This article explores bildning as a central concept in the development of the explicit cultural policy of the Swedish government. It takes its point of departure in how the concept of bildning was interpreted by Arthur Engberg, the minister responsible for cultural policy in the Social Democrat governments 1932–1939. In his interpretation bildning was liked both to upholding the high arts and the national culture and to the idea of re-invigorating these through cultural policy and education. The article continues by looking at the role and the interpretations of this concept in the later government reports and government bills aiming to cover the entirety of Swedish cultural policy, i.e. the government bills of 1974, 1996 and 2009, and the preceding reports. I suggest that the concept of bildning – and specifically Engberg’s interpretation of this concept – contributed to shaping the specific form taken by explicit cultural policy in Sweden under Engberg’s leadership, and that this approach has influenced later Swedish cultural policies, including the cultural policy bill of 1974. In more recent decades, more pluralistic approaches to cultural policy and bildning appear to have started to replace this path dependency in cultural policy, but the focus on established cultural institutions still remains. The reasoning in this article is based on the concept of path dependency, in the sense that historical decisions are considered to limit possible decisions later in history, thus steering history on a path, which may or may not be in line with the intentions of the original decision-makers.

In this article we will focus on which cultural values that people´s interest in practical-aesthetic learning activities have in the common busy and splinted society. Dance and crafts is neither necessary nor understood as useful knowledge in our time. Transmission and safeguarding of these kind of knowledge and skills often arise as a result of chosen and interest based learning and through participation in organizations and different forms of study activity (formal, un-formal and informal) in a landscape of volunteerism. Practical-aesthetic learning activities are categorized as leisure and hobby due to their existence within the organizations of voluntary sector and offered as part of the study organizations training courses. That does not always be true for the persons that are active and participating in this landscape.

It is people’s interest and choice of practical- aesthetic activity and its role in our time that is in focus in this article. Why do people choose to deepening in and continue learn dance and crafts? What is the cultural political significance of this interest? In contemporary time it seems like a paradox that people choose to deepen an interest that rests on values contradicting the dominant values in society. What does this tell about this phenomenon’s potential as a countercultural value?

The characteristics of the informants’ lifestyle are interpreted as a potential counterculture. This way of living are based on values of time, skill, usefulness and meaning different from those asked for in the new capitalism. Practical-aesthetic learning activities cultural values are complex and political overarching. Learning takes place in the intersection between several political sectors, such as education, cultural, social and environmental issues. In what sense this countercultural phenomenon will be measured societal impact is still an open question.

The Norwegian folk high schools are value-based institutions with a 150-year history. As such, these schools have a continual need to reinterpret and redefine the values on which they were founded. This article examines how the Norwegian folk high schools redefine the religious values that are part of their movement’s heritage. Initially, the context of the Norwegian folk high schools is presented with an overview of the history of the movement and the laws governing the schools, along with relevant research. The second part of the article refers to an empirical study involving the text analysis of value documents from two folk high schools. Reification is introduced as the central analytical concept and defined from Etienne Wenger’s use of the term in his presentation of the theory of communities of practice. In the analysis, the value documents are understood as a presentation of reifications in the schools’ negotiation of meaning. As the reified values are categorised, the text analysis concludes that the documents focus on relational reifications. As the schools reintegrate traditional religious values, these are characteristically bridged or translated by using relational reifications and connecting these to Grundtvig’s legacy.

The purpose of this article is to study how the social interactions exhibited at a woodworking course for seniors within institutionalized popular education in Finland («kansalaisopisto» in Finnish, «medborgarinstitut» in Swedish) contribute to the participants' conceptualization of their citizenship. Popular education is considered to contribute to a functioning democracy through its collective and participant-centered activities and content. The aim of the article is to shed some light on how this ideal is realized and contribute knowledge about how participation in institutionalized popular education can be understood as an expression of citizenship. The study was conducted as an ethnographic field study with the researcher as a participant in the course. The course was held three times a week for 15 weeks. The participants consisted of 12 men and a woman between the ages of 60 and 80. The researcher aspired to become a part of the group in order to clarify what goes on in the course through thick descriptions relying on neither going native nor mimicking them. The seniors organize their woodworking in the course as a work community. Within this community, it is possible to act as a citizen in relation to shared basic values. These values are an aspiration to live up to ideals of conscientiousness and diligence in order to remain ready to act as a productive citizen.

Globally speaking, parliamentarians tend to be more highly educated than their average constituent. In some countries, such as Great Britain and France, there is also a clear link between political power and some certain educational institutions, such as Cambridge and Oxford, which have become important roads to a successful political career. The Swedish political elite differs from this pattern. Even though Swedish parliamentarians generally have a higher education than the average Swede, having an academic education has not been a necessity for a successful political career. This is particularly evident in the Social Democratic Party, which is Sweden’s largest party. Non-academic educational pathways have been of great importance. Historically, popular education, particularly certain «folk high schools», have served as an alternative educational portal for politicians. Is this still the case? What forms of education and knowledge are currently important portals for entering the political elite in Sweden? This paper explores these questions, using interviews with Social Democratic MPs and data from Statistics Sweden on MPs' educational background. Bourdieu's concept of symbolic capital is used to analyze how different skills and educational experiences confer value within the Social Democratic Party. The results show that there are a number of different types of knowledge and experience that are considered of great value. The value of academic knowledge exhibits a great deal of ambivalence. In terms of exchange value (e.g. academic degrees), academic knowledge is conferred low value and is often downplayed narratively. At the same time, however, in terms of use value, academic knowledge is acknowledged to have considerable utility as academic education is seen to facilitate the reading of political documents that forms a large part of MPs' daily lives. The results also suggest that non-formal education still appears to be a highly valued educational pathway to political power in Sweden.

The article studies and problematizes how a reading campaign, «Danmark Læser» (Denmark Reads) initiated from the Danish Ministry of Culture problematize the part of the Danish adult population who never or rarely read fiction. The article analyses key documents from «Danmark Læser», as well as recent surveys on cultural participation. This analysis shows several assumptions linked to literature's potential to do good and to the assumption that dialogue about literature is an important element of democracy and societal cohesion. These assumptions shape the way non-reading and non-readers are problematized in the discourse. The article also show that the campaign's focus on non-readers fits into an international discourse about non-users, something that is also supported by the use of participation surveys. The article points out that new forms of media and mediatization of existing art forms seem less recognized as a source of contemplation, ‘Bildung’ and participation, even though digitization of art and culture create opportunities to seek, create, share and participate in creative communities, which seem to contain many of the same characteristics, which are emphasized in reading. The article highlights this as problematic because it may lead to the stigmatization of non-readers.