The Swedish breakfast is an ordinary thing. It usually consists of a bowl of ‘filmjölk’, a sandwich with butter and cheese, and a cup of coffee with milk. This nostalgic composition is routinely consumed at kitchen tables around Sweden, every morning, before the daily commute to work. Most of us consume at least one of these dairy products on a daily basis without thinking about how they arrived at our kitchen table The commercialisation of the food industry in the 20th century led to a commodification of dairy products. Through heavy marketing, dairy producers, with the goal of increasing their own profit, were able to infiltrate Swedish homes and increase their dairy consumption. Milk went from being a small scale, domestically produced and consumed food, to receiving a political status as a part of ‘folkhemmet’. Consumption of dairy products was encouraged as a way of building the Swedish welfare state (Martiin, 2024, 227-230). The Swedish breakfast was commodified. Food and shelter are two of the most basic human needs, and are inevitably affecting all of our lives. However, the environmental implications of how food is produced, sold, and consumed, as well as the impact of our domestic lives can no longer be ignored. Global warming, deforestation, eutrophication, and biodiversity loss are only a few climatic emergencies that we are facing due to humanity surpassing planetary boundaries. The correlation between economic growth and climate change is today commonly declared, and decreasing production and consumption is becoming increasingly urgent to avoid an ecological collapse. Departing from the increasing urgency of the climate emergency, this thesis investigates the environmental impact of the commodification of the dairy industry from degrowth perspective. Nested in a Northern Swedish rural context, this paper speculates about how the Swedish breakfast can be re-localised through degrowth processes, and how this can contribute to producing alternative, degrowth housing structures in the rural area Tavelsjö. A housing structure which creates low impact domesticity and a post-growth rural community.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-227127 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Svahn, Nathalie |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Arkitekthögskolan vid Umeå universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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