volved? Here one could have wished for a deeper Polish, Fulani, etc. find it hard to make themselves Reviews 207

heard on the global scene. Years ago a book about takeover of what was originally a woman’s pursuit. borders appeared in Finland, with a constructivist Dairy work on farms was mostly done to meet the discourse that was typical of the time. It became needs of the household. Making cheese and butter internationally famous, and it is still cited. It was in was the housewife’s responsibility, but it was an un- English. Sven-Erik Klinkmann can hardly reckon professional process and with deficient hygiene. with similar success, even though he has written a Butter was stored for a long time and became ran- far better book with much richer empirical evidence. cid. This is deplorable, particularly when his book is Dairying was developed during the nineteenth viewed in the context of the generally high level that century to become an independent activity alongside is characteristic of Nordic research on popular musi- farming. The Danish manors were the first to intro- cal history, as is clear from reviews on this topic in duce dairies on the Dutch pattern. In these dairies, this journal in recent years. which made products for sale, there were special Niels Kayser Nielsen, Aarhus milk rooms that were clean and cold. The workforce was female, “dairymaids”. The Danish manors in- troduced convertible husbandry in agriculture and Dairy Training in Denmark the interest in stock raising increased. Experienced Linda Klitmøller , Som en skorsten. Mejeribrugets dairymaids were brought from Holstein, laying the uddannelse i Danmark 1837–1972. Landbohistorisk foundation for the good reputation of Danish manor Selskab, Auning 2008. 268 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-87- butter. The dairymaid’s work entailed great respon- 7526-214-4. sibility, and this was reflected in her pay. In the 1870s it was four times higher than a serving maid’s
The title of this book, meaning “Like a Chim- wages and two to three times what a farm labourer ney”, refers to the fact that Niels Pedersen, who earned. started the first theoretical education for dairy work- Between 1837 and 1875 the Royal Danish Agri- ers in Denmark in 1887, formulated this metaphor cultural Society provided training for dairymaids, for a good dairy worker. The author investigates with manors as the base. The Agricultural Society how the training of dairy workers developed. Since was aware of the significance of the dairy trade for the end of the nineteenth century, dairies have been Danish agriculture. Above all it was essential to im- an important part of Danish agriculture, and hence prove the quality of butter so that it could compete of Danish industry as a whole. Despite the fact that on the British market. In 1861 the Agricultural So- all those who were active in various ways in dairy- ciety employed Thomas Riise Segelcke (1831– ing were well aware of the importance of effective 1902) as dairy consultant, and he became a figure- training, it took a long time to agree on the forms. head of Danish dairying. It was important to develop The disagreement had both cultural and economic scientific methods. Industrial production could not causes. rely solely on experience, sensory impressions, and Professional training of dairy workers was un- personal feeling. Artisanal operations had to be satisfactory at the end of the nineteenth century. made rational and factory-like. He believed that men Theoretical knowledge was lacking, and practical understood science and rational production better training was very limited. Dairy workers also at- than women. The aim was that men should take over tained a prominent position in the local community, the managerial role while dairymaids took care of for example, as leaders of various associations, and the practical work. in this role it was also important to have a good gen- In 1878 the separator was invented, making it eral education. The theoretical education was never possible to process milk from different suppliers si- in dispute, but it was difficult to reach agreement multaneously. Thanks to the separator, milk that about common rules for the practical training: was to be skimmed to give cream could be trans- should there be free training under the auspices of ported over longer distances. The separator paved the dairies themselves, or should there be vocational the way for private dairy companies and cooperative training in accordance with the Apprenticeship Act? dairies. Technical and entrepreneurial development It was not until 1972 that agreement was reached. strengthened the position of men as leaders of the The industrialization of dairying led to a male dairies. The technical development increased the 208 Reviews

need for research, which was centralized in 1882 in Although men increasingly took over dairying, the newly opened Agricultural Research Laboratory. dairymaids could become dairy supervisors if they One important study concerned how the fat content were unmarried. The work with machines was con- in milk should be calculated to ensure that the pro- sidered to be a man’s domain, and female supervi- ducers got the right price and that the milk was not sors employed men to look after the boiler. At the diluted with water. The calculation was complex, manors, the dairymaids retained their position until which required training for the dairy workers. the First World War. It was common for dairymaids The idea of the folk high school was raised in the to make the butter at the new cooperative dairies as 1830s by the Dane N. F. S. Grundtvig, who wanted long as the process was manual. The dairymaids’ an institute of higher education for young adults. professional competence was respected, and women This form of education was intended to further the were believed to have a better sense of cleanliness spiritual liberation and social development of the than men. At one time there was a dairy school in peasantry. Teaching was based on free oral lectures Ribe with theoretical education for dairymaids who by teachers and dialogue with the pupils. Pupils wanted to become dairy supervisors, but the school boarded at the school and mixed with the teachers did not have the same good reputation as the two big every day. For the men there was a longer winter ones, and thus found it difficult to fill the courses. course and for the women a shorter summer course. The Danish Dairy Workers’ Association was The agricultural schools and folk high schools had founded in 1887 to support its members in practical the same ideological roots, which set their stamp on and economic matters. It started a members’ news- tuition in the dairy schools. paper, Mælkeritide , which is still being published. Denmark’s folk high schools, ever since the first Most of the members were dairy supervisors. The one was opened in 1844, had taught agriculture. junior dairy workers founded their own association This was then taken over by the agricultural schools. in 1907. They had become a special occupational In 1882 the Ladelund agricultural school, founded in category since not everyone could expect to become 1867, was attached to the Agricultural Research a supervisor. They wanted recognition as profes- Laboratory. Research in the laboratory led to new sionals and better employment terms. To achieve findings that made theoretical education increasing- this required regulated apprenticeships in which ly important. In 1886 Ladelund started control they would not be exploited as cheap labour. The courses to measure the fat content of milk. In the association was like a trade union but it was non- following year a five-month theoretical course for political. dairy workers was introduced. Two years later a In 1910 the dairy schools in Dalum and Ladelund comparable summer course was started at the agri- established a shared theoretical eight-month course. cultural school in Dalum, which was the second The free form of the education did not give formal school to provide training in dairying in Denmark. It competence, but in practice the students became was intended to nurture vocational skills and per- dairy supervisors. The course continued to be taught sonal education improvement in the spirit of until 1962, when it was replaced by training for Grundtvig. Practical experience was to be enhanced dairy technicians. To be admitted required practical with theoretical knowledge. experience of dairy work. The dairy schools did not award certificates. In- The parties in the dairy industry found it difficult stead there was a leaving examination with external to agree about the form of practical education. In examiners. Development led to the requirement of 1912 it was decided to introduce a four-year appren- training for anyone wishing to become a dairy su- ticeship which would be voluntary for the dairies. It pervisor. Several pupils studied first at a folk high failed because the majority of dairy supervisors con- school or agricultural school and then went on to tinued to employ apprentices on personal contracts. take the dairy training. Pupils were separated from In 1915 the Danish Dairy Workers’ Association and the students of agriculture in the schools, despite the the Dairy Association of 1907 failed to draw up a fact that dairies were a part of farming. Courses for wage scale for the junior dairy workers, which led to men were given in the winter and those for women union unrest and strikes. At the suggestion of the in the summer, but the latter were later discontinued minister of social affairs, a council was set up with because there were too few female applicants. representatives of employers and employees. The Reviews 209

council would admit apprentices, deal with com- remained constant, around five billion kilos, and plaints, issue certificates, and draw up suggestions new products such as fermented milk were intro- for the content of courses. Antagonisms led to the duced. In the 1960s and 1970s it became difficult to dissolution of the council eleven years later. There find apprentices. Other occupations attracted young was growing interest in forming trade unions in the people, especially in the towns. In terms of culture same way as in other industries. In 1919 the Dairy and education, Denmark was divided between town Employee Association was founded to look after the and country. The apprentices became dairy workers, members’ union matters and economic interests. who could hope at best to become middle managers The antagonisms exposed the conflict between in a big dairy. the unionized urban dairy workers and the free- To deal with the problems, it was decided that the dom-loving rural dairy workers. Many dairy em- practical training should also be given in the dairy ployees remained unorganized. In 1923 the Danish school. To this end, a workshop dairy was to be es- Rural Dairy Workers’ Federation was founded as a tablished, which required a major investment. The non-political trade union. A difficult problem was Ladelund dairy school was closed in 1972. The Da- that the dairy supervisor ran the business on con- lum school was separated from the agricultural tract. He in turn employed staff and paid their school and given its own principal. It was trans- wages. formed into a technical school on an equal footing The apprentice, in accordance with the ideal of with other vocational schools. This ended the long the folk high school and the peasant tradition, was association between dairy training and the educa- supposed to be treated as a member of the family, tional ideology of the folk high school. with food and lodging, a furnished room of good The book focuses on the Danish training of dairy standard, washing facilities, and a place to study. workers. For a Swedish reader it is interesting partly Working hours were not regulated; as in farming, because many Swedish dairy workers were trained work had to be carried on until it was finished. The in Denmark. The book includes a brief comparison apprentice had few days off and was to be taught the of dairy training in the neighbouring countries. In value of cleanliness, punctuality, and thrift. The su- these it was the state that took the initiative for the pervisor’s wife provided food and served dinner to education of dairy workers. The author believes that the board of governors at their meetings. the training started earlier in Denmark because the The dairies belonged to the agricultural industry business itself was more involved and took the in- but the employees did not perceive themselves as in- itiative. The significance of the ideological differ- dustrial workers. The dairies were rooted in agricul- ence in the outlook on the educational system be- ture and owned by farmers. Working conditions and tween town and country in a growing industrial so- employment terms resembled those in agriculture. ciety is one of the important findings of the study. In the course of the twentieth century, more and The other is the presentation of the factors that led to more apprentices focused on using the education as men taking over the profession from the women. a way to get them out of farming rather than to be- The analysis of the content and organization of the come dairy workers. In the inter-war years more dairy courses and suggestions for training is com- people received dairy training than there were jobs prehensive and presented in detail. for. In the middle of the 1940s there was instead a The author’s sources are extensive, drawing on shortage of trained dairy staff. Many left because of official documents, business archives, dairy schools the low pay. At the end of the 1950s it was suggest- and professional associations, including correspond- ed that apprenticeship rules with an aptitude test ence, but she has also interviewed a number of dairy should be introduced, and that the dairies should be workers who were apprentices before and during the of a certain size in order to admit apprentices. Second World War. It is the official goals of the In 1962 a nine-month course was introduced, dairy schools, the dairy workers’ associations, and based on apprenticeship rules from the start of the the educational system that stand out most clearly twentieth century. This course did not suit the big here. Without losing the focus on the scholarly aim, dairies that had resulted from the ongoing rational- the study would have gained by citing a larger ization. In Denmark in 1940 there were almost number of personal narratives and opinions. The 1,700 dairies, but only 619 in 1969. Milk production book reflects how the development of the dairies 210 Reviews

was led by people with a strong ideological convic- arily on written sources, the big picture is very tradi- tion. tional. It seems that some of the most interesting Göran Sjögård, Lund perspectives have been found through a narrative of the milieu and family networks of clergymen and their families. In fact, the bibliography presents an Following the Last Traces of the Finnish appreciable amount of Finnish literature written by Parsonage writers with their roots in parsonages. Marja-Terttu Knapas, Markku Heikkilä & Timo Parsonages have their origins in the medieval pe- Qvist , Suomalaiset pappilat. Kulttuuri-, talous- ra- riod. Being able to sustain the priesthood was an kennushistoriaa. [Finnish parsonages. A cultural, elementary requirement when the church was con- economic and architectural history.] Suomalaisen sidering establishing a new parish. Building a Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 1238/Tieto. Suo- church and a parsonage, as well as paying certain malaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki 2009. 231 maintenance fees, were a burdensome responsibility pp. Ill. ISBN 978-952-222- 096-7. for the parishioners. The church had its own system of taxation at a very early stage and parsonages were
Studying parsonages has been quite the same as an important part of this system. building research, and they have been considered to The earliest phases of Finnish parishes had represent a very specific kind of building heritage. simple parsonages, which struggled with problems But the aim of this book is to get closer to the phases such as sparse settlement and long distances. The of development of this phenomenon as a whole. The peculiar protestant parsonage culture took shape book situates parsonages within their larger environ- gradually after the Reformation. ments and the social complexity of local human life. Legislation and historic and social changes were The articles focus personal and social history as well milestones when following the story of parsonages as on architecture. and their especial way of life. Living between the Parsonages are, in their present state, beautiful lower and higher classes provided the priests and and dignified old buildings. Nowadays, when only their families many contacts. In this special position half of the existing parsonages are still used as parsonages were supposed to act as messengers homes for clergymen, they stand out in the rural spreading new ideas. Curiously enough, it seems landscape as empty examples of quality architec- even the women of the households played a role in ture. They might be used for a totally different this process. purpose than their original purpose. There has Most general histories dealing with parsonages been serious concern about their vanishing cul- focus on the Enlightenment period in the 18th centu- tural history and context. Although they have ry up until the beginning of the 19th century. During played such a crucial role in the centre of ecclesi- this time, many parsonages developed into innova- astic life in parishes, there are only a few traces to tive farmsteads for their enthusiastic keepers, thus follow when trying to revive the whole spectrum allowing for the spread knowledge about the ways of existence. in which new crops and methods could be intro- The story of the Finnish parsonage is a pleasant duced to the common people. Parsonages also reading experience. Readers all over the country can played a central role in church based folk education. find very interesting background information in the They achieved results in improving health, literacy book. It can be used to find details on ancient family and living conditions in general. Lutheran parson- members or to follow family lines. The focus is on ages played a significant role as centres of social persons, not on the parishes. And of course quite a care and in supporting everyday living. few of the buildings themselves are presented in the The gradual formation of significant family net- summary of Finnish parsonages. works of clergymen and their families was an im- This book tells the story of the clerical estate, not portant element in the cultural history of parsonages. so much the story of ‘common people’. Nor are the These networks gradually shaped themselves into be upper classes mentioned. There is some variation an institution that gained strength during the ensuing between the writers in the ways they chose to get centuries. Some 53 families survived and stayed in closer to the parishioners, but, due to a focus prim- power until close to the present day. In fact, it was Reviews 211

