Place and Identity: A New Landscape of Social and Political Change in Sweden

By Santérus Academic Press

Sweden is internationally renowned for its generous welfare state. However, over the past decades, changes in economic circumstances and population composition, as well as increasing population concentration in larger urban areas, have imposed new challenges to the Swedish model. What does this imply for individual and collective identity formation? Why and how have some places become more attractive than others? What individuals or groups prosper from these changes and who looses?

The authors of this anthology highlight social and political change in Sweden from different perspectives, based on various studies in urban and rural Sweden. They represent five disciplines: history, human geography, political science, social work and sociology. Contextualised by theories on place and identity, the book’s ten chapters focus on ageing, lifestyle migration, rural landscape, place branding, group identity, religion, music, the school as a meeting place, unsafety and residential projects.

The participating authors are affiliated with the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CUReS) at Örebro University, Sweden.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Santérus Academic Press
• Release date: May 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9789173350471

Book preview

Contributors

Introduction

Themes and Trajectories of Urban and Regional Development in Swedish Society

Håkan Forsell & Marco Eimermann

The point of departure for this volume is the history of Swedish modernisation. This modernisation follows the Swedish industrial golden age (1930–1975), which rested on strong features of socialization into employment, interest expressions organized in political parties and trade unions, the consumption of public services and leisure activities clearly separated from work. It was a homogeneous society with strong equality ideals and commitment to the formal democratic decision-making processes. Above all, the smaller industrial towns gained most from the welfare-building process.

The ‘horizon of expectation’ (Koselleck 1992 [1979]) created by the industrial society during these decades was not compatible with the social and political landscape that took shape and direction after the industrial crises of the mid-1970s. The developments were increasingly characterized by labour-market flexibility, deregulation, consumer lifestyle, individualization and privatization of public welfare services. At the time, Henri Lefebvre (1979: 290) noted an ‘explosion of spaces’, in which industrial geography, patterns of urbanization, every-day life and the regulating power of the nation state were instable and distorted. This tendency has increased through globalization, neo-liberalism and the urbanized labour market.

Generally, the traditional social democratic welfare model that made Sweden world-famous during the post-war period has been dismantled and deprived of many of its economic and political instruments. The initial distributive allocation model has been transformed into a market-oriented hierarchy of activities, regions and cities. The global economy has undergone similar changes. Since the late 1970s, national, regional and local policies no longer aim at redistribution of resources in order to counteract uneven geographical developments. Rather, the policies result in the emergence of areas as winners or losers in sub-national competition for resource-allocation (Andersson et al. 2008). In most cases, this development favours knowledge-intensive and financially governing urban regions, with international connectivity.

In detail however, this transformation has proceeded in different ways depending on historical, geographical and institutional circumstances. This anthology is written in light of these structural changes in economy, politics and society. The localities and identities that the Swedish welfare model created were strongly related to a distributive national system of cities and production locations. But metropolitan areas and university cities have in recent decades taken on a decisive leading position in economic and demographic development. An ever-widening gap has emerged between small towns and rural areas on the one hand and major cities on the other hand. In recent decades, reasons for population growth in large Swedish cities are less connected to domestic rural-urban migration, but more to high urban nativity and international migration. Countless small towns in the countryside experience an alarmingly aging population and schools with a decreasing number of school-children. This is a result of a redistribution principle and choice of investment locations that stand in stark contrast to the economic and political landscape which once formed the basis for the Swedish welfare society.

Against this background, the aim of this anthology is to present research on place distinctiveness, identity formation and social change in Sweden, aided by international theories and concepts. At the time of writing, the authors were PhD candidates and senior researchers at the research school Urban Studies (FUS) within the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURES) at Örebro University, Sweden. The studies collected in this volume relate to various interpretations of the concepts of place and identity.

Therefore, this introduction now turns to a short discussion of these concepts. Before a more critical stance is offered towards the end of this chapter, the concepts are first approached broadly here. In lay discourse, the word ‘place’ is used in many ways in different contexts. Someone or something can be put ‘in place’ or become ‘out of place’. The word can also be used as a verb, when scholars are ‘placing a phenomenon in time and space’. Similarly, identity can be formed by age, gender, ethnicity, religion and so forth. As such, identity is used in many ways to describe senses of belonging to or alienation from groups or places.

As an academic concept, ‘place’ has been discussed by sociologists (e.g. Urry 2007), human geographers (Massey 1991, Relph 1976, 1996, Tuan 1977, 2005) and other social scientists. As Massey (1995) argues, places are unique in that they are different, while simultaneously having aspects in common in an interrelated world. According to Castree (2006: 170), place can have different, often overlapping meanings. These are place as location (distinct points on the earth’s surface), sense of place (‘how different individuals and groups […] both interpret and develop meaningful attachments to those specific areas where they live out their lives’) and place as locale (the scale at which people’s daily life is typically lived). It is neither possible nor desirable to reach consensus on what constitutes place, which is why it is so exciting to study social phenomena in relation to ‘place’!

