Instructions for reading at home: The shaping of domestic reading practices in the Swedish welfare state.

The purpose of the project is to create an understanding of how domestic reading practices were shaped and made possible in the Swedish welfare society. Sweden has a long-standing tradition of the governing of domestic reading practices through explicit and implicit policy targeting households and families. However, this type of governing has been unproblematised, both as a policy practice and as an object of research.

Furthermore, in current educational, civic and political debate, the “right” kind of reading practices are described as something that inevitably will result in economic prosperity, cognitive development, cultural enhancement and social mobility for Sweden as a country, as well as for its inhabitants. This project will critically examine this notion.

A discourse analytical methodology will be used to analyse how domestic reading practices are shaped. The main empirical material consists of texts by prominent public educators and authors, family journals, and literature recommendations for children and adults. The project analyses material from three time periods: 1) The initiation of the welfare state in the 1930s-1940s, 2) the peak of the welfare state in the 1960s-1970s, and 3) the transformed welfare state in the 2000s-2010s.

The project will shed light on how the ideal domestic readers and reading materials are described, the types of scientific knowledge used to underpin the arguments, and the effects these ideals have for people's lives.