Research project The People’s Home: The History of a Swedish Keyword 1900–2020
The People’s Home, Folkhemmet, is the premium concept in Sweden's modern history. It is also a word with several different uses and meanings that seem to change over time. This project investigates both how the term was used in the 20th century and how contemporary research has established it as an interpretative framework.
"Folkhemmet" is used in multiple media, political and academic contexts and seems to be more popular today than ever before. This confirms a search in the databases. Folkhemmet is usually linked to the Social Democrats and the welfare state, to a period in history before marketization and privatizations – or, as some claim, before immigration – changed Swedish society. It can denote welfare policies, society in general or a period in Swedish history. And much more.
The project will result in a book by Nils Edling
Project description
Political keywords have two salient characteristics: they have to be used to some extent and, above all, they are controversial, subject to different interpretations and struggles for the right to define them. Both criteria must be met for a word to be counted as a political keyword. The purpose of the project is to analyze how the people’s home has been understood and used in politics, debate and research since the turn of the century 1900. The study has a double focus on both the user history and the modern historiography. This means that it maps and studies the over time changing uses and the later processes in public debate and research where folkhemmet has been established as the given interpretive framework for Swedish 20th century history.
The two tracks of the project, the study of past usages and understandings and the strong interpretations of contemporary research, are essential. This is so because it does not take for granted that folkhemmet became the central governing concept for the Social Democrats just because Per Albin Hansson used it a few times. Actually, this was the projectś starting point: a growing sense of astonishement and unease over the discrepancy between the folkhemmet's absence in Swedish politics in 1930–1980 and later obsession with its importance.
One hypothesis is that the folkhemmet was not politicized until the 1980s, when the social democrats were challenged by the crisis of the welfare state, market liberalism and globalization. It was only then that the people’s home became something more than the uncontroversial metaphor for the prosperous Swedish society in general as it had been during the preceding decades. Only with the crisis of the welfare state and the perceived threat from European integration, later reinforced by perceived threats from migration and multiculturalism, did folkhemmet become the unifying concept that needed to be defended against the system change, external threats and new denigrations.
At the same time as the Social Democrats lost their interpretive precedence in Swedish politics and the sterilization policy received attention, research began to take an interest in the word "folkhemmet" itself and explored in detail its roots and early history. It also entered research and began to used as label for a period in Swedish history; from the 1980s onwards, everything that the researchers studied – sports, housing, immigration and so on – could be placed ’in the people's home’. By doing this, historians and ethnologists actively contributed to building and furnishing folkhemmet, making it fundamental in modern Swedish history. This explains why the historiographical analysis is important.
The book will have five empirical chapters. The first studies the scattered – and drastically overvalued by existing research – use of the people’s home before Hansson's speech in 1928. Chapter two focuses on the social democrats' understanding of folkhemmet during the thirties and shows its weak impact in politics and a much stronger presence in the media. The third chapter's analysis of the folk home during the fifties - often called ’the true folkhemmet decade’ - confirms this: the keyword was not important in party politics but was widely used in media as a synonym for the prosperous Swedish society in general. The fourth chapter of the book studies folkhemmet’s breakthrough in politics and research in the 1980s. The concluding chapter covers the upsurge in folkhem-usages during the 2010s, which can partly be linked to the Sweden Democrats' attempt to take over as the true wardens of Per Albin Hansson's legacy. Consequently, the people’s home has been politicized in a new way and this process demonstrates something more basic: the present and the future are always at stake in the fight over historically charged keywords.
Project members
Project managers
Nils Edling
Professor
