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Swedish Dads as a National Treasure: Consumer Culture at the Nexus of the State, Commerce, and Consumers

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Nordic Consumer Culture

Abstract

Molander, Östberg, and Kleppe uses the case of fatherhood in Sweden to illustrate how consumer culture evolves at the nexus of the (welfare) state, individual consumers’ lived lives, and companies’ marketing activities. The chapter thereby implicitly draws on the idea of statist individualism, whereby the Swedish state’s feminist agenda attempts to liberate both mothers and fathers from their traditional roles. This freedom, however, should not be confused for some sort of anarchy where anything is allowed. Instead, the freedom is highly regulated by various actors who both prescribe and capitalize on particular modes of being a progressive father.

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Molander, S., Östberg, J., Kleppe, I.A. (2019). Swedish Dads as a National Treasure: Consumer Culture at the Nexus of the State, Commerce, and Consumers. In: Askegaard, S., Östberg, J. (eds) Nordic Consumer Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04933-1_6

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