not until after the Second World War these strong vive the harsh winters – not to mention the needs of networks began to break down. large families and their workforce. From the local perspective individual parsonage Still, the overall image given by the book is houses have sometimes been seen as special and somehow posh. There are some examples of Euro- unique. This book offers another point of view, one pean style, or better still, applications of it. The very in which parsonages belong to a larger, homogenous first attempts to follow fashionable styles are noted. phenomenon. This might give, in some respects too positive a con- The reader gets an overall look at the parsonage ception of the overall situation. At the same time, construction of parsonage and the surrounding the research for this chapter has been accurate and buildings. The authorities have exerted strong con- extraordinary in all respects. trol concerning the layout of official houses. Design Gardens and gardening are studied parsonage by was restricted, and even the outbuildings were limit- parsonage. The effects of structural innovations are ed. Building orders installed parsonages between told by means of a cavalcade of parsons, each with a noble estates and lower class houses. green thumb. The background for new customs can The stately parsonages had still a great influence be connected, in several cases, to enthusiastic per- on other buildings in the area. The design was sons and their activities. The story of new plants and copied – but not always. One example of locals re- better nourishment spreading outwards from the jecting the parsonage design was the stone buildings parsonages to the surroundings is touching. Al- of the 18th century. The state strongly recommend- though the growing season is extremely short, it ed using them, but the local people, who were used seems to have been extended in significance through to timber houses, never accepted them. these efforts. A set of lovely pictures strengthens There was not much information about the actual this conception. The photographs were taken from use of the houses. It would have been most interest- early spring through the late summer. And even in ing to read more about how parishioners used the the text, the winter season is mentioned only when parsonages. For example, how parishioners pre- describing disasters. Persistent attempts to reach for ferred parsonages to churches. People liked to visit something better are described even when there has them and have some of their sacraments there. This been misfortune. seems to have happened at least when baptizing ba- Though primarily consisting of literary research, bies, especially during the cold winter season. The the story of the Finnish parsonage is told in pictures. parsonage was warm and cosy compared to the un- Several museums and private collectors have con- heated and even untidy church. tributed to the book releasing previously unseen pic- And local people also used the parsonage to get ture material. married. Nowadays there seems to be a certain mis- The picture research seems to have been carried understanding about the church wedding being an out extremely ambitiously. Sirkku Dölle has done old tradition. In fact, it seems that the church wed- the research with care, using every possible means ding was even avoided when possible. One possibil- to enliven the history and facts. The main part of the ity was getting married in the parsonage. The cere- illustrations is from the large archives of Finland’s mony could be kept simple and it was also afford- National Board of Antiquities. But they have been able for everyone. supplemented by very interesting photographs from The birth of Finnish gardening culture in a wider private collections. It seems that there have been sense is presented through parsonage gardens – par- persons living close to the parsonages who have tak- sonages were so very important in this development. en pictures which are different from the photos often The improvements in gardening and courtyards in- used in official documentation. Some of these con- troduced many innovations and new customs into tain much more information than the surrounding daily life. But the picture may seem somehow mis- text. leading, too. Most often there must have only been One of the most important reasons to value these common courtyards, sometimes even shared with precious pictures is that they show some of the more cattle and other domestic animals. The article is de- intimate aspects of everyday life, which have been scribing an era when even the smallest amounts of mentioned only subtly in the articles of the book. every possible feed was collected to help cattle sur- Again, we meet many influential figures from histo- 212 Reviews

ry who either spent their childhood in parsonages or Cokery (1500) was an elaboration of an older manu- were in other ways connected to them. This book script, which was partly compiled of even older tells a proud story of early Finnish cultural history manuscripts. seen through the windows of the parsonage. A lot of cookbooks came out in the 17th and 18th Sanna Eldén-Pehrsson, Turku centuries and they mediated the upper class culinary customs to those who could afford the books. More and more books about everyday cooking also came A Cookbook is a Message out, aimed at less skilful cookers and ordinary bour- Maarit Knuuttila, Kauha ja kynä: Keittokirjojen geois women and also written by women. They were kulttuurihistoriaa. [Ladle and pen: cultural history of published in almost every European country. Many cookbooks.] Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, were translated and applied to fit the local circum- Helsinki 2010. 207 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-952-222-187- stances. Especially French cookbooks were fre- 2. quently copied and translated. It was clear that the rising middle class needed those books.
Maarit Knuuttila is an ethnologist specialized in The central European trends also spread into Nor- the research of food culture. Her new book is a fresh dic countries where dozens of cookbooks were pub- contribution to the Finnish discussion about the his- lished. The book, which found its way into Finnish tory of cooking. She omits the “haute cuisine” and manors, parsonages and bourgeois families, was concentrates on ordinary, basic cookbooks, their Christina (Cajsa) Warg’s Hielpreda I Hushållningen writers and users. Among cookbooks Knuuttila för Unga Fruentimmer published in 1755. But the accepts any books which at some level guide the first book on food culture in Finnish did not come reader in the art of cooking. out until 1834. It was a translation of a Swedish In addition to the introduction the small-sized guidebook to famine food. The first ordinary cook- hardback contains five chapters with the meaning of book in Finnish, Kokki=kirja , published in 1849, cookbooks for women as their main theme. In was translated from an unknown foreign original. “Cookbook through the centuries” Knuuttila de- Still, it gives an idea about how the gentlefolk’s scribes the history of texts about cooking and food cooking tradition began to take written forms. The since the ancient Greeks, Romans and medieval book established a cooking vocabulary and also people. Ancient documents are rare, but there still gave information on the cooking techniques and raw exist about one hundred Latin or French manu- materials available. Kokki=kirja does not describe scripts which date back to the late Middle Ages the actual Finnish cooking, but it shows what kind (1000–1500). Such manuscripts were spread as of food could have been prepared. copies among the upper classes. Under the title “Modern cookbook” Knuuttila in- The medieval culinary manuscripts had already troduces the reader to Anna Olsoni’s Keittokirja ko- begun to establish rules concerning food, cooking deille ja kouluille , which was printed in Swedish in and eating, but the printed books finally put food in 1892 and in Finnish in 1893. It was the most note- its place. By the end of the 15th century they began worthy 19th century publication on food culture in to replace the handwritten texts, reaching a wider Finland. It concentrated on nutritious and economic audience and spreading across borders. The com- food but can be called modern since it followed the mon people, however, did not have access to the new European trends in cooking and housekeeping: manuscripts or printed books, since they could not it was based on chemistry, nutritional physiology afford them or the raw materials needed. Besides, and bookkeeping. Olsoni originally wrote the book they could not read. for the students of a college for domestic science The oldest “modern” cookbook printed in Ger- teachers that she had founded in 1891, after a study man was Kuchenmeisterey published in 1485. It sold trip to Sweden and England. Housewives could use amazingly well and was reprinted 56 times. In the the book as well. According to the book, fifteen ba- 16th century cookbooks were printed in all major sic “theoretical rules” should be followed in cook- European languages. Most books were not very ing, the most important of them being cleanliness. original but copies of copies of older texts. For in- Olsoni’s cookbook served as a model for many new stance, the first English printed cookbook, Boke of books in the 20th century. Reviews 213

In 1908 three teachers of Olsoni’s college edited planned and realized. They are like documentations a new cookbook which was to become a monument of the preparation process or the final product. An- in the Finnish kitchen culture: in just one century it other target of the author’s attention is written mate- appeared in 64 editions! Knuuttila presents the book rials retained in family archives: individual recipes in a short chapter: “ Kotiruoka and the century of and hand-written cookbooks and booklets, appen- changes”. In teacher’s training the book was first dixes to printed cookbooks, and corrections to print- used together with Olsoni’s book, but with its ed recipes. All this material narrates about the numerous recipes it was also meant for a wider fascinating world of the kitchen. audience. In addition to Finnish recipes it had many Throughout her book Knuuttila uses quotations foreign and manor house recipes. Every new edition from her own interviews in 1996–2000 and from re- of the book tried to meet the requirements of the plies to the National Museum’s questionnaire “Pap- day, brought up new recipes, and modernized or dis- pilan ruokatalous” (Food management in parson- carded old ones. It also tried to maintain the spirit of ages, 1969). They give the reader a taste of everyday the first book. New electric household appliances, cooking culture, not only of the failures but also of new foreign vegetables and fruit together with new its joys and pleasures. In the future Knuuttila could recommendations for nutrients forced the editors to focus more thoroughly on the influence of cook- renew the book. Illustrations increased and together books in everyday food culture. with the content they reveal material and social Obviously, the author has had difficulties in de- changes in the Finnish kitchen culture and family. ciding which genre of writing to choose: a research In the two last chapters Knuuttila deals with reci- account or a publication for a wider audience. Now pes. In “Recipes, the core of a cookbook” she de- the genre is mixed, enjoyable, however, for those fines the recipe as a formula, which gives all the es- who love cookbooks and cooking. sentials of a dish: name, ingredients and methods. It Leena Rossi, Turku is like a little story with a plot and a narrative strate- gy. Through the years recipes have changed very much and today the old ones are almost unintellig- Textile aesthetics ible. Today’s recipes contain a lot of information. Minna Kragelund , Tekstil æstetik – nytolkning af The name of the dish is descriptive; the ingredients dansk kulturarv. Forlaget FiberFeber, Holbæk 2009. are in a logical order; the measures are exact; the 223 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-87-92152-05-3. tools and cooking vessels are mentioned; the prep- aration methods are described, and the exact cook-
In this new book the Danish textile researcher ing time is given. Minna Kragelund tackles the task of interpreting a The last chapter “Cookbooks and recipes as re- collection of nineteenth-century folk textiles used search objects” is the most interesting part of the for interior decoration. These consist of about forty book. Books, manuscripts and various guidebooks white textiles in linen and/or cotton, in private own- form a rich material, which has been used in many ership. Kragelund first encountered them thirty fields of research, especially in gender history. years ago, when their special “tone” appealed to her. Naturally, they do not depict only the food culture At that time a major project was in progress, an in- but also the customs and manners, ideologies, cul- ventory and exhibition of “Danish Folk Embroider- tural models and practices. They give information ies” under the auspices of the National Museum. But on the supply of goods, harvesting, fishing and hunt- these textiles are not a part of the national canon of ing as well as about festival traditions, families and the foremost textile objects, materials, techniques, communities as well as relationships between sexes. or expressions established since the end of the nine- In cookbooks, the researcher can even find the ideal teenth century. They were omitted for various rea- contemporary woman and the many meanings of sons, and Minna Kragelund’s study and reinterpreta- food and cooking. tion should be viewed as a contribution to the cur- Knuuttila also writes about her own research in- rent discussion of canons that is asking questions terests, for instance about the illustration of cook- about selection, attention, and historiography. Ear- books. Drawings were replaced by black-and-white lier museum builders, collectors, and textile scholars photos and colour pictures, which were carefully took it for granted that these textiles were not suffi- 214 Reviews

ciently fine to belong among the select ones. The Since this is an interpretation on aesthetic prem- central question underlying the book is what hap- ises, Minna Kragelund presents some theories in this pens, and why, if one looks closely in an attempt to field to which she relates. The most important, and understand and interpret their aesthetic expressions. the one she consistently uses, is the German phil- But it is important to point out that this is not a his- osopher Martin Seel’s theory of the formation of torical study aiming to say something about manu- aesthetic experience, which he divides into three facture and use, but an aesthetic investigation which stages: aesthetic contemplation, correspondence, asks how we perceive these textiles with their spe- and imagination. In her study, Kragelund translates cial tone today. In that respect, this is a contem- these three steps into the simply worded questions: porary study of old objects which have survived What sense impressions do the textiles make? What their original context of manufacture and use and happens? What do the textiles stimulate? Minna have been moved between different places up to our Kragelund returns to these questions, putting them times. to all the textiles she studies. In the somewhat more In six chapters the reader follows a discussion of elaborate form described on page 55 in the book, it the textiles, presented in sections based on orna- is a matter of placing the observer/interpreter in the ment, form, pattern, and figuration. The introducto- centre. In the first step (aesthetic contemplation) this ry chapter highlights the problems addressed by the is done by capturing the observer’s immediate sen- study, and this is followed by a chapter about the sory impression and experience of what the individ- study itself. Then come the main chapters entitled ual textile looks like and what the observer notes “Rhythm and Repetition” and “Figuration”. Be- and dwells on. The second stage (aesthetic corre- tween these is an “Intermezzo”, a chapter dealing spondence) goes further, allowing the observer to with problems relevant for the analyses. The book link the immediate experience to his or her own in- ends with a section discussing the artistic idiom of terpretation of life, as questions are asked about the textiles and briefly rounding off the text. Just what happens, whether the textiles create nearness leafing through the pages conveys an impression of or distance, and whether they contribute to a discus- the author’s great fascination with the textiles she sion of “the good life”. The third stage (aesthetic studies. This is a powerful encounter, which echoes imagination) focuses on what the textiles trigger in through text and pictures alike. For this is a presen- the observer in the form of associations, and if they tation in which the illustrations are at least as impor- have a contemporary expression. Later on in the tant as the words, they literally communicate what book the three stages are quite simply translated into the author wants to tell about her meeting with the the three concepts of sensory experience, existential textiles, about the analytical process and the results. recognition, and relevance to life in the present (p. The author’s encounter has strong theoretical sup- 108). Without being closely acquainted with Seel’s port in the study; more about that below. As regards theoretical works, I see many points of contact with methodology, the question of how the aesthetic ex- a phenomenological approach in which the subject/ pressions are investigated is essential, and Krage- researcher becomes an explicit co-actor in the study. lund’s method draws in large measure on the ar- This theoretical point of departure places the illus- rangements created when the textiles are to be pho- trations in an important position for being able to tographed. She selects and combines textiles with present the analysis, discussion, and results. similar expressions, attaches them to a board, stu- What then is the actual result of the use of Seel’s dies them, and lets a photographer take pictures of theory? The analytical sections are structured in a them. In this way she stages an aesthetic space of uniform way. First Kragelund describes the category her own, where the textiles serves as starting points of textiles to be treated. This is followed by a list of for analysis. Each analytical section is introduced key words, compiled to capture the artistic idiom with an overall picture which is then followed by and the aesthetic experience. Here, for example, is several details and more experimental arrangements how she characterizes the idiom of woven textiles in which texture, light, and shade emerge in differ- with net patterns: simplicity, calm, foreground and ent ways. It is a challenge to create interesting pic- background, tension, mattness and sheen, drama, ur- tures of bright, flat objects, and the result is one of ban plan, geometry, conviction, oppositions, surface the great merits of the book. and depth, and rhythm (p. 77). This can be com- Reviews 215

pared with the key words for animal motifs in the say that the result is an interesting and thought-pro- form of dogs: recognizability, simplicity, calm, at- voking reinterpretation of older material, and that a tention, humour, figure/ground, straight lines, sym- careful reading of the book is well-invested time. metry, tension, and conviction (p. 116). A reader Anneli Palmsköld, Halmstad may sometimes wonder about these key words: are they specific for particular forms, or could they also be used for other forms? We are not given any real Reconsidering the Sámi Drums guidance as to how the key words have been formu- Kerstin Eidlitz Kuoljok , Bilden av universum bland lated, other than that it took place in the author’s en- folken i norr. Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2009. counter with different groupings of the textiles. Af- 272 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-91-7331- 271-4. ter the key words, Kragelund moves close to the objects and discusses them in detail in terms of
The Sámi drums have fascinated many people, material, form, pattern, technique, with sidelights in perhaps mainly because of their rich array of illus- different directions. trations, which have been studied by several re- A recurring discussion considers different forms searchers. The ethnologist Kerstin Eidlitz Kuoljok, of patterns and their meaning (if any) in the contem- however, is not satisfied with previous interpreta- porary context of manufacture and use. The problem tions when it comes to the meanings of the pictures. is that there is so little empirical evidence for the Her ambition to find new ones has resulted in this way the peasantry regarded, spoke about, and used book, Bilden av universum bland folken i norr , the patterns that occurred in their textile manu- which is a continuation of her previous work, Moder facture. That is why Minna Kragelund uses J. C. jord och andra mödrar (1999). Cooper’s widely spread and translated dictionary of The first part of the book consists mainly of criti- symbols as support in her discussion. Although she cism of the research tradition and of presentation of covers herself by saying that it is not known whether the author’s starting points. As has been pointed out the peasant women knew of the various symbolic by some scholars, we know more about Sámi drums meanings of the motifs, she draws attention to the than about Sámi shamanism. According to Eidlitz general biblical knowledge at the time (p. 148). The Kuoljok, the material Swedish scholars have been historical functions and meanings of the patterns are using when constructing the Sámi pre-Christian reli- on the agenda for several scholars. The Norwegian gion, consisting mainly of narratives told by mis- philosopher Mikkel B. Tin’s book De første for- sionaries and clergymen and of court reports, is not mene: Folkekunstens abstrakte formspråk (2007) is good enough. In the absence of more trustworthy one of these, and Kragelund repeatedly refers to his data, the author chooses to turn to the fieldwork ma- work with its phenomenological premises, where he terial collected among various Siberian peoples by analyses and describes a number of forms in philo- Russian and Soviet ethnologists. sophical terms. I myself am sceptical of the idea that By using descriptions of the drum motifs and the people who made textiles wove, embroidered or other pictures in Siberia, given by local shamans and sewed in patterns because they had a specific mean- other well-versed persons, the author wishes to get ing. My research tends to indicate that patterns have closer to the meanings of the motifs on Sámi drums. a completely different function linked to craft skill As she points out, this is a risky method; we cannot and curiosity about what can be done in the circum- be sure that a motif had a similar meaning in differ- stances (what is available in human, technical, mate- ent times and places. However, according to the au- rial, economic, and cultural terms). Kragelund’s am- thor, it is even more unreliable to try to guess the bition to analyse the textiles from a contemporary meanings on the grounds of the appearance of the perspective, however, can have the effect that a pictures. The drum is not a key to Sámi cosmology; philosophically oriented discussion seems more on the contrary, we need to know the Sámi cosmolo- relevant than a historically geared interpretation. gy in order to understand the drum. Minna Kragelund is a veteran textile scholar with The author disassociates herself from previous decades of work behind her. This experience perme- Western research concerning Sámi drums and Sámi ates the book and makes it a courageous work, quite pre-Christian religion. Western scholars are seldom unlike other analyses of textiles. To sum up, I would mentioned in the book, and their interpretations are 216 Reviews