Place has been characterised both as fixed and as fluid. As such, the concept has been associated with settlement and stasis as well as with mobilities and dynamics of everyday life. Urry (2007: 269) suggests that ‘places are economically, politically and culturally produced through the multiple mobilities of people, […] capital, objects and information’. As the chapters and various empirical materials in this volume witness, place is never completed (Thrift 1999: 317).

Yet, in relation to the concept of identity, place can be studied from a particular angle. The concepts of identity and place can be combined so as to ascribe identity to a certain locale (place identity) or for human beings to derive their identity partly from a place with which they identify (Gren & Hallin 2003: 143–145). As such, place identity can be derived from historical human activities in or around that place. It can also be created by contrasting places with each other or focusing on similarities between places. Moreover, through music, people may relate their identity to places by expressing emotions of joy, sadness, hatred or rebellion felt in connection to those places.

This volume discusses on-going multi-disciplinary explorations of geographical and cultural change within the social sciences on the one side, and recently intensified transformations of Swedish society on the other. The chapters represent various reflections on these transformations and how they are connected to people’s relationship to particular places. They contribute to an adjusted perspective on the history of Swedish modernisation by looking at its different consequences during the post-war period.

The rapidly growing research on the situation of the elderly population has spread widely across demographic analyses. Christina Hjort Aronsson’s contribution examines the conditions for the elderly in depopulated municipalities after the turnaround from a publicly funded nursing care to a cost-effective and competitive market in line with New Public Management. How did this policy transition affect the elderly care especially when it comes to sensitive issues like dignity, belonging and social interaction? Do elderly people today live less or more in congruence with contemporary society than previous generations? Hence, this first chapter focuses on a rural society.

Current issues in contemporary rural society are also highlighted in Marco Eimermann’s study on Dutch migrants in Hällefors, a municipality in rural Sweden. This chapter relates place-identity to the field of lifestyle migration (e.g. Torkington 2012). Eimermann discusses post-migration challenges faced by lifestyle migrants, as an illustrative contrast to e.g. refugees’ post-migration everyday lives that seem challenging for more obvious reasons. In many cases, a mismatch occurs between pre-migration aspirations – partly raised by visiting migrant fairs where Swedish depopulated municipalities attempt to attract new residents from Holland, Belgium and Germany – and post-migration experiences in the rural Swedish destinations. Although the natural beauty, space, low property prices and a general sense of freedom motivates many lifestyle migrants to move, the (lack of) social relationships established after migration determine much of the migrants’ quality of life.

Particular characteristics of the rural landscape are studied in the third chapter. Taking a story that relates contemporary rural Swedish landscape to historical events as its point of departure, the chapter by Fridolfsson connects place and identity to issues of uniqueness in an era of globalisation. The author relates a particular place in the rural Swedish Bergslagen area to nostalgic sentiments referring to the heydays of this area before and during the Swedish industrial golden age (see also Isacson et al. 2009). She investigates these developments within the context of emerging ecotourism in rural Sweden.

After these chapters with a rural focus, the collection turns to a rather urban focus. The chapter by Eva Gustavsson and Ingemar Elander on local climate policy in three Swedish towns corresponds to the ‘selling’ perspective on urban and regional development. As municipalities increasingly compete when attracting jobs, investment and international interest, environmental strategies have become an integral part of the ‘branding’ of the location – but the outcomes differ in terms of success, as Gustavsson & Elander also discuss in the chapter.

Besides the social fabric of a place, physical surroundings are also important. Places can also be designed, built and constructed for different purposes. Both Andreas Thörn’s study of the Pentecostal Church in Stockholm during the earlier twentieth century and the chapter by Charlotte Fridolfsson and Ingemar Elander on contemporary mosques in Swedish cities deal with sites created for specific groups’ needs of both community life of the enclosed group and integration of that group in society. The emphasis on religious community for the identity process of groups and individuals in a secular country like Sweden would appear to be a decisive shift from socialization as formerly connected with work and the profession learned in a work place.

However, Thörn’s contribution shows that there have always been parallel community building processes, and previously unaddressed histories of space and wealth creation, which are again visible today with the establishment of a more pluralistic society. The investigation by Fridolfsson and Elander proves that the process of site-constructing, in this case involving a religious and cultural Muslim community, in reality follows quite different patterns in different cities. The places as well as the importance designated to basement mosques and new built mosques could be linked to different perspectives on minority rights and the need and willingness of the group itself to interact with the surrounding society.

