From Mothers of the “People's Home” to Biologically Rational Consumers

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to study how women's alcohol consumption has been defined and contested in the Swedish press from 1955 to 2010 in relation to the development of Swedish society from a social democratic welfare state to a neoliberal competition state. Our material consists of articles published in the largest Swedish national and regional newspapers in 1955, 1965, 1977, 1982, 1995, 2004, and 2010. In the study, we apply Fraser's concepts of recognition and redistribution to analyse how the press contributed to the formation of cultural injustices and counter-claims through its recognition of women's drinking, and how these cultural injustices and counter-claims have conditioned the redistribution of societal resources. Our analysis shows that, during the study period, women were recognized in the Swedish press in limited and stigmatizing subject positions. These dominating representations of drinking women changed over time in an unpredictable way. As collectively shared, widely accepted cultural images, they tended to downplay the possibility of women achieving equal and just participation in cultural interaction, social activities, and healthcare services. In counter-discourses, the possibilities for women to formulate public claims in order to make surrounding structures more “enabling” of their independency, weakened during the study period.

Keywords::

• news items
• historical perspective
• welfare state
• recognition
• redistribution
• subject position
• drinking

Acknowledgements

The paper is part of the projects “Women, health and substance use” (FAS: 2007-2131, funded by FAS) and “Changing alcohol culture” (FAS: 2008-0658, funded by FAS).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Filip Roumeliotis

Filip Roumeliotis is a PhD student in sociology, currently working at the Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs, Stockholm University. His main research topics include alcohol and drug policy, drinking cultures and gender. E-mail: [email protected]

Jukka Törrönen

Jukka Törrönen has a chair as professor at SoRAD on social alcohol and drug research. He has had a long-term interest in alcohol and drug research, in theoretical sociology and in qualitative methods. E-mail: [email protected]