Swedish Exceptionalism Research Articles

Humanitarian discourse as racism disclaimer

Abstract Roma communities remain Europe’s most marginalized and disadvantaged population, facing increasing discrimination, especially after the 2015 refugee crisis. European media often portrays them as criminals or anti-social, furthering misunderstanding and social exclusion. This article examines Swedish news media’s representation of Roma, which, at a surface level, appears much less negative. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we analyze two Swedish newspapers’ coverage of the controversial law which sought to criminalize begging, which targeted Eastern European Roma migrants. Our findings reveal that ‘Swedish exceptionalism’–a discourse of human rights, equality, colorblindness, characterized by limited racial literacy–serves to obscure and act as a disclaimer for anti-Roma sentiment and government actions which in fact resemble those criticized in other EU countries.

Magic of feminist bridging

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with difficult experiences and memories of othering and racialisation? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racialization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidentifying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions. Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives, such as automatic writing, epistolary formats, poems, fiction, collective memory-work, allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajectories as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, refl ections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well.

Giftedness and Swedish Exceptionalism? Gifted Pupils in Primary and Compulsory School, 1842–2022

Giftedness in school has in the twenty-first century grown as a field of research in Sweden. Some claim that giftedness and gifted children’s needs were long ignored by the education system for historical and cultural reasons, and it is only in the past two decades that a slight change in view has occurred so talented pupils’ learning has been highlighted. In this article, this often-reproduced image is questioned. Instead, taking a longer educational, historical perspective, is it argued that as early as the nineteenth century the authorities took some account of differences in talent; that giftedness received a great deal of attention from the state after the First World War; that the need to adapt education organizationally or pedagogically to pupils’ different giftedness was extensively covered in the first two curricula of the new compulsory school system in the 1960s; that the authorities required schools to adapt their learning activities to the needs of gifted pupils; that these views and demands rested on contemporary research and school commissions; that the Swedish school system’s growing segregation and decentralization since 1990 has meant that the curricula thereafter are now significantly vaguer than the earlier ones regarding giftedness; and finally, that there today is a significantly greater risk than in the 1960s–1980s that the needs of gifted pupils are forgotten.

‘Happy Stories’ of Swedish Exceptionalism

AbstractSexuality education (SE) takes place in fields of tension where biology, legislation, norms, and values intersect. Drawing on Ahmed’s phenomenological account of whiteness, this article examines how Swedish whiteness is constructed and reproduced within SE. In Sweden, SE is formalised as an overarching, subject-integrated knowledge area where the biology subject plays a crucial role in its delivery. To include a wide spectrum of SE, where both planned and unplanned aspects of teaching are considered, as well as tensions in the content, we have analysed eight semi-structured teacher interviews and five biology textbooks. Our analysis shows how Swedish whiteness is reproduced as a form of institutionalised orientation constructed by norms, social values, people, subject knowledge, policies, and legislation, all intertwined in a complex web. This web places SE, teachers, and pupils in a racial landscape that constructs and reproduces specific forms of Swedish whiteness by assigning each a position in relation to familiarity. This familiarity provides a taken-for-granted starting point in SE, where ‘here’ is constructed as a place of progression, openness, and possibilities for happy future sexual lives, while other places come to stand out as hyper-visible examples of the less familiar, less happy, and ‘far away’. From this outpost, teachers and biology textbooks construct and reproduce Swedish whiteness through ‘happy stories’ of Swedish exceptionalism. Although these positive messages in SE may stem from good intentions, our findings show that a colourblind view of racial hierarchies in the rendering of ‘happy stories, about, for example, gay rights, free abortion, and equality also contributes to reproducing whiteness and reinforcing ideas about race and Swedish exceptionalism in SE.

Democracy and Technocracy in Sweden's Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sweden's management of the coronavirus pandemic, beginning in early 2020, has been much discussed because it deviated from other countries' equivalents. Set in the context of scholarly debate about the balance between politicians and experts in political decision-making, we argue that a necessary condition for this case of Swedish exceptionalism was the manner of policy-making adopted by the Swedish authorities. In this article, we describe this policy-making procedure, which involved a radical form of delegation by elected politicians to appointed experts, and seek to explain how it came about. We focus on the 1st year of the pandemic, and use media reports and other public documents, including parts of a public inquiry, as our empirical material.