questioned. The previous explanations given for Northern peoples, though, is hidden on the last page drum motifs are often presented here as mere of the book and may be difficult to discover. guesses. The author criticizes the researchers for This new book by Kerstin Eidlitz Kuoljok ques- continuously leaning on each other: what has been tions previous interpretations of the pictures on repeated over and over has become a truth which no Sámi drums but does not provide many new ones. longer needs to be proved, and the criticism of Nevertheless, it is an interesting contribution to the sources has not been applied to the authorities. discussion about the pre-Christian religions and In the second part of the book, Eidlitz Kuoljok world views of the Sámi and other Northern discusses the conceptions of the invisible, of death peoples. In addition, the author highlights signifi- and the dead among various Northern peoples, as cant issues when emphasizing the importance of the well as the meanings and functions of their drums. criticism of sources and the criticism of research tra- The third part concentrates on some concrete pic- ditions. tures, starting with a picture of the universe drawn Nika Potinkara, Jyväskylä by a Chukchi. Another picture, drawn by an Orochi shaman, describes the geography of the universe and the journey of souls after death, as well as the jour- A Multifaceted Survey on Modernisation neys of the shaman. The author also presents a re- and Women’s Everyday Lives in a Mari construction of a Teleut drum, with a description of Village in Central Russia its motifs, and some pictures of the universe drawn Valkoisen jumalan tyttäret. Marilainen nainen ja by Selkup people. When presenting these different modernisaatio. Ildikó Lehtinen (ed.). Suomalais- drawings, she discusses diverse issues related to Ugrilaisen Seuran Kansatieteellisiä julkaisuja 19. them, for example, the conceptions of the Pole Star, Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, Helsinki 2010. 304 pp. the elk and the reindeer as a metaphor of the sun, Ill. ISBN 978-952-5667-14-1. and the signs of the sun among different peoples. Several established ideas concerning the world
The anthology Daughters of the White God. The views of Siberian peoples and the Sámi are counted Mari woman and modernisation , is the product of a as scholarly myths in this book. One such myth is joint project of the ethnology departments of the the notion of a tripartite universe, with the upper universities of Helsinki and Turku to investigate the realm of the deities, the middle realm of the people, effects of modernisation on women’s everyday life and the lower realm of the dead. According to the among the Finno-Ugrian speaking Mari in Central author, the world views of Siberian peoples – and Russia. The research group was led by one of the probably of the Sámi, too – were more complicated. leading experts in Mari culture, Ildikó Lehtinen. Another conception, presented here as a scholarly From the outset a number of Finnish students of eth- myth, is the notion of a world pillar holding up the nology were involved in the project since one of its sky; the author does not believe that such a notion aims was to revive an interest in Finno-Ugrian eth- was common among Northern peoples, nor that it nology, a subject whose once strong position had was related to the conceptions of the Pole Star. weakened in step with a waning of interest in Finno- The content of the book is somewhat fragmented, Ugrian studies generally. The project was also in- skipping from one issue to another. Instead of pre- tended as a pilot study to test fieldwork in a Russian senting a general interpretation of the Sámi drum context and to co-operate with the Mari academy of motifs or the Sámi pre-Christian religion, the author science. The Mari scholars arranged contacts in the discusses various themes related to the world views field while local authorities and villagers were re- of different Siberian peoples and the Sámi, finding sponsible for all practical arrangements. parallels outside this region as well. Some Sámi Because of the substantial contribution by the drum motifs are given possible new interpretations, Mari participants to the field work, it is gratifying but many of the issues discussed are not directly that their efforts have been rewarded by this richly connected to the drum motifs nor to the Sámi. illustrated, bilingual publication. It would appear The author’s style of writing is rather popular and that this book is also meant to contribute to a further the book is easy to read. The layout is simple and goal of the project, the strengthening of the ethnic pleasant, with lots of illustrations. The map of the identity of the Mari themselves. Given the fact that Reviews 217

the Mari language, religion, and folk dress were point of departure gradually widening the scope to stigmatised during the Soviet period, Lehtinen the entire village and beyond the village borders. posits that the interest shown in Mari culture by for- One of her important findings is that the gendering eign scholars contributes to the revalorisation of this of space is not static, but has changed through time culture and to the empowerment of the Mari. In the and is constantly under negotiation. Ruotsala also wake of the first field trip, Finnish tourist groups, sheds light on the changes in Mari ethnic religion, foreign photographers and scholars have regularly which was traditionally male- dominated. The reli- visited the region, and there are some indications gious space has gradually become re-gendered and that this has led to a growing interest in Mari culture places that were once off-limits to women are now among some local and regional actors. Because of open to both sexes. Both Helena Ruotsala and Ildikó this goal, this project has a dimension of engaged Lehtinen make an important contribution to ethnology, which has not been uncommon in post- women’s studies in religion by highlighting the reli- Soviet ethnological scholarship, which in many gious significance of women’s household chores. places has been actively involved in the revival of Their studies show that ritual purity is the precondi- old traditions. The ethnologist Tamara Molotova, tion for religious performance among the Maris, as who participates in this project, serves as a good ex- it is in many other religions. ample of one who practices this applied scholarship. Purity and cleanliness were not only significant She acts as a scientific consultant for the local work- in religious contexts but, as Lehtinen’s two chapters room that designs new “ethno dresses” on the basis show, were central values in the village of Untšo. of traditional embroidery patterns. Her first chapter deals with cleanliness as norma- Modernisation studies have often been criticised tised action and her second with the significance of for being gender-blind. They have tended to view cleanliness in women’s life cycle. Lehtinen outlines the modernisation process from the perspective of the changes that the notions of purity and cleanli- men thereby concealing the fact that modernisation ness have undergone in the course of modernisation. affected men and women differently. Valkoisen ju- She shows how purity has been defined and upheld malan tyttäret makes an important contribution in in various contexts at home and in the village, and this field of studies because of its specific focus on discusses the role that state institutions, such as ma- women. Besides providing the women’s point of ternity clinics, played in the introduction of modern view, the book also contributes to the study of ideas of cleanliness and health. As a specialist in modernisation among ethnic minorities in rural Mari dress, Lehtinen also analyses what the modern- Russia in general since, at least at the outset, being isation process has implied for the traditional folk modern was synonymous with being urban and dress, which earlier served as a marker of Mari eth- Russian. The authors investigate from various nic identity. The folk dress that older women in ru- angles what it has implied to be a woman and a Mari ral areas still wear also illustrates regional variations in the modernising Soviet and post-Soviet country- of Mari identity . During the Soviet period, the Mari side. Various members of the research group made a dress, particularly the headdress, was attacked as a total of five field trips during years 2002–2006 to symbol of backwardness. The authorities sought to the village of Untšo and its environs in the republic put an end to its use by rational arguments: embroi- of Mari El. The participants have documented dering destroyed the seamstress’s eyes and the head- women’s everyday life through interviews, photo- dress caused loss of hair damaging women’s health. graphs and video films, drawings and paintings. Time-consuming embroidery was also condemned Even though some members of the research group as a highly unproductive activity. Besides the propa- mention language problems as an obstacle in their ganda against headdresses, they were at some point field work, the groups have nonetheless succeeded even “liquidated” by burning. In place of the tradi- in producing solid, “thick descriptions” from the tional dress, a national dress which would signify field. modernity, urbanity and industrialism was designed In her contribution, Helena Ruotsala analyses as a marker of common Mari identity. This “hybrid Untšo as a gendered space with special focus on dress” combined traditional Mari elements with ele- women’s spaces and the everyday practices that take ments borrowed from other ethnic groups and from place in these spaces. She takes the home as her the uniform of the political activist. During the 218 Reviews

post-Soviet era, some local women have developed tion were their family membership, motherhood and an “ethno costume” which combines traditional em- womanhood. Women’s identities as workers are in- broidery patterns with a new, modern cut. visible in the photos but, as the author points out, the Although the book concentrates on women’s results of women’s everyday toil can be seen in the everyday activities, several articles deal with festive pictures indirectly: clean homes and clothes as well occasions. This does not conflict with the goal of the as festive tables. study since household chores in any case prepare the Because the home and women’s everyday chores ground for the feasts. Mari Immonen’s paper fo- have been an understudied scholarly field, presum- cuses on the central phase of the Mari wedding rit- ably because of their allegedly trivial nature, this ual, namely the bride’s moving to the home of her book makes an important contribution to present- husband. Her article shows the importance of day scholarship in ethnology. The anthology also women’s domestic chores for these rituals. Most of contributes to the study of the Finno-Ugrian reli- the major symbols used at the wedding are the gions as it complements the one-sided picture drawn products of women’s work. In Untšo, as elsewhere, by earlier scholars, who tended to focus on male- food, the preparation of which preoccupies women led, exotic and large-scale ceremonies, by putting at for days, plays a major role in the rites of integra- the centre the daughters of the White God and their tion, of which the wedding is a foremost example. contribution to the everyday religion in the village Formerly, traditional weddings presents, notably of Untšo. scarves, towels, shirts and dresses, were woven and Marja-Liisa Keinänen, Stockholm embroidered at home, preferably by the bride her- self. Nowadays they are mostly purchased but the bride ideally embroiders some of the textiles. The Customer is King Through the distribution of these presents, the social Beatriz Lindqvist & Mats Lindqvist , När kunden är bonds between the new in-laws are materialised. kung. Effekter av en transnationell ekonomi. Boréa Food rituals also play a central role at the celebra- Bokförlag, Umeå 2008. 280 pp. ISBN 978-91- tion of Semyk , which is the topic of Tamara Moloto- 89140-56-1. va’s highly interesting paper. The three- day long Semyk has a twofold purpose: the commemoration
In the introduction to När kunden är kung. Effek- of the dead and the celebration of the beginning of ter av en transnationell ekonomi the authors refer to the summer. The ultimate purpose of these rituals a Dagens Nyheter article from 2007, concerning the was to ensure fortune and health of the villagers. potential closing of the famous Gda ńsk shipyard, the Tellervo Saukoniemi’s paper views women’s birthplace of the Solidarity. The authors then travel everyday lives and the celebration of lifecycle and back in time and take a look at the shipyard 25 years calendric rituals through the medium of family pho- earlier, at the moment of its glory, when it was the tographs. She studies the meanings and everyday symbol of the Solidarity, the birthplace of the revo- uses of the photo collections by the local women lution and the beginning of the road to democracy. from three different perspectives – as visual autobi- The history of the shipyard relates to the cultural, ographies, as works of identity and as a way of or- social and economic changes in the Baltic Sea Re- dering reality. Cultural conventions steer the choice gion, described in the book and taking place during of topics for photographing and as in all cultures this the two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall in has meant an emphasis on special occasions in the 1989. In this study two completely different worlds human lifecycle; consequently the pictures leave la- have collided, represented by Gda ńsk and Riga on cunae in the autobiography. As Saukoniemi men- the one hand and Karlskrona on the other hand. In tions, the gaps in the photo collections can neverthe- the book those two stories in a way became quite less be filled to some degree through narration similar. which is often an integral part of viewing the photo- The ethnologists concentrate in their research graphs. By identity work Saukoniemi means that the first and foremost on the change in working condi- photos locate a person in the flow of time and in the tions as well as “the consequences of the new capi- wider society. Family snaps predominate and the talism for an individual”, i.e. worker, in two seem- identities which thus surfaced from women’s narra- ingly different and unconnected worlds: a transna- Reviews 219

tional corporation and the area of sexual services. Karlskrona? Mats Lindqvist skilfully distils the in- The selection is supported among others through the terviews with the employees down to the most im- theories of Webster and von Holdt, who concluded portant elements of working for a new kind of capi- from their research of working conditions in South talist employer: flexibility, learning all your life (p. Africa that the traditional division into legal and il- 76), flexible employment, i.e. with a specific, usual- legal work is outdated. They expanded the classifi- ly short work period (p. 73–74). Perhaps the com- cation and divided work into three areas (p. 20–22). parison to feudal peasants was a step too far (p. The reasons for the transformation quoted by the au- 118), but it is true that the image is not optimistic: thors come from the general global changes driven with interviews describing the world of constant by the elements defined in the introduction: late fear, with rumours and speculations at the end of modernism, neoliberalism and globalisation. each month, connected with layoffs (p. 115, p. 118) The book is divided into three parts. The first one the globalisation does not sound like the right direc- describes changes concerning the lowest level em- tion for the changes in the employees’ world. ployees of a transnational corporation Flextronics, A company, which encourages its employees to whose factory in Karlskrona moves some of its pro- (admittedly, in current situation rather short-term) duction facilities to a newly opened site in Gda ńsk. commitment, loyalty and sacrifice for the company The second part concerns the research of Beatriz (p. 91) and tries to use the metaphors concerning Lindquist performed among persons involved in family and being “in the same boat”, as well as ap- prostitution and persons offering help to prostitutes pealing to common responsibility before the cus- in Riga. The third part includes the conclusions and tomer (with a capital C), in practice establishes the further discussion. arena for dividing people into “us” (on limited-time In the first part of Mats Lindquist’s study an es- employment contracts) and “them” (with permanent pecially interesting element is the opening discus- employment contracts). sion of the Flextronix employees’ situation, the Some of the features of the job and the employee comparisons between the “old” type of companies, are also found in the second part of the book, con- with their roots in modernism, tradition, history and cerning the matter of prostitution in Latvia. Al- the prestige of the last name (an example given by though the initial chapters are devoted to trafficking the author is Ericsson) versus the “new” late-mod- and its complexities, the study is not focused solely ern companies, which are flexible, seem to have no on the matter. A further part clearly states that the history, and are not supported by the name of the women studied by Beatriz Lindqvist seldom con- founder’s family, an example being Flextronics. sidered themselves forced to prostitution or passive “While the modern society’s industry existence is victims of poverty and poor life choices. That point described as a state of being, the late-modern work of view is shared by the Latvian NGO employees life is presented more as a flow” (p. 80). One might working with prostitutes interviewed by Lindqvist. say that the whole study is based on that opposition, The undeniably strong point of Lindqvist’s studies presenting the most important difference: modernity is stressing that perspective, rarely accepted in the vs. late-modernity. West. The author accurately points out that such The study is based on quality interviews that look at women selling sex often does not fit the Mats Lindquist undertook in the years 2003–2005 ideologies of Western feminism, represented in the with the Swedish employees of Flextronics. The in- research by the Canadian, the Swedish and the Nor- terviews paint a rather gloomy and depressive image wegian support organisations undertaking projects of employees of a neoliberal transnational company. in Latvia. They are more vagabonds than tourists, to refer to Women selling sex are considered by the em- Zygmunt Bauman’s theory (p. 84), despite Swe- ployees of Western organisations to be an especially den’s image of a strongly unionized country. An- vulnerable group in need of education and setting other description for such type of an employee, ac- free from slavery. This despite the fact that, as cording to Bennet Harrison’s definition, is “out- Lindqvist shows, even the Western European ap- sider” as opposed to “insider”, an employee with a proach to prostitution is not unambiguous. Lindqvist permanent employment contract (p. 87–88). introduces an interesting division into: a Swedish Who, then, is a typical employee of a factory in “vision strongly rooted in the welfare state project 220 Reviews

