Regional Culture Meets Nation State Culture

- the case of Scania
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
      Malte Lewan

Innehållsförteckning

1. Introduction
1.1 Relevance of the Issue
1.2 Purpose and Aim
1.3 The Definition of Culture
1.4 Reverse Cultural Influence
1.5 Methods and Material

2. Nation State Culture in Sweden today

3. Regional Culture in Scania Today
3.1 Regional Culture as Observable Habits
3.2 The Linguistic Analogy
3.3 The Cultural Heritage Today
3.4 A View from Literary History
3.5 The Regional Identity
3.6 Attitudes and Morality

4. The Sociological Theories
4.1 Jürgen Habermas
4.2 Pierre Bourdieu
4.3 Michel Foucault
4.4 Anthony Giddens

5. Conclusions

Footnotes

Appendix 1
Appendix 2

References
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1. Introduction

1.1 Relevance of the Issue

In the 19th century, the old local folkkloric culture was still dominating the rural areas of the region of Scania as well as other regions in Sweden. Folkloric culture is "an independently developed culture which isn't directly dependent on or a copy of centrally directed or inspired culture" as defined by Nationalencylopedin (my transl., NE: "folkkultur"). This culture slowly started disappearing and in the 19th century an interest was born for the "old days" and for the popular and the "genuine" (DAL, 1995, p 3). This interest among other things meant collecting information about the old agricultural society and so eg. Folklivsarkivet in Lund was born in 1913 (Folklivsarkivet, 1998).

What happened? The ethnologist Agrell writes that in the end of the 19th century, "economic, social and religious changes influenced both work habits and festival customs on the country side" (Agrell, p 85). A new modern society was appearing. Britannica Online suggests an explanation to us in the term of "acculturation": "the culture of the more highly developed nation is 'imposed' upon the less developed peoples and cultures [...] ; the acquisition of foreign culture by the subject people is called acculturation" (Britannica Online: "The Concept and Components of Culture"). And yes, in this case the agricultural population was less developed in the sense that it had not yet been affected by the modern industrial society that was arriving but instead lived by more traditional habits.

I will in this essay discuss the consequences for local and regional culture meeting the central nation state culture. (Concerning the use of the term "nation state culture", see Appendix 1.) I will later suggest that local and regional culture are less particular than they once were and so there are some people who think that the regional differences are no longer interesting. To think so is a mistake in my mind, because even though the differences now are smaller, they affect so very much in our lives. The smaller differences in habits are from the point of view of our interest for them compensated by their enormous scope, involving everything from eg. how group projects are carried out at the Institution of Sociology at Lund University to the food we eat when we get home. I think that everything we do and think still has a regional angle that often is very hard to categorise and measure. This thought will be discussed and supported later.

There are certainly not only different regional cultures which influence our habits but also many other kinds of social cultures, but my purpose with this essay is simply to bring out the often neglected issue of regional cultures alone. I also think that social cultures with very salient differences (eg. working class ó upper class) within one region have things in common with each other in many fields that are not shared by widely different social cultures of another region. The culture of regional identity which I will talk about later, referring to Ek, is one.

The issue of regional culture meeting nation state culture gets even more topical when looking at the 1996/97 government bill that in two of its five main aims wants to make use of the cultural heritage and promote the encounter of different cultures within the country:

Regeringens förslag: Målen för kulturpolitiken skall vara att [...]:
   ó bevara och bruka kulturarvet,
   ó  främja internationellt kulturutbyte och möten mellan olika kulturer inom landet. (KulturpolitikProp.1996/97:3)

The bill also states that regional and local distinctive features are part of the diversity and richness of the country: "Från ett inhemskt perspektiv kan man urskilja både regionala och lokala särdrag, vilket ger oss möjlighet att uppfatta mångfalden och rikedomen i landet och inte enbart ett enhetligt svenskt kulturarv." (KulturpolitikProp.1996/97:3)

Since regional culture and nation state culture share the same territory and concern the same populations, the relationship between them is essential for especially the weaker part, the regional culture. That the regional culture has become the weaker part is supported by for example Skånsk litteraturhistoria II which believes that Scania and other regions in Sweden have been exposed to a strong cultural Swedish centralisation: "Centraliseringen har i själva verket ofta varit långt starkare på det kulturella området än på det politiska och ekonomiska ó där de därtill oftare blir föremål för diskussion." (Skånsk litteraturhistoria II, 1997, p 15-16)

1.2 Purpose and Aim

I will now present the issue of this essay. The interest is directed towards finding answers in general sociological theory which answer a cultural anthropological question, namely why, when and how does cultural adaption and change occur in a modern society when the local and regional cultures are confronted with the nation state culture of the country. The question at issue is:

Following the ideas of some leading modern sociologists, what are the consequences for a regional culture of co-existing with standard culture in a nation state and what influence from the latter to the former as well as from the former to the latter can we expect?

The concepts of this issue will be defined and made precise in this introduction and also later, in chapters 2 and 3 before the sociological theories are analysed in chapter 4. In this way, it can be said that the introduction continues into chapters 2 and 3.

1.3 The Definition of Culture

Let us start with defining "culture". The standard work often referred to is Kroeber and Kluckhohn entitled Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.1) They find more than 150 definitions of culture which they discuss (Borofsky,1994a, p 3). Borofsky mentions two definitions that "currently pervade the field". It is the one of Kottak which defines culture as "distinctly human; transmitted through learning; tradition and customs that govern behavior and beliefs." and the one of Keesing which states that culture is "the system of knowledge more or less shared by members of a society." (ibid).

Nationalencylopedin writes that during a period in the 1970's and 1980's, there was a trend for reducing the content of the concept of culture to thinking only: "Inom den antropologiska och etnologiska vetenskapen har under 1970- och 80-talen förordats en inskränkning av kulturbegreppets innehåll till att omfatta enbart tänkandet." Since then, during the 1990's, many anthropologists have returned to the wide19th century definition and have again included not only that which people think but also what they do. In that way, material things have once more been included since otherwise "it is left aside without beeing given a summarising name" (my transl., NE: "kultur").

Looking at the definitions of Kottak and Keesing above, the one of Keesing seems the most narrow one, talking about "a system of knowledge". Behaviour, what people do, is not included. The definition of Kottak is wider but to me lack the fluency and directness that the definition of Britannica Online possess and which I will use:

the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour. Culture, thus defined, consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components. The development of culture depends upon humans' capacity to learn and to transmit knowledge to succeeding generations. (Britannica Online: "culture")

1.4 Reverse Cultural Influence

The question at issue involves influence from the regional culture to the nation state culture as well as influence from the nation state culture to the regional culture. That may need a short explanation. We may expect an acculturation of the regional culture when it encounters the nation state culture but we can not be sure that the diffusion of culture will not also go the opposite direction. That is why this possibility is included in the issue of this essay. Britannica Online writes: "But even in cases of conquest, traits from the conquered peoples may diffuse to those of the more advanced cultures" (Britannica Online: "The Concept and Components of Culture"). This is true for the cultural tradition of language as well, a relationship we will get back to: "substrat, ett språk som påverkar ett annat, i det fall där det påverkande språket talas av en socialt underlägsen grupp" (NE: "substrat")

1.5 Methods and Material

I have chosen only sociological general theories as my main material. I will use the sociologists Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens och Pierre Bourdieu. Naturally, choosing them was a trying-out process and the reasons for choosing these four will hopefully become apparent during the essay in that I argue along the way for how the views of these theorists are relevant for describing mechanisms that occur in the encounter of regional and nation state culture. A general view on what drawed me to these theorists and how they can be seen as interesting for this essay will first be mentioned though.

