Emotions, power and space in the discourse of ‘People of the Real World’

Abstract

The article investigates the discursive trope of ‘People of the Real World’ (PRW) as it was launched by the leader of the Swedish Christian Democrats, Göran Hägglund, during a political campaign week on the Island of Gotland in 2009. Sociological and cultural theories of local vs. cosmopolitan identity, of emotions, and of space, are used to analyse the speech and a selection of newspaper articles from 2009. The PRW discourse defends local, sedentary communities against globalization and cosmopolitanization. It draws on the collective emotional resources of ‘normals’ as they feel threatened by the social and political advancement of previously marginalized groups, undermining the former group’s power to define social space. It thus contributes to the social and political cultivation of resentment among those who identify with conservative, anti-cosmopolitan values.

Keywords:

• emotions
• power
• space
• politics
• Sweden
• Swedish Christian Democrats

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the editors, Helena Flam and Jonathan Heaney, two anonymous reviewers, and colleagues at the ISA 2010 for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. This may be compared to the extreme right wing Swedish Democrats, founded in 1988, who entered parliament for the first time in the elections of 2010 with 5.7% of the votes.

2. It has been argued that Hägglund took over the concept from the dissolved New Democracy when he was a young member of parliament during their time as a parliamentary party in 1991–1994 (see e.g. Utbult 2009). New Democracy was constituted in 1991 by industrialist Ian Wachtmeister and entertainment entrepreneur Bert Karlsson, none of whom had any previous political experience. Their political philosophy was summarized by them as ‘common sense’.