The Bog and the Beast
The Bog and the Beast
The View of the Nation and the World from Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Gothenburg
This chapter examines how the different stages in the arc of nation building and world claiming affect the position of Danish and Swedish museums on the cosmopolitanism–nationalism continuum. It first looks at the New Danish Prehistory exhibition and Sweden’s Museum of World Culture, which features exhibitions about human trafficking, migration, and Bollywood. It suggests that both countries use museums to make sense of their place in the world, not to claim to be its leader. In Copenhagen, museums used the global to reassert the national, while in Stockholm and Gothenburg they put the country’s inherent cosmopolitanism on display, as a good thing in and of itself that also strengthens the nation. This chapter also considers the differences in immigration and integration policy between Denmark and Sweden and why Swedish museums drive forward cosmopolitanism while their Danish counterparts generally reference global ideas and values to celebrate Danishness. Finally, it explains why both countries showcase diversity in ways that somehow set immigrants and their children apart.
Keywords: cosmopolitanism, nationalism, museums, immigration, Denmark, Sweden, exhibitions, diversity, nation building
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