Habermas talks about the "colonization of the life-world", Ritzer says, by the system. "The life-world represents the viewpoint of acting subjects on society" (Ritzer, 1996, p 549-550). In this way, the local and regional cultures are particular parts of the life-world and can be viewed as affected by the system in which nation state culture is a part.

Foucault is interested in the relationship between power and knowledge and writes about how the modern society gets control over its citizens. This makes me interested in whether the spread of nation state culture can be regarded as part of the pattern of controlling the use of knowledge.

Giddens becomes attractive for answering the aforementioned questions in that he creates a theory that integrates agency and structure. The agent and the structure are interdependent and here the agent can be seen as an individual of the local or regional culture that is interacting with the strucure.

The concepts of habitus and field that Bourdieu presents can also be used in this discussion. Since habitus is a structure that defines how people perceive the social world and field is a network and an arena of battle and struggles, habitus can be regarded as connected to the individual's local/regional culture and field as the nation state in which it is formed.

Except the main material I have many different types of sources that either support my general view on nation state culture in Sweden and regional culture today in Scania (chapters 2 and 3) or support the application of the sociological theories in their role as examples (chapter 4).

It can with some success, I confess, be argued that I have not paid enough attention to what can be called "world culture" and modern European and world trends. My implicite focus has been situations where the modern regional culture is different from modern nation state culture and has been in some kind of exclusive competition or confrontation with it. I hold that there are still such areas. One easily observed area is accent which has little to do with world trends, and so, there are probably more. Looking at my sources in chapters 2 and 3, it becomes evident that a fruitful disussion can still be held around regional and nation state culture. There is still something by many referred to as a "Swedish culture" as opposed to the culture of other countries, and if there is such a thing, we need to examine what it is and what processes are influencing its development, scrutinise it and take on a critical view of it. I offer a regional perspective of it in this essay.

2. Nation State Culture in Sweden Today

Ehn, Frykman and Löfgren write about the transformations of the national (nation state) culture in Försvenskningen av Sverige ó The Swedification of Sweden. They aim to examine the "quite wooly concept" of "national culture" that they say primarily is used to describe the "collective conscience" of a people (Ehn, Frykman and Löfgren, 1993, p 13-14). They emphasize the arbitrariness of the constitutions of today's Nordic countries.

De nordiska länderna har i hög grad lyckats lancera bilden av sig själva som etniskt okomplicerade, kulturellt homogena, urgamla nationalstater. I själva verket är de nuvarande staterna resultatet av ganska tillfälliga gränsdragningar, som mer speglar skilda dynastiers skiftande geopolitiska framgångar än några naturgivna etniska gränser. Homogeniteten framträder främst med hjälp av en viktig ingrediens i nationsbygget ó förmågan till selektiv glömska. (Ehn, Frykman and Löfgren, 1993, p 32)

They bring out several images and symbols which help creating the nation state "collective conscience". There is first the powerful symbol of the flag, the persuasive outline of the territory (the map) eg. in weather forecasts, the use of the term "abroad" and its associations, the national history, a very simplified or outright wrong idealised picture of the landscape and nature (also used in political propaganda and tourist advertisements today), the "common" literary heritage in eg. Astrid Lindgren and Selma Lagerlöv, the paintings by Carl Larsson, postcards and posters and the opinion polls which measure and defines the nation state and make it the standard to which everything is compared. The arenas are the schools, the newspapers, radio and TV (Ehn, Frykman and Löfgren, 1993, p 15, 72, 81-117)

Ehn, Frykman and Löfgren describe how the nation state repeatedly calls attention to itself through media, messages and references and that this "medifiation" has created a type of Swedishness.

Konkret kan vi inventera hur det nationella gör sig påmint i vardagen, via en uppsjö av medier, budskap och hänvisningar ó från Allers och Sonora till reklambilder och medorgarinformation. Denna mediering av nationen har skapat en svensk införståddhet, svenska bilder, svenska skämt, svenska associationer och samförståndsblinkningar. Den har även erbjudit högst skiftande sätt ó att enskilt eller kollektivt ó uppleva det förflutna.(Ehn, Frykman and Löfgren, 1993, p 114)

The media is much centralised to a nation state level, giving rise to a homogenous media world and so the creation of alternative public institutions have suffered.

Här i Sverige har vi i så hög grad vant oss att leva i en medievärld som är organiserad på riksnivå. Vi har skapat en mycket homogen press, där de lokala och sociala skillnaderna mest är variationer på rikets affärer. Vi hade länge en nationell monopolradio och -teve. Denna utveckling har varken varit självklar eller naturnödvändig, men den har hämmat uppkomsten av alternativa offentligheter eller subkulturbaserade deloffentligheter. (Ehn, Frykman and Löfgren, 1993, p 115)

3. Regional Culture in Scania Today

I will in this chapter try to answer what the situation of the local or regional culture today is in a region such as Scania. That is the relevance of all the sections in the chapter. This is naturally fundamental for how it can have a relationship with another culture.

3.1 Regional Culture as Observable Habits

It is often difficult to find non-questionably distinct everyday regional habits. But this is generally quite uninteresting too. That you in Denmark are supposed to present flowers while keeping the wrapper and you are supposed to take the wrapper off before presenting the flowers in Sweden is in itself not very interesting (Uddenberg, 1997, p 152). It is only if it takes on a another deeper significance that we get interested. In the same fashion, it is only when the celebration of the feast of Mårten in Scania takes on a meaning of for example regional identification that we get interested.2)

However, due to the reliability (but lack of validity) of this operationalisation, I will give some examples of how it may differ between regions. Uddenberg writes in a book about etiquette in Sweden that etiquette differs from region to region: "Kanske kommer läsaren att tycka annorlunda här och var: under arbetets gång har jag förstått att det råder mycket delade meningar i etikettfrågor. Vad som är viktigt för den ena struntar den andra i, vad som gäller i Stockholm är annorlunda än skånskt och norrländskt." (Uddenberg, 1989, p 12). Unfortunately, she gives no examples though. Some observable practical examples where I, the author, believe to be aware of a difference concern how strong coffee is made in Scania (stronger) and in more northern parts of Sweden (less strong) and the importance of name days that are still less important in Scania than in the old Sweden (name day celebration is a mostly catholic tradition that I understand never spread in the more anti-catholic Denmark (NE: "namnsdagsfirande").

