Tools or Toys--Inventing the Need for Domestic Appliances in Postwar and Postmodern Finland

Abstract

The article describes how the boundary between necessary and unnecessary consumption items was defined in Finland in the years following World War II. On the basis of extensive comparative data, it focuses on the history of two items: the washing machine and the cellular phone. The data consist of press coverage and material published by manufacturers and consumer counseling organizations. The need for household appliances was invented, shaped, normalized, and legitimized through a social interaction process in which the media were a central vehicle. The data suggest that the need for novelties is interpreted though similar types of cultural modes, no matter what the product or type of cultural text. Thus, the entry of technology into the home in the postwar years was accompanied by a discussion flavored not only by technological determinism, but also by a form of social and cultural determinism manifested in deep-grounded conceptual distinctions, such as tools versus toys. The world-record pace at which Finnish consumers took up new technology in the postwar period provides illustrative evidence and new stimuli for evaluating the potential for digitalizing the home in the twenty-first century.