concept” and taking into consideration the participa- Göteborg/Stockholm 2010. 222 pp. Ill. ISBN 978- tion of “social engineers”, who help establish pro- 91-7061-079-0. grams of satisfying human needs (p. 231). But the Norwegian and Canadian approach, according to
For a fellow Nordic citizen this book is a surpris- Lindqvist, is “more liberal late-modern”, where the ingly exotic read. This compilation of texts by thir- influence of the state on the private life of the citizen teen Danish and Swedish authors reveals the scale should be lesser, and where the individualisation of of regional differentiation taking place within the needs, as well as the empowerment of sex Northern Europe. The focus is on the ten-year workers is stressed (p. 231, 233–234). period after the construction of the almost eight This part of the book ends with two pessimistic, kilometre long Öresund Bridge. Here a convincing albeit especially convincing statements. The first statement is made about the existence of a transna- one concerns the discussion and the critique of tional region between Sweden and Denmark, but, in “global sisterhood” or “global feminism” as an idea, addition, this book also reflects the ethnological re- which does not include in its concept of global com- directions this can mean. Although the writers have munity of submission and oppression the “cultural, various academic and professional backgrounds in social, economic and symbolic” differences between the Öresund area, the majority of texts are written women in various parts of the world (p. 242–243). by ethnologists. For these ethnologists the Öresund The thought can be commented upon with a quote region is not only a vision or a dream but part of a included in the study, a simple statement of a Lat- lived reality in the area. It can be observed how the vian midwife after a workshop organised by the reality of everyday border crossings has been over- Canadian activists: “There is so much they don’t un- shadowed in the way the region has been discussed derstand” (p. 238). The quote is used in the context in the local media and politics. Thus, while many of the diversity of experiences, strategies and defini- studies come to the conclusion that a true “cross- tions of commercial sex, well analysed by Lind- border identity” or “region” seldom becomes a real- qvist. ity, this book insists on new tools for analysing the The studies by Lindqvists truly shine in how they many ways such “transnational regions” can exist. ground the empirical research in the theory of global The title of the book, Regionauterna , originates trends. I see very few weaker areas, but must men- from Tom O’Dell’s earlier texts which also concern tion the lack of more detailed information concern- the Sound area and its “regionauts”. In the articles ing the research method, a bit too narrow approach this term regionaut functions as a common denomi- to research concerning prostitution (although the au- nator for those local actors who have “learned” to thor stresses the complexity of the issue and the in- use and “make” the region. The term itself is here ability of hearing out all parties), mentioning the fa- used only by ethnologists. Thus, although the book cility in Gda ńsk without explaining why its employ- concerns a European borderland, the actual term ees were not included in the study. I think it would “borderland” is not used by the writers. It seems that have made for a much more comprehensible ap- it is the Öresund, a fifteen kilometre wide sound, proach, if the authors showed both sides of the Bal- and the Bridge that crosses it, that make this change tic Sea in both studies: the Swedish visiting prosti- of perspective possible. Significantly, the contribu- tutes in Latvia, as well as the Polish side of Flex- tors of this book are also regionauts themselves. Be- tronics. However, these minor qualms do not ing aware of this, they emphasize that this “region” weaken what I consider to be a very interesting and should not be regarded too mechanically or as ho- valuable book. mogeneous. In the end, this regional approach is Maja Chacinska, Gda ńsk also based on a specific institutional setting where the analysis of the region is supported by the region itself. This book also celebrates the first decade of Dreams and Routines of a Transnational the Lund University’s Centre for the Study of Den- Region mark. Regionauterna – Öresundsregionen från vision till In the articles the Bridge and the ways of crossing vardag . Orvar Löfgren & Fredrik Nilsson (eds.). it come into focus. On one hand, the sheer magni- Centrum för Danmarkstudier 24. Makadam förlag, tude of the construction has made it an actor in it- Reviews 221

self, a leading character in region- building. At the A general conclusion drawn in the book is that the same time, the regionauts (daily commuters, job Öresund region should not be understood in terms of seekers, students, tourists, shoppers, etc.) adopt not a single “Öresund identity”. The bridge has created only the physical but also the cultural landscape. new rhythms and routines for crossing the national Sometimes these regionauts can realize the transna- border, but these are also selective opportunities. tional dreams presented during the bridge construc- What is at stake is not the visions in projects but the tion in the 1990s, but often they find alternatives. way that people use, or decide not to use, the region. Here, for example, some everyday practices can In the book, some choices of terminology could come to mark “national differences” (Löfgren) or have been more explicit. Not only the term “border- the mobility across the border, its routines and bodi- land” is missing but also “Europeanization”. In the ly experience, can come to reflect and relocate the text, it is noted how the EU has been crucial for the experience of “home” and homeness (O’Dell). For a region but that the EU itself also needs this transna- recent cosmopolitan immigrant in the region who tional region as an example of European integration. has specific competences of her own, the experience On the other hand, this book also gives insight into of a transnational region is rather different than for the effects of the recent global economic crisis. Such locals who remember how it was in the past (Beck). topicality is extraordinary and seems to reflect well Also, the right and wrong ways of border crossing the processes that affect the lives of regionauts. All are redefined. Here car commuters and smugglers in all, this book is an excellent read for everyone in- face the new tollgates and the media stories about terested in the complexities of present-day European drug couriers (Nilsson). borderlands. Orvar Löfgren notes how the tendency to regard Karri Kiiskinen, Turku “region” in terms of a certain spatiality easily leads to false expectations of its homogenization. In their routines and attitudes, the regionauts do not create a Emotions in Research uniform region but rather a changing “archipelago”. Känslornas koreografi. Reflektioner kring känsla For the practically oriented regionauts, there is also och förståelse i kulturforskning. Lena Marander- a need for “interesting differences” that a borderland Eklund and Ruth Illman (eds.). Gidlunds förlag, can offer. On the other hand, this “transnational re- Hedemora 2007. 200 pp. ISBN 978-91-7844- gion” is also rather easy to avoid, for example, as 735-0. the presence of Danish cultural products on the Swedish side of the Sound is very limited (Sanders).
Emotions have become a popular topic in cultural Here stereotypes also downplay the role of diversity analysis, and a recurring discussion concerns the and it seems that for Swedes, Denmark has even be- universality of emotions or whether they should be come a projection of Swedes’ own fears concerning understood as historical and cultural specifics. How- migrants (Alsmark). ever, in the present book, from Åbo Academy, this Also discussed in this book are forces that affect discussion is not addressed. Instead researchers region building, namely, ideas about creativity from the disciplines of religion, philosophy and (Tankjær). All in all, the articles by diverse regional folklore investigate the role of feelings in academic actors are an asset as they provide different perspec- research. The general challenge is how to integrate tives on cross-border region-building. The book also emotions (the researcher’s own and the informants’) ends with two articles that put experiences of border in a way that at the same time enables critical reflec- crossings into historical perspective (Salamon) and tion. As such, the agenda of the book is self-reflex- show how the sheer scale of the construction causes ivity and inter-subjectivity as a necessary and in- memory loss about the opposition it once faced (Id- escapable dimension of any humanistic research vall). dealing with people and culture. The way the ethnological studies contribute here The book consists of three parts with four articles to wider discussions is something one would be hap- each. The first addresses the question of how emo- py to see elsewhere too. It seems that if a regional tions have been handled in philosophy as an episte- revolution takes place in the Öresund region, it is mological dimension. In the history of philosophy something to be verified especially by ethnologists. emotions have an important role not least in the 222 Reviews

hermeneutical tradition where interpretation and emotions are considered to be – which bodily and “empathic reflection” involves the researcher’s own mentally experiences are characterized as which feelings and subjective understanding. Also with re- emotions and how they are expressed – is not a uni- gard to cognitive dimensions of understanding, bod- versal phenomenon beyond time, space, and social ily experiences, and the dialogic meeting between and cultural context. In the present book it is never- cultures, the authors discuss emotional potentials. theless taken for granted what the category refers to The second part investigates emotions – prim- in spite of the reflexive, personal, individual, and – arily the researcher’s own emotions – in fieldwork. in short – subjective dimensions that, according to As stated in the first paper, fieldwork is much harder the authors, are involved in dealing with emotions in to cope with in practice than when described in the any kind of understanding, fieldwork or research. In textbook. Participant observation often involves the a deep self-reflexivity like the one promoted here, researcher deeply in heavy emotional situations the awareness of the potential ethnocentrism of the where empathy is certainly called for, but the ideal researcher’s own category of emotion would have of an emotionally detached researcher is impossible been highly relevant. and also irrelevant. Thus involvement is called for. Tine Damsholt, Copenhagen Building trust across gender, generation, language, and other barriers also might succeed as a result of deeper involvement on the part of the researcher. Enchanted by Spas The researcher’s own emotions are thus a potential Tom O’Dell, Spas. The Cultural Economy of Hospi- instead of a barrier towards understanding. In this tality, Magic and the Senses. Nordic Academic part emotions are turned into a broader agenda as re- Press, Lund 2010. 160 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-91-85509- gards fieldwork ethics, subjectivity, inter- subjectiv- 35-5. ity, self-reflexivity, and the personal process of do- ing research projects. The reflections are elaborated
In this book Tom O’Dell analyses the spa indus- on but do not bring anything new to the current dis- try that has expanded rapidly in Sweden during the cussions of methodology within ethnology. last decade. He focuses on the complicated interplay The last part deals with emotions as objects of re- of hospitality and the magic of sensuality. The aim search. The scope is very broad and brings us from is to make the reader aware of how today’s quest for Christian metal rock to processes of mourning – in a health and well-being is combined with the cultural single family and also how mourning can be textual- history of the old mineral springs and channelled ized in literature. From this reader’s perspective the into a comprehensive economic network of mutual best contribution in the volume is found in this part, influence. by the folklorist Lena Marander-Eklund. O’Dell describes how a great many non-material She argues that one physical expression contains values are made concrete in saleable services and many different meanings, and she shows how this products. It is a matter of launching a lifestyle, cre- can be investigated in her fine and concise study of ating an atmosphere, projecting an aura, and also of how laughter becomes part of narratives of giving generating trust in the staff and the therapy. There is birth to a child for the first time. much to gain from succeeding in this enterprise. The laugh can expose, unveil but also blur feel- Many hotel complexes have taken on a new life ings in these verbalizations of bodily and emotional through the growing health industry. This applies experiences. Marander-Eklund thus investigates the both to places that were previously known as health heterogeneity of emotional outbursts and the com- resorts and to completely new sites that create their plex relationship between expression and meaning own traditions. and how this complexity is enacted in narratives. After a historical exposé of Swedish health re- The book as a whole would have benefited from sorts, the analysis is concentrated on three major spa this more complex understanding of emotions. For a hotels: Varbergs Kurort Hotel & Spa, Varberg Stads reader who has dealt with emotions from the per- Hotel and Asia Spa, and Hasseludden Conference & spective of cultural history it is striking how emo- Yasuragi outside Stockholm. O’Dell has done par- tions otherwise are dealt with as an unambiguous ticipant observation and also interviewed managers, and “natural” category throughout the book. What employees, and guests. He has studied newspapers Reviews 223

and magazines, advertisements and brochures, sta- treatments are geared solely to physical enjoyment tistics, and website presentations. and basically neoliberal in character, egotistical and He finds that the ambition to combine hopes of perhaps even hedonistic. medicinally effective treatment with the connota- O’Dell uses general ideas about magic, mostly tions of a luxury hotel or a Japanese bath house taken from Marcel Mauss’s A General Theory of makes great demands, especially of the architecture. Magic (1902), to reveal what happens in connection His study of advertisements and prospectuses re- with a spa treatment. He emphasizes the ritual as- veals concern down to the finest detail. Arched en- pect: the slow, repeated movements accompanied by trances and winding corridors show the individual’s certain words and phrases. Substances for external passage into a world where different laws apply and use – selected essences, oils, and clays – are as- new opportunities are revealed. The colour scheme cribed at least symbolic healing capacity and are of the walls is expected to create the right atmos- combined with massage of different kinds. Profes- phere of warmth and rest. Various boundary mark- sional tactile therapies are available only in the right ers contribute to a sense of seclusion and intimacy, place and the right context. They are an effective while large windows admit sun and light to indicate form of communication, and the very rhythm of the proximity to life-giving nature. these movements is intended to release energy and Even though these spas attract many conferences affect one’s emotional life. and group excursions, the marketing tends to exhibit For O’Dell it is obvious that these emotional im- panoramic natural scenery and empty rooms in com- pressions have cognitive aspects – “[affect] is a cor- bination with pictures of individuals or couples. poreally anchored way of knowing the world” (p. There were amorous and sexual elements in the im- 96) or “embodied knowledge giving shape to the age of the old spa culture, but O’Dell finds that less world” (p. 97) – and that the emotions gain strength attention is devoted to this in the material he has col- by having not only biological but also social and lected. Nor does he find the focus on family to- cultural roots. Those who are not content with this getherness that was a typical feature of advertise- line of thought can be given explanations of the ef- ments when the home sauna and private swimming fect of the cure in ostensibly more scientific termi- pool were launched in Sweden in the twentieth cen- nology. There is talk of theta waves, increased blood tury. The effect that a spa treatment is expected to circulation, and a strengthened immune system. give in the twenty- first century definitely seems to The inspiration for today’s spas comes not only be linked to the individual. from the old European culture of taking the waters, According to Tom O’Dell, the presentation of with its mixture of science and religion, but also modern spa therapies, promising healing and flow- from the Orient and from various branches of the ing energies, can sometimes verge on the occult. To- New Age movement. This is evident, of course, in day’s health magic may be largely secularized, but it the Tai Chi, Qigong, yoga, and meditation exercises is none the less hedged with rules and regulations. on offer, and also in the aroma therapy and the back- Spas are described as sanctuaries, dedicated to the ground music that creates a relaxing atmosphere divinities of health. Just as in a church, you can along with the trickling water. At Yasuragi Hassel- smell the incense and realize that you have to be- udden they declare that the advice of a Feng Shui have in a particular way, moving cautiously, lower- master was enlisted when the rooms were to be fur- ing your gaze, talking in a low voice, and clearly nished and decorated. showing consideration for other people. Stress is O’Dell is careful to point out that the ambition to something you remove like an overcoat as you put affect both body and soul could also be found in the on the obligatory dress for the cure. All worldly old spa culture. Claims of spiritual dimensions in worries should be left behind as you walk along the the treatment may have changed, but they have not corridors barefoot or in simple slippers. been eliminated, and today, as in the past, the spas The staff are expected to wear some kind of uni- allude to the waters as the fountain of youth. An- form and guide the guests in everything from the other similarity is the fact that the spa setting is geography of the place to the etiquette of spa cul- dominated by women, at least as guests. ture. They are supposed to make a friendly and seri- The spa industry has moreover built upon the old ous impression, to counter the criticism that spa idea of an after-cure, a continued healthy life on re- 224 Reviews