3.2 The Linguistic Analogy

So, it is difficult to observe and measure culture. That is our first problem. Goodenough writes: "The prospect of trying to describe cultures adequately is daunting. For some aspects of culture we simply don't know. For others the necessary recording technology may be available, but we lack notational systems to make the record susceptible to analysis." (Goodenough, 1994, p 265) One way of doing it is to use the "linguistic analogy". Borofsky quotes Sapir as saying: "The network of cultural patterns of a civilization is indexed in the language." "Just as language is patterned, [...] so is culture", Borofsky interprets (Borofsky, 1994b, p 245). Goodenough agrees: "Both method and theory relating to language and other kinds of cultural tradition, [...] are productively to be regarded as basically similar." (Goodenough, 1994, p 265). If we can use the linguistic analogy, then it becomes relatively easy to observe and measure culture.

There are divergent views though. Bloch, is by Borofsky said to challenge the value of the linguistic analogy. He suggests that "the lingustic analogy is appropriate only in some cases for modeling cultural knowledge." (Borofsky, 1994b, p 245) Still, I will follow the line of Sapir and Goodenough. Certain conclusions that I will make will of course then be dependent on that they are right. If they are, then we know that there is still a regional culture in Scania but we also know that it probably is considerably weakened. If Bloch is right, then we don't know anything by this way of reasoning. We have to depend on other ways. Regional Scanian culture can be as different from nation state culture and close to Danish as it has ever been or it may have been completely replaced by Swedish culture.

In appendix 2, I argue for that the linguistic analogy seems to at least have used to hold well for the south of Sweden in that language and other traditions of culture have followed each other fairly closely. Veli Tuomela, researcher at the Centre of bilinguistic research at Stockholm University, also thinks that the language is the sum of our experiences and that it, apart from having its grammatical features, is a culture and a set of norms (Sidenbladh, 1997).

In the question at issue for this essay, I use the term "standard culture" that is a term corresponding to "standard language" which is "the form of a language that, in difference to dialects and other variations, is commonly accepted and stilistically neutral" (my transl., NE: "standardspråk").3) Most people today in Scania speak a regionally bound variant of standard Swedish. A significant aspect of regional standard language is that it is a socially accepted pronounciation, usable in all social situations, also the more formal ones. The number of regional standard languages are limited to a few regions ("en handfull etablerade och allmänt acccepterade regionala uttalsvarianter") of which south Sweden ó and especially Scania I add ó is one (NE: "regionalt standardspråk"). Note though, that in the Scanian countryside, there are still people ó eg farmers and fishermen ó who speak the old dialects which sound very different (Hallberg, 1998-01-20). These dialects should not be neglected but most of us have probably never heard them (see the quote from Dahlqvist later in the text).4)

My assumption, based on the above, is that just as there is a regional standard language in Scania, there is also a regional standard culture which is a regional variation of the standard Swedish culture. One might ask oneself how the local folkkloric cultures became regional. The answer is possibly the same as how the local dialects became regional dialects. Ingers writes: "Denna yngre dialekt eller nivellerade dialekt, som i nutiden [1939] mångestädes talas av den övervägande delen av befolkningen [...] har i allmänhet bibehållit sådana dialektala drag, som äro gemensamma för större områden men saknar sådana, som endast tillkomma mindre områden" (Ingers, 1939, p XI). So the younger forms of the old dialects are more regional and less local than the older forms. They are mixed within a bigger area and lose their localness but still retain their "regionalness". The same is, following the lingustic analogy, then probably also true for other traditions of culture. This seems reasonable to me since we travel more in the modern society than in the old agricultural society but commuter distances can still not be more than regional. Local has become regional. Because of this, I will in this essay concentrate on the relationship the modern regional culture has with the nation state culture although the old local culture will be mentioned too.

For this, I need to define the term "region". I will the use the definition of Ek (who I will get back to in the next section) that is on purpose floating: "Completely imprecise, I use the term for 'bigger' areas, as opposed to districts, municipalities and places." (my transl., Ek, 1992, p 74)

To give an example, regional culture can, following the linguistic analogy, be basically a watered down version of what we find in other Scandinavian countries. In the TV program Sefyr, a Swedener living in Copenhagen was asked about the difference between Swedish and Danish culture.5) He answered that he felt that Danes were more oriented towards process and Swedes were more oriented towards product. The Dane asked "how" to do something and the Swede asked "what" to do (Sefyr, 1997-11-20). Whether this is true or not, this gives us one possible answer to how Scanian culture may differ from Swedish. It can be a watered down variety of east Danish culture that still is more process oriented than standard Swedish culture in the way the Scanian accent (the regional standard language) is a watered down version of the old East Danish dialect (except where the old East Danish dialects are still spoken).6)

3.3 The Cultural Heritage Today

The ethnologist Holm-Löfgren with about ten years of research of people in the offices of Sweden stresses very much the cultural heritage that is much alive in our modern lives:

[N]utida seder och bruk ó med djupa rötter i forntidens bonde-, herrgårds- och hantverkssamhälle ó spelar oss spratt när vi minst anar det. (Holm-Löfgren, 1995, p 12)

Kulturen ó som här definieras som tankar, känslor, handlingar och produkter ó bygger på urgamla traditioner, seder och sedvänjor, normer, regler, värderingar, beteenden och idéer, som är djupt inpräglade i oss sedan generationer. Ofta märker vi inte själva hur vi för med oss dessa sega strukturer från generation till generation. En del på gott, en del på ont. Vi märker inte hur vi själva som kulturbärare för vidare vårt arv i vardagens kulturella kommunikation. (Holm-Löfgren, 1995, p 13)

[After a description of the agricultural society] En hel del av det traditionella tänkandet finns kvar som osynliga trådar i dagens kulturmönster även på våra hypermoderna kontor. (Holm-Löfgren, 1995, p 28-29)

She also quotes the ethnologist Börje Hanssen who writes that "the institutions and behaviours of our own society can attain their explanation through the knowledge, not of Scandinavia of the 19th century but of Scandinavia of the 17th and 16th centuries" (my transl., Holm-Löfgren, 1995, p 143). At that time, Scania was Danish and though the state belonging was less important then, Scania was certainly part of the Danish cultural sphere as expressed in Appendix 2 and in footnote 6.

