This thesis studies the ways in which Swedish advertising agents tried to reshape advertising into a practise seen as working for the public benefit, and not just for economical profit of themselves and their clients. Earlier research on Swedish advertising has not paid enough attention to the advertising sectors ambitions to spread their views of advertising as a societal good during the 1930s. By investigating, among other things, the 4th Nordic Advertising Congress in 1937, which was held on the theme “Advertising serves society”, and the magazines Futurum and Reklam nyheterna, published by and for advertising agents in Sweden, this thesis shows that the Swedish advertising sector actively tried to represent advertising as an important factor in the improvement and modernization of Sweden. The arguments used to legitimize advertising as a question with relevance for the whole of society was intimately connected to ideals that are usually associated with the emergence of the Swedish welfare state, such as public health, social improvement, modernity and rationality. Earlier research tend to focus on the agency of the state in this period, but this study shows that also the private advertising sector of Sweden were embracing these ideals and playing a part in the processes creating these policies by advocating a society with more “propaganda” for things such as public health, better homes, and traffic safety.

Si l’histoire de la médecine et les avancées des doctrines hygiénistes sont des thèmes reconnus de l’historiographie. En revanche, peu de travaux ont explicitement porté sur le rôle des médecins dans l’émergence de nouveaux comportements alimentaires. Basée sur le modèle prosopographique, notre réflexion s’attache à mettre en exergue l’évolution du discours nutritionnel, les actions prophylactiques et les initiatives de vulgarisation d’un groupe de médecins autour de la construction des recommandations alimentaires. En s’interrogeant sur l’acte de manger, les régimes alimentaires, l’hygiène des aliments, l’apprentissage d’une bonne alimentation, ces médecins constituent un groupe de pionniers en hygiène alimentaire. Ils participent à la construction des bases théoriques et pratiques d’une diététique scientifique qui se développe en France dans les dernières années du XIXe siècle et dans laquelle la volonté de réformer le social n’est pas absente. Si la figure du médecin est au coeur de ce travail, la comparaison de trajectoires individuelles permet une réflexion plus globale sur la place particulière de l’alimentation dans la pratique médicale / The history of medicine and the evolution of the hygienist doctrine are traditional historiography topics. However, only a few researches explicitly focused on the medicals roles in the emergence of new eating behaviors. Based on the prosopography method, our work focuses on the evolutions of nutritionals discourses, the prophylactic actions and vulgarization initiatives taken by a medical group concerning elaboration of food recommendations. By studying the eating act in itself as well as the diet, food hygiene, and the learning of good eating habits, these physicians are considered a pioneer group in food hygiene. They introduced the theoretical knowledge and dietetics practices developed in France in the late 19th century. Social reformism was the key point of their thoughts. If the physician figure is the heart of this research, the individual careers comparison gives us a more global idea on the particular place of food in the medical practice