Postmodern World …

Abstract

What has happened to the welfare state? As we enter the 21st century, can it even be said that the set of institutions, practices and policies associated with the golden age of Swedish modernism and social democracy has survived the impact of a new era of postmodern capitalism? Alongside major changes in technology, cultural production and economic organisation, the postwar welfare state has, in the last few decades, undergone dramatic change in many countries. During the late 1970s and the 1980s, there was a distinctive shift from the universalist features of state welfare to the more particularist/selective characteristics of welfare pluralism. For some considerable time Sweden resisted this trend. However, from 1989, there were clear signs of change. Economic problems resulted in growing unemployment and pressures to reduce public and social expenditure. Sweden applied to join the EU and to adopt the convergence criteria associated with the emerging single currency of the Euro. Parallel with these developments, the Swedish economy was having to adapt to the globalisation of the world’s economies and more intense international competition; information technology was having a major impact; cultural boundaries were being challenged.

At this time Sweden was supposed to be a much freer country. And there I had the experience that certain kinds of freedom may have, not exactly the same effects, but as many restrictive effects as a directly restrictive society.

(Michel Foucault cited in Eribon 1991 p. 74)