In other cases, places can be inextricably linked to entire subcultures, something that is particularly evident when talking about youth and music culture. Susanna Nordström analyses the heavy metal scene in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city. She demonstrates how place and music create a strong identity link through a youth culture that is spread out across the country. Nordström argues that the heavy metal scene in Gothenburg shows characteristics of a diaspora, in which music becomes a means for people to connect to an imagined place of birth or upbringing.

The spread of values and conducts that originally came from urban conditions can be read in several sectors of society and in medium-sized and small towns as well. Anders Trumberg’s chapter shows how economic and ethnic segregation in the Swedish compulsory school also is a reality in medium-sized towns in Sweden after the major school reforms in the early 1990’s. Previously, segregation between the primary schools has been treated exclusively as a phenomenon in larger metropolitan areas. Trumberg discusses how the individualization of democratic values has altered the social geography not least in places that have accomplished structural transformation from once industrial production towns to become places of knowledge production.

In the penultimate chapter, Monika Persson also addresses an aspect of urbanization and urban life that long has been associated with metropolitan areas: (un)safety and the perceived dangers of the urban environment. Persson discusses how the differentiation of insecurity by gender, age and social class and urban space as a ‘moderator’ of social relations is a predominant reality also in small and medium-sized Swedish towns.

A point of departure for several chapters in the book is the construction of places; the physical and mental design and their social and economic importance. This may involve selling strategies of houses and homes through marketing and storytelling, as analysed in the final chapter by Maja Lilja and Peter Sundström. The market depiction of people and places associated with imagined locations and their values are a prominent feature of private construction companies and investors. Places are defined by what is emphasized and what is deselected. Lilja and Sundström observe how a number of dichotomies occur frequently for various planned residential areas: history and modernity, nature and city life, people and lifestyle. Several residential areas could be interpreted as projects of self-segregation for an urban, active middle class. At the same time Lilja and Sundström reflect upon how conceptions of the home are connected to leisure, rather than to work. Moreover, the marketing of residential sites demonstrates a greater awareness of the importance of leisure time spent at the residential area.

As introduced above, this collection presents studies from different disciplines covering a variety of cases. Each chapter takes as its point of departure an existing or imagined place in connection to Swedish empirical material gathered by the authors. It discusses questions of identity related to people’s everyday practices in or related to that place. How do people relate individually and collectively to various places? Can we observe socio-cultural developments in this type of relationships? Can everyday practices be explained by studying characteristics of place? But also: how can the identity of a place be produced and instrumentalised in political visions and processes, for example concerning sustainability and policy? This volume addresses these and other questions using an array of place- and identity-related theories and concepts.

Places are historical and geographical, but also subjective entities. They may radically change due to economic and political development. People living in once booming towns and regions that recently have turned to face declining population and stagnating economy interpret their lives differently than before. In other circumstances, culture and society give places new meaning and attractiveness. This is related to the different and often overlapping meanings that the concept of place can have (Castree 2006: 170). This collection sheds a light on these meanings from Swedish rural and urban perspectives. Places make a lasting impression in people’s minds and they are thus important components of the (dis) continuities of social life and the formation and values of society.

Due to mobility’s increasing impacts on place, place identities have become more fragmented over the past decades. A major challenge in researching place and identity is to overcome this fragmentation and combine increasingly fluid and remaining static interpretations of place, as they emerge in various new contexts among different groups in Swedish and other societies. Combining the contributions presented here, this volume takes a step towards addressing this challenge.

Örebro and Umeå, Sweden, Summer 2014

References

Andersson, Frida, Richard Ek & Irene Molina (2008), ‘Introduktion: En regional politik i förändring’. pp. 7–34 in: Andersson, Frida, Richard Ek & Irene Molina (eds), Regionalpolitikens geografi – regional tillväxt i teori och praktik. Malmö: Studentlitteratur.

Castree, Noel (2006), ‘Place: connections and boundaries in an interconnected world’. pp. 165–185 in: Holloway, Sarah, Stephen Rice & Gill Valentine (2006) (eds), Key Concepts in Geography. London: Sage.

Gren, Martin & Per-Olof Hallin (2003), Kulturgeografi, en ämnesteoretisk introduktion. Malmö: Liber.

Isacson, Maths, Mats Lundmark, Cecilia Mörner & Inger Orre (2009) (eds), Fram träder Bergslagen – nytt ljus över gammal region. Bergslagsforskning 3. Västerås: Mälardalens Högskola.

Koselleck, Reinhard (1992 [1979]), Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.

Lefebvre, Henri (1979), ‘Space: social product and use value’, pp. 285–295 in: J. W. Freiberg (ed.), Critical Sociology. European Perspectives, New York: Irvington Publishers.

