Explaining the mechanisms behind the larger processes of globalization, modernization, and cultural imperialism, this book explores the realms of daily life in Sweden and how cultural impulses are actually integrated in the lives of ordinary people. The dreams, opinions, actions, and consumption desires of individuals with different social backgrounds are considered, determining the significance the processes of Americanization have had in shaping and influencing the form and content of everyday life in Sweden.

Digital self-tracking devices and data have become normal elements of everyday life. Imagining Personal Data examines the implications of the rise of body monitoring and digital self-tracking for how we inhabit, experience and imagine our everyday worlds and futures. Through a focus on how it feels to live in environments where data is emergent, present and characterized by a sense of uncertainty, the authors argue for a new interdisciplinary approach to understanding the implications of self-tracking, which attends to its past, present and possible future. Building on social science approaches, the book accounts for the concerns of scholars working in design, philosophy and human-computer interaction. It problematizes the body and senses in relation to data and tracking devices, presents an accessible analytical account of the sensory and affective experiences of self-tracking, and questions the status of big data. In doing so it proposes an agenda for future research and design that puts people at its centre.

Focusing on how museums prioritize and produce content, Hip Heritage demonstrates how economic issues play an ever-larger role in determining how cultural heritage is being framed and presented in contemporary heritage museums. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the authors at seven museums over the course of five years, this book offers an in-depth analysis of heritage museums in Nordic, Scandinavian and North American contexts. It investigates how economic realities, coupled with the cultural contexts in which museums operate, affect how these institutions organize, manage and develop their collections to make themselves relevant in society. Once charged with the primary task of educating citizens about their cultural identity and history, national museums and heritage organizations are also under pressure to rethink their market demands and meet stakeholders’ increasing interest in growing visitor numbers and expanding economic returns. Simultaneously, many museums are part of a cultural sector with diminished public funding and increased competition for the existing financing. Against this background, this book questions: ‘When the budget is tight, whose heritage counts most?’ It considers museums as arenas for heritage politics in action on the local, national and international levels, as well as at the institutional level. Hip Heritage will appeal to scholars and students engaged in the study of ethnology heritage, museum studies, marketing, leisure and tourism, public folklore, and sociology.

From 17th-century Sweden to the present time, this remarkable volume provides a historical perspective on the manner in which hospitality has developed from a private right and obligation to a commercialized product. Examining the ways religion, belief, and notions of health and wellness have been intertwined in the world of spas, this account argues for an appreciation of the role that magic, serenity, and rejuvenation play as a facilitator of economic processes and as a source of perceptions of health. Aimed at advanced students and scholars, this record will interest those in the fields of anthropology, hospitality, and sociology.

Ethnography has become something of a buzzword in recent years. It is talked about and invoked in disciplines ranging from anthropology and ethnology to literature, history, business administration and design studies. Textbooks that teach ethnography tend to imbue students with the impression that ethnography is a mode of systematic investigation by which the researcher gets closer to the realities of people's everyday lives. But how straightforward are these processes in reality? As ethnography spreads into new folds of research both within and without the academy, the contributions in this volume demonstrate the manner in which field methods are adjusting, transforming or taking new forms altogether. If textbooks might lead students to believe that observations and interviews are the grounds upon which "good" ethnography can regularly be produced, the authors in this volume take as their point of departure the realisation that ethnography is being used in a multitude of different contexts which forces them -- and us as readers -- to question the "regularities" and "irregularities" of their own work.