The Making of Everyman’s Capitalism in Sweden : Micro-Infrastructures, Unlearning, and Moral Boundary Work

This article analyzes the so-called turn to the market in Sweden, with an emphasis on aspects that are typically absent from large-scale narratives. How did the changes known as neoliberalization and financialization enter everyday life and mundane financial practices? And which analytical tools can historians use to meaningfully connect the experience of changes on the micro level to those on the macro level? Zooming in on the the year 1979 and focusing on two empirical cases—the popularization of stock saving and the domestication of consumer credit—allows us to elaborate and apply a set of analytical entry points about (1) mundane micro-infrastructures, (2) financial knowledge as learning and unlearning, and (3) moral boundary work. This framework offers a way of exploring when and in what ways new financial practices were experienced and eventually embraced by those who had previously been skeptical or even hostile. It also reveals the role played by actors and institutions not typically seen as agents of marketization

Bank Identity : Banks, ID Cards, and the Emergence of a Financial Identification Society in Sweden

Today nearly the entire adult population in Sweden uses a digital BankID for more purposes than only financial ones. Issuing identity documents is commonly perceived as a task for state authorities, but in Swedish society banks have played a dominant role as identificators. The first contribution of this article is that it explains this unique emergence of bank identity and traces the historical roots of a financial identification society to the mid-1960s. Banks started issuing standardized identity cards as a complement to the new system of paying salaries and wages by direct deposit to checking accounts, and these cards eventually became quasi-official identity documents. The Swedish story thus contrasts the scholarship on identification and state control. By treating identity as both a socio-cultural category and a materialization of a technology of control, I argue that the formalization of official identity documents for everyday use was intertwined with the creation of new financial identities. The introduction and general distribution of ID cards were parts of a process whereby wage earners became financial consumers, and the banks transformed themselves into retail companies. My second contribution therefore relates to the scholarly narrative on the financialization of everyday life since the 1980s. While the mass move to financial identification in Sweden, highlighted in this article, certainly fits the content of this narrative, it questions its chronology

The entrepreneur's dream : Credit card history between PR and academic research

This chapter explores a book project initiated in the mid-1970s by Erik Elinder, a charismatic entrepreneur and owner of the Swedish credit card company ContoFöretagen. Commissioned book projects had been carried out within the university also before. However, economic historian Ulf Olsson describes a veritable upsurge of such projects from the mid-1970s, many of them initiated by the Wallenberg group. However, the case of the book project on “The Right to Credit” differs from the Ericsson book and other corporate history writing of the time. The economic valuation of knowledge is clearly spelled out. The book project would in the following years cost way more than 100,000 SEK, including more than 15 months of salary and a long research trip to the United States for the authors. Writing the history of consumer credit and credit cards in Sweden and working with both historical and contemporaneous material seemed a path breaking project

Sociala medier och distanshandel anno 1900 : Charlotte Nilsson: Förbindelse med en större värld: Postorder i Sverige under tidigt 1900-tal

Title in Web of Science: Connection with a larger world: Mail order in Sweden during the early 20th century</p

Golden everyday. Housewifely consumerism and the domestication of banks in 1960s Sweden

The paper explores cultural historical and gender aspects of the financialisation of everyday life through a case study of an extensive Swedish bank campaign in the 1960s targeting women. I analyse the so called Golden Everyday conferences (1961-1969) as representations of popular finance and I focus on two questions: firstly how the financial identities for a broad population were constructed and enacted; and secondly, which role the bank adopted in relation to its (presumptive) clients. The development of retail banking has been roughly outlined in historical studies of banking, but the challenge faced by the banks, and their strategies for entangling finances in everyday practices has not been looked upon in detail. Through the case of the Golden Everyday conferences I argue that in he 1960s a domestication of banks occurred intertwined with the “bancarisation of households” described in the history and sociology of banking. I highlight how emotionality, familiarity and references to consumer skills were used to domesticate a new kind of popular banking. The conferences attempted to reconcile the “hostile worlds” of economy and intimacy. They furthermore framed everyday finance by a ‘housewifely’, consumerist and familiar discourse, which reinforced the bank’s new role in managing personal finance on an everyday basis. This new line was made practically possible by the introduction of a system of direct deposits and cheque accounts for salaries and wages, but the new practices were to be extended also to those who did not lift own salaries and even more importantly needed to be rooted in a domestic context – for both women and men. The financial identity that came into being in the Golden Everyday conferences differed from the identities emphasised by scholars of financialisation of everyday life or those writing about popular finance. The new clients of the Swedish bank, might very well have been engaged in investing, saving or borrowing, but they were addressed here as consumers of financial products. They were supposed to choose and buy in the “department store of finances”. The bank certainly represented itself as a “department store” of finances. At the same time it also institutionalised the expertise about family economics/personal finances, an expert knowledge that previously belonged to many different governmental and non-profit organisations. Thereby the topics of sharing within the family were discussed in the same context as shareholding. Alternativ titel: Quotidien doré : consommation des ménagères et domestication des banques dans la Suède des années 1960</p

