Subways and Citizens. Negotiating Citizenship Through Greater Stockholm's Subway System (1950s–1970s)

Abstract

This article argues that Greater Stockholm's subway system functioned as a material space to govern passengers into diligent welfare citizens, fit for life in a modern Swedish welfare society. It also shows that this was a contingent process, which was marked by conflicting answers to the moral question of how to live and how to act. Beginning with the expansion of the subway system in postwar Stockholm, the article explores how its development aligned with ideals of collectivism and social welfare. It then analyses the use of cultural and commercial policies, as well as disciplinary strategies to educate passengers into conforming and informed commuter citizens. Finally, the article addresses how countercultural protest groups challenged these prescribed subject positions by using the subway in ways that transgressed the virtues of welfare subjectivity. By materializing citizenship through Greater Stockholm's subway system, this article highlights how the terms and conditions of life in a modern Swedish welfare society were formulated, challenged and negotiated through seemingly mundane practices, such as commuting, and spaces, like Stockholm's modern subway system.