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This article examines a series of financial study courses for women in 1950s Sweden, jointly organised by commercial banks and an important non-partisan women's organisation, the Fredrika Bremer Association. The aim is to highlight and explain historical connections between feminism and financialisation. I argue that the feminist aspiration to emancipate women from the curtailments of 'petty' domestic finance aligned with the banks' desire to domesticate financial markets. The performances of 'female finance' in these campaigns – striking a balance between PR and empowerment – contributed to the making of a new historical figure, not that of the female investor but rather the consumer of finance. The article not only demonstrates the role of gender in the financialisation of everyday life and in the domestication of finance, but also uncovers a longer pre-history behind these processes that are conventionally associated with neoliberalisation in later decades.

Today, nearly the entire adult population in Sweden uses a digital BankID for more purposes than only financial ones. Issuing identity documents is commonly perceived as a task for state authorities, but in Swedish society banks have played a dominant role as identificators. The first contribution of this article is that it explains this unique emergence ofbank identityand traces the historical roots of afinancial identification societyto the mid-1960s. Banks started issuing standardized identity cards as a complement to the new system of paying salaries and wages by direct deposit to checking accounts, and these cards eventually became quasi-official identity documents. The Swedish story thus contrasts the scholarship on identification and state control. By treating identity as both a socio-cultural category and a materialization of a technology of control, I argue that the formalization of official identity documents for everyday use was intertwined with the creation of new financial identities. The introduction and general distribution of ID cards were parts of a process whereby wage earners became financial consumers, and the banks transformed themselves into retail companies. My second contribution therefore relates to the scholarly narrative on the financialization of everyday life since the 1980s. While the mass move to financial identification in Sweden, highlighted in this article, certainly fits the content of this narrative, it questions its chronology.

Cet article explore les aspects culturels, historiques et genrés de la financiarisation de la vie quotidienne. Il s'appuie sur le cas d'une importante campagne bancaire en Suède dans les années 1960 ciblant les ménagères, en analysant un cycle de conférences appelé « Quotidien doré » (1961-1969) comme représentation de la finance populaire. Deux questions traversent l'article. D'une part, comment les identités financières sont-elles construites et mises en œuvre pour un public large ? D'autre part, quel rôle la banque joue-t-elle vis-à-vis de ses clientes potentielles ? Si l'on commence à connaître le développement de la banque de détail, il n'existe encore aucune étude approfondie du défi auquel ont été confrontées ces banques, ni des stratégies adoptées, pour ancrer la finance dans la vie quotidienne. L'exemple des conférences « Quotidien doré » invite à conclure à une domestication des banques dans les années 1960, intimement liée à la « bancarisation des ménages » analysée par l'histoire et la sociologie du secteur bancaire.

The paper explores cultural historical and gender aspects of the financialisation of everyday life through a case study of an extensive Swedish bank campaign in the 1960s targeting women. I analyse the so called Golden Everyday conferences (1961-1969) as representations of popular finance and I focus on two questions: firstly how the financial identities for a broad population were constructed and enacted; and secondly, which role the bank adopted in relation to its (presumptive) clients. The development of retail banking has been roughly outlined in historical studies of banking, but the challenge faced by the banks, and their strategies for entangling finances in everyday practices has not been looked upon in detail. Through the case of the Golden Everyday conferences I argue that in he 1960s a domestication of banks occurred intertwined with the "bancarisation of households" described in the history and sociology of banking. I highlight how emotionality, familiarity and references to consumer skills were used to domesticate a new kind of popular banking. The conferences attempted to reconcile the "hostile worlds" of economy and intimacy. They furthermore framed everyday finance by a 'housewifely', consumerist and familiar discourse, which reinforced the bank's new role in managing personal finance on an everyday basis. This new line was made practically possible by the introduction of a system of direct deposits and cheque accounts for salaries and wages, but the new practices were to be extended also to those who did not lift own salaries and even more importantly needed to be rooted in a domestic context – for both women and men. The financial identity that came into being in the Golden Everyday conferences differed from the identities emphasised by scholars of financialisation of everyday life or those writing about popular finance. The new clients of the Swedish bank, might very well have been engaged in investing, saving or borrowing, but they were addressed here as consumers of financial products. They were supposed to choose and buy in the "department store of finances". The bank certainly represented itself as a "department store" of finances. At the same time it also institutionalised the expertise about family economics/personal finances, an expert knowledge that previously belonged to many different governmental and non-profit organisations. Thereby the topics of sharing within the family were discussed in the same context as shareholding. ; Alternativ titel: Quotidien doré : consommation des ménagères et domestication des banques dans la Suède des années 1960

The Morality of Quality. Assimilating Material Mass Culture in Twentieth-Century Sweden This article discusses perceptions of material mass culture in twentieth-century Sweden through the lens of the concept of «quality». It aims to shed light on how the concept of quality emerged in connection with mass culture and mass consumerism in Swedish public debates and writings, and how it was used, defined and redefined between the seemingly opposite poles of feelings / subjectivity and reason / objectivity. By analysing the ways in which quality was positioned historically within the complex web of relations woven between the individual, society and the commodity, I will show how and why it should be seen as a key term in the attempts at shaping mass consumerism within the framework of the emerging Swedish welfare state. During this process, the concepts of quality and quantity were repeatedly reconciled in different ways. This is exemplified by two mass-media debates on material mass culture in the 1930s and in the 1960s.

Dans la seconde moitié des années 1950, les banques commerciales suédoises ont offert aux employeurs de gérer leur service de paie et ouvert des comptes chèques aux employés et aux ouvriers. En une décennie, les salariés sont devenus des consommateurs de services financiers, et les établissements bancaires – jusque-là augustes institutions au service exclusif des entreprises et des riches particuliers –, des débitants de produits grand public. Les problèmes culturels soulevés par la bancarisation précoce de la société suédoise sont étudiés ici à travers le cas de ces « comptes chèques salariaux ». La fabrication et le contrôle de nouveaux sujets financiers ont été rendus possibles, au début, par des techniques et des discours enracinés dans des valeurs traditionnelles et des identités de classe, autrement dit collectives : l'identité de salarié a joué un rôle essentiel dans la financiarisation de la vie quotidienne. Les nouveaux sujets financiers ont été créés dans un mouvement de va-et-vient entre ces vieilles identités et les modèles imaginés pour les nouvelles. Le cas suédois révèle par ailleurs qu'il faut reculer de plusieurs années, par rapport aux évaluations habituelles, la datation de la financiarisation de la vie quotidienne en Europe.

This article analyzes the so-called turn to the market in Sweden, with an emphasis on aspects that are typically absent from large-scale narratives. How did the changes known as neoliberalization and financialization enter everyday life and mundane financial practices? And which analytical tools can historians use to meaningfully connect the experience of changes on the micro level to those on the macro level? Zooming in on the the year 1979 and focusing on two empirical cases—the popularization of stock saving and the domestication of consumer credit—allows us to elaborate and apply a set of analytical entry points about (1) mundane micro-infrastructures, (2) financial knowledge as learning and unlearning, and (3) moral boundary work. This framework offers a way of exploring when and in what ways new financial practices were experienced and eventually embraced by those who had previously been skeptical or even hostile. It also reveals the role played by actors and institutions not typically seen as agents of marketization.