turn home from the spa. In its modern form, this course, and for decades it was the countryside in leads to totally renovated, fully tiled bathrooms with particular that was examined through these dimen- large oak bathtubs or a new jacuzzi. Bathroom sions. As such, this anthology is firmly attached in shelves are filled with various fragrant spa products, the traditions of Finnish ethnology, but brings at the exclusively designed or easily available in the near- same time a fresh viewpoint to rural study through est food store. Green plants, peaceful music, and gender. The gender aspects of countryside have ob- candles create the right mood. viously been researched before, but as the editors One of the differences between spas past and note, the emphasis has been on the external conse- present is the short time that is now usually avail- quences of gender, for example in the gendered divi- able. A weekend is the rule, not a four-week stay as sion of work. The articles of this volume focus on in the old days. The experiences therefore have to be people’s everyday lives, and try to understand how intensive. both society and individual lives are structured by The sensual elements in spa treatments have an gender. One of the goals of the writers is to show the opposite side that fascinates O’Dell. Instead of processes of how gender is produced, and the ways bubble baths and rubs, one can be allowed to float in which accepted gender-based behaviour has been silently and weightlessly in total darkness. Deprived constructed in different times and in different of many of the normal sensory impressions, time groups. seems to move very slowly. In this state you are ex- The authors consider space and its formation pected to enjoy a special kind of rest and hopefully through cultural and social phenomena. The focus is to find yourself. on lived space , and its social practices. Through the Spa treatments somehow seem to have won a incorporating of the senses, the imagination, and proselyte in the author of this book. He sums up: “A various symbols and utopias; places become mean- visit to a spa may be seen as a way of pampering or ingful only through the experiences and interpreta- spoiling oneself, and of having fun, but in order to tions of human beings. Through the concept of work, it is dependent upon a densely woven web of space, questions of identity are also implicitly ad- rituals, props, and representations that provide the dressed: what is the relationship between space, spa visit with its energy, and move it that much place and identity on both the local and the individ- closer to being a magical experience of sorts – and if ual level? nothing else, a homage to the Self” (p. 91). In ethnology, one of the common areas of re- Regardless of how this may be, in this book Tom search in recent years has been change and the strat- O’Dell provides us with a number of interesting per- egies available to people in adapting to it. This an- spectives on the new spa culture, placed in a clear thology is no exception, and the authors focus on historical context, with an exemplary presentation of changing rural processes at a micro level, in other his analysis of the Swedish spa culture of today. words on how the changes affect people’s everyday Elisabeth Mansén, Stockholm lives. Life at a micro level is examined through the applying of classical field work methods: inter- views, written oral history and participant observa- Changes of Everyday Life in Gendered tion. Analysing the material collected in this way Rural Spaces the authors aim at mapping the life of rural people as Gendered Rural Spaces . Pia Olsson & Helena Ruot- an entity, in which their occupations, social relations sala (eds.). Studia Fennica, Ethnologica 12. Finnish and values are interconnected. The articles thus fo- Literature Society, Helsinki 2009. 158 pp. Ill. ISBN cus on a way of life and on how the pressure of 978-952-222-154-4. change affects it, as well as the relationship between localities and individual places. The main questions
This collection of articles edited by Pia Olsson are how individuals are responding to these changes, and Helena Ruotsala focuses on analysing the coun- what their strategies, solutions and tactics are, and tryside and its multiple meanings through gender. how they have experienced the process of change. The main emphasis of the book is on rural spaces as Answers to these questions are offered in eight gendered spaces. Place and space have been the ma- different articles written by Ann-Catrin Östman, Ka- jor dimensions in ethnology for a long time, of tariina Heikkilä, Nancy Anne Konvalinka, Mari Im- Reviews 225

monen, Tiina Suopajärvi, Katri Kaunisto and the of land. In her article, Östman appropriately points editors Pia Olsson and Helena Ruotsala. The editors out the role of early social sciences in building the have also written a good introduction, in which they ambivalent and strictly gendered image of agrarian define and explain the concepts of place, (rural) people and their everyday life. space and gender, and introduce the project and its Pia Olsson has also a historical perspective in her goals; the articles comprising this book have article and she notes that women were tied in their evolved within a research network called Gendered home surroundings and felt their homes often as an Rural Spaces and are the results of seminars and obstacle right before and after the Second World meetings of this group. The authors’ relationships War in Finland. Katriina Heikkilä shows the change with theories of gender vary, however the individual that has taken place in about hundred years. She articles are connected in that the shared starting asks in her article “Farm space as an arena for fe- point has been in the occupational, structural and en- male entrepreneurship”, how female entrepreneurs vironmental changes that have taken place after the on present day farms in south-west Finland make Second World War. The themes of the articles form use of and reshape the rural space around them. In a whole, nevertheless incorporating multiple time the transitional period of Finnish farming after Fin- levels and spaces in both Finland and in other coun- land’s joining in the European Union in 1995, the tries (Russia and Spain). The anthology begins with inhabitants of the countryside have had to find new a historical account and then proceeds to address means of livelihood. Many new businesses have questions from a present-day perspective. The in- been started, and women have been active in this formants of the articles show how important their process, too. Using theme interviews with women active role is in terms of their quality of life, and, re- who have established a business of their own, or spectively, what the consequences of potential spa- manage some subsidiary industry on a farm as her tial control and constriction may be. material, Heikkilä shows how female entrepreneurs Here I introduce few of the eight articles to give do not just live in rural areas, but also actively create more precise picture of the content and issues of the the rural space, and the images and representations book. The first article by Ann-Catrin Östman, related to it. Home is no more an obstacle for “Land and agrarian masculinity – space and gender women, as they are now active participants in their in Finnish Cultural History 1933–1936”, discusses rural environment and have been able to convert ru- how peasantry was described in an exhaustive series ral space into new uses through their entrepreneurial of interdisciplinary work, namely Finnish Cultural activities. An interesting point of the article is how History, published in 1933–1936. Östman points to new uses for farm space are being created in order to the connections between the traditions of rural histo- make living possible in the rural areas, even in the riography and the formulations and understandings future. of masculine ideals. She argues that in the volumes Even if crucial changes have been taking place in in question, the material culture and social institu- the past few decades, the places of/for women have tions of rural society – labelled agrarian – were not in any straightforward way been completely lib- made visible and peasants were positioned through erated even in contemporary rural Finland. In what the discipline of history, although defined in gen- in my opinion is the most interesting article of this dered terms. The cultural representations of peasant- collection, Helena Ruotsala asks ”Is there room for ry were contradictory and ambivalent; the idealised women in the reindeer forest”, and the answer is peasants were described in terms of freedom and in- both yes and no. Traditional and modern concep- dependence, but at the same time peasantry was tions of women’s space introduced in two earlier ar- viewed as undeveloped, childish and uncivilised. ticles seem to actualise at the same time in northern The same dichotomy has, one might note, labelled Finland. Based on the evidence of her fieldwork, rural studies and the general opinion of agrarian Ruotsala argues that women have a decisive role in people until our days. At the same time, a gender- today’s reindeer herding: they not only make up differentiated rural society was depicted; women about one quarter of all reindeer owners, but they were confined in domestic spaces and were not seen also perform many of the necessary herding tasks; as actors in the local public spaces, whereas men furthermore they are often wage earners and main were depicted as settlers and colonisers of vast areas supporters of the family. However, work in the rein- 226 Reviews

deer forest remains predominantly in the hands of if it is suggested in the introduction that the collec- men, who hold the official power; young women are tion would give equal attention to both genders, this facing the challenges that arise from male domi- is not the case. For rural and agrarian research in nance. Efforts to limit women’s access to reindeer general the ethnological approach is always wel- herding are to be seen as a form of spatial control come, however, and the bringing together of the over women and also as a form control over social concepts of space and gender and the applying of identity. Ruotsala’s article shows how patriarchy these concepts on the everyday lives of people liv- lives on in the rural areas in the North, also being ing in the countryside is both refreshing and inter- one of the main reasons why women leave the esting. northern countryside. Leena Hangasmaa, Jyväskylä All the eight articles together give a wide and multifaceted picture of gendered rural spaces. Each writer responds to her specific research questions, Folk Culture in Focus introduces her methods and skilfully applies her Folkkultur i fokus . Maj Reinhammar (ed.). No. 106 chosen theoretical perspective. The articles proceed in Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi, Kungl. in a consistent and logical manner, and the same ap- Gustav Adolfs Akademien, Uppsala 2009. 156 pp., plies to the entire volume: the order of the individual Ill. ISBN 867-91-85352-79-1. texts is sensible, and they are set in dialogue with each other, a sign of competent editorial work. The
To mark its 75th anniversary in 2007, the Royal topics for the articles may be quite different, which Gustavus Adolphus Academy for Swedish Folk means that not all of the various questions outlined Culture arranged seminars on the theme of folk cul- by the editors in the introduction can be answered. ture. A total of thirteen lectures have been pub- The sum of the collection is larger than its individ- lished, all of them illuminating this crucial concept ual parts, however; nearly all of the authors have from different angles. succeeded in shedding light on the topics of the vol- The term folk culture is particularly associated ume from their own perspectives, and the reader will with the two academic disciplines we know as eth- thus receive plenty of new information on gendered nology and folkloristics, although many other names rural spaces, what and where these spaces are, and have been used: folklife studies, culture studies, and who uphold or resist them. The reader will learn that Swedish terms such as folkdiktsforskning and folk- gendered rural spaces are both ambiguous and mut- minnesforskning . In articles by Birgitta Svensson able, like all other aspects of rural life, but may also and Ulf Palmenfelt we can read about the central be surprisingly static in their mental manifestations; values in the scholarly activities concealed behind implicit structures are solid and slow to change. all these terms, and why they ultimately were not With the rapid changes of many aspects of life, a adequate as names for our disciplines. Birgitta sense of contradiction and uncertainty may trouble Svensson gives an account of the development of rural inhabitants. Swedish ethnology and the watersheds in Swedish Gendered Rural Spaces represents basic ethno- history that forced the subject to change its name. logical research for our days; it enlightens the for- “Folk” once stood for the peasantry and “folk cul- mation of meanings and mental processes in ture” was rustic culture, but after many turns in this people’s everyday lives. The volume is also tightly long dance one may wonder whether these two connected with the scholarly tradition of ethnology words are suitable at all in the academic discourse as through its subject matter, while approaching its elements in the names of disciplines. She very ele- topic from fresh perspectives. Gender research has gantly looks for triads which in some way character- been topical in ethnology in recent times, but it is a ize ethnology through its history. Swedish , folk , and rather novel approach to combine it with a rural per- culture have different meanings in relation to ideas spective or with the discussion of space. However, I of distinctiveness, similarity, and diversity in time, would like to see more focus on masculinity and the place, and social setting through different forms of male perspective in gender research; this volume, expression: place, narrative, and artefact. For her the too, has been entirely written by women, and most perspective of cultural history is central. Ulf Pal- of the articles focus on the female experience. Even menfelt represents this in his article about folk cul- Reviews 227

ture as a political power factor in the Swedish wel- interest groups, or political organizations which fare state and in the Swedish university world. Later concern large numbers of people in a more con- the concept of folk became problematic in the multi- crete way than, say, studies of the crown or the no- cultural, classless, but ethnocentric Sweden. Pal- bility. Bo Lindberg demonstrates how the authori- menfelt nevertheless suggests continued uses for the ties have viewed the people. The concept is rather concept: for an ethnologist or a folklorist “folk” can new, only going back to the eighteenth century, but indicate a desire to see the world from a bottom-up it has been ascribed many different meanings and perspective, with everything that this involves of has therefore been the subject of different kinds of questioning, everyday ordinariness, and collectivity. interest from the authorities. Demographers view That folk culture has been and still is central to the people as something that can be counted and the work of the Academy is clear from Bengt af described. Politicians see in the people a serious Klintberg’s account of the publication of Swedish potential for progress or regression. As social folklore. This survey is valuable as an introduction awareness has changed, the people have been to the different series, many of which are already out viewed as consumers of care and education. As a of print. The article also shows what has been of in- romantic phenomenon, the people are also associ- terest to Swedish folklorists at different times. ated with a certain territory, a certain language, Even within the Academy, “folk culture” was a and hence also with a certain culture. Lindberg’s problematic concept. There was debate about the conclusion is that the concept today is approaching place of that term in the name of the Academy, but what it meant in the eighteenth century, since it after a few years’ critical thought, it was decided to now seems to lack ideological content, standing retain it. Nils-Arvid Bringéus sheds light on the more or less for “the masses”, vulgus . process surrounding this. These four articles to- Lena Johannesson shows how theorists of art gether give a good overview of the history of re- have viewed folk art through the ages, from some- search in ethnology and folkloristics, and the ideas thing that did not have the same rank as “proper” that have prevailed in Swedish university life when art, via something that was admittedly interesting the two disciplines have needed to create distinctive but difficult to handle, to something intrinsically in- images for themselves. teresting to study as art. The term folk has also But folk culture as a concept does not concern meant different things, from the peasantry via chil- only ethnology and folkloristics. In the Academy dren and patients in psychiatry to today’s large mass there are representatives of several other branches of of people interested in global art. It is clear that eth- scholarship which also explore folk and folk culture. nologists have taken over the study of folk art, but Bo Gräslund shows what life on a farm and in a vil- they ask different questions about the material than lage could be like in the Iron Age. In his very lucid those an art scholar would pose. article he does not make any great fuss about the dif- In the same way as in the study of art, the term ferent classes in society. The elite and the people are folk plays a part in comparative religion. Anders not set up as opposites. The reader nevertheless un- Hultgård asks what folk religion is and cites some derstands that the society of the time may have been pairs of concepts in an attempt to pin down this as complicated as today’s, albeit in a different way, non-established, non-canonical religion. He charac- and that people then had similar joys and sorrows to terizes folk religion through religious actions and ours, irrespective of social background. The intro- ideas that lie alongside the doctrines of established duction to the article is particularly enlightening, as religion, in that the representatives of established re- Gräslund lets people in a Swedish Iron Age village ligion do not embrace folk religion, and folk reli- meet a post-modern Homo sapiens . gion “has its place among the broad strata of the In the disciplines of history and demography people”. Of course there are many ways to define too, the word folk , is interesting, but this is more folk religion, from national religion to folk belief or because the Swedish word in its definite form also the religion of the masses. Hultgård’s main interest, means “the people”. Torkel Jansson shows how however, is in showing how individual religious historical research at Uppsala University has components are treated at the transition from having changed over the years from a study of “kings and had a place in established religion to becoming a wars” to investigations of occupational categories, part of folk religion. His examples are the corn god 228 Reviews

