Translating Hygge : a Danish design myth and its Anglophone appropriation

Hygge, the lifestyling trend that offers a path to ‘authentic’ Danish contentment, is one of the more curious instances of cultural translation in recent years, both semantically and in terms of how an everyday Danish concept has been transformed by London publishing houses into a marketable commodity. Despite the widespread international popular success of the phenomenon, hygge has received little academic attention. What is particularly lacking is an analysis of the cultural transferral of the concept, of the rather different set of meanings constructed by the remodelling of hygge by English-speaking commentators. This paper proposes that design history can offer a helpful framework for this kind of understanding. By approaching the case of hygge as a ‘mythology’ in the Barthian sense, we will argue that the concept builds upon the legacy of the mythologies imprinted on Anglophone societies by the branding of Scandinavian Design since the 1950s. Highlighting the links between such myths and the manufactured British version of hygge, we will posit that the meaning of hygge – the way it operates as a sign in British culture today – is dependent upon longstanding structures of understanding.PostprintPeer reviewe

Hygge, Hope and Higher Education: A Case Study of Denmark

Higher education institutions have been profoundly reshaped by processes associated with neoliberalism. In this chapter, Larsen outlines the ways in which Denmark has ushered in marketdriven reforms to the Danish higher education system to enhance their institutional competitiveness over the past 30 years. Research on the impacts of neoliberal higher education reforms on faculty is reviewed and the author discusses her experiences (at a Canadian university) with market-driven, accountability reforms. The chapter shifts direction and provides the reader with an overview of the concept of hygge, an idealized Danish term that has connotations of coziness, safety, friendliness, and intimacy. Larsen recounts her experiences as a Canadian academic on sabbatical at a Danish university in 2017, illustrating the ways in which she experienced hygge in the Danish university setting. In the final section of the chapter, Larsen argues that hygge can be viewed as a retreat from the individualism, competition, market stratification and other challenges associated with neoliberalism. Hygge marks out the boundaries between the cold and heartless market-place and the warm and cozy home, and despite critiques that is instantiates exclusions, hygge offers hope to resist the alienation associated with neoliberalism and provide an alternative ethos for close and safe social relations within academia

Social Acceleration in the Marketplace: Three Essays Exploring the Intersection of Culture and Consumption

Consumer culture is fast. Goods, services, people, ideas, and values – the material and nonmaterial aspects of culture – are moving more quickly throughout the marketing system than ever before. Such acceleration effects diverse stakeholders: people, public, and planet. This dissertation explores the phenomenon of ‘social acceleration’, and specifically, the ‘acceleration of the pace of life’ which examines the feeling that time is going faster in modern societies as a result of “the increase of action episodes per unit of time” (Rosa 2013, 80). This project develops an understanding of how meanings in marketing are socially constructed in relation to this phenomenon, focusing on the following research question: How do consumers experience and personalize the cultural meanings of social acceleration in their everyday life?” This question requires an examination of the phenomenon from both a macro (cultural meaning) and micro (individual experience and personalization) perspective in order to create meso-level theoretical and market insights. Essay 1, “The Intermingling of Meanings in Marketing: Semiology and Phenomenology in Consumer Culture Theory”, provides a theoretical framework explaining how macro, cultural meanings and micro, individual meanings combine in order to discover how meanings in consumer culture come to constitute a sense of “normalcy” in society. Essay 2, “How Fast Became Normal: Temporal Rhetoric in Consumer Culture”, examines the macro cultural and ideological meanings associated with time and social acceleration in the context of the United States market environment. Essay 3, “Consumer Deceleration Through Market-Mediated Cultural Reflection”, serves as an exploration of micro, individualized consumer meanings created as a response to the phenomenon of social acceleration in the context of the marketization of Danish hygge in the United States. This dissertation expands both marketing literature and theories. The findings will improve marketers’ understanding of social acceleration in both the marketplace and in the everyday life of consumers so that the meanings surrounding this phenomenon may be better managed

Effect of vicarious fear learning on children's heart rate responses and attentional bias for novel animals

Research with children has shown that vicarious learning can result in changes to 2 of Lang's (1968) 3 anxiety response systems: subjective report and behavioral avoidance. The current study extended this research by exploring the effect of vicarious learning on physiological responses (Lang's final response system) and attentional bias. The study used Askew and Field's (2007) vicarious learning procedure and demonstrated fear-related increases in children's cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses. Cognitive and behavioral changes were retested 1 week and 1 month later, and remained elevated. In addition, a visual search task demonstrated that fear-related vicarious learning creates an attentional bias for novel animals, which is moderated by increases in fear beliefs during learning. The findings demonstrate that vicarious learning leads to lasting changes in all 3 of Lang's anxiety response systems and is sufficient to create attentional bias to threat in children

‘Being’ and ‘becoming’ a welfare citizen in the Danish Folkeskole

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel UniversityThis thesis is an ethnographic investigation into the ‘bringing about’ of the Danish welfare citizen as observed through everyday values and practices in the Danish folkeskole. The thesis takes as its starting point the notion of dannelse, which is the ’holistic formation of social human beings who can manage their own lives, who know how to behave properly in society, and how to fit in with each other’ (Jenkins 2011:187) and hygge (cosiness), as the primary frameworks through which Danishness can be understood. While trying to unravel what these values/practices are and how they were expressed and inculcated in the everyday lived reality at the Danish folkeskole, I observed the importance of several other key concepts, including lighed (equality as expressed through sameness), and medborgerskab (co-­‐citizenship). This thesis will attempt to understand the importance of these concepts in relation to wider Danish society, and as defining features on the ‘citizenship-­‐journey’ that the Danish folkeskole in this thesis represents. I will argue that the Danish folkeskole to some degree exemplifies a ‘playpen of democracy’ (Korsgaard 2008) as it exists as a liminal sphere, both in terms of providing a space in which students can practice ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ welfare citizens, but more crucially also as a space in-­‐between the public and the private sphere, a home-­‐ away-­‐from-­‐home. This is achieved through notions of hygge to provide the safe and bounded space that is necessary to secure a conducive learning environment in which students can obtain a shared ideological understanding of the world, and hence an equal starting point. Finally, my thesis will focus on the interaction between and value connotations of concepts such as diversity, difference, individuality, inequality and heterogeneity. I am principally interested in demonstrating how these exist in a dynamic relationship with concepts such as equality, similarity, homogeneity and a sense of ‘we/us’ as Danish, and subsequently as democratic welfare citizens.Radcliffe-­Brown and Firth Trust Funds, a fellowship from the Institute for Humane Studies and a Brunel University Social Science Studentshi

Identification of major noise donors, a sure way to abating noise

A Study was conducted to ascertain the specific noise emitted by presumed noisy environments. This was achieved by direct measurement of the noise with the use of an integrated sound level meter in which a built-in frequency filter or weighting network is incorporated. Ten (10) environments were selected in Ilorin and Akure towns in Nigeria, in which sixty (60) readings were taken at intervals of 30 seconds for 30minutes separately at each location. This amounted to an overall reading of six hundred (600) readings. The results show that the Lawn Mower emits noise with the highest Equivalent sound level