3.4 A View from Literary History

Since literary historians study written material (fiction, biographies etc) in their exercise, their interpretation of regional identity becomes interesting. In two recent books, a team concludes a regional identity for Scania. Skånsk litteraturhistoria I starts with claiming its own literary tradition and a Scanian identity:

Skåne är ett landskap som har en egen tradition inom den svenska litteraturen. Att följa desslinjer är också att följa Skånes kulturella och ekonomiska öden, att studera den skånska identitetens tillblivelse och förvandlingar och att möta en rad personligheter med ett förhållande till det skånska. (Skånsk litteraturhistoria I, 1996, p 7)

Also later, the Scanian literary history handles expressions like "the regional culture", "the Scanian culture" and "the Scanian identity" (my transl.) naturally (Skånsk litteraturhistoria II, 1997, p 9, 14, 18).

3.5 The Regional Identity

The ethnologist Sven B Ek at Göteborg University analyses in a state official report regional identities in Sweden. He defines regional identity as "the regionally limited culture that the people identify themselves with, that is regard as specific and separating for them and others that they regard as feeling allied to" (my transl., Ek, 1992, p 76). So identity is culture. In the report, he comes to the conclusion that basically only Skåne and Gotland have regional identities in Sweden:

På två undantag när tycks det mig dock i dag inte möjligt att särskilja regionala identiteter [i Sverige] om dessa ska ha någon kvalitativ innebörd i överensstämmelse med de kriterier som behandlades inledningsvis.
 De två undantagen är Gotland och Skåne. Bestämningen baseras i detta fallet dels på historien, dels på talspråket, dels på graden av särskiljande självupplevelse (Ek, 1992, s 97).

He presents a table of different types of feelings of regional identities in the beginning of his essay where "ethnic" is the strongest one and the strong "traditional" is the second strongest one followed by a weaker "traditional" identity (Ek, 1992, s 80). In the conclusive chapter, he puts Skåne and Gotland in the category of the stronger traditional regional identity (Ek, 1992, s 97).6b)

Also consider that Ek seems to concede a slightly stronger regional culture to Scania than perhaps a strict application of the lingustic analogy and the regional standard languages would imply. He also limits the regional identity/culture to two regions while there are as much as maybe five or six regional standard languages in Sweden ó of different amount of distinctness of course. The phoneticians Gårding et al say that the Scanian regional Swedish sounds different from other Swedish accents. The prosody (pronounciation of vowels and consonants in such qualities as length, stress and intonation) is quite non-Swedish and has more in common with German, Danish and Dutch (and even sometimes English) (Gårding et al, 1973, p 107, 112). The words and the grammar has changed, but the prosody is close to as different as it always has been.

Ek mentions the Scanian flag as an indication of a regional identity. That is a relatively easily measured phenomena. In Lund, there are not many but on a visit in Landskrona city centre on the 29 of December 1997, I found approximately the same number of Scanian flags flying (some ten) as Swedish ones. The Eslöv local government councillor Lesley Holmberg points out that both Helsingborg and Ystad municipalities officially hoist the Scanian flag (Skånska Dagbladet, 1998-01-28). Also Svedala municipality has taken a decision to unofficially hoist the flag four times a year (Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 1998-01-14).

3.6 Attitudes and Morality

I have given some examples along the way of observable expressions of regional identity, but the resolution is still that what maybe most sets a regional grouping off from other groupings is shown in attitudes, something which is difficult to discern. This is in fact what Ek bases his conclusions on. Peterson Royce writes: "A group may maintain an identity, although to the outside observer it has no features that set it off from the larger society. In such a case, we must look to subjective features, standards of morality, and values to explain what otherwise is inexplicable." (Peterson Royce, 1982, p 31-32) One example that has struck me as relevant is the attitude against one well-known French trait of in different ways protecting the country's (main) language. I imagine myself thinking that there is more a feeling of understanding for this French stance and also a general view of French culture in Scania than in the northern parts of Sweden. Whether I am correct or not in this case, this illustrates what kind of difference in attitude ó good or bad ó one may have in mind when discussing the consequences for regional cultures meeting nation state cultures. It is an example of what Peterson Royce call the "sharing of moral values" (ibid).

4. The Sociological Theories

This is the main part of the essay that describes my application of the theories of the four sociologists on different aspects on what happens in the encouter between regional culture and nation state culture.

4.1 Jürgen Habermas

Habermas is "arguably [...] today's leading social theorist" and also "the leading defender of modernity" (Ritzer, 1996, s 586). "For many years, Habermas was the world's leading neo-Marxist" (Ritzer, 1996, s 589). But one main difference is Habermas' stress on communicative action as opposed to Marx' stress on work (purposive-rational action in the vocabulary of Habermas). Habermas is concerned with social structures that distort communication just as Marx was concerned with social structures that distort work. Here lies a similarity in the way of thinking although the difference is even more apparent. The distinction between these two sorts of actions (purposive-rational and communicative) is central to Habermas. His goal is a society where communication is not distorted (Ritzer, 1996, s 293-294).

Habermas uses a few very important concepts. The first one is the "life-world" that is composed of culture, society and personality. It involves mutual understanding that does not have to be spelled out. It is a world of natural presuppositions, traditions and common language (Ritzer, 1996, s 549-550). I think it is related to the Simmel individual (subjective) culture that is the capacity of the actor to produce, absorb and control the elements of the objective culture (see below) (Ritzer, 1996, s 160). The production, absorbation and control of the elements of the objective culture can be compared to the communicative actions and eventual agreement of what Habermas calls the speaker and hearer in the life-world. Obviously, Habermas stresses the communication between two people more than Simmel who talks about an individual culture. Ritzer says though, that "the life-world represents the viewpoint of acting subjects on society" (p 550) and the life-world is in that sense a subjective, but not individual, culture.

I suggest that the communication in the life-world can be a conversation between people having a cultural background in the region. Then it is bound to be a communication on the terms of the still existing regional culture. This far, there is no reason for the conversation to be interrupted by an outside different culture, represented by the "system" as described of the "medifiation" of the nation in chapter 2.

Yes, there is the "system", which has its roots in the life-world but has come to develop its own structural characteristics. That can be the family, the state or the economy.  The system distances itself from the life-world. It grows in power and starts to dominate the life-world. It threatens the capacity to communicate that we find in the life-world (Ritzer, 1996, s 550). This is in my mind very similar to Simmel's objective culture which is those things that people produce, eg. art, science, philosophical ideas, language, laws, religious ideas and moral. "The objective culture comes to have a life of its own" and endangers the individual culture (Ritzer, 1996, s 160). Habermas talks about the observer's perspective of someone not involved (Ritzer, 1996, s 550). That bears resemblance to the Simmel "objective culture".

That the system has its roots in the life-world, but ultimately comes to develop its own structural characteristics triggers my own thoughts that in the same fashion, the nation state culture has its roots in those local folkkloric cultures which were dominating and that it has developed its own far-reaching structure as a mix of these cultures.7) The nation state culture is the "system" or maybe a structure of the (supposedly global) "system" as Ritzer suggests (Ritzer, 1996, s 550).

