… Modern Society

Abstract

The task of this chapter is to suggest that a number of interrelated elements in the early twentieth century contributed to Swedish modernity: the modernist belief in science, progress and rationality, linked with more traditional notions of order and discipline, a functionalist aesthetic in art and architecture and a social engineering approach to social problems. The politics of social democracy - which aimed to bring a degree of state control to a capitalist economy and to promote social planning - complemented and was complemented by these. Sweden’s subsequent economic and social success contributed to a sense of national pride and superiority. Sweden was considered, by itself and other countries, to be a model of progress and modernity.

Eugenics, order, rationality and conscientiousness have been shown to have left their mark on the institutional social policy of the social democratic People’s Home. (Holgersson 1994 p. 119)

The large process of socialisation which transformed “peasants into Swedes” … implied that national identity was wed to modernity. Modernity was nationalised and became Swedishness. (Frykman 1996 p. 63)