in Vånga and other stories of that kind, where the Finding a New Kind of Savo transitions described by the author take place be- Savo ja sen kansa. [Savo and Its People.] Riitta Rä- tween Old Norse religion, Catholicism, and Protes- sänen (ed.) Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran toi- tantism. mituksia 1192. Savon historia 7. Suomalaisen Kir- Place-name research examines how people have jallisuuden Seura, Helsinki 2008. 560 pp. Ill. Maps. given names to the localities around them. Svante ISBN 978-951-746-987-6. Strandberg shows how the life and livelihood of the folk are reflected in place-names. In dialectology
Savo ja sen kansa [Savo and Its People] is an ex- too, folk is a central concept. Lars-Erik Edlund’s tensive compilation on the province of Savo written analysis of some dialectal words demonstrates, by six researchers. Its aim is to discuss what hailing among other things, how everyday work among the from Savo and Savo culture are all about from dif- ferent points of view, and to give answers to the fol- population is visible in some expressions, how lowing questions: what are Savo people like, how world history is reflected, so to speak, in the way have they been described and how have they under- people adopt words and reshape them to suit their stood themselves? The book has been written by dialect. Pekka Hakamies, Aila Mielikäinen, Mervi Naakka- It is also interesting to read how Lars-Gunnar Korhonen, Pia Puntanen, Matti Räsänen, Riitta Rä- Larsson compares the conditions for Hungarian and sänen, Anna-Leena Siikala and Marjo-Riitta Simpa- other Uralian folk culture. He says that the distance nen. The study is interesting in both structure and between folk culture and what he would call “the content, and it differs from traditional cultural de- culture of the few” has increased the longer a scriptions. It is divided into four main sections: the people, the Hungarians, have had a place in the Region and the People, the World of Beliefs, the European context. World of Living and the World of Values. It needs Evert Taube’s links with different categories of to be noted here that these research perspectives people – from the folks at home in the Vinga light- complement each other and together provide a com- house, the people in Gothenburg, and in school, to prehensive and sympathetic picture of the Savo sailors, restaurant musicians, and Argentinian gau- people, their way of life and its ties to nature, and chos – are described by Olle Edström. their sense of community. A central position is also To sum up, it was interesting to read how varied occupied by how Savo has been constructed, pro- the meaning of folk has been and still is. It was also duced and interpreted literarily and visually at dif- rewarding to see that the term plays an important ferent times in history. The book highlights both the role in many of the disciplines represented in the spontaneous originality of the Savo culture and the Academy. In practice it seems as if the polarity of conscious influences through which efforts to create folk–elite still holds as a theoretical approach in a culture have been made in different times and in different cultural contexts. many of the disciplines covered by the work of the In their article, entitled “Savo kotimaana” [Savo Academy. It also seems as if folk in most of the dis- as a Homeland], Matti Räsänen and Riitta Räsänen ciplines, as they are presented here (in all the articles discuss the meanings of place in human life. This except Lars-Gunnar Larsson’s) still stands for context highlights the connection between place and “Swedes”; it is Swedish folklore, Swedish customs, time, empiricism and contextuality. These are fac- Swedish religion, Swedish dialects, and Swedish tors that largely regulate people’s relationship to history – and perhaps the most Swedish of all that is place. This context also places emphasis on emo- Swedish folk, Evert Taube – that is at the centre. But tional factors, the cultural significance of which has this is best explained by the fact that it was the received little attention in research so far. Nostalgia Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy for Swedish and its existence and influence on culture is also a Folk Culture that commissioned this book. Several recent perspective and introduces its own special di- of the articles could be used as required reading on mension to the text. Furthermore, attention needs to courses, since many of them are lucid surveys with be given to the diversity of cultural characteristics general interest. revealed by the distinctive features. There is no Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Åbo single true Savo, as we can say that everyone in- Reviews 229

volved has his or her own Savo, and even that is traits admired and aimed for by people. Significant never an established concept, experience, view, issues in this sense include exceptional acts and memory or image, but, rather, an idea or set of ideas their combination with intellectual insight and apt created on the basis of this very moment. In this verbal expression. Savo stories feature three differ- connection, a central position is also occupied by ent types of heroes: strongmen, wise men and ras- time − past, present or future − which, as we inter- cals, in addition to whom we may also mention fa- pret culture, whether by researching and/or experi- mous criminals. In this connection, Hakamies also encing it, exert an influence on each other. It is quite discusses the way in which Savo people use lan- aptly said in the text that ’The viewpoint of cultural guage: ‘The main purpose of speaking is not to state researchers on the past is flexible – they can move in the final truth in a clear way but rather to prompt the the target area along the continua of mythic, cyclic listener to make his or her own conclusions. When a or linear time.’ Savo person is having a conversation with someone, In an article entitled “Arvot ja mielenlaatu” she or he is constantly fathoming the other person’s [Values and Mentality], Pekka Hakamies discusses intelligence.’ It must further be noted that it is diffi- the Savo mentality and Savo people’s ideas of good cult for Savo people to give a clearly positive or and evil, of acceptable and condemnable behaviour, negative answer, as they dare not take a clear stand of qualities worth pursuing and avoiding. They al- on anything and are thus open to various interpreta- ways have an effect on the local culture, and this is- tions. Part of the discussion is also devoted to the jo- sue also highlights the diversity of the research per- viality and antipathos typical of the Savo mentality, spective and, thus, its freshness as well. The analysis meaning avoidance of all kinds of pomposity and in the article is presented in an interesting way; it is self-important displays. On the other hand, popular well justified and opens up new perspectives on morality is characterized by tacit intracultural Savo culture as a whole. Hakamies examines the is- knowledge, its presence and impressiveness. There sue by comparing it to, for instance, similar charac- is a consciousness of orders and prohibitions, views teristics typical of the Western Finnish cultural re- of what is right and wrong, and even if they are un- gion. He also discusses what is typical of Savo spoken, they still regulate people’s everyday lives. people and culture as well as what is specific to this Anna-Leena Siikala’s article “Tunteiden ilmaisu culture. This context highlights the concepts of na- ja eroottinen huumori” [Expression of Emotions and tional character and world view and their position in Erotic Humor] shows in a very delicate manner how cultural research. The discussion also considers the people representing different cultures speak very ecological conditions and their impact on the local differently about their emotions and how important culture. According to Hakamies, the intellectual cul- it is for people in general to express their emotional ture and the cultural models involved are dependent states verbally. In this way, the lived and experi- on ecological adaptation and material culture. In this enced emotions – such as joy and sorrow, love and connection, it is good to consider, among other hate – are shared, they are identified and they re- things, the slash-and-burn culture typical of the ceive a phenotype characteristic of their culture. In Savo region which has had a crucial impact on the her article, Siikala asks a highly important question local way of life. We also need to remember the im- from the viewpoint of cultural research: ’…what portance of folk belief, especially the status of the was the attitude to emotions like in the Savo cul- seer in his community as an approved and respected tures? Did the common people, defined by national individual with exceptional powers. Individual cul- stereotypes as folks tending to jest and use humoris- tural traits highlight issues such as the position of tic figurative language, have the ability to identify the devil in tradition of beliefs and tales, cursing and and express emotions?’ related conceptions, the vice of dancing, respect for This is where the significance of folk lyricism be- Sunday peace, playing with death and the vice of comes evident. On the other hand, Siikala highlights card playing. All of them have been factors govern- the holistic nature of culture and how sparse and of- ing the way of life at certain points in time and they ten barren living conditions, the hardness and harsh- help to outline an idea of Savo mentality. ness of life, are directly connected with the expres- Hakamies also studies the problematics of the sion of emotions. So, sadness in Savo lyric poetry world of values and mentality through the cultural does not only describe the internal feelings of 230 Reviews

people; it is often related to the poverty of the home forms of engagement and making the reader think and concerns over livelihood. Feelings of sorrow about the problematic of Savo in a new way. and grief may be described very traumatically, but Anneli Meriläinen-Hyvärinen, Oulu they are still not desirable emotional states. Through sorrow, a Savo folk lyric may thus end up in verses looking for ways to survive and even in ones that are The Spaces In-Between amusing in one way or another. The 19th century Mellanrummens möjligheter. Studier av föränder- concern-focused lyric poetry in Savo had no room liga landskap . Katarina Saltzman (ed.). Makadam for touching, emotionally focused expression. It also förlag, Göteborg/Stockholm 2009. 250 pp. Ill. ISBN needs to be noted that emotional experiences and 978-91-7061-064-6. their expression changed in the course of people’s lives. They also varied according to whether the ex-
The title of the publication can be translated as pression was private or collective and the underly- “Opportunities of in-between spaces”. Studies of ing cultural context. changing landscapes”. It is a result of an interdisci- In her article Siikala also discusses the back- plinary project concerning the dynamics of the ur- ground of the poem called “Jos mun tuttuni tulisi”, ban fringe, and it focuses on urban fringes, in-be- which has been considered a top achievement in tween spaces, places that are changing or waiting for Finnish folk lyricism, as well as research done on it. change. In the introduction, the editor Katarina One version of this poem has also been recorded in Saltzman points out that urban development pro- Savo – at Juva – in 1815. This poem is exceptional cesses may take time, and that some areas might be in that it has interested researchers internationally in a state of waiting for years, while decisions are ever since the early 19th century. The Swede A. F. being made and implemented. Examples of this can Skjöldebrand and the Italian Giuseppe Acerbi pub- be seen in many of the chapters of this book. It has lished translations of it in French and English in to be borne in mind, though, that such places, which their travel accounts in 1799–1804. J. W. von are viewed by the local authorities mainly as re- Goethe later published a German translation called serves for future expansion, in the meantime are the “Finnisches Lied”, and the Swede C. G. Zetterberg everyday landscapes of many people. This book acquired 467 translations of the poem in different gives us glimpses of what goes on in such ephemer- languages. The poem is a love poem with strong al areas, how various groups occupy them and how emotional expression, erotic charge, and mythic and they change. living figures of speech. The composer of the poem The book continues with Katarina Saltzman’s ar- is not known. It has been generally thought that the ticle dealing with individual experiences of chang- poet was a woman, an Ostrobothnian vicarage maid, ing landscapes. Saltzman uses individual stories a Finnish Sapfo, daughter of snow and ice. It must gathered by a questionnaire to depict activities and be noted that the poet was not necessarily a woman everyday life in the outlying areas of some Swedish and the poem does not describe only a woman’s cities. As most of the informants are elderly people, feelings. their memories of the environments they describe go The compilation Savo ja sen kansa is, as a whole, back a long way, and they can thus give a good pic- worthy of praise. It is exceptionally diversified in ture of the changes of the landscape. Saltzman calls terms of its approaches and content. Special credit is attention to the fact that individual narratives are im- due for the comprehensive discussion of the mate- portant links between past and present, especially in rial and spiritual fields and impacts of culture, which the case of landscapes that have vanished. From the is evident in the analytical sections throughout the narratives we can see that the urban fringe has a book. It is also a good example of how a book which complex character and is in a constant state of is scientifically convincing and well written and change, and that landscapes stuck in a temporal-spa- which has an elegant layout can be targeted simul- tial state of in-between while waiting for a yet un- taneously at both the scientific community and the certain future are quite common. The informants interested public. In this sense, it also has a social meditate upon the changes of the landscapes, mainly meaning and impact. Everyone can find his or her with a nostalgic undertone, but often also with own Savo in the book, allowing for interesting awareness of the fact that the changes from another Reviews 231

point of view might bring necessary improvements. explained and understood, and it preferably has to In the next article Lennart Zintchenko uses two serve specific needs. Therefore the advocates of the contrasting areas on the outskirts of Gothenburg to market have to emphasize a concept of a strong “us” observe how unpredictable city development has be- when they talk about the marketplace, to highlight come a part of the inhabitants’ everyday life. Ac- its social aspects. The discourse about multicultural- cording to him, unpredictability can have many ef- ism also has an important role here. There is a con- fects. It may create seclusion, develop into some- stant power struggle about the place, since not every- thing attractive or generate new spatial qualities. one sees the market as something positive. The au- Zintchenko has interviewed persons who inhabit or thorities perceive it as uncontrolled and see no value frequently visit either of the two studied areas. He in it. There is also a common perception about stolen says that the highly appreciated, peaceful atmos- goods being sold on the market. Petersson McIntyre phere of the both areas is not something that has sees the authorities’ negative perception as one rea- been achieved by planning, but it is rather the ab- son for the marketplace’s ephemeral character. sence of a predictable city development that has al- Most of the articles focus on areas on the out- lowed the use of those areas to develop differently skirts of cities, but there are also some studies of from what was intended. Both the studied areas have in-between spaces in the city centres. Barbro Jo- at times been almost forgotten or threatened by hansson, in her chapter, has studied a city planning powerful development interests and by the expan- project in Gothenburg, and focuses on how children sion of nearby activities, although in the end this has have been made a part of the project. Including a not happened. The idyll is fragile, however. Factors child perspective in city planning has been justified such as the increase in property value, the trans- both by pedagogic reasons and by the idea that the formation of holiday cottages into permanently in- planning of a city for everyone needs to involve as habited homes, and plans to construct new roads and many citizens as possible. Johansson claims that the buildings are now affecting the areas. But despite imaginative ideas of children have an influence on the anxiety about future changes, the inhabitants the city planning by providing visions from new welcome the recent planning and regulations. After points of view and by moving the boundaries for the many years of unexpected changes and rumours, kind of suggestions that can be made. The children’s they value firmly established decisions about the use possibilities to participate were not quite uncompli- of the landscapes, especially if they mean that the cated, however, because of the strong generation or- present state can be maintained under controlled der that sorts children and adults hierarchically. The forms. children could feel that they had trouble getting their Magdalena Petersson McIntyre focuses on a ideas heard and participating on the same premises place on the urban fringe that is in a state of waiting as everyone else. On the other hand, children may – a former military complex that is waiting for deci- also be romanticized and attract attention because sions about its permanent future utilization, and they are seen as something special. Therefore they meanwhile serves as a marketplace during the week- may win admiration for their competence without ends. Petersson McIntyre studies the people who really competing with the adult world. Johansson visit the market as well as the power relations that says that the generation order is so strongly rooted are manifested through the way people talk about that it is hard to ignore even if you want to. The the place. She says that the temporary character of study thus shows that it is a complicated process to the marketplace creates different opportunities to find functioning forms for the real involvement of practice commerce than the commercial districts in children in city planning. the city centre. The commerce at Rödbo market- Joakim Forsemalm also studies in-between spaces place is on a smaller scale than in the city centre, in the city as he focuses on a district in Gothenburg and a large amount of the goods for sale are second- called Långgatorna. The district mixes different hand. The marketplace also has a strong multicultur- types of buildings and has developed into what al character, since many sellers and visitors are im- many consider an ideal combination of activities migrants. Petersson McIntyre points out that, in con- and apartments. Some buildings differ by being trast to the established commerce in the city centre, lower than the rest and also house activities that are the commerce on the outskirts of the town has to be unconventional, thus forming gaps of a kind in the 232 Reviews

environment. The prevailing ideal of urban densifi- characterized by a seasonal changeableness, as the cation sees gaps like that as potential subjects for fu- activities vary during the different seasons. This can ture development. The studied district now engages especially well be seen in the boat storage zones that both inhabitants and property owners, who think it are completely empty during the summer, when dif- deserves to be preserved. It is especially the gaps in ferent groups can claim the space for their activities, the built environment that are seen as something for example driving practice. Olshammar points out special and characteristic for the district, not only the contradiction in the development when larger because they affect the appearance of the district by and larger land areas are taken into use, but at the letting in sunlight, but also because of the kind of same time the spontaneous use of these is restricted activities that are established in these out-of-the-or- by powerful development interests. Marinas, for ex- dinary buildings. I found it very interesting to read ample, are not recreation sites for everyone; their that the property owners rather would rent the use is exclusively for members of boat clubs. The premises to the “right” kind of activity than to the marina Olshammar has studied is for the time being highest bidder. Forsemalm’s study thus shows that it offering a somewhat smooth and open space during is not always the economic potential that dictates the the summer, but as more buildings are erected, the use of the urban gaps. space becomes increasingly one-dimensional and The majority of the authors have been involved in closed to alternative users and spontaneous activities. the ethnological part of the interdisciplinary project This is quite a good collection of articles focusing that lies behind this publication, and Mattias Qvi- on landscapes on the margin and in-between that are ström represents landscape planning. He has studied easily overlooked. It shows that these transitory the eastern fringe of Malmö, which for a long time landscapes are meaningful for many people and that has been waiting for development as different devel- the wait for future plans gives room for a number of opment plans have come and gone over the years. In temporary activities. The book is well put together, this chapter he observes the interplay between the and although there are several writers, the articles physical planning and the everyday activities that form a good unity. It is illustrated with photographs, form the urban fringe, in order to obtain a picture of which of course helps the reader to gain better in- how the landscape is affected by constant waiting sight into the landscapes in question. The book can for a future city expansion. Qviström has compared be recommended for anyone who is interested in ur- the development of the area during the last few dec- ban development and in how people perceive and ades with the future visions of the planning docu- interact with their environment. ments. He does not focus so much on the substance Anne M. Niemi, Åbo of the plans as on the mere existence of them, as he claims plans can create shadows over the areas in question. These shadows may have a positive effect A Danish Smallholder in the Nineteenth and create refuges for temporary activities, or on the Century other hand they may lead to passivity and paralyse Gunnar Solvang , En østsjællandsk husmand i en the existing landscape. Qviström sees the future brydningstid. Hans Olsens optegnelser og livsforløb plans as a part of today’s landscape, not only as i Hyllestettehuset Enderslev Sogn 1849–1890. Køge something that will cause change in the future. He museum, Køge 2010. 264 pp. Ill. ISBN 978-87- emphasizes that areas in a state of waiting should 90299-22-4. more often be recognized as assets in landscape planning, and that an important public resource will
The Danish smallholder Hans Olsen spent his go missing if areas like this are ignored. whole life from 1819 to 1890 on the smallholder’s The closing article is by Gabriella Olshammar, farm of Hyllestettehuset in Enderslev Parish on the who has studied a marina in Gothenburg. She uses Danish island of Sjælland. A smallholder had a Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s theories about dwelling with or without a small area of land to smooth space/ striated space, and says that marinas farm. Smallholders also made their living through can be used to exemplify how fixed and well de- crafts and by working for bigger farmers or on the fined cityscapes spread out at the expense of more estate of Vallø Stift in the parish. Hans Olsen had loose, undefined and creative spaces. Marinas are six acres of land. He can be regarded as a small Reviews 233