Habermas talks about the "colonization" of the life-world by the system. One needs to know that Habermas sees society as both life-world and system. In earlier history (in the local folkkloric cultures, I assume that he means) they were one and today they have become "decoupled". The system has come to control the life-world. Both have undergone a rationalisation but they have been different kinds of rationalisations. The rationalisation in the system is of a formal rationality and the one in the life-world is of a substantive rationality, to borrow some terms from Weber. The danger is not rationalisation in general. Instead, Habermas is looking to recouple system and life-world. (Ritzer, 1996, s 551-553).

If applied to the situation of today's regional cultures in the nation state, I interpret this as meaning that the nation state in the form of a structure of the system may tend to excercise "violence", as Ritzer quotes Habermas as saying (1996, s 552), over the regional cultures, which have the life-world as their base. This is so because the regional culture is less institutionalised than the nation state culture that is supported by a number of "national" institutions. Skånsk litteraturhistoria II talks about the "centralisation in the cultural area" in the context of regional institutions (my transl., Skånsk litteraturhistoria II, 1997, p 16). And Ehn, Frykman and Löfgren bring out that a homogenous media is organised on the nation state level in chapter 2.

Persson discusses the period 1658 to 1720 in Scania and points out that the Scanian and Danish institutions often were replaced by Swedish ones after the Swedish occupation in 1658: "Institutionerna och eliten bar som vi har sett upp mycket av den danska identiteten i Skåne. Uniformiteten innebar att svenska institutioner ersatte de gamla skånsk-danska och att en till stora delar rent svensk och i övrigt försvenskad elit ersatte den gamla skånsk-danska eliten." (Persson, 1996, p 28) Later he concludes that institutions are needed for the regional identity to survive the encounter of the national one: "Slutsatsen blir att utan institutioner som värnar om den regionala särarten, konkurreras den historiska identiteten ut till förmån för en övergripande nationell." (Persson, 1996, p 30) Using Habermas' terms, this is because the system dominates the life-world that has no corresponding structures with which it can defend itself.

Habermas would like to see the recoupling with the help of social movements resisting the colonization and impoverishent of the life-world (the basis for the regional culture, in my analysis). The solution is not to destroy the systems since they provide the material that the life-world needs to rationalise itself (which Habermas very much wishes). No, the solution is to put in "restraining barriers" to reduce the impact on the life-world and "sensors" to help the impact of the life-world on the system. This would in my analysis result in a more undisturbed communication within the regional cultures (less interruption and pressure from the nation state culture) and a possibility for these to develop independently. The sensors would help the impact of the regional cultures in all their differences on the nation state and would transform this diversity and cultural dialogue into the system (which I very much wishes :-)Ý). Habermas wants a full partnership between the system and the life-world and a mutually enriching rationalization of system and life-world. That is why he is a die-hard modernist that still believes in our modern society. Ritzer writes that "[i]f he (and his supporters) emerge victorious, he may be viewed as the saviour of the modernist project" (1996, p 587-591).

4.2 Pierre Bourdieu

Bourdieu uses two key concepts: habitus and field. Habitus are the mental or cognitive structures through which people deal with the social world. It is a question about how they perceive, understand and evaluate the social world. Habitus is acquired by long-term occupation of the same social position. Similar exeriences people have, tend to give the same habitus. Habitus can be a collective phenomenon. While practice tends to shape habitus, habitus unifies and generates practice. It is not an unchanging structure but is adapted by individuals for different situations. It is so basic that it manifests itself in our most practical activites, such as eating, talking or blowing our noses (Ritzer, 1996, s 541-542).

While habitus are mental or cognitive structures, we have defined culture as "the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour". Habitus has more of its main focus on one-way communication so it is not exactly the same as culture according to my definition, but it still has a close relationship with it. Habitus is a structure that helps interpret the social world, a term which in its turn is closer to the concept of culture. Habitus can be highly influenced and shaped by a regional culture for example. And it can be collective. When it manifests itself in practical activities, then it becomes very close to culture. We may have a regionally coloured habitus.

Field is a network, a network of relations with objective positions in it. The field is seen by Bourdieu as an arena of battle and struggles. The positions in the field of the agents are determined by how much and what kind of capital the agents possess. There is economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital. Symbolic capital originates from one's honour and prestige. The state is the site of the struggle over the monopoly of symbolic violence. It is exercised on a social agent with his complicity. It is practised indirectly, mostly through cultural mechanisms. The main institution is the educational system. The language, the meanings and the symbolic system of those in power is imposed on the rest of the population. It reproduces existing powers and class relations (Ritzer, 1996, s 542-543).

I hold that the field can be seen as the networks of the nation state, the nation state arena. Bourdieu says that agents employ a variety of strategies depending on their positions in the field, i.e. depending on the capital which they possess. Those with eg. a regionally coloured cultural capital probably improve their position best by adapting their habitus. There is less room for finding strategies with an aim of strong improvement of position within regional institutions (a regional "field") than within nation state institutions (the nation state field) since the institutions involving the highest prestige clearly are the nation state ones. One example would be the regional political bodies, Landstingen, that have only a fraction of the power of Riksdagen, the parliament. But this is true for practically all cultural institutions as well that the nation state ones have the highest prestige within Sweden and internationally. As mentioned in 1.1, Sweden is especially culturally centralised and as mentioned in chapter 2, media is centralised.

Bruce describes how the prosody of Scanians marks identity but often is adapted to different situations and he quotes Gårding: "'Prosodiska mönster markerar grupptillhörighet (dialekt) och uttrycker känslor och attityder. Detta gör att prosodin kan kännas som en del av vårt individella och kollektiva signalement, som vi inte gärna vill lämna ifrån oss.'" He adds: "Den anpassning av det skånska uttalet till uppsvenskt uttal som vi kan iaktta drabbar dock även prosodin." This becomes especially apparent in regional TV where the same reporters use Scanian pronounication in some situations, eg. interviews with Scanians but central Swedish pronounciation in the documentary parts (Bruce, 1987, p 97) These strategies picture an example of manifestiation and adaption of habitus. The lingustic analogy implies that this is not only true for language but also for other less easily measured traditions of culture.

Finally, the notion that the main institution for the site of the struggle over the monopoly of symbolic violence is the educational system is illustrated by a motion to the Swedish parliament that shows irritation for the schools being used as instruments for a non-neutral historic perspective. It talks about "historieförvanskning", distortion of history:

"viktigt är att man i de delar av landet som inte alltid tillhört Sverige erhåller undervisning om vad som hände och avhandlades i deras respektive landsdelar, innan nu fastställda nationsgränser etablerades.
  I skånska skolor undervisas om händelser i svensk historia som inträffade före 1658. Det är då inte deras landsdels historia." (Andersson, 1997/98:Ub203)

4.3 Michel Foucault

Foucault analyses the relationship between power and knowledge sociologically. He is interested in how knowledge is used by people to govern themselves and others. He doesn't see a conpiracy (that would imply conscious actors) in this use of knowledge though, but instead structures that create these power relations. He is concerned about madness and the mad people and is critical of the treatment of these. He puts a historical perspective on this and says that in the seventeenth century, madness was accepted to a much greater extent. The most recent development is that the mad are less judged by external agents and instead (Ritzer quoting Foucault) "madness is ceaselessly called upon to judge itself". Such internalised control is in many senses the most repressive form of control, says Ritzer (Ritzer, 1996, p 599-600). I will in this account have a wide interpretation of "madness" which will involve "oddness" and in the end any deviation from the view from the majority on what is "normal". To me, this makes a natural interpretation.

