Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle Class Life
by: Jonas Frykman, Orvar Lofgren, Alan Crozier (Translator), John Gillis (Foreword)

Softcover. New Brunswick NJ, Rutgers University Press, reprint, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 321 pages. Culture Builders deals primarily with the ways in which ideas about the good and proper life were anchored in the trivialities and routines of everyday life in Sweden, in the sharing of a meal, in holiday-making, and in the upbringing of children. The authors describe how the attitudes of the bourgeoisie toward time and time-keeping set them apart from the peasantry. Uses and perceptions of naturals increasingly divided the classes. For peasants, nature consisted of natural resources to be used. Fr the bourgeoisie, nature had only non-productive connotations. Another change was the growing importance of home over the community. Life became a romantic ideal, not an economic necessity. For the first time, parents became self-conscious about how to raise their children. Clean copy.