Sweden’s Rule of Law, Democracy, and ‘Swedish Exceptionalism’ as seen through COVID-19 – Restricted Power and Rights to Freedom

2020년 코로나바이러스감염증-19 팬데믹 상황에서 스웨덴은 긴박한 대응 없이 자유주의적인 ‘느슨한’ 방역 전략으로 큰 주목을 받았다. 거의 모든 나라들이 검사와 추적, 격리, 규제와 금지, 봉쇄 조치를 취했는데 스웨덴은 매우 예외적으로 개인의 자율과 책임에 기반한 권고 중심의 방역정책을 채택했다. 이러한 자율방역 또는 방역 예외주의는 팬데믹이 장기간 지속될 것이고 의료적, 개인적, 사회적, 경제적으로 지속가능한 대응을 강조한 스웨덴 보건청의 과학적 판단에 따른 것이다. 스웨덴의 방역 예외주의는 개인의 자유와 사생활 보호, 권력 행사의 절제, 록다운에 의한 경제적 영향에 더해 의료·교육·돌봄 등 사회적 차원의 위기와 위협을 고려한 것이었다. 이러한 스웨덴의 자율방역을 헌정적 관점에서 분석하고자 한 본 연구는 스웨덴 법치주의와 민주주의의 특성이 자율방역 전략과 밀접하게 관련되어있다는 점을 밝히고자 했다. 스웨덴 법치주의와 민주주의를 형성해온 근본적인 문화적·역사적·사회적 요인들이 자율방역의 지속을 가져왔을 것이라는 직관적 판단의 가설을 규명하기 위해 스웨덴 법치주의와 민주주의의 역사적 발전 과정과 이 과정에서 유래되어 온 관습과 제도, 사회·문화적 규범을 분석했다. 역사적·사회문화적 관점에서 스웨덴의 헌정 및 민주주의 제도를 검토한 결과 권력 분산과 제한된 권력, 개인의 자유와 사회의 규범을 중시한 스웨덴 법치주의와 민주주의의 특성, 스웨덴은 남다르고 잘한다는 민족주의적 우월감을 의미하는 ‘스웨덴 예외주의(Swedish exceptionalism)’가 자율방역의 근본적 요인임을 알 수 있다.In the context of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden received great attention for its liberal relaxed infection strategy without an urgent response. Almost all countries have implemented inspection, tracking, quarantine, regulation and ban, and lockdowns, but Sweden is an exceptional case, which has adopted a recommendation-based policy based on individual autonomy and responsibility. This infection exceptionalism is based on the scientific judgment of the Public Health Agency of Sweden which emphasizes that the pandemic will last for a long time and that medically, personally, socially and economically sustainable policies are emphasized. Sweden s infection exceptionalism has taken into account crises and threats at the social level, such as medical care, education, and childcare, in addition to the economic impact of lockdowns, rights to freedom and privacy protection, restraint in the exercise of power. This study, which attempted to analyze Sweden s relaxed infection strategy from a constitutional point of view, has intended to reveal that the characteristics of the Swedish rule of law and democracy are closely related to the strategy. The historical development of Sweden s rule of law and democracy which have formed the fundamental cultural and social characteristics such as customs, institutions, social norms, have contributed to the resilience of the relaxed strategy. By examining Sweden s constitutional and democratic system from a historical and socio-cultural perspective, this article finds that the characteristics of Sweden s rule of law and democracy which emphasized dispersion of and restricted power, rights to freedom and social norms, and nationalistic superiority, so-called Swedish exceptionalism , are fundamental factors for the Sweden s exceptional and relaxed infection strategy.

Swedish exceptionalism and the Sars-CoV2 pandemic crisis: Representations of crisis and national identity in the public sphere.