Massey, Doreen (1991), ‘A global sense of place’. Marxism Today 38: 24–29.

Massey, Doreen (1995), ‘The conceptualisation of place’. pp. 46–79 in: Massey, Doreen & Pat Jess (ed.s), A place in the world? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Relph, Edward (1976), Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.

— (1996), Reflections on Place and Placelessness. Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter, 7, 3, 14–16 [special issue on the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Place and Placelessness].

Thrift, Nigel (1999), ‘Steps to an ecology of place’. pp. 295–323 in: Massey, Doreen, John Allen & Phil Sarre (ed.s), Human Geography Today. Chichester: Wiley.

Torkington, Kate (2012), ‘Place and Lifestyle Migration: the Discursive Construction of Glocal Place-Identity’. Mobilities 7: 71–92.

Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977 [2008]), Space and Place: the perspective of experience. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.

— (2005), ‘Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective’. pp. 444–457 in: Agnew, John, David Livingstone & Alisdair Rogers (ed.s), Human geography. An essential anthology. (Seventh edition) Oxford: Blackwell.

Urry, John (2007), Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Ageing, Identity and Place

– Senses of Belonging

Christina Hjorth Aronsson

Introduction

This contribution to the anthology about identity and place has to some extent been influenced by the ongoing Swedish media attention during 2011 to what has been called scandals in elder care, especially residential care. This media debate has focused on the fact that private companies make huge profits by having extremely cost-effective care organizations, and that frail elderly persons suffer from this. The cases of deeply disgraceful treatment of older persons that have surfaced are as far from any idea of human dignity as possible. But what is interesting to reflect upon is the fact that the concept of identity is remarkably absent in most discussions about the content and quality of elder care, and not only these current examples. The focus of elder care has been on solutions to bring health care and social assistance to individuals, not on how the help might contribute to the quality of life to ageing persons in terms of their lifelong identities. Scientific knowledge should contribute to better care content, as well as to how to put personnel and financial resources to use in a better and more dignified way.

In the years around 1900, human ageing was not yet something that was regarded as a social policy issue. The great demographic changes during the twentieth century, however, with rising in average life expectancies all over the Western world due to better hygiene, food and health care and medical treatment, forced society to recognize the need to take action to deal with the ageing population. The Swedish average life expectancy is projected to continue to increase until around 2050, for men from the current 78.6 to 83.6 years, and for women from 82.8 to 86.3 years (SCB, 2006:2). The fact that we live for so long has also meant that we live as retired persons for a fairly long period, sometimes more than thirty years. Also, the transition from an active, working life to living as pensioners is far from an abrupt change from one day to next. Many prefer to retire step by step between the ages of 60 and 67, thus keeping in contact with their occupations to some degree. Also, many preserve their good health to a high age and lead active lives travelling, pursuing interests and hobbies, and taking part in social activities with friends.

The argument that will be focused on in this chapter concerns aspects of the connection between the person, social interaction and place as they have been theorized on psychological, social-psychological and social levels in social science and social gerontology. As is asked by Forssell in the introductory chapter, matters concerning dignity, belonging and social interaction, deeply influence identities of older persons and this is especially important when the amount of freedom in action is restricted by bad health and illness. Over the course of their entire lives, individuals develop a deep identification with an environment, be it rural, a small rural town or an urban environment, with the consequence that they either live there for the rest of their life, have resettled during a later part of life, or arrange a mixture of both, all in order to keep in contact with a geographical location that is familiar to them. The places where one lives and has lived during one’s life reflect aspects of one’s self (Chapman & Peace 2008) and life experiences are connected to certain places which themselves contribute to and influence how identity develops through the life course. Though people may move many times during their lives, all the places where they have lived form a kind of mental map which contributes to their identity and to a sense of belonging as well as of exclusion (Lynch, 1967). The aim of this chapter is to review and discuss some aspects of the concept of identity in terms of how research captures this in connection with human ageing in a social context where social care of older people is of great importance for their daily lives. Places and artefacts as well as relationships, play a vital role in the continuity and change of individual identity. Identity arises in the relationship between one’s own and others’ definitions of who I am, and identity changes over time as well as according to the social context. The chapter will begin with some notions about the home ideology of Swedish elder care, followed by a theory of personality development and then move on to theories explaining ageing from social and sociological levels and the importance issues concerning place when trying to understand ageing and the life course.

The home ideology

An increasing dependence on health and medical care as well as social care such as home help is often a reality in the life of older individuals. Welfare solutions are based on the idea of remaining at home for as long as possible on the grounds that it is good for the individual to remain in a familiar and comfortable setting. This chapter will discuss the importance of place relations for the individual self throughout the entire course of life. The ideological preference within the Swedish welfare sector for having the elderly remain at home is supported by