Drömmars värde : Varuhus och lotteri i svensk konsumtionskultur 1897-1939

The dissertation explores ideas about consumption in general and about consumer dreams in particular in early twentieth century Sweden. This is done in an analysis of two specific consumer environments –- the department store and the lottery. Both have often been explicitly related to dreams by contemporary observers as well as modern-day researchers. My case studies concern Sweden’s first real department store –- Nordiska Kompaniet (NK) in Stockholm –- in the period 1902 to 1939, and Swedish lotteries in the period 1897 to 1939. The dissertation consists of four parts. The first part presents the starting points of the investigations. Previous research has described the consumer culture of this period either as conveying a normative message about rational thinking or as imbued with a new hedonism. Consequently, I apply the notions of rationality, irrationality, hedonism, and asceticism as analytical concepts. I analyse ideas as expressed in words, in actions and in the shaping of institutions. I investigate the material in both empirical substudies from the perspective of three basic issues. Firstly, I examine the perception of old and new; secondly, the role of pecuniary values and ideal values; thirdly, the power relationships reflected and created by the institutions of the department store and the lottery. Part Two is a study of the department store NK. The empirical chapters discuss issues about the ‘enchantment’ of rationality and modernity within the department store, the attempted reconciliation of commerce and (high) culture, and how gender and class were defined by the shaping of the store space and by the interactions between sales staff and customers. In a concluding chapter I point out the cultural implications of the department store’s business principle of providing a complete range of all possible consumer goods. Part Three investigates the issue of Swedish lotteries in the early twentieth century. I focus on the political and press debates about a proposed state lottery but I also illuminate the institutional forms of lotteries and some aspects of gambling practices. In the empirical chapters of this case study I explore how the perception of the lottery as an antiquated phenomenon shifted to the exact opposite; I examine the conflict between individual dreams and collective future planning as expressed in the political debate; and I discuss how the lottery was related to the work ethic in the normative discourse and in the practice of gambling. I also study how the ‘good public causes’ which Swedish lotteries financed were used by contemporaries to provide moral legitimacy to the lottery. To sum up, I argue that the various and shifting social meanings of money should be considered as a key to understanding both individual and collective attitudes to dreams in the lottery issue. Part Four summarises the results and discusses the two case studies together. Rational, irrational, hedonistic and ascetic features were brought together in the ideas about consumption and in the practice of consuming. I isolate three mechanisms that were used in the period to reconcile apparently contradictory notions and actual opposites. I call these mechanisms redefinition, value equalising and stereotyping. In summary, the dissertation illuminates the interpretation of consumer dreams by placing them in a broader context. It shows how dreams were related to the view of modernity and to the power relationships in society and how they were ascribed ideal and pecuniary values.Förlagsutgivning av författarens avhandling vid Stockholms universitet (http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-276)</p

The Identity Economy

Historian Orsi Husz highlights the continuities in the transition from an analogue documentary regime of identity verification to digital surveillance capitalism

Golden everyday. Housewifely consumerism and the domestication of banks in 1960s Sweden

The paper explores cultural historical and gender aspects of the financialisation of everyday life through a case study of an extensive Swedish bank campaign in the 1960s targeting women. I analyse the so called Golden Everyday conferences (1961-1969) as representations of popular finance and I focus on two questions: firstly how the financial identities for a broad population were constructed and enacted; and secondly, which role the bank adopted in relation to its (presumptive) clients. The development of retail banking has been roughly outlined in historical studies of banking, but the challenge faced by the banks, and their strategies for entangling finances in everyday practices has not been looked upon in detail. Through the case of the Golden Everyday conferences I argue that in he 1960s a domestication of banks occurred intertwined with the “bancarisation of households” described in the history and sociology of banking. I highlight how emotionality, familiarity and references to consumer skills were used to domesticate a new kind of popular banking. The conferences attempted to reconcile the “hostile worlds” of economy and intimacy. They furthermore framed everyday finance by a ‘housewifely’, consumerist and familiar discourse, which reinforced the bank’s new role in managing personal finance on an everyday basis. This new line was made practically possible by the introduction of a system of direct deposits and cheque accounts for salaries and wages, but the new practices were to be extended also to those who did not lift own salaries and even more importantly needed to be rooted in a domestic context – for both women and men. The financial identity that came into being in the Golden Everyday conferences differed from the identities emphasised by scholars of financialisation of everyday life or those writing about popular finance. The new clients of the Swedish bank, might very well have been engaged in investing, saving or borrowing, but they were addressed here as consumers of financial products. They were supposed to choose and buy in the “department store of finances”. The bank certainly represented itself as a “department store” of finances. At the same time it also institutionalised the expertise about family economics/personal finances, an expert knowledge that previously belonged to many different governmental and non-profit organisations. Thereby the topics of sharing within the family were discussed in the same context as shareholding. Alternativ titel: Quotidien doré : consommation des ménagères et domestication des banques dans la Suède des années 1960</p