The phenomena of madness which is called upon to judge itself can for example be found described in a letter in the communist days from Václav Havel to Dr. Gustáv Husák, the General secretary of the Czechoslovakian communist party, describing how he thought fear made people act in a way that gave the impression of total support for the country's government:

"För fruktan över att förlora sitt arbete lär skolläraren ut saker som han inte tror på; för fruktan inför sin framtid repeterar eleven efter honom; av fruktan för att inte kunna fortsätta skolan går den unge mannen med i Ungdomsförbundet och engagerar sig i de nödvändiga aktiviteterna." (Hansson, 1997)

The treatment of the mad in hospitals is related to many other phenomena of the modern society, holds Foucault. In earlier days, those breaking the law could be punished by torture. Today, the system is more effective, more regular and more constant. It is more bureaucratised, more efficient and more impersonal. It is punishing the soul more than the body. And the model can be extended to all of society. It is based on the military model of disciplinary power. It uses instruments such as the effortless observation and the power of making normalizing judgements and then punish the person deviating. There is the "Panopticon" (eg. a watch tower in the center of a circular prison) which is a structure that allows officials the possibility of observing the prisoners but the prisoners can't see the officals or even know if they are being observed. This is very effective since the prisoners stop themselves from doing things they should not do. Foucault sees the Panopticon as the base of the whole disciplinary society (Ritzer, 1996, s 602-605).

In the same fashion, I hold that the nation state culture in an indirect way controls the regional cultures from claiming their own identity and culture and difference from the standard culture. There is not a conspiracy but another type of system of power. Ehn and Löfgren write that "seldom in history ó and if so, only for a short time ó does a ruling class exercise its authority through direct and personal military or even economic power." (my transl., Ehn ó Löfgren, 1982, p 76) Strong regional identity is seen as an oddness that must be cured. The person strongly arguing the separate regional culture knows that he is not following the norm but that he is probably observed by the surroundings and it makes it the easier choice for him not to deviate from the norm. The power acts not by being visible but by being invisible.

One example of the attitude that agents of society may show against individuals who make public argumentative points based on their regional identity is the following replying letter to the editor concerning the discussion of seal for Lund University:

Det klåfingriga förslaget till nytt universitetssigill har inte bara med rätta upprört estetiskt, heraldiskt och kulturhistoriskt sinnade Lundaakademiker. Som en smått komisk bieffekt har det även förmått ett antal lokalpatriotiska Skåneseparatister att ta till pennan. Dessa bisarra insändare [...] måste i all sin tosighet trots allt bemötas. (Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 1997-09-16)

I have in my life several times in public contexts in Scania observed the view of strong regional feelings indulgently smiled at as odd.8) I suggest that social pressure in this fashion tends to create a ó sometimes overcautious ó anxiety among the general public not to be considered belonging to the "bizarre" and the "odd" who by their actions partly call in question what is considered such a fundamental aspect of society as the one simple nation state identity ó by many regarded as something everybody, in its role as a presumed basis for our society, is supposed to adopt without much thought.9) This is also what Bauman stresses, that the nation state strives towards a situation where its legitimacy is "natural" and does not need argumentation (Bauman, 1992, p 208, 213-214). There are connecting points with Bourdieu as well who is referred to by Ehn ó Löfgren, where he is paraphrased as saying that the ruling elite finds it important to define as many issues as possible to be outside the cultural battle arena: "Han har noterat att det för en härskande elit är viktigt att en så stor del av verkligheten som möjligt definieras som neutral mark och därmed utanför stridszonen. Dominansen upprätthålls som mest effektivt när kulturen definieras som icke-kultur ó det som är självklart, naturligt och 'höjt över all diskussion'". My interpretation is that the "ruling elite", which also more rightfully can be called a dominating cultural group, may not even be aware of that it is they who direct culture. For example, they do not consciously think about that they have the prestigious accent and that their accent dominates radio and TV. They do not reflect on that their history is referred to as "our history" in a wider group of people not sharing that same history.

Another example is the self-judgement showed by Scanian local government councillors in Svedala when they in the earlier discussions of the issue of hoisting the Scanian cultural flag turned down such a proposal (Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 1997-06-12).10) My interpretation is that it is considered an oddness or a deviation from the "normal" behaviour of the greater community (Sweden) that the municipality happens to be part of (see chapter 3 for the arbitrariness of the Nordic nation states) in hoisting a non-local flag other than the one of the greater community. It can also in worst case be seen as a challenge against the nation state. The councillors do not know whether more powerful forces are watching (the "Panopticon"), ready to make a big thing of it in the media so the councillors control themselves and choose the safest way.

An example of a different kind is when some phoneticians in Lund presented a proverb pronounced in four different Swedish accents in order to demonstrate differences. One of these was Scanian. In a footnote, the authors write that the Scanian speaker (alone, presumably) causes a general merriness in the auditorium. (Gårding et al, 1973, p 107). One interpretation that I make is that a strong Scanian accent can be considered an oddness in so clearly not trying and not caring about participating in the race of attaining the prestigious neutrality of mainstream modern culture and language. (I would also say that there is an attraction and warm feeling at the same time for the self-possessed Scanian speaker but that is an feeling a part from the laughter that marks the distance.)

This reaction is probably what has made the dialects disappear. The dialect is considered an oddness. The socio-linguist Dahlstedt writes about a couple in Luleå who for this reason do not want to speak their "Swedish" dialect in the city: "Ja, sa gubben, när jag och gumman är inne i stan och går på gatan, så talar vi svenska, för annars vänder sig folk och undrar vad det är för språk vi talar." (Tor G Hultman, 1994, p 60) With the help of the linguistic analogy, this fear for exposing deviation may be true for other traditions of local and regional culture too.

In conclusion, when the mad are less judged by external agents and instead "madness is ceaselessly called upon to judge itself" as Foucault says, this will concern not only statements of strong regional identity but also habits with a regional background.

