Anden i lampan: Etnologiska perspektiv på ljus och mörker (The Genie of the Lamp: Ethnological Perspectives on Light and Darkness) by Jan Garnert

Abstract

970 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Anden i lampan: Etnologiska perspektiv pa ljus och morker (The Genie of the Lamp: Ethnological Perspectives on Light and Darkness). By Jan Garnert. Stockholm: Carlsson Bokforlag, 1993. Pp. 307; illus­ trations, notes, bibliography, index, English summary. Skr 300. The ever-present availability of artificial light seems so taken-forgranted to most of us that we seldom reflect about how life would be if the darkness of night governed as much as the natural light of day. When we want to celebrate something with dinner in the com­ pany of good friends, we switch off the electric light to enjoy the feeble flame of a candle. Things have not always been like this. A century ago our party would have been illuminated as brightly as possible, iffor no other reason than to show social status. And when the party was over, we would have gone back to the ordinary rhythm of life with its marked differences between day and night, light and dark. The use, and nonuse, of light is deeply imbedded in our cul­ ture. This is thoroughly demonstrated inJan Garnert’s dissertation, an ethnological study of the cultural history of lighting. His starting point in The Genie oftheLampis the reasonable assump­ tion that the light of day and the darkness of night, as well as the technical forms of man-made lighting, have an influence on social relations and human interaction. From this follows the author’s am­ bition to discuss the interplay between technical and cultural change: what do lighting techniques mean for cultural processes? The study concerns mainly Sweden from the 18th century until the middle of the 20th century, but the observations and the analysis are no doubt of more general value. Garnert uses an interesting mix ofsource material: interviews, arti­ facts, memoirs, diaries, questionnaire responses, fiction, and his own observations. Pictures ofdifferent kinds play an especially significant role. They are not primarily used as illustrations (although the book is richly illustrated). In the lack of other source material that might reveal everyday habits and routines related to various lighting tech­ niques, Garnert found contemporary portrayals and photographs re­ warding. Pictures, he says, “became my fieldwork”: they “allowed me to make a journey of discovery through time.” Garnert’s main thesis is that, for an ethnologist, the only truly sig­ nificant long-term change in the history of lighting came with elec­ tricity at the end of the 19th century. Certainly paraffin lamps and gaslight, which came into use during the second half of the 19th century, represented an improvement compared to older tech­ niques like the open hearth, train-oil lamps, tallow candles, and wax candles. But they still suffered from the limitations and dangers of light from flame. The risk of fire from the live flames meant that a light never should be left unattended. Empty rooms were dark rooms. Instead everyone gathered around the single source of light, whether it was a paraffin lamp or the fire in the hearth. Only safe TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 971 and clean electric light made it possible to reduce the marked differ­ ences between a daytime world and a nighttime world, where light and darkness set boundaries for the things people could do. Electric light, arc light, was used in Sweden from 1876, and elec­ tricity became an important element in the modernization of the nation around the turn of the century. With the help of trademarks and advertisements, Garnert demonstrates how the miracle of the radiant electric bulb was associated with classical symbolic imagery and the goddess of light. But electric light was still relatively exclu­ sive. Not until the introduction ofmetal filament lamps around 1910 did it become economically viable for ordinary people. Garnert argues that the real cultural transformation made possi­ ble by the new lighting technique took place around 1930 in Swe­ den. A number of “display events,” such as the Stockholm Exhibi­ tion of 1930, introduced the concept of “electric light culture,” and electric light began to shape the space of streets, homes, offices, fac­ tories, and shops. What emerged was an electrically lit milieu which meant that the age of point lighting was...