The main result of my sabbatical year is a book manuscript (to be completed next spring) and a number of peer-reviewed articles/chapters. Furthermore, the extra research time and my stay as a visiting scholar in Paris also led to new academic collaborations and new research applications.

The working title of my bokproject was ‘The intimate relationship. A cultural economic history of everyday finances’. I made two main changes compared to the plans outlined in the application. First, I reconsidered the publication plans and opted for international publishing in English instead of a Swedish monograph at Nordic Academic Press. My book proposal (incl. Introduction, detailed synopsis, and an example chapter) was accepted at Palgrave MacMillan after a peer-review process.

This changed my work schedule, as writing in English takes a bit more time and also requires a contextualising background chapter. However, an international publication is highly motivated. Historical accounts for the financialisation of everyday life or for the spread of consumer credit especially credit cards largely dominated by Anglo-Saxon, especially American examples. Sweden constitutes an interesting case in international comparison, not only because of the Nordic welfare state context, but also considering that it was an early ”bancarised” and technology friendly society but with historically and ideologically grounded strongly negative attitudes against consumer credit.

The other change I made compared to the original plans is that I added two new empirical chapters. I found new and highly relevant archival material, based on which I wrote a new chapter for the monograph (and also a chapter for an edited volume see publication list). Another newly added chapter remains to be completed in the coming months. I am planning to finish the manuscript in the spring 2020, as it is stated in the contract with the publisher.

The new title is ´Marketing money in the welfare state. Everyday finances in Post-War Sweden’. The book highlights how formal and informal financial institutions shape (and are shaped by) everyday culture. It tells the history of the marketization of domestic money in an unexpected setting, that of the post war Swedish welfare state – which had an ambition to de-marketize many economic aspects of private/domestic life such as financial security for old age, compensation for higher costs and lost incomes for parents or saving and loans for education thereby made private savings and borrowing on market less necessary. Nevertheless, simultaneously, and sometimes interconnectedly with the developing social security system, Swedes became increasingly users of new financial services and products offered by an emerging consumer finance market. Financial habits changed and so did people´s relationship with finance institutions. I argue that already prior to the deregulations of the 1980s and the so called financialisation in the last three-four decades, significant changes occurred at the micro-level which changed mundane financial practices of ordinary people. Although savings accounts were common already in the 19th century in Sweden, a close everyday relationship between banks/financial institutions and ordinary people started to develop in the late 1950s. The book explores the cultural challenges that this transition necessarily involved. It is structured along a number of cultural gaps that had to be bridged over in order to normalize the role of formal financial institutions (banks and credit card companies). The empirical chapters are based on thorough archival studies and apply an analytical perspective inspired by a cultural economy perspective (cultural theory, social studies of finance, STS). The themes explored in the chapters are:

1) CLASS and how wage-earners turned into finance consumers along the introduction of the so-called check account salaries and wages (checklöner, from 1957).

2.) GENDER: and the domestication of commercial banks through campaigns targeting women.

3) MORALITY and the introduction of credit cards in Sweden and the efforts to de-stigmatize consumer credit (cf. paper 2 below, which partly overlaps this chapter)

4) IDEOLOGY, which is about commercial attempts to rewrite the history of consumer credit and to mobilize academic research to achieve “unlearning” of financial ideologies. (cf. overlapping publication 1 below);

5) SOCIAL ENGINEERING REVISITED unpacks the concrete historical connections and continuities between the “welfare departments” [intressekontor] of early twentieth century industrial companies and the payment and budgetary services offered by commercial banks from the 1960s.

The concluding chapter picks up recurrent topic of KNOWLEDGE from all chapters. The new finance consumers were supposed to have increased financial knowledge (and financial “maturity”), but financial information and education were often intertwined with marketing financial products. The most important knowledge for the financial services industry was however the new knowledge about the consumers and their financial and purchasing behaviour. With the new products and services since the late 1950s banks and card companies started to establish an “intimate relationship” (quote, Handelsbanken 1968) with their customers as they have come to know about almost every penny their consumers spent, borrowed or saved. Pointing out the early shift of interest in ‘knowable’ consumers instead of ‘knowledgeable’ ones, the book ends with an outlook towards today’s algorithmic personalised economy. I show that it, in some respects, can be traced back to the 1970s and that a personalised marketing and transactional data as a product idea belonged explicitly to the future visions articulated important actors at that time.

During my sabbatical year, I was a visiting scholar at Paris Nanterre University where my colleague prof. Sabine Effosse works. When in Paris (June 2018 and Febr. 2019) I was also in contact with colleagues at SciencePo, participated at seminars and discussed research collaborations.

Furthermore, I also presented my research at many occasions in different academic contexts: seminars, conferences, workshops and as keynote speaker at the Critical Finance Conference in Gothenburg in August 2018. I organised a conference session with my French colleague Sabine Effosse and a workshop and other conference sessions with Swedish colleagues.

The collaborative activities and the extra research time resulted in new research questions and new grant applications. First, my work on the history of consumer banking led me to questions about the role of commercial /financial interests in identification management and practices: For example, why did banks started to issue identity documents and how has this developed historically? This connects to today’s topical debates about commercial surveillance but also to theoretical questions about the links between money and identity.

Second, I am part of a major grant application “Neoliberalism in the Nordics” (RJ Program) initiated be Jenny Andersson (SciencePo, Paris). Although my forthcoming book relates in many ways to Neoliberalism studies and to the emergence of neoliberalism in the Nordics, it is not a dominant theme. By means of the program and the new research context it offers, if granted funding, I will be able to develop my research. Also, my research gives new insights to the studies of Neoliberalism in the Nordics by pointing out not only the neoliberal features of mundane financial cultures and practices but also their cultural embeddedness into the social democratic welfare model. However, a few collaborations, such as workshops and an edited volume – will be realized also regardless of the outcome of the applications. Lastly, it should also be mentioned that with the sabbatical year completed I am now handing in my application for promotion to professor of Economic History at Uppsala university.