Controlling a future by admiring a past: An ecomuseumin Sweden

This article considers some aspects of an historical open‐air museum, an ‘eco‐museum’, in a region called the Bergslag in mid‐Sweden, an area renowned for its age‐old iron ‐ore mining and iron foundries and its modern steel industry. It is now an area in economic decline with a relatively high unemployment rate—proclaimed by the state some years ago as a ‘crisis area’ in need of ‘economic and cultural support and development’. The argument of the article is that concern with controlling the future is a central motivation for the ecomuseum to turn to the past, since history is interpreted as a rational continuity and the roots of local identity, essential ingredients in the making of a good future. This lends the concentration on varying techniques of iron production and work some of its cultural meaning. This concentration is a projection of present values and interests on to the past—from which people in turn seek knowledge as if it were something natural of the past while in fact the cultural identity and a sense of uniqueness are inherent in the events of their ongoing lives, tied to places and networks of social relations.

Notes

1. There is no exact definition of ‘ecomuseum’, on the contrary, defining it is one of the controversial issues for many working with museums. I focus on this below, but to avoid unnecessary confusion, I shall mention a few defining points: ‘ecomuseum’ denotes a museum which actively attempts to include the social and the geographical/ecological environment in the exhibits, objects should not be detached from their ‘natural context’. A key term of this perspective is ‘wholeness’.

This was originally a paper given at the Second EASA (European Association of Social Anthropology) Conference in Prague, August 1992. I wish to thank several persons for reading and commenting on the earlier version: Claes Hallgren, Johan Norman, Don Handelman, Minou Fuglesang, Elisabeth Lind and Ulla Wagner. The study on which this article is based is a work in progress, fieldwork having been conducted during recurring periods since 1991, mainly in a small town I call Gruvbo and its surrounding villages. The general project concerns the situation of women and notions about development and culture (financed by ERU [Expert Group for Research on Regional Development] and BFR [Swedish Foundation for Building Research]). Within this overarching study I address several more limited issues—ideas about ‘social planning’ and the meanings of house and home; notions about history; ideas about health, the body and uses of obscenity as well as the problematics of doing anthropology ‘at home’.