In abstaining from law‐enforced virus containment measures, the Swedish response to the severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic crisis stood out as radically different compared to other European nations. The present study aims to provide an understanding of the deviant Swedish crisis strategy and to do so from a cultural perspective by illustrating how the crisis and national self‐identification were interpreted and contested in the public sphere. Drawing on a content analysis of claims made by politicians, scientific experts, public intellectuals, journalists, and editors, I illustrate how crisis response was associated with collective, national identity and how this identity was said to enable an exceptional crisis response. This association, I argue, gave rise to the stigmatization of dissident voices that were accused of undermining social order. Responding to a call by crisis researchers, the present study serves as an attempt to bring social and cultural factors back into the center of crisis research.

Film Pioneers? Swedish Women’s Documentaries about the “Third World” in the 1970s and 80s

ABSTRACT This article explores an obscure category of documentaries made by Swedish women in the 1970s and 80s, about women’s situation in the so-called “Third World”. The films were supported by the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA), through an allocated budget for information aimed at raising the Swedish population’s awareness about and sympathies for the “Third World” and Swedish development assistance. Distributed at a strikingly gender equal rate, SIDA’s film support implied rare opportunities for Swedish women filmmakers in a film industry otherwise heavily marked by inequalities and restrictions. Examining this unique case of women’s film history from the perspectives of feminist and postcolonial film studies, employing archival research, film historical contextualization and critical film analysis, the article seeks to understand the complex interplay between the feminist film movement and Swedish solidarity politics at a time. How did the production context that opened up through the SIDA support overlap with women’s film culture? What kinds of films did the support result in? What kinds of gender and racial politics and national imaginary did they articulate? How can the legacy of these unrecognized but problematic films be approached and included in women’s film history? By unravelling and contextualizing the layered meanings and intricate politics of this small film culture, the aim is to add original insights into the operations of Swedish exceptionalism in women’s cultural production, as well as to address key issues in feminist film historiography. Looking closer at a sample of films, the article critically discusses their mobilization of a colonialist imaginary that evoke Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s (1984) pivotal critique of Western feminist discourse and explores their role in the context of Swedish solidarity politics and constructions of notions of Swedish moral superiority.

CORRIGENDUM to “Swedish exceptionalism, herd immunity and the welfare state: A media analysis of struggles over the nature and legitimacy of the COVID-19 pandemic strategy in Sweden”

CORRIGENDUM to “Swedish exceptionalism, herd immunity and the welfare state: A media analysis of struggles over the nature and legitimacy of the COVID-19 pandemic strategy in Sweden”

Civic and Political Engagement during the Multifaceted COVID-19 Crisis.

Measures to cope with the COVID‐19 pandemic have put a sudden halt to street protests and other forms of citizen involvement in Europe. At the same time, the pandemic has increased the need for solidarity, motivating citizens to become involved on behalf of people at risk and the vulnerable more generally. This research note empirically examines the tension between the demobilisation and activation potential of the COVID‐19 crisis. Drawing on original survey data from seven Western European countries, we examine the extent, forms, and drivers of citizens’ engagement. Our findings show the remarkable persistence of pre‐existing political and civic engagement patterns. Concurrently, we show that threat perceptions triggered by the multifaceted COVID‐19 crisis have mobilized Europeans in the early phase of the pandemic. Similarly, the role of extreme ideological orientations in explaining (regular) political engagement indicates that the current situation may create its specific mobilisation potentials.

Swedish exceptionalism, herd immunity and the welfare state: A media analysis of struggles over the nature and legitimacy of the COVID-19 pandemic strategy in Sweden

Compared to many other countries, Sweden has managed the COVID-19 pandemic with no lockdowns, less regulation and more voluntary action expected of citizens and organizations. In this article, the authors explore media representations of national preventative strategies and how they were anchored in broader discourses. The article aims to analyse the development of crisis narratives and struggles over legitimacy during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden. Employing a critical discourse analysis, the authors investigate the editorials and opinion articles in Sweden’s largest morning newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, during the spring of 2020. The authors combine descriptive analyses of the development of the crisis narratives with discursive analyses of conflicting ideologies in the debate. The study indicates that three crisis narratives dominated the debates: health, the economy and democracy. Within and between these narratives, struggles over legitimacy in the handling of COVID-19 were captured in several conflicting perspectives or paradoxes: Swedish exceptionalism versus the world, centralization versus decentralization and herd immunity versus herd humanism.

