The People’s Home 1900–2020: An interpretation

‘The People’s Home 1900–2020: An Interpretation’ will provide the first comprehensive history of this quintessentially Swedish concept folkhemmet, usually considered to be the premium political concept in modern Swedish history, from its first appearances to the present. ‘The People’s Home' has been widely used in different medial, political and academic contexts and seems to be more popular today than ever before. Folkhemmet is usually linked to the Social Democrats and the welfare state before marketization and privatization – or, as some will have it today, before migration changed Swedish society.

It can connote specific policies, typically welfare and labour market policies, society in general or an entire period in Swedish history.

‘The People’s Home 1900–2020: An Interpretation’ analyses how the concept has been defined, understood and put to meaningful usage in Swedish politics and public life since the beginning of the 20th century. The study has a double focus on the changing historical usages and the modern historiography. This means that it maps and studies both the history of the concept and the contemporary processes where folkhemmet has been established as an interpretative framework in public discourse and academic writing.