Ulrika Torell, Nordiska museet
Sugar on the Mass Market: Sweet Commodities and Cultures of Consumption in Sweden, from 1890 to the Present
Aim
The goal of this project was to illuminate the patterns of consumption relating to sugar and sweets in Sweden from the decades around the turn of the 1900s up until today. According to current historical interpretations, sugar was incorporated into the diet of the population and became a given staple commodity in Swedish households during this period of time. Official statistics show a dramatic increase in consumption: from three kilogramsper capita in the mid-1800s to fifty kilograms during the 1930s, a development far beyondthat of any other foodstuff. However these figures only present the country’s sugar supply in relationship to the size of the population at particular points in time.What has been lacking, on the other hand, is an understanding of the uses of sugar as such, its roles and functions in people’s diets as well as its geographic and social dissemination.Thus the central point here was how demand was created, how the culture of consumption related to sweets was established, and how sweets were incorporated into people’s diets and social lives: to study the patterns of consumption surrounding sugar via the significances and uses which were gradually associated with sweets in an expanding mass market. The main focus was the production of meaning around sweet objects– the identification of values, ideas and ideals which were gradually formed and linked to the consumption of sweet products.
As the project progressed, the time period of the study was a revised. The ambition was to study how increasing amounts of beet sugar were disseminatedin new forms for use in wider circles concurrently with theincrease of modernization and prosperity. However I found no clear indications of apparent new habits within new groups which were automatically generated by an increased supply of sugar. Instead a number of central implications were identified which persistently surroundedthe consumption of sugar, and which characterized the ideas about the functions of sugar,even though there was a tenfold increase in the per capita figures and the price of sugar fell. These central themes could in turn be traced to traditions farther back in time which were rooted in classical and medieval conceptions of taste, manners and customs.
For example, among these was the ceremonial use of sugar in the form oflavish expositions of sweets during the era of the Swedish Empire, which in the next phase were copiedby the bourgeoisiewith their very conspicuouspresentations of desserts,and then replicated further in the more folksy presentation of sweets in the coffee klatches of the mid-1900s. Also belonging here was the use of sugar for medicinal purposes which had been handed down since antiquityandwhich, to a very great extent, generated significance in terms of the consumption of sugar as it related to risk and health, as well as to moderation and excess, up until our own times. These contexts, where sugar acquired central values and functions, became the starting point for a number of thematicsubstudies: sugar as medicine, as food, as a medium, as a marker of class and as a threat. In some cases, the creation of significance within the framework of the themes can be traced considerably farther back in time, with an emphasis on the period from 1800 to the beginning of thepresent century.
Results
The monograph Socker och söta saker. En kulturhistorisk studie av sockerkonsumtionen i Sverige [Sugar and Sweet Things. A Cultural History of Sugar Consumption] (2015),is a presentation of the project and its results in seven chapters with a concluding discussion on the history of sugar consumption as it relates to exclusivity, normalization and modernity.
One important conclusion is that earlier descriptions of how sugar consumption evolved in Sweden were simplified,based on assumptions regardingthe immanent desirability of sugar combined with a lack of knowledge about the composition of people´s diets, the actual ways in which sugar spread as well as the roles and functions of sweetness in different levels of society. Sugar supplies were notevenly distributed, nor were they spread concurrently alongwith aprogressive development of society in the way whichaggregated statisticshave led to suggest. Sugar was not automatically transformed from an exclusive luxury to an everyday commodity of mass consumption among more expansive groups in a one-way chronological process of modernization and increasing prosperity. If anything, patterns of consumption were established when particular historical conditions arose where demand was created in relationship to social, political and cultural conditions. Neither the taste sensations nor the price of the commodity have, in themselves, determined how patterns of consumption have evolved in history. That sugar has been incorporated as a given in life (or not) is a result of how people have actively made use of sugar’s specific characteristicsto suit practically formulated aims and needs. Sugar has been defined as a good, beneficial and,above all, a practical product based on economic, political, scientific as well as cultural points of view. The idea of productive sugar having contributed to the solution of problems on many levels in society thereby nuances the notion of sugar’s self-generating desirability which has marked historical descriptions as an explanation of the development of sugar consumption.