Music, mining and colonisation: Sámi contestations of Sweden’s self-narrative

Sweden’s dominant self-narrative has tended to marginalise its historical colonisation of Sápmi. This aspect of Swedish history sits uncomfortably with prevalent understandings of that self-identity. Indeed, there has been little emphasis on the historical subordination of Sámi people in political science scholarship on Swedish exceptionalism and internationalism. This article problematises this absence by centring the analysis on Sámi musician Sofia Jannok’s efforts to decolonise Sápmi through her music. The first part examines Sweden’s colonisation of Sápmi and the tensions between Sámi reindeer herding communities, mining interests and the Swedish state. This is followed by an exploration of the constitutive relationship between music, politics and celebrity, as sites of political communication. A two-step analysis follows, investigating the broad themes in Sofia Jannok’s personal narrative and the discursive markers defining her music and politics. The analysis shows how her narrative intersects with the discursive themes of her musical expression and other engagements.

Swedish exceptionalism? Investigating the effect of associational involvement on generalized trust with panel data

ABSTRACTFor some time been it has been hypothesized that involvement in civic associations creates generalized social trust. Yet, prior panel data studies, based mainly on data collected in Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have found little support for the existence of such an effect. This article adds further empirical knowledge, focusing on Sweden. The evidence presented here is the first to provide support for the hypothesis using a survey that allows panel data models. In the conclusions, it is discussed whether the differing findings may depend on Sweden being a particularly favourable environment, considering its comparatively democratic and prosperous associational life; or if the reason is that the data at hand do not allow using exactly the same panel models as in some of the prior studies.

The midwife case and conscientious objection: new ways of framing abortion in Sweden

ABSTRACT By examining the arguments presented in courts and in print media to support and oppose the introduction of conscientious objection for healthcare workers in Sweden, this article illustrates the ways in which interest groups may take advantage of expanding opportunity structures in the wake of internationalization, all the while framing their arguments in ways that create resonance with national and nationalist discourses. Focusing on the case of a midwife who sued a county for refusing to hire her after having learned she would not participate in abortions, the article analyzes how both anti- and pro-abortion groups frame the issue of conscientious objection as aligned with “Swedish exceptionalism” in terms of worker co-determination and adherence to international conventions. The article thus strengthens the feminist contention that the issue of abortion, regardless of how precisely it is framed, tends to mobilize nationalist discourses, but also highlights how anti-abortion movements can “think global, act local.”

“Sweden Has Been Naïve”: Nationalism, Protectionism and Securitisation in Response to the Refugee Crisis of 2015

Fake news, disinformation campaigns, xenophobia, political resentment, and a general backlash on equality issues mark the current political climate. In this context, the idealism of the Swedish welfare state has gained a specific symbolic value. This article investigates how the idealisation of Sweden as a modern and gender-equal country was articulated as a focal point in the establishment of threat and crisis narratives in the political debate of the refugee crisis of 2015. The article shows how progressive and egalitarian ideals were viewed as outdated and naïve, but at the same time put forward as core values worthy of protection. The title refers to the statement made by the Swedish Prime Minister in 2015 stating that “Sweden has been naïve” and serves as an example of how the myth of Sweden as an exceptionally modern, secular, and equal society was evoked in processes of securitisation, nationalistic protectionism, and normalisation of xenophobia. The article concludes that the articulation of Swedish exceptionalism in the establishment of threat and crisis narratives may reproduce and enhance social inequality and polarisation.

The changing political landscape of Sweden

The political landscape in Sweden has undergone considerable changes in recent decades The number of political parties in the Swedish parliament has increased from five to eight, and the socio-economic issues of the traditional political right–left scale has been challenged by socio-cultural issues relating to lifestyle and identity. Notably, the notion of Swedish exceptionalism and the particularities of its welfare state is lingering despite findings pointing in the opposite direction e.g. with the increased electoral support for the radical right, and its ethno-nationalist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The corporatist model has been challenged by new forms of political authority, participation and representation. New political actors, such as social movements and civil society actors, think tanks and policy professionals, are becoming increasingly engaged in political processes. The long-term trend suggests that traditionally marginalised groups, such as the young, women and groups of migrant background, are represented in decision-making forums to a higher degree than before. Yet, current conditions need further analysis. In this article, we provide a background to Sociologisk Forskning’s special issue on the political landscape of the parliamentary election in 2018.

