ABSTRACT
Important leitmotifs in Swedish society at the end of the twentieth century would reflect the sharpened environmental, social and political profile of late capitalism. The end of the Cold War and the escalation of conflicts and genocide in the Balkans and Rwanda, the rise of a new Europe, (anti)globalization, threw a new light on the once so pervasive Swedish model. This chapter teases out some of the complexities and contradictory stories of Swedish society and geography in the late twentieth century. The primary focus is on human geography, because it is where the most obvious connections to a society under the aegis of Chiasmus are found. The 1980s was a period of increasing tensions between workers' unions and employers. The confused era of postmodernity had to a large degree emanated into a post-Gothenburg world of increasingly tense globalization. Phoenix, Faust and Narcissus moments appeared simultaneously and in various (dis)guises during the closing decades of the twentieth century.