Further it seems as though sugar was democratized later than what had been previously assumed. Common foodstuffs were nearly sugar-free during the 1800s and the early 1900s,while the amounts of sugar and its uses among the few households in the upper classes were quite similar to the average use of sugar during the present century. Moderation and ceremonial patterns have thus marked the use of sugar within the entire population, even though the supply increased and the price fell. It was only when the food industry took over most of the sugar distribution, for the fabrication of processed food during the mid-1900s, that common people’s food became sweeter, and therebysweetness was ‘normalized’ in everyday life.
A methodological finding is that analyses of patterns of consumption during historical times can be improvedby using a combination of different kinds of sources. In this project, the roles sugar played in food and diets has been tested against a number of alternative types of source materials including historical statistics on production and commerce, price lists, assortmentlists and advertising, as well as material objects preserved in museum collections, in the form of sweets and objects which were used in the process of consumption. Other sources include the records of district physicians and county governors, representations of sugar and sweetness in cookbooks, books on etiquetteand literature on home economics, as well as diaries, letters and memoires. Norms and ideas about sugar have been traced in nutritional guidelines and consumer information. Over time the consumption of sugar has clearly become a health issue with political connotations, and this has been analyzed in reports, scientific and medical studies, political health documents and debates about risks in newspapers, trade journals and popular culture.
New ResearchTopics
Some of the questions which this project raised are the ways in which methodological working practices within the field of historical consumption can be developed.This mainly involves identifying alternative kinds of source materials, particularly material artifacts. It is also a matter of widening perspectives so that even environments and locationsof consumption, in a broader perspective, are included in the analysis, because places for purchasing and consumption have been identified as active contexts wherein the goods as well as their uses acquire meanings and values. Geographic perspectives should be researched further, including questions as to the significance of spatial dimensions for the forms and changes in the patterns of consumption.
Publications
Over and above the monograph Sugar and Sweet Things (2015), the project has generated a number of studies within the area of historical consumption (see below). For example, Sötsaksrum. Sockerbagarnas platser och den kommersiella scenografin [Rooms for Sweets: Confectioners’ Spaces and the Commercial Scenography] (2011) on the spatiality of sugar consumption and the bakery shop as a public space in the urban environments of the 1800s. This also includes studies on the history of packaging and commerce which are presented in the anthology Burkar, påsar och paket. Förpackningarnas historia i vardagens konsumtionskulturer[Cans, Bags and Packages:The History of Packaging in the Cultures of Everyday Consumption] (2010).
Collaborations Between the University Communities and the Archive/Library/Museum (ALM) Sector
Collaboration has primarilyinvolved forming and participating in networks, establishing seminars with external researchers in museum environments and helping researchers to navigate the collections. Two national conferences on research in the ALM-sector were arranged, 2008 and 2009. Research groups have been involved with working seminars at the museum, one on packaging history (2007-2010), followed by a seminar on the history of the Kitchen, A Room for Dreams, Ideals and Daily Life During the Long 20th Century. The museum’s collections as potential research material has been highlighted and problematized in seminars and conferences as well as in the handbook project Fråga Föremålen [Ask the Objects] (2013). Efforts were also made within the museum to find ways to increaseinvolvement in current research by organizing study circles, proposals for hearings related to actual topics, as well as seminars on texts and exhibition production, etc.
Further Dissemination of Research Results
The project has been presented at the universities in Stockholm, Uppsala, Linköping, Lund and Gothenburg, as well as in Helsinki (The Nordic Consumer Policy Research Conference) and Bologna (The International Commission for Research into European Food History). It will also be featured in the upcoming publication of the book, The Mediality of Sugar, in a collaboration with the universities in Siegen and Bern.
The project was presented (2014-2015) in the exhibition Socker [Sugar] at Nordiska Museet. This received wide coverage in the media which was followed up by special guided tours for schools, organizations and interest groups together with lectures and programs which focused on the history of sugar consumption. A temporary exhibition on the history of packaging was produced and exhibited in 2010-2011.
