Inspector Wallander’s angst, social change and the reconfiguration of Swedish exceptionalism
| Author | Thomas McLean,John Pratt |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474515590894 |
| Published date | 01 July 2015 |
| Date | 01 July 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment & Society
2015, Vol. 17(3) 322–344
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474515590894
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Article
Inspector Wallander’s
angst, social change and
the reconfiguration of
Swedish exceptionalism
John Pratt
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Thomas McLean
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
This article examines the extent to which changes in Swedish values and culture are
undermining what has come to be known as the penal exceptionalism of that society. It
does this by contrasting the two very different pictures of Swedish society that are to be
found in the detective novels of Maj Sjo
¨wall and Per Wahlo
¨o
¨, set in the 1960s and early
1970s, and those of Henning Mankell, set in the 1990s onwards. Notwithstanding the
extensive social change we find reflected in them, it is argued that Sweden’s penal
exceptionalism has been reconfigured rather than swept aside. It largely remains
intact for those on the legitimate side of the barriers and divisions that mass immigra-
tion has constructed around it, but those whose ethnicity denies them this status are
likely to find themselves excluded from it.
Keywords
Wallander, insecurity, Swedish exceptionalism, immigration, prison
Introduction
For a good part of the post-1945 period, Sweden was a much acclaimed (and often
self-proclaimed, see Nilsson, 2012) leader of Western liberalism, tolerance and
humanity. It came to be seen by many as the embodiment of those values that
were meant to be instrumental to the rebuilding of the modern world at the end of
Corresponding author:
John Pratt, Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand.
Email: John.Pratt@vuw.ac.nz
World War II. One of the main indicators of Sweden’s leadership role at that time
was the inclusionary nature of that society, reflected in its egalitarianism, cohesion,
extensive welfare state, and commitment to social democracy. As a further illus-
tration of how inclusive a society it appeared to be, it also possessed a penal system
that maintained a relatively low rate of imprisonment and relatively high levels of
material comfort, personal space, and inmate autonomy in its prisons (Pratt and
Eriksson, 2013). Indeed, as the Anglophone countries especially, from the late
1970s, began to engage in dramatic expansions of their penal estates alongside
physically deteriorating and ever more security conscious prison conditions, its
own exception to these trends stood out as a beacon of difference (Pratt, 2008a).
Nonetheless, it has been apparent from the 1990s that this Swedish exception-
alism – both in relation to its penal system and the more general inclusionary
characteristics of Swedish society – has been subject to significant threat (Pratt,
2008b). ‘Law and order politics’, and the ‘toughness’ auctions between Left and
Right parties (Tham, 2001), for example, became a familiar political theme there,
as with the UK and USA. Furthermore, the Swedish social fabric appears to have
been subjected to something like the process of neo-liberal reconstruction that has
been experienced in much of the Anglophone world – more emphasis on lowering
direct taxes, privatizing state services and so on. In this regard, the apparent fall of
Sweden’s hitherto strong central state (Lindvall and Rothstein, 2006) might be
thought to symbolize the final nail in the coffin for Swedish exceptionalism.
Except that we do not think it was. Instead, we argue in this article that such
claims are significantly overstated. The changes that have indeed taken place in
Sweden have not swept Swedish exceptionalism aside in favor of the more punitive
and exclusionary social and penal arrangements now to be found in the
Anglophone countries especially. Instead, Swedish reconfiguration has produced
a much more bifurcated society. This means that it has been possible to maintain,
to an extent at least, its social democratic values and attendant social and penal
characteristics – but only by constructing a range of barriers around them that now
separate ‘legitimate’ Swedes from those whose immigration status leads to them
being denied any such legitimacy in Swedish society.
Our argument is based on an analysis of the social arrangements, values and
everyday expectations of the very different Swedens that are to be found in two
series of Swedish detective novels. First, that of Maj Sjo
¨wall and Per Wahlo
¨o
¨,
featuring Detective Chief Inspector Martin Beck and set in Stockholm, which
illustrates what it was like to be living in that country in the 1960s and early
1970s. Second, and more centrally, that of Henning Mankell, featuring Chief
Inspector Kurt Wallander, set in the southern Swedish town of Ystad. The
latter, international bestsellers, were published in Swedish during the 1990s
(except The Troubled Man in 2009),
1
then translated into English a few years
later. Their plots feature Wallander investigating and ultimately solving macabre
multiple killings. These two popular series of novels were chosen in the belief that
their popularity was indicative of their strong correspondence with common experi-
ences or preoccupations in that society in the two periods they cover. In that sense,
Pratt and McLean 323
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