1. En husmoder ska vara tusenkonstnär : en kunskapshistorisk undersökning av hemmets rationalisering 1946–1956
- Author
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Wildt, Emma and Wildt, Emma
- Abstract
A housewife of many trades: applying history of knowledge to the rationalization of the home in 1946–1956. After World War II, Swedish women were expected to return to their work at home, due to a shortfall of work for men. However, to make housework more attractive for women, its status needed to increase. One way to make housework more appealing for women was to rationalize the home and therefore make the household chores more manageable for women. Working at home should be a real profession. The idea was also that some women should be able to combine housework with a wage-earning profession. The rationalization of the home was initiated by politicians, engineers, architects, scientists, housework teachers and housewives. In society at this time, many believed that industrialization, modernization, and science should make the housework effective. The aim of this thesis is to explore how the rationalization of the Swedish home demanded new knowledge and how this knowledge circulated in society through different forms of media. To understand why this knowledge was only intended for women, two theoretical perspectives were combined: gender and history of knowledge. Firstly, the theory of gender contracts by Yvonne Hirdman was used. Secondly, different concepts on knowledge were used such as Johan Östling and David Larsson Heidenblad’s definition of knowledge and Peter Burke’s definition of authorities. The theoretical framework of this thesis was circulation of knowledge especially Philip Sarasin’s description of the concept. This gives a better understanding of how knowledge from different media circulated in society. One way to specify the term circulation is to use Östling and Heidenblad’s definition, which is called: societal circulation of knowledge, meaning that only the knowledge that had an impact in society at large should be studied. The primary source material for this study was HFI-meddelanden which was a scientific magazine, Husmoderns köksalmanack which
- Published
- 2024