farmer compared to other farmers in the parish. In ment in the 1850s. In 1855 he became parish super- 1849, at the age of 30, he began to keep notes about visor and in 1859 parish executive officer, which in- important events in his life. First he briefly wrote his cluded police functions and responsibility for clear- recollections of his childhood and youth up to 1849. ing snow. In 1873 he became first a member and Then he made notes year by year, which means that then chairman of the parish council. This was re- he has left us annual reports, not a diary of the kind sponsible for schools, poor relief, fire-fighting, that many Danish farmers and also some smallhold- roads, and collecting municipal taxes. Olsen then ers kept in the nineteenth century. had the two top posts in the local government, The Danish ethnologist and museum worker which was highly unusual at the time for a small- Gunnar Solvang, who has done extensive research holder. There was no payment for work on the on smallholders in Denmark, has published and ana- parish council, but as parish executive officer Olsen lysed these notes. The major part of the book con- received a remuneration of 40 kroner a year. He re- sists of analyses and commentary. Olsen’s actual tained that post for the rest of his life. He had good notes are printed in full on pp. 200–247. It is valu- contacts with the management of the Vallø Stift es- able that readers can thus peruse the original text tate. When a memorial stone was to be raised to the and thereby form an opinion of their own which can owner, Count Frederik Georg Julius Moltke in 1877, be related to what Solvang says. Olsen was given the task of unveiling the monument The book begins with the author’s presentation of and making a speech. This meant that there was no essential features of Enderslev Parish, its cultural significant difference between high and low in the landscape, buildings, and division of occupations. parish. Olsen also took an active part in the associa- This is followed by an analysis of Olsen’s notes, tions that were being formed. In 1866 he was one of first about his home and family, then about the local the founders of a shooting club. community, then about Denmark as a nation, and Olsen also commented on national politics and finally what Olsen writes about the outside world. how the intentions of the Danish constitution were Local and national politics, as well as foreign poli- being fulfilled. He criticized the growing liberal par- tics, are among his great interests. He began to write ty, Venstre, which was increasing in power. He had in the same year as the Danish constitution was greater sympathy for the conservative party, Højre. adopted. This introduced democracy and meant the He also expressed his views of Denmark’s wars end of Danish absolutism. Olsen became a cham- with Prussia in 1848–1850 and 1864. The latter was pion of democratic development in Denmark. He disastrous for Denmark, which had to cede Schles- was also involved in the Scandinavist movement in wig, Holstein, and Lauenborg in southernmost Den- the 1850s and 1860s. In 1858 he took part in a large mark to Prussia. Olsen wrote the following emotion- Scandinavist demonstration at Ramlösa in Skåne. al comment: “I have never been in such a mood, it This was his only trip outside Denmark, and he de- was almost as if one were going to die” (p. 214). scribes it in detail. He regarded the magnificent In the 1880s Olsen commented on the various gathering in Skåne as “one of the happiest days in changes during his life that he was glad about. He my life” (p. 210). felt that he had lived at a watershed between old and In his youth Olsen helped his father with craft new. Subsoil draining had become widespread in work, which consisted of making wheels for spin- agriculture. In 1879 Olsen witnessed the opening of ning wheels. He got married at the age of 25, in the railway through Enderslev. It was he who de- 1844, and the couple had a son and two daughters. livered the speech to the king, who thanked him af- He took over the home place at Hyllestettehuset terwards by squeezing his hand. Olsen notes that with its lands when his father, Ole Hendrichsen, this was such a great honour for him as a smallhold- died in 1851. The land was leased from the Vallø er that he would never have believed it possible to Stift estate, but in 1868 Olsen was able to buy the experience anything like it in his life. In 1879 he re- house and land. From 1860 to 1870 he leased an ad- ceived his highest award, when the king presented ditional ten acres of land from the vicarage. Through him with the Order of the Dannebrog in the form of his craft work, Olsen built up a solid economy com- a silver cross. Another example of technical pared with other smallholders in the parish. progress alongside the railway, was the telegraph. Olsen had his first experience of local govern- What Olsen objected to at this time was the increas- 234 Reviews

ing luxury in dress. This was not compatible with book Kulturanalys (1982) and its revised and ex- his sense of thrift. tended sequel Kulturanalyser (2001), which today As a whole, it may be said of Olsen’s notes that must surely be regarded as classics in Swedish-lan- political matters at local and national level are at guage cultural studies, where the authors show the centre. The reader does not learn very much how one can learn to understand greater patterns in about the family’s life, nor about farming and the society proceeding from studies of everyday phe- weather, although there are some brief notes each nomena such as all the animals that occur in pre- year. It would have been appropriate if Solvang schools, or how doing the laundry is organized in had made a comparison in the final chapter, look- the home. In Finland-Swedish folkloristics, where ing at characteristic features of the farmers’ and I belong as researcher and teacher, there is an smallholders’ diaries that are preserved from the equally keen interest in everyday life, as is evident nineteenth century and have been analysed by from an undergraduate course entitled “The Danish ethnologists. Science of the Everyday”. A prominent feature of Olsen’s notes is his trust It was therefore with great delight that I opened in God and God’s help; there are open prayers to this book with the promising title “Essential Every- God at several places. His religion gave him securi- day Life” to review it for a Scandinavian ethnologi- ty. Gunnar Solvang, unfortunately, does not com- cal journal. The fact that title also promised “dis- ment on this inward aspect which makes itself no- course-analysis perspectives” only made it better, ticeable in different phases of Olsen’s life, whether since no researcher in cultural studies today can they are occasions of joy or sorrow. Olsen makes no stand outside this powerful research tradition, and secret of his feelings about the events he describes. moreover since I am constantly on the lookout for His notes are a fascinating source for the life of a new literature to use on courses. The blurb as a smallholder in Denmark in the latter half of the whole convinced me that this must be one such nineteenth century, against the background of the book, and in the introductory chapter by the editors technical and political changes that took place. They Anna Sparrman, Jakob Cromdal, Ann-Carita also show how a smallholder could cross class Evaldsson, and Viveka Adelswärd, I was still rub- boundaries to become a political leader at the local bing my hands with delight. The introduction was level. The book is an important contribution to precisely as well written, knowledgeable, and lucid micro-historical studies of bygone times. as I have become accustomed to seeing good Swe- Anders Gustavsson, Oslo dish cultural scholars write. Discourse and discourse analysis are explained here. Critical discourse analy- sis is highlighted. Michel Foucault is here. The Discourse Analysis or Conversation power perspective too. The writers discuss essential- Analysis? ism versus relativism and bring in the obligatory Den väsentliga vardagen. Några diskursanalytiska discussion of social constructionism, referring to Pe- begrepp på tal, text och bild. Anna Sparrman et al . ter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s influential (eds.). Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2009. 335 work The Social Construction of Reality from 1967. pp. Ill. ISBN 978-91-73331-229-5. My expectations were high after all this. Admitted- ly, I was slightly surprised that the editors had not
Eighteen scholars who are described in the blurb brought up the critique of relativism in discourse as having “a shared interest in exposing the differ- analysis, put forward by those who defend the idea ent expressions, rules, and practices of everyday of materiality, that is to say, there does after all seem life” have contributed articles to this volume on the to be something that is permanent, that not every- subject of “Essential Everyday Life” . There seems thing is solely constructed. I was also surprised that to be a great scholarly interest in everyday life. I there was nothing anywhere in the title of the book am thinking, for instance, of the edited volume Et- or in the blurb to suggest that the majority of the nografiska observationer (2009), which sought to content concerned children – I imagine there are test new methods for participant observation and to other essentials in everyday life than those concern- develop methodology in research on everyday life. ing children. I am aware that what children do has Another example is Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren’s sometimes been viewed, and perhaps still is, as triv- Reviews 235

ial, but like Blanka Henriksson (2007), who has content in relation to this. The book is written by re- written about girls’ friendship albums, I believe that searchers connected to Linköping University, which there is a great deal to discover in what others classi- has chosen to depart from what could be called a tra- fy as trivial. ditional division into faculties and subjects, and in- I nevertheless thought that more interesting read- stead works with departments structured according ing would follow about discourse analysis and to a theme; for instance, there is one for Children power practices in everyday life, but I was really and one for Communication. So I myself have to surprised when I found that the subsequent articles, work out which research tradition the writers place above all, concerned something that I perceive as themselves in. more or less linguistically oriented conversation I would highlight one of the articles as interest- analysis. I read on, looking for discussions of dis- ing, although not as discourse analysis, and that is courses and power, definitions of the concepts, or the study by Pål Aarsand and Lucas Forsberg, least an inquiry into how the authors have done their which they entitle “The morality of open and discourse analysis and how they relate to it. I was closed doors – dilemmas in participant observation surprised a couple of times, it is true, by pleasant with a video camera”. I think that they display pro- reading about how the Himba people of Namibia found insight when they critically consider the use represent themselves when researchers ask them to of technical apparatus as actors in fieldwork. They do drawings, or how children in the Quechua in discuss the camera as an obstacle in different situ- Ecuador look after their younger siblings, but I ations, but also as a tool that makes it possible for found that there was a great deal in the texts that them to gain access to situations that it would could have been elaborated on from the power as- otherwise have been impossible for them to be pects that I assume to be central in discourse analy- present in. This article is an example of how good sis. The problem for me was that I had to do these it is to problematize oneself and one’s presence in analyses myself, which I do not think is acceptable. all the phases of research, which is essential for re- Likewise, there are articles about everyday life in flexivity. Other authors in this volume could well Swedish schools where the authors have gone to the have made valuable contributions to the discussion trouble of making video recordings so that they can of technology as an actor and the ethical stances come closer to the everyday reality they want to associated with it. study, instead of, as before, basing their research on The way the concept of discourse is handled in questionnaires and interviews. Here too, there are the articles confuses me, perhaps because the word aspects of power to seize on, and sometimes at- is so often missing from them and is thus not ex- tempts are made at this, but I am still not convinced plained, defined or problematized. This is done well by what I read. in the introduction, but I nevertheless think that cen- It seems as if the majority of the authors relate to tral theoretical and methodological concepts ought the concept of discourse above all as if it were syn- to be clarified in each article if it is to be included in onymous with conversation. And it seem to me that a collection that claims to provide discourse-analy- what the authors are doing in most of the articles is sis perspectives. I also tried to envisage the possibil- conversation analysis, which I recognize from my ity that I have misunderstood the point of the ar- own undergraduate studies that also included lin- ticles, that the authors are perhaps above all linguists guistics. Some of the authors say that they are doing who understand the term discourse in a different conversation analysis, and quotations from the video way from culture researchers. In the introduction, recordings are mostly given in the precise transcrip- however, we are told that the writers in the book are tions that I know from linguistics, but which feel interested in studying discursive practices, which I alien in ethnology and even folkloristics, which has perceive as synonymous with “everyday social prac- branches with a heavy orientation to conversation tices”, as something that is said earlier in the intro- analysis. The book claims to have an interdiscipli- duction to belong to the Foucault-inspired critical nary approach, and it is possible that this is one ex- discourse analysis. On this basis, I expect the term planation why it affects me as it does. Another may discourse to mean more than just “conversation” to be that I want to be able to categorize a work in or- these authors too. Yet it remains unclear to me what der to understand its context and take a stance on the the discourses and power aspects are that are ex- 236 Reviews

posed with the aid of the discourse analysis that, ac- tions of earlier movements in Sweden and elsewhere cording to the editors, is done in the articles. that variously influenced it, and followed by brief There are some minor exceptions to this obvious discussion of the slightly later Klimax movement, deficit, but there is just one article that, in my opin- and a final chapter on ‘the right to the city’. ion, stands out as regards its clarity in method- The work begins by discussing how the Ameri- ological approach and practical use of discourse can Earth First! movement, founded [1979] to pre- analysis. The second last article in the book, “Be- serve wilderness areas, subsequently inspired direct- tween victim and perpetrator – talking about vio- action ‘eco sabotage’ protests in Britain against a lence”, written by Kjerstin Andersson, discusses number of road building projects in environmentally how a young man who lives in a remand home re- sensitive areas. The young British protesters, with lates to the positions of victim and perpetrator in a their tree-sitting and innovative tunnelling tactics, larger discourse on violence. Through a narrative failed to stop the particular schemes they chal- analysis of what the young man told her about vio- lenged. But by increasing construction costs and lence, Andersson shows here which discursive gaining considerable public support, they probably practices he adopts to write himself out of both contributed to new Prime Minister Major in 1996 these stigmatized/stigmatizing discourses. Apart abandoning his predecessor Thatcher’s Roads for from this contribution, which I can clearly identify Prosperity programme. as discourse analysis, the closest I can come to a As this period of British road-building protests distinction of different discourses is what Kjell ended, activists turned their attention on the one Granström writes about in his article about the hand to the developing Global Justice movement meaning of the teacher’s desk, when he reports on which was crystallizing around opposition to the G8 a study which shows that there are two divergent summit meetings, and, on the other, to establishing pictures of what lessons look like: the pupils’ and the initially London centred Reclaim the Streets. the teacher’s. The article highlights power aspects During the second half of the 1990s RTS initiated a in that Granström examines a piece of furniture series of large-scale and widely reported events in which signals the power position that the teacher, the capital. Somewhat oversimplifying, the earlier at least traditionally, has in the classroom. Reclaim efforts tended to be relatively light-hearted, It seems as if there are different discourses on with activists temporarily closing roads to cars in or- discourse analysis, and that most of these authors der to hold street parties with much loud music and and I look at discourse analysis in such different dancing. However later protests, held in iconic parts ways that we find it difficult to meet in a shared un- of the city, Stahre presents as ‘more political’ [the derstanding of the concept of discourse and the 1997 event was designated a ‘Festival of Resist- method of discourse analysis. ance’ and began with a ‘March for Justice’]. They Sofie Strandén, Åbo tended to become violent, evoking media condem- nation and motivating the core initiators, around the turn of the decade, to wind the London organisation The Right to the City down. Ulf Stahre, Reclaim the Streets: om gatufester, väg- However, this was not before the RTS idea had motstånd och rätten till staden. Bokförlaget Atlas, quickly spread to other cities in Britain and abroad, Stockholm 2010. 232 pp. ISBN 978-91-7437-938-3. including Stockholm. Having also just seen the withdrawal after protest of its own road restructur-
Stahre’s Reclaim the Streets [subtitled ‘on street ing programme [the Dennis Paket], it held its first festivals, road protests and the right to the city ’] is RTS ‘global street party’ in parallel with many other the fourth of his volumes documenting how urban cities, on May 16th 1998 [also the date of a G8 sum- social movements have responded to and partly mit in Birmingham]. Stahre briefly reprises his ear- shaped the Swedish capital’s post 1930s develop- lier works’ fuller depiction of the long tradition of ment. Its focus is Stockholm’s Reclaim the Streets urban protest in the Swedish capital, which also in- [later Reclaim the City] movement during the dec- spired Reclaim Stockholm, before further elaborat- ade from its inception in 1999. But this depiction ing on the new movement’s complex trajectory and takes up only half the text. It is preceded by exposi- structure. Reviews 237

