Table Of ContentEdited by
Søren Askegaard · Jacob Östberg
Nordic
Consumer Culture
State, Market
and Consumers
Nordic Consumer Culture
Søren Askegaard • Jacob Östberg
Editors
Nordic Consumer
Culture
State, Market and Consumers
Editors
Søren Askegaard Jacob Östberg
University of Southern Denmark Stockholm Business School
Odense, Denmark Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden
ISBN 978-3-030-04932-4 ISBN 978-3-030-04933-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04933-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018968446
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This book is dedicated
to the memory
of our friend and colleague
Per Østergaard
(1958–2016)
Pioneer of Nordic consumer culture investigations
from Svalbard to the Baltic Sea
Contents
1 Introduction: The Institution and the Imaginary in a
Nordic Light 1
Søren Askegaard and Jacob Östberg
Part I Nordic Consumer Culture and the State–Market Nexus 23
2 Democracies of Taste Ruled by the Law of Jante?
Rudiments of a Nordic Sociology of Consumption 25
Henri A. Weijo
3 Market Wonderland: An Essay about a Statist
Individualist Consumer Culture 49
Sofia Ulver
4 Why Can’t They Behave? Theorizing Consumer
Misbehavior as Regime Misfit between Neoliberal and
Nordic Welfare Models 71
Diane M. Martin, Frank Lindberg, and James Fitchett
vii
viii Contents
5 Unacceptable Consumption: Conflicts of Refugee
Consumption in a Nordic Welfare State 95
Maria Hokkinen
6 Swedish Dads as a National Treasure: Consumer Culture
at the Nexus of the State, Commerce, and Consumers 119
Susanna Molander, Jacob Östberg, and Ingeborg Astrid Kleppe
7 Experiencing Nature through Nordic Restrictions and
Freedom 147
Emma Salminen
Part II The Nordic as Market Imagery 169
8 Danish Welfare Exports as the “New Bacon”: Myth and
Meaning of the Nordic Welfare Model as Glocal Cultural
Commodity 171
Stine Bjerregaard and Dannie Kjeldgaard
9 Dark, Difficult, Depressing: Nordic Crime Novels in the
Eyes of the Beholder 193
Pamela Schultz Nybacka
10 Nordic Branding: An Odyssey into the Nordic Myth
Market 213
Lars Pynt Andersen, Dannie Kjeldgaard, Frank Lindberg, and
Jacob Östberg
11 Mythologies of Finnishness in Advertising 239
Juulia Pietilä, Jack S. Tillotson, and Søren Askegaard
Contents ix
12 Perspectives on Hygge: The Kolonihave Discourse 267
Jeppe Linnet and Jonathan Bean
Part III Epilogue 293
13 Nordic Consumer Culture Theory Research: Conversation
in a Wine Bar 295
Benjamin J. Hartmann and Eric J. Arnould
Index 329
Notes on Contributors
Lars Pynt Andersen is associate professor of Strategic Communication at
Aalborg University, Department of Communication and Psychology
(Copenhagen campus). His PhD from Copenhagen Business School was on the
rhetorical strategies of television advertising. He has published papers on the
uses of irony and personification metaphor in advertising, as well as advertising
genre and related effects. Research interests include parental consumption, the
“tween” consumer, and vicarious consumption as status negotiation. He is cur-
rently researching the (re-)construction of the “Nordic” and “Nordic values” in
consumer culture and branding strategies.
Eric J. Arnould is Visiting Professor of Marketing at Aalto University School
of Business. He has pursued a career in applied social science since 1974. The
University of Arizona awarded him a PhD in anthropology in 1982. Aalto
awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2016. Arnould’s research on consumer
culture, cultural marketing strategy, qualitative research methods, services, and
development appears in major social science and managerial periodicals and
books.
Søren Askegaard is Professor of Consumption Studies at the University of
Southern Denmark in Odense. Of northern origin, more precisely from
Northern Funen, he is educated in Odense and in Paris (and not least in the
general interaction with his colleagues). He considers himself a rooted cosmo-
politan. His career has meandered him to and through various positions such as
professorships at Lund University in Sweden, Lille University in France, and
xi
xii Notes on Contributors
Suffolk University in Boston, USA. His publications appear in various journals
ranging from the Flag Bulletin to the Journal of Consumer Research. In terms of
research, he is interested in encounters of the local and the global in consumer
culture, as well as in humans as imaginary beings and the consequences for phe-
nomena of consumer culture.
Jonathan Bean is Assistant Professor of Architecture, Sustainable Built
Environments, and Marketing at the University of Arizona. His research on
taste and consumption spans the fields of consumer research, human–computer
interaction, architecture, and design. He has received grants from the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Institute
for Transportation and Communities, and others. Bean writes the Consuming
Tech column for ACM Interactions magazine and gave a TEDx talk as part of his
immersive study of market transformation in the US building market. His work
on IKEA hacking was featured on an episode of the 99% Invisible podcast.
Stine Bjerregaard is a former PhD student in the Consumer, Culture and
Commerce group at the University of Southern Denmark. She now works as a
marketing professional—currently with sustainability in the fashion industry.
Bjerregaard’s research focuses on the early stages of market formation, with spe-
cial attention to the role of politics and ideology. Theoretically, she works in the
intersection between consumer culture theory and market studies, exploring the
performativity of ideas and representations. Other research interests include
place branding and subtle forms of consumer resistance as it plays out in branded
consumption scapes.
James Fitchett is Professor of Marketing and Consumption at the University
of Leicester School of Business. He is associate editor for Marketing Theory. His
research interests include investigations into the politics of consumption, neo-
liberalism and consumer culture, and theory development in marketing.
Benjamin J. Hartmann is an Associate Professor at the School of Business,
Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg. Originally from Berlin,
Hartmann has been a lifetime friend and connoisseur of Nordic consumer cul-
ture. His award-winning research generally explores the intersection of con-
sumption, markets, and society, and is published in Consumption, Markets &
Culture, Marketing Theory, Journal of Consumer Research, Psychology & Marketing,
Journal of Marketing Management, and Advances in Consumer Research.
Maria Hokkinen is a PhD candidate at the Åbo Akademi University in Turku,
Finland. Her research interests lie in the field of consumer behavior, with a spe-