4.4 Anthony Giddens

One of the best-known efforts to integrate agency and structure is the theory of Giddens. He first looked at a number of theories which started with either the individual or the society and rejected these theories because he started to see agent and structure as much more dependent of each other than these theories indicated. Neither can exist without the other (Ritzer, 1996, s 528, 531). He says that actors do not create activities directly but reproduce them continually. Activites are not produced by conciousness or by the social structure. Actors are engaging themselves in a practice. The actor can be reflexive though, then he is self-concious and monitoring the flow of recurrent activites when he himself is making his choices in action. Actors rationalise their world, but that means routines that gives them a sense of security and efficiency. Actors may intend to do one thing but may end up with an involuntary result. "intentional acts often have unintended consequences" (Ritzer, 1996, s 529-530).

Still, Giddens grants the agent much power in his model. The agent can make a difference in the social world. Well, he must have power to be an actor in the first place. Giddens says that structures only exist in and through the activities of the human agents. He says that to him structure is what gives form to social life but it is not the form in itself. The structures can constrain actions but they can also enable them. The agents are liberated to do what they otherwise would not be able to do. He does not deny that actors can lose control over the structures and the social systems (Ritzer, 1996, s 530-531). Up til now, I remark, he has shown a much less defeatistic view than Simmel and Habermas.

There is also the concept of "structuralisation" which is displaying the interdependence between agent and structure. It is the dialectal relationship between the two (Ritzer, 1996, s 531).

Time and space are crucial variables in Gidden's theory. The default condition is the face-to-face interaction when other agents are present at the same time and in the same space. But this is not necessarily always so. Especially with new forms of communications people can emancipate from this type of interaction (Ritzer, 1996, s 531-532).11)

Archer critisises the problem of structure and agency in the work of Giddens as overshadowing the issue of culture and agency. She sees a distinction between the two. Still, structure (material) and culture (nonmaterial) are intertwined in the real world. Also, Giddens refers to both when he discusses structure (Ritzer, 1996, s 534). That means that the analysis of this essay can use Giddens.

In the light of the theories of Giddens, we can for the purpose of this essay see agents as belonging to a regional culture as reproducing the activites of the whole agency body including all the members of the standard culture (of the nation state). That makes members of the regional culture practice the standard culture as a result of being only a part of the cultures making up the nation state culture. It is in a way rational since that is how they reach security and efficiency as Giddens have suggested. When they want to temporarily get out of the grip of the standard culture, they have to make a reflective choice. This is not very likely to happen if it is to be the result of individual thought processes alone. So I am simply suspicious of the strong power of the agent that Giddens believes in. To me it seems that opposition is dependent on if the members of the regional culture can organise themselves in some form to a high degree. If they can, then the idea of choosing resistance against the plain reproduction of the standard culture can spread.

A visible example of the simple reproduction of the standard culture concerns the tradition of cheering. In Scania, the tradition is to cry out three cheers. In the rest of Sweden, the tradition is four cheers. The tradition has its roots in how Danish and Swedish warships marked their nationality by the use of blank shots (Skansjö, 1997, p 10). In my experience, and without judging the importance of the issue, younger people care less and less about this difference and simply reproduce the majority culture within the structure (which is the nation state) by cheering four times.

5. Conclusion

In chapter 2, nation state culture in Sweden today was discussed. I gave examples of how it manifests itself and brought out that the nation state repeatedly calls attention to itself through media, messages and references and so creates a nation state culture. In chapter 3, I discussed and gave examples of regional culture in Scania today and concluded that there are several indications of its existance.

This being clarified, in the main chapter, I studied the theories of four sociologists and more precisely the parts of these theories relevant for the relationship between regional culture and nation state culture. I will go through the theorists one by one.

Using the theories of Jürgen Habermas, we draw the conclusion that while the agents of the regional culture can communicate uninterrupted in the life-world, when regional culture meets nation state culture, nation state culture constitutes a system that starts to dominate ó or colonise ó the communication on regional premises in the life-world. There is little possibility for the regional culture to at least be colonized by its own more similar system since its institutions are so weak. (That would still have been an improvement in my mind.) Habermas says that the life-world and the system have become "decoupled". His solution is "restraining barriers" and "sensors" ó measures which would help regional culture. Sensors would also contribute to a society of regional diversity on the nation state level.

The concept of habitus as presented by Pierre Bourdieu has a close relationship with culture and can clearly be influenced by for example regional culture. Also, field has its relevance in this discussion since it can be seen as the region or the nation state. In the meeting between regional culture and nation state culture, the field widens from the region into constituting the nation state. The agent develops strategies in order to participate in the struggle for social positions. Since the most prestigious positions are found in the nation state (because the field constituting the region is so relatively unimportant), the agent will adapt his habitus in order to most easily find the desirable positions within the nation state. In this way, regional culture will be weakened and influenced from nation state culture. If the highest positions in the field of the region are still attractive, there may be an opposing trend in a few cases (eg. politicians giving up the status of being a member of Riksdagen in order to fight for the highest positions within the new Scanian regional assembly).

Concerning Michel Foucault, I especially focused on the treatment of the mad, a term that I softened to being the "odd" or those deviating from "normal" behaviour. I combined this with the view of the "Panopticon" and the effortless observation by the power, calling to the effectiveness of self-judgement. I brought forward several examples but the main idea is that when two cultures of different strengths are in a sort of competing situation occupying the same space, the dominating one will more easily be defined as the "normality" against which the subordinate culture will be judged. In this way, the subordinate ó here, the regional ó culture will try to avoid being "odd" and therefore adapt itself to the dominating ó here, nation state ó one. This adaption will be especially quick when the regional culture suspects that it may be under observation and the aspiration to behave "normally" becomes not limited to fixed situations but is looked after by even the fellow members in all situations (eg. one friend teasing the other for having the broader regional accent of the two). We can not really expect an influence from the regional culture to the nation state culture using Foucault.

In the theory of agency and structure by Anthony Giddens, the agent does not normally create activities directly but reproduce them continually. In the situation of regional culture co-existing with nation state culture, the most dominating agency body will be the nation state and so, the actor will in many areas reproduce the activities of this whole agency body. When he does that, he will perform the culture of the nation state and so regional culture will be weakened. There is also a possibility of the agent to rely on the agency body of the region but the region's cultural institutions are usually too weak to support this. The actor can be relexive though and is granted quite a lot of power by Giddens. I find it hard to believe in much power for the agent based on my observations concerning regional culture and nation state culture. Like for the theories of Bourdieu, there may be a few cases of an outside agent moving to the region reproducing the culture of the regional agency body but that will not affect nation state culture to any significant degree but only that individual and only temporarily.

I would also like to make some comparisons of the relevance of using the four sociologists for the issue of this essay and say that they are all relevant but that especially Foucault and Bourdieu are interesting and that Habermas has maybe a slightly weaker relevance than the others.

