Landsbygdens uttolkare - Bilder av landsbygdens relation till samhällets modernisering: en undersökning av Lantbruksförbundets Tidskriftsförlags bokutgivningar under 1940-talet

Abstract

"The rural" contains a broad set of ideas concerning what is regarded as central aspects of human life and culture. The countryside is often used to visualize certain aspects of humanity, such as how human life is most ideally lived and how progress in society is expressed. The rural has often been considered either as a state that societal progress deviates from, or as what could get lost in that same process. This thesis examines the relation between the accounts of "rurality" and "modernization" through certain texts from the 1940s Sweden, produced in accordance to what could be considered "rural interests." Adapting an understanding of modernization as something open and expressed through narratives, the thesis investigates three texts with help of theories concerning alternative modernization and pastoral ideals. The rural appears to be more compatible with modernization than often suggested; certainly, during an era when the ideas of societal progress are thought to have been utterly future-oriented and the future rarely shared characteristics with the constitution of the rural. In contrast to what previous research could tell us about criticism towards modernization in the early 1900s, the voices here investigated are not as deep in their critique against societal progression.