Demokratins vardagsrum : Folkbildning och kultur genom samarbete mellan studieförbund och folkbibliotek

Sammanfattning

Warnings that the Swedish culture and popular education (folkbildning) infrastructure is under threat due to cutbacks in public funding have recently been highlighted in a joint report published by national interest organizations representing the library and popular education sector. This thesis seeks to explore the role and perceived value of the collaboration between study associations and public libraries through an infrastructural lens and a neo-institutional perspective on their functions. Using thematic analysis, it investigates how collaboration operates as a component of this infrastructure, drawing on sixteen interviews with professionals working in public libraries or study associations who have experience collaborating with the respective other party. Through the analysis five themes are identified. The first one highlights that collaborations play an important role, ensuring that there is space for culture and popular education in a local context. The second shows that the role of these collaborations often is to connect respective networks of the study associations and public libraries and to develop and implement standards for activities as an infrastructural dimension. The third theme pinpoints the compensatory role of collaborative efforts. By borrowing the concept “bootstrapping” from the world of start-ups, an inquiry is made into the role of the collaborations to make more out of less. The two last themes explore the role of social reading as reason for collaboration and the prerequisites to put Sen and Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach into practice. The latter, is argumentet, plays an important role in relation to the ideals of the public library as a social infrastructure and public education as a democratic process. In the concluding discussion three roles of the collaborations are identified: the compensatory, efficient and meaning making roles. The values identified are concluded to be instrumental in many ways, but the intrinsic value of culture and popular education seems to be guiding the collaborative efforts to a greater extent.