Another and final conclusion which I make is that using Habermas, strengthening regional cultural institutions is a an improvement, I think, but not a solution. It is a solution using Bourdieu and Giddens. It is a solution to this particular problem using Foucault but the main problem of a society which pays no respect to those deviating, remains.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Footnotes

1) I have four references to this work: (Britannica Online: "The Concept and Components of Culture"), (Ehn & Löfgren, 1982, p 13), (Holm-Löfgren, 1995, p 113), (NE: "kultur")
2) Ehn and Löfgren support this idea in their book, eg.: "För vår del intresserar vi oss mest för kulturell mening, antingen de betydelser som människor själva kollektivt tilldelar verkligheten eller sådana djupare liggande betydelser som kan visas vara en omedveten del av språk, tänkande och handlande." (Ehn ó Löfgren, 1982, p 97, passim)
3) This doesn't mean that two people ever have the same language or culture. Neither does it mean that there aren't a number of different sociolects and social cultures respectively.
4) Note though that there is of course no sharp line between the old remnants of the local parish dialects and the language more influenced of standard Swedish. It is a continuum stretching from perfectly genuine dialects to close to neutral standard Swedish where the later varieties are in a majority (Hallberg, 1998-01-20).
5) I use the word "Swedener" in analogy with "danlænder", a non-ethnic characterisation of a Danish citizen used by the Danish social researcher Mehmet Ümit Necef (Ronkainen, 1998).
6) Ingers confirms that the old Scanian dialect can be said to be a Danish dialect: "Den var en särspräglad östdansk dialekt, som kan benämnas Skånemål, redan i dansk tid utgörande övergångsstadier mellan ödanska mål och de sydligaste svenska målen i Småland, och tillsatt med åtskilliga egenartade drag." (Ingers, 1974, p 35) According to the linguistic analogy, such a mention of geographic transition stages can be a decent description of the local folkkloric culture as well.
6b) Here it must be noted that Scania of course is not homogenous as region but there is a historic border towards the province north of it. There are also certain lingustic and cultural borders following this old Danish-Swedsh border as eg. the dialectal softening of the letters k, p and t to g, b or v and d after stressed vowel (Ingers, 1939, p 7) and the tradition of singing songs on the first of May (Agrell, 1973, p 77). When Ek concludes that Scania has a regional culture, he looks at several cultural maps of a more general significance. My explanation to why so much changes culturally at the border is that the culture of Copenhagen/Malmö in some regards could only penetrate so far north into the forests of northern Scania. That is the same reason as for why Denmark ended in the forest in that area. The historic border has played an active role too later certainly.
7) In the same way, the standard language comes from dialect areas which dominated culturally and politically. It has "inslag från de olika dialektområden som genom tiderna har varit kulturellt eller politiskt dominerande" (DAL, 1995, p 3)
8) Ehn and Löfgren analyses these strategies and tactics: "I ett läge där en dominerande kulturs verklighetsbild utsätts för opposition väljer hegemonins företrädare bland olika former av motanfall. Till en början kanske man ignorerar oppositionen, definierar den som irrelevant eller som toserier ingen människa behöver ta på fullt allvar. Ett bra försvar är ofta att förlöjliga eller marginalisera motkulturen. Går inte det får man stämpla den som kättersk eller blasfemisk. I sin analys av småborgerskapets världsbild pekar Barthes (1969) på att småborgaren gärna värjer sig mot en hotande annorlundahet genom att förneka olikheten. Det främmande oskadliggörs genom att trivialiseras och tämjas. 'Dom är egentligen som vi.' Den andra strategin som Barthes nämner går ut på att exotisera en antagonistisk grupp eller livshållning genom att förvandla hotet till ett skämt eller något icke-mänskligt. 'Dom är fånar'. eller 'dom är som djur'." It should not be forgotten though, that cultural hegemony often appears more overwhelming than it is in practise. There are a lot of tricky defense mechansims on the part of the weaker culture (Ehn ó Löfgren, 1982, p 80-81).
9) This sort of anti-regionalist nationalism, I see as the belief in the more primitive mechanical solidarity (based on similar activities and similar responsibilities) rather than organic solidarity (based on differences), to borrow some terms from Durkheim. Ritzer paraphrasing Rueschemeyer writes that "a society characterized by organic solidarity leads to both more solidarity and more individuality than one characterized by mechanical solidarity." This is because there is less competition and more cooperation (Ritzer, 1996, p 80). But supposedly, the diversity and individualism of regionalism scare those believing in mechanical solidarity.
10) The official explanation was that is was not an official county flag, something which neither legally or for any other reason has stopped two other municipalities from hoisting it.
11) At the same time, for this reason, we arrive at the risk society because risk has become global in intensity. Ritzer writes that Giddens thinks that "modernity is a double-edged sword, bringing both positive and negative developents" (Ritzer, 1996, p 570, 572).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Appendix 1

In this essay, I use the term "nation state culture" instead of "national culture" since the word "nation state" relates to the culture developed in the modern state and not directly to the culture of a "nation". The problem of having a word directly related to "nation" is that "nation" in its turn essentially relates to the word "people", i.e. people who are tied together by a common identity (NE: "nation"). Beeing on the border of claiming that all Scanians for sure belong to one and the same Swedish nation should be avoided in an academic work in my opinion. It must be admitted though that the normal use is "state" (ibid). However, I want to prevent as much confusion as possible here. "Nation state" is often used synonymously with "state" and if so, used synonymously with primarily administratively integrated states in a modern sense (NE: "nationalstat"). The fact that "nation state" also can have a confusing literary meaning can be seen as a problem but I think it is a lesser problem in the context "nation state culture" since the direct connection between the culture and the nation (people) is no longer there. I will sometimes also use the term "standard culture" as a synonym to nation state culture, a term whose justification I will explain later in the text. This could possibly have been a better term than "nation state culture".
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Appendix 2

The ethnologist Bringéus says that south western Scania is a culturally innovative area from which a number of cultural traits have spread: "Sydvästra Skåne är nämligen ett utpräglat novationsområde, där en rad nyheter fått sitt första fäste i vårt land varifrån de spritts kontinuerligt mot norr och öster." (Bringéus, 1971, p 13). At least concerning food culture, he says that there hardly has been a corresponding spread of innovations from the north (ibid). The direction of cultural diffusion is supported by Nationalencyclopedin which says that in an area south and west of a line from between the Swedish provinces of Värmland and Dalarna to the city of Kalmar, the cultural contacts have been directed towards the Malmö-Copenhagen area since pre-historic times (NE: "kulturgränser").

Ingers writes that a dialect researcher finds several dialect borders from north east to south west where the most Danish traits are found in the south west: "Gång på gång gör man på det skånska dialektområdet den iakttagelsen, att ett stort antal gränslinjer i riktning nordväst-sydöst avskilja mera allmänt sydsvenska dialektdrag från mera danskpräglade." The south west is an "intencity centre for all most Danish characterized dialectal features" (Ingers, 1939, p 6). In an interview, Hallberg says that south western Scania was a cultural diffusion centre for as well dialects as many other cultural traditions (Hallberg, 1998-01-20).

So dialects and other cultural traditions followed the same patterns in the folkkloric culture in south Sweden.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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