Abstract
AbstractThis chapter explores how the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries can be used to examine civil defence as remembered. In focus stand oral histories testifying to the entanglement of civil defence in everyday life. The chapter employs a historical ethnography approach, using interviews and questionnaires collected between 2006 and 2012 in Sweden and the UK. The analysis, which departs from the three themes of localities, temporalities and mediations, illustrates the value of a more ‘bottom-up’ approach and discusses how we may refine the sociotechnical imaginaries framework to incorporate at least some elements of the ‘fuzziness’ of everyday life. It shows how elements of everyday culture relate to processes of embedding, resistance and extension of civil defence in Sweden, the UK and beyond.
Highlights
How do you write the history of people trying to remember how they imagined desirable or undesirable futures? Analysing civil defence as an imaginary involves conceptualising civil defence as a technology, but it reminds us of the fact that civil defence was above all a way of mapping out a future for states, societies and individuals
The main focus will not be the memory work of civil defence museums or monuments, but instead oral histories testifying to the entanglement of civil defence in everyday life
Is civil defence viewed as having continued validity, or as essentially defunct as a technology? Can we identify major shifts between how civil defence was experienced during the Cold War and how it is remembered afterwards, and can we use the concepts of extension, embedding or resistance to unpack these possible shifts?
Summary
Civil Defence Memories and Everyday Life in Sweden and the UK. How do you write the history of people trying to remember how they imagined desirable or undesirable futures? Analysing civil defence as an imaginary involves conceptualising civil defence as a technology, but it reminds us of the fact that civil defence was above all a way of mapping out a future for states, societies and individuals. As a future-oriented activity—mapping out and rehearsing the future in the present—it was at the same time abstract and firmly rooted in space and time. When people are looking back at their own experiences of Cold War civil defence from the vantage point of the 2000s, a layer of complexity is added because the act of remembering the future is removed, at least in part, from its anchorage in material experience.
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