The radical right and the end of Swedish exceptionalism

Fifteen years ago, Rydgren (Scand Polit Stud 25(1):27–56, 2002) asked why no electorally successful radical right-wing party had yet emerged in Sweden. In this respect, Sweden was a negative case. Rydgren posited four main explanations: (1) social class mattered more in Sweden than elsewhere. Working-class voters identified strongly with their social class and with the Social Democratic party, making them largely unavailable to radical right-wing mobilization; (2) socioeconomic issues still structured most politics in Sweden, and issues belonging to the sociocultural dimension—most importantly immigration—were of low salience for voters; (3) voters still perceived clear policy alternatives across the left-right divide; and (4) the leading radical right-wing alternative, the Sweden Democrats, was perceived as being too extreme. Since 2010, however, Sweden can no longer be considered a negative case, and in this article, we argue that in order to understand the rise and growth of the Sweden Democrats, we should focus on changes in the factors enumerated above.

When the Phantom became an anticolonialist: socialist ideology, Swedish exceptionalism, and the embodiment of foreign policy

ABSTRACTThe Phantom, an American comic about a superhero of British heritage set in a fictional African country, is held in high esteem elsewhere, regarded as a national institution in Australia, New Zealand and much of Scandinavia. Since the early 1960s, officially licensed scripts have been produced by the Swedish-based scriptwriters of ‘Team Fantomen’ who today remain the major suppliers of adventures to the Phantom comics around the world. This essay suggests that this shift in the scripts’ geographical origin also altered the politics of the comic: in the hands of Team Fantomen, the masked hero is instilled with political doctrines reflected in Swedish foreign policy during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This ideological shift means that the masked hero moves away from the role of colonialist fantasy prevalent in the American scripts to become a supporter of decolonisation, social justice and equality. The Phantom becomes an avatar of democratic socialist ideology, the episodes offering a direct commentary on Sweden’s perception of its own role in the world as a leading proponent of international solidarity.

Deadly exceptionalisms, or, would you rather be crushed by a moral superpower or a military superpower?

In this essay, I consider the ways in which nationalism in both the U.S. and Sweden relies on notions of exceptionalism, and I discuss what this means materially for their own populations and for the world. The analysis consists of two lines of attack against both these assumptions of exceptionalism – one focusing on psychological processes and the other political economy processes. I examine the historical development of the ideas of U.S. and Swedish exceptionalism, and consider the roles of ignorance, denial, and projection in maintaining these problematic ideas. Through the use of a materialist definition of racism, I show how the nationalist ideology of exceptionalism in these two cases harms the well-being of their own citizens as well as citizens of other states. I argue that a combination of the psychological and political economy approaches are necessary if we are to both understand the power and impact of exceptionalism as a nationalist ideology and to be able to effectively work against their tendency to “crush” marginalized groups.

Neoliberalism and Civil Society: Swedish Exceptionalism in a Comparative Perspective – On the Conceptual and Real History of Civil Society

Social science is a battlefield for the formation of concepts. The Swedish case is particular. “Civil society” re-entered the scene as a neoliberal and social-conservative reaction against the social-democratic ideology of the “strong state,” in which the state and society were conceived to be almost synonymous. The Swedish revival of an old concept is in obvious contrast with the concept’s reception east of the Elbe in recent decades, where “civil society” has often been used as a label for grass roots social movements, which are independent of the state and the nomenklatura, in malfunctioning regimes with low legitimacy and poor output. This idea is lacking in the Swedish case, where we find a characteristic merger between the “top-down” and “bottom-up” perspectives. “Real, existing” civil society in Sweden has a long history. Self-organised initiatives sought support from the state and often received it – in some cases creating institutions that grew into state agencies. Forestry, electrification, and early social insurance provide examples of the interplay between the state, the market, and society. Swedish civil society has deep roots in history, going back at least to late medieval days. Civil society was a formative element in the design of the relatively successful “Swedish model” through social engineering and piecemeal reforms during the period from the 1930s to the late 1960s.