David Östlund:
“Maskinmodernitet och dystopisk lycka: den sociala ingenjörskonstens Sverige, upplaga Huntford 1971”, forthcoming (in Swedish) in Polhem: Teknik- och vetenskapshistorisk årsbok.

Abstract:

Machine-modernity and Dystopic Bliss: Sweden as the land of social engineering, edition Huntford 1971.

In 1971 the British Conservative Roland Huntford launched his anathema over Swedish society: The New Totalitarians. Somewhat drastically it illustrates the genre of image-creation in the surrounding world during the People’s Home Era 1932-76; especially its nature of political fight by means of descriptions, and its focus on technology and scientific efficiency. In its genre, Huntford’s bestseller received the largest attention in Sweden itself, and thus bids a link to the domestic creation of images of the nation’s recent past after 1976. The common element is the key theme of social engineering, which Huntford used in a theoretical framework that claimed technological development to be heading towards control on the socio-cultural level. The internal retrospective image creation has been a political business as well, especially as it has shared with Huntford the problematic axiom that modern Sweden became the intentional edifice of the Social Democrats.