Volevo condividere con voi un passaggio del saggio "Remaking the National - The Swedish Experience 1950-2000; Anthropology at Home", The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 10, p. 66-68, di Orvar Löfgren. Il capitoletto in particolare si intitola "The Ethnification of Pride" e tratta del fatto che fino agli anni novanta gli svedesi non erano proprio orgogliosi di essere tali, più che altro ne parlavano in maniera ironica e satirica. Discute quindi riguardo l'individuazione di persone che abbiano il diritto di sentirsi svedesi, essendo svedesi o meno. A mio parere offre molti spunti di riflessione.
"[...]the description [of what is 'being Swedish] made by a high-school student in 1988:
'I take part in all Swedish traditions, which I know is backwards: herrings and potatoes, black pudding, Dalecarlian wooden horses. Summer days on the coax, late nights in the islands catching crayfish. Midsummer with dancing round the maypole. Crayfish and fermented-herring parties. Christmas dinners with ham and Swedish meatballs. Donald Duck on television at three o'clock. boat trips to the island of Gålö, jellyfish floating in the salt water, the screams of seagulls. All the Astrid Lindgren stories. (I was crazy about Pippi Longstocking when I was seven.)'
[...]
Returning to the list of Swedish traits given by the high-school student earlier, she concludes her definition of 'being Swedish" with these words:
'I speak fluent Swedish. I felt Swedish, too - altogether Swedish. Until the day when I started thinking, for the first time, about the reason why people around me don't look at me the way I've always done myself.'
The girl Sara came to Sweden from Ethiopia as an adopted child, aged five months. Who, then, is permitted to be proud of being Swedish?
Indice 