He shows how, whilst weakening its earlier inter- sient RTS/C. He demonstrates that while narrow est in critiquing global capitalism, Stockholm’s Re- specification makes goals easier to achieve, once claim movement extended its specifically urban gained, the bodies that promoted them may be concerns. It’s initial desire to reclaim the streets harder to sustain than those with a wider remit. We from cars expanded into a quest to regain, in the see that groups attracting supporters through offer- face of increasing inequality and social segregation, ing action opportunities, face the problem of con- the city as a public space accessible to all. Stock- tinually generating such excitements, which bodies holm was to be reclaimed from capitalism and the based in ideological commitment do not. In this rich as well as traffic. RTC developed a particular text Stahre is particularly interested in the role that interest in the plight of lower-class suburban youth, expressive symbolic action, such as Reclaim’s including those of migrant background, who had street parties, can play in protest movements. He little representation in the city’s earlier urban move- shows it to have a powerful potential to energise ments. In 2001 it organised a series of festivals activists, increase their collective solidarity and against racism and injustice in different suburbs gain audience attention. In RTS/C’s street festi- which were to culminate in a ‘study visit’; i.e. a vals and the earlier, briefer, festive street block- march of the suburbanites to discover what life was ages’ [ kulturkrokar ], expressive symbolic action like in Djursholm, the city’s most prestigious resi- also exemplified a desired state of affairs. It dential district. The organisers diverted the marchers showed, if only temporarily the pleasure to be to party in a nearby park at the last minute, fearing gained from sociable, non-commercially oriented their protest would degenerate into the kind of vio- activity in car-free urban spaces open to all, in con- lence and attacks on property which had concluded trast to the ‘ingrained, grey routines of the modern many, but not all of their previous central city street community’ with its ‘uneventfulness and lack of parties and attracted largely negative media atten- room for fantasy and creativity’. Stahre sees paral- tion. This disorder at Reclaim events seems to have lels here with the carnivalesque’s ‘moments of been initiated not by the main body of participants, madness’ when the grip of the established order the youngest of whom in particular seem to have feels weakened, though these have generally been more interested in partying than demonstrat- served more of a ‘safety valve’ than a revolution- ing, but rather by a small number of left anarchists ary function. sometimes together with right wing youth. ‘Carnivals’ produce their effects through physical Stahre suggests the general tendency of Reclaim co-presence and Stahre provides examples of the events to end in this way was linked to the [changing] continued importance of face-to-face meetings for core of organisers’ focus on setting in play open- core activists. But he stresses the impact of the new ended, largely unstructured events, which their small information and communications technologies numbers and lack of hierarchy then made it imposs- which facilitate the rapid dissemination of informa- ible for them to control even if they wished to do so. tion about goals and tactics within and between or- The briefly described Klimax movement provides a ganisations. The Reclaim movement would not have contrast here. Their generally time-limited, carefully spread so rapidly and widely without the web. Al- orchestrated, often witty street-theatre, directed to- though perhaps surprisingly, given the overlap be- wards transport-related climate change issues, seldom tween its ‘oppositional’ and expressive use of music provoked hostile police or public reaction. and that of rave culture, it does not seem to have As in earlier volumes, Stahre comments picked up on the latter’s tactical use of text messag- throughout on factors which differentiate the abili- ing to disadvantage the police, by only revealing the ties of movements and organisations to evoke pop- location of mass events at the last minute. ular and media support, attain their goals and sus- The web is often seen as facilitating a ‘globalisa- tain themselves over time. For example, he shows tion’ of protest, to match capital’s increasing inter- that both loosely and more tightly structured or- connection. But Stahre’s work suggests that the ganisations have strengths and weaknesses and can idea of a ‘global challenge from below’ needs un- sometimes be symbiotically connected. Long es- packing. For example, the G8 summit protests, tablished bodies such as Alternativ Stad and Fält- drawing activists from many countries to one place, biologerna provided supporters for the more tran- need distinguishing from the Reclaim street parties, 238 Reviews

which though sometimes occurring simultaneously Reindeer Husbandry of the Könkämä- in different countries, and largely in response to vuoma Sami similar problems, only mobilized local activists. Lars J. Walkeapää , Könkämävuoma-samernas ren- Similarly though the Klimax organisation drew in- flyttningar till Norge – om sommarbosättningar i spiration from Britain’s Plane Stupid supporters, Troms fylke på 1900-talet. Tromsø museum – Uni- they didn’t engage in joint actions, leading one to versitetsmuseet, Tromsø 2009. 346 pp. Ill. ISBN query whether their interconnection made them any 82-7142-048-8. more difficult for the authorities to deal with. In conclusion, Stahre declares his is an ethno-
Lars J. Walkeapää’s book focuses on the reindeer graphic project. He acknowledges that it isn’t driven husbandry of the northernmost Sami village in Swe- by any particular grand theoretical commitment, al- den, Könkämävouma (or Könkämä as it most often though he mobilises and comments on lower-level is called) in the parish of Karesuando, and more spe- theoretical concepts, often from the social move- cifically on the use of reindeer pastures in Norway ment literature, as appropriate. This has its pros and during the summer. This is a group of herders, and a cons. His ethnographic skills enable him to handle a cross-border activity, which has been severely af- wide range of publications, web-based data and in- fected by the policies of the states, both historically terviews and offer a coherent picture of the kaleido- and today. In 1751, the border between Norway and scope of more or less structured groups and organis- Sweden was finally agreed upon. In an addendum to ations with cross- cutting memberships, internal the border treaty, known as the Lapp Codicil, the schisms and changing aims which have tried to states confirmed traditional Sami rights to use lands shape Stockholm over the last half century. As he on both sides of the border in an effort to preserve shows, later activists can gain inspiration from ear- “the Lappish nation”. However, this positive view lier ones, and in providing a permanently available of the Sami and their rights would not last. During account of this social movement tradition he may be the nineteenth century, Sami rights and their free- helpfully contributing to it. On the other hand, at dom of movement across the state borders became least some broader theoretical commitments might increasingly limited; in 1852 the border between usefully have encouraged Stahre to emphasise more Norway and Finland was closed to reindeer hus- strongly the major structural transformations that bandry, and in 1889 the Swedish-Finnish border was underlie many of the events described. It’s perhaps likewise closed. Sweden and Norway also reached symptomatic that in the rather thin final chapter dis- several agreements concerning the herders crossing cussing ‘rights to the city’ he mentions Harvey but their common border – the 1883 Swedish-Norwe- not his moves to connect phases of urban develop- gian Reindeer Grazing Act, the 1905 agreement on ment and reactions to them, to different attempts by the dissolution of the union between Sweden and capital to deal with its accumulation problems. Pro- Norway, and the 1919 Swedish-Norwegian Rein- testers are variously shown as challenging road ex- deer Herding Convention – which restricted their tension, consumer car culture, neo-liberal urban so- movements. Through the 1919 Convention, the cial policies and the restructuring of urban space. grazing areas in Norway for Sami from Sweden was But in this volume at least, the reader is rather left to limited, and forced relocations from the northern- join up the dots themselves to see how all these is- most Sami villages, among them Könkämävuoma, sues might be connected, not least to the growing to more southern areas in Sweden was one effect. power of global capital. This is significant, not least These herders have thus seen tremendous change because the possibilities of movement success de- through history, while trying to continue their tradi- pend not only on the kinds of organisational and tac- tional industry despite external influences. It is the tical factors we have mentioned above, but on the traditional aspects of the reindeer husbandry of character, strength and distribution of interests. It’s Könkämävuoma that Walkeapää wants to relate in not just the clarity or even the scope of goals which his book. Walkeapää, who was born in 1928, par- affects a social movement’s chances of achieving ticipated as youth in the work and the seasonal mi- them, but the extent to which a victory would dam- gration of the herders in this Sami village, before his age the fundamental interests of powerful others. family was forced to relocate to the Sami village of Hilary Stanworth, Swansea Tuorpon in the parish of Jokkmokk in 1944. He con- Reviews 239

tinued herding reindeer for several years, until he dimensions to the narrative; through the numerous left the industry in the 1960s to begin working in and impressive photographs and drawings, people health care. From his position on the outside, and environments, as well as places and objects, are Walkeapää clearly saw the large-scale changes that brought to life, while the fourteen maps place what had taken and were taking place within reindeer Walkeapää describes – such as migration routes, husbandry, where many traditional aspects of the in- camp sites, reindeer enclosures etc. – in a geo- dustry were disappearing, and realized the need to graphical context. document the traditional seasonal migration of the Walkeapää’s book is not a scholarly study, but I Könkämävuoma Sami before this important part of am convinced it will be frequently used in future re- Sami cultural heritage was forever lost. This pur- search. For many of the themes covered in the vol- pose has been the driving force behind the extensive ume there are only scarce Sami sources, making his work carried out by him since 1969, to collect mate- work very important. The book will also be a fasci- rial on this issue; he has visited archives and inter- nating read for anyone interested in Sami culture viewed a large number of informants, taken photo- and reindeer husbandry. Walkeapää is a gifted story- graphs, followed migration routes, and visited camp teller, describing a culture, a profession and a way sites during his many trips through the area. It is of life with all the joys and tribulations it contains. thus very extensive and time consuming work that Everyday life and work with reindeer husbandry are has laid the foundation for this volume. depicted with clarity and profound knowledge. The The book opens with a historical overview by the tempo is slow, thoughtful and rich in detail, and the ethnographer Dikka Storm, which places Walkea- narrative alive and captivating, not least when he re- pää’s narrative in a larger historical context. He then lates his own memories and experiences. I hope that begins by describing the reindeer herding in nine many will find and read this gem, and learn from the herding districts in Norway during summer, mostly experience. focusing on the first half of the twentieth century. Patrik Lantto, Umeå Each segment starts with an overview of which families used the district – and which of these would later be forcibly relocated – before moving on to a North Norwegian Local History in the Late description of grazing lands, camp sites and migra- Nineteenth Century tion routes. The district to which Walkeapää’s fami- Øyvind Wæraas , Brytningstid i Hammerfest 1860– ly belonged gets the most in-depth and thorough de- 1885. Modernisering – Religiøsitet – Diskrimine- scription, and his memories and experiences are an ring. Novus forlag, Oslo 2010. 303 pp. Ill. ISBN important part of this narrative. We learn about the 978-82-7099-578-3. changes to reindeer husbandry in the area during World War II because of the German occupation of
Øyvind Wæraas has written a book about the Norway, and catch some glimpses of the actions of local history of Hammerfest, the town in North Nor- the regional state authority responsible for the ad- way where he grew up. The focus is on the late nine- ministration of the industry, the Lapp Administra- teenth century, specifically the historical develop- tion (LA) – an authority whose influence is both a ment between 1860 and 1885. The author’s aim is to problem and an irritation to the herders. But the study the radical changes that took place during this main focus in the book is firmly directed on the time, which he designates as modernization; by this daily life and the work with reindeer husbandry dur- he also means the technical and economic develop- ing different seasons. The forced relocations are also ment. The basic idea of the book is that the old so- a theme towards the end of the book, when Wal- ciety was challenged and disappeared. Something keapää describes how the reindeer herding group his new came instead, and it happened during a relative- family belonged to had to leave Könkämävuoma in ly short period. It made itself felt on the economic, 1944 and move to Tuorpon. The reader is allowed to technical, political, social, cultural and religious lev- follow Walkeapää and his family on this journey – els. The author clearly states that he sympathizes which was long, time-consuming and partly prob- with these changes in society, and his text paints a lematic – as well as their first time on their new rather critical picture of the older society. He does grazing lands. Illustrations and maps add yet another not have much good to say about the magnates – 240 Reviews

merchants in the export trade – who ruled at the ex- democratic development. In Haugianism there were pense of the ordinary people. It is thus obvious that also female preachers, which was something new. he adopts the role of a subjective researcher, and The author attaches great importance to the first tends to take it a little too far. moves towards women’s liberation under Hauge’s A major technical innovation was the opening of influence. In my opinion, however, it is difficult to a telegraph station in Hammerfest in 1870. This prove that Hauge’s ideas had any direct impact in meant that the townspeople could communicate Hammerfest in the late nineteenth century. It should with the outside world in a way that had not been be regarded as an assumption. There was scarcely possible before. What happened during the Franco- any female emancipation in Hammerfest at the end Prussian War in 1870–1871 suddenly became of the nineteenth century. present in northernmost Norway. The newspaper A negative tendency that made itself felt in North Finnmarksposten started in 1866, providing a forum Norway in the late nineteenth century was the in- for lively discussions and exchanges of opinion be- creasing racial discrimination against minorities. tween the conservative editor and merchant Iver This affected the Sami and the Kven, the latter being Rostad and the liberal debater and public official immigrants from Finland. This development took Andreas Hinberg. A political dividing line became place alongside the emergence of a stronger national obvious here between the defence of the old society sentiment in Norway. Minorities had to be inte- represented by the magnates and the introduction of grated in Norwegian society as quickly as possible. something new. Hinberg fought for democracy and Norwegianization was the key word, and it had to be universal suffrage. The magnates, who were first- or achieved through coercion. The Sami and Kven lan- second- generation immigrants from more southerly guages were not to be used. As a consequence of parts of Norway, made up just 3 per cent of the pop- this, a large number of Kven people emigrated to the ulation in 1875. USA in 1870–1890. Many associations were founded at this time, The author has done important work on the de- both political and religious, which strengthened the velopment of society in a small town in Northern development towards democracy. The first workers’ Norway at the end of the nineteenth century. He also association came in 1865, dominated by craftsmen. describes currents of thought that extend from the A separate craftsmen’s association was founded in eighteenth century to the twentieth. In this respect 1871. Craftsmen constituted a large share of the he has not confined himself to the period 1860– people who migrated here. The largest population 1885. This gives the book a less stringent impres- growth took place in 1865–1875, when the town sion than the subtitle promises. In some respects the grew from about 1,500 inhabitants to 2,100, an in- chapters about ideas seem to be loosely connected to crease of about 40 per cent. The newcomers were what happened in Hammerfest in the late nineteenth mostly younger people from more southerly parts of century. Do we really need the parts about what hap- northern Norway. pened in North Norway during the twentieth centu- On the religious level, the author thinks that the ry, for instance the Nazi occupation in the 1940s? ideas of the lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge What he writes about this is interesting in itself, but (1771–1824) were of great significance for the de- it is outside the scope of the book. There is no con- velopment of society in North Norway. The author cluding discussion of the processes of change or clearly sympathizes with this current of ideas, which modernization in the late nineteenth century in the led to something new. It questioned the authority of book, which ends abruptly with what happened in the established church, the system of which the au- the 1940s. thor is critical. He views Hauge as a predecessor of Anders Gustavsson, Oslo