ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to take the American/Swedish juncture as a point of departure for an investigation of some of the workings of the trans-national. It discusses the aesthetics of Swedish modernity constituted an extremely important point of orientation for daily life throughout the country, but the voice of this modernity did not go completely unchallenged. Using the American car as an example, the text proceeds by examining consumption and mobility as the idioms through which transnational cultural elements are implemented in the Swedish setting to express alternate gendered conceptions of identity. In the immediate post-World War II era, America symbolized for many within the Swedish middle and working classes an economic and productive force which could not only rebuild Europe but also serve as a model of industrial and democratic efficiency in Sweden. Part of the problem was that American cars were built and designed to accommodate the aesthetics of middle-class America’s vision of modernity.
