Is there a need for a new cultural policy strategy in the Nordic welfare state?

Cultural policies have existed as a structural element of the Nordic welfare states from the very beginning. Today these policies are being re‐evaluated, and there are some indications that they may be gradually dismantled. Local cultural politicians in municipalities (cultural boards) and professionals (e.g. cultural secretaries) have become uncertain and anxious about their future role and legitimacy.

This new situation is addressed and analysed by using the ideas of Goffman's on‐and off‐stage representations, and Foucault's governmentality. Important background factors in the development of cultural policies both in the past, present and future are identified and used to explain the present unclear situation as a reflection of an existing cultural hierarchy or hegemony (see Gramsci). This paper also discusses the role of cultural professionals and local cultural politicians in the implementation of the Nordic cultural policies with references to examples from Finland and Sweden.     

"Testimonies from the Field": The Coming of Christian Science to Australia, c. 1890–1910*

The account of the coming of Christian Science to Australia given in this article is based on testimony contributed by early adherents to the two main church publications, The Christian Science Journal and the Christian Science Sentinel , supplemented by Church records and other sources. The first two decades are covered, from the earliest known intimations of interest to the death of Mary Baker Eddy in 1910, when a Christian Science presence in Australia was assured. Interest shown by writer Miles Franklin, and her association with Melbourne adherents such as leading feminist Vida Goldstein, provides the starting point. The focus is on positive responses. It is postulated that in addition to the documentary and expressive value of the testimonies, they point to problems of class and health in turn-of-the-century Australia. A preponderance of women in both the testimonies and the practice is evidenced, and the openness of progressive women to new approaches is noted. With reference to male testimony, it is suggested that further research into responses to American ways in religion by the urban midle class would be very valuable.     

The Family Behind the Farm: Race and the Affective Geographies of Manitoba Pork Production

As increasing toxicity of Manitoba lakes garners public concern, the environmental impacts of pork producers have come under scrutiny. In this context, the Manitoba Pork Council launched The Family Behind the Farm, a series of advertisements and testimonials featuring pork producers and their families. We examine how this campaign operates affectively to distance the family farm from industrial pork production. Building upon geographical literature theorizing the relationship between race and affect, we argue that the campaign mobilizes pride in the family farm through heteronormative and racialized affects of intimacy, tradition, and intergenerational continuity. In the process, not only is pork production made innocent, but the family farm, and rural Manitoba itself, is reproduced as a white, heteronormative space with an innocent past and secure future. By analyzing this specific case, the paper demonstrates the role of the heteronormative family in reproducing affective geographies of whiteness.     

Erotic Modesty: (Ad)dressing Female Sexuality and Propriety in Open and Closed Drawers,USA, 1800–1930

When middle–class women began to wear drawers in the early 1800s, they were feminised by fabric, ornamentation and an open crotch. Incorporating open drawers into respectable women’s dress within a framework of ‘passionlessness’ constructed female sexuality as both erotic and modest. Crotch construction figured in the twentieth–century struggle to establish modern boundaries of women’s sexual propriety. The accepted sexual and moral meanings generated by open– and closed–crotch undergarments reversed as women increasingly chose to wear closed drawers during a period of women’s greater public presence and feminist activism. The transition from open to closed drawers reveals not only the power of clothing as a medium of significance, but how women’s struggles for autonomy interact with resistant social forces to reconfigure gender distinctions.