Från kvinnoberedskap till vardagsprepping: genus i mobiliseringen av uppgifter för nationen i tider av kris 1939–2023

This project takes an integrated approach to explore how we can understand the gendered aspects of national preparedness and civil responsibilities in the past, today, and in an imagined future.

By focusing on how individuals, and part of civil society, are expected to and encouraged to build their preparedness, this project aims to analyze how preparedness, as a gendered practice, is being “done”, in the echo of different times. This project will explore four different context and engagements that promotes individuals home preparedness: 1.

State/Public information, such as public information materials, 2.

Civil society initiatives with  particular focus on the Swedish Women’s Voluntary Defence Organization (Svenska Lottakåren), Sweden´s largest defence organization, open only to women, 3.

Popular Education and Study Circles with as specific focus on campaigns for youth preparedness, in the 1940’s and in the 2020’s, and 4. Popular culture, in a broad sense, including descriptions of housekeeping and of representations of home-prepper.

These four cases will all include historical and contemporary analysis and a breadth of perspectives on societal and individuals’ preparedness.

Through an analytical comparison over time, this project will contribute to a nuanced understanding of preparedness that recognizes how it is shaped, performed at multiple levels, being collectively built, and socially, spatially as well as historically situated.