List of Publications
---, “Signifying Social Life. Confectionery as a Cultural Object“, The Mediality of Sugar, Nadja Gernalzick & Joseph Imorde (eds) Forthcoming 2016.
---, Socker och söta saker. En kulturhistorisk studie av sockerkonsumtionen i Sverige, Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag 2015.
---, ”Grand Tour bland tingen”, Fråga föremålen. Handbok till historiska studier av materiell kultur, Anna Maria Forssberg & Karin Sennefelt (red.) Lund: Studentlitteratur 2014.
---, ”När sockret blev vardagsmat. Moderniseringen av kostkulturerna i Sverige under 1930- och 1940-talen”, Tidskrift for kulturforskning, nr 3-4, 2013.
---, ”Den rullande butiken. Livsmedelsbussarna och den svenska landsbygdens modernisering”, Bussen är budskapet. Perspektiv på mobilitet, materialitet och modernitet, Gustafsson Reinius, Lotten Habel, Ylva & Jülich, Solveig (red), Kungliga biblioteket 2013.
---, och Jenny Lee, “Promoting packaging and selling self-service. The rapid modernization of the Swedish food retail trade”, The Food Industries of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Derek J. Oddy & Alain Drouard (eds), Ashgate 2013.
---, ”Köpstimulerande mönster i varuvärlden” I: Ränder, rytm, riktning, Susanne Helgeson (red.), Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag 2013.
---, ”Allmogekaramellen i modern kostym” I: Ränder, rytm, riktning, Susanne Helgeson (red.), Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag 2013.
---, ”Draperad i desserten. Ätbara plagg som raffinerad reklam” Markeringar och maskeringar. Att visa eller dölja sin kropp, red. Roger Qvarsell & Birgitta Svensson, Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag 2012.
---, ”Sötsaksrum. Sockerbagarnas platser och den kommersiella scenografin ” Andra Stockholm. Liv, plats och identitet i storstaden, red. Bo Larsson & Birgitta Svensson, Stockholm: Stockholmia förlag 2011.
---, Roger Qvarsell & Jenny Lee (red), Burkar, påsar och paket. Förpackningarnas historia i vardagens konsumtionskulturer, Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag 2010.
---, Jenny Lee, Roger Qvarsell, ”Forskning om förpackningar” I: Burkar, påsar och paket. Förpackningarnas historia i vardagens konsumtionskulturer, red. Ulrika Torell, Roger Qvarsell & Jenny Lee, Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag 2010.
---, & Jenny Lee, ”Talande paket. Butiksrum, förpackningar och försäljningens kommunikativa former” I: Burkar, påsar och paket. Förpackningarnas historia i vardagens konsumtionskulturer, red. Ulrika Torell, Roger Qvarsell & Jenny Lee, Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag 2010.
---, ”Svenskt välstånd i standardförpackning. Lanseringen av socker för masskonsumtion på 1930-talet”, I: Burkar, påsar och paket. Förpackningarnas historia i vardagens konsumtionskulturer, red. Ulrika Torell, Roger Qvarsell & Jenny Lee, Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag 2010.
---, Lee, J & Qvarsell, R, ”Förpackningshistoria och förpackningsforskning”, Samdok-forum, nr 1, 2010, s. 23-26.
---, & Christina Mattsson, ”Begärets locksång. Annons-visan och marknadsföringen av 1880-talets konsumtionsvaror” I: Mediesystem, red. Jonas Harvard & Patrik Lundell, Mediehistoriskt arkiv 15, Stockholm: Kungliga biblioteket, 2010.
---, ”Att äta världen. De massproducerade sötsakernas idévärldar i Sverige 1860-1914”RIG nr 1, 2007.
---, ”Crêmekometer, Lefverkorf och Lindebarn i marsipan. Om idévärldar och konsumtionskulturer kring sötsaker i Sverige 1860-1914” i Grönsaker eller godis? Kulturella perspektiv på nordiska barns kosthåll, Barbro Johansson (red), CFK-rapport 2007:1, Göteborg: Handelshögskolan, Centrum för konsumtionsvetenskap.
English translation: Rachelle Puryear
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