Crisis alert! – Perceptions of the book market crisis in the Swedish literature policy discourse 1975-1989

Abstract

The paper studies what demands stakeholders put on Swedish literature policy during a (perceived) book market crisis. This is done by a discourse analysis of the debates on the crisis made in newspapers and specialized press during 1975-1989. The results show that there are two opposing positions in the discourse: those who want more and those who want less government intervention on the book market. For the first position the state aid to fiction is seen as a guarantee for a qualitative and diverse book market. The latter position however sees the state aid as a threat because it undermines the free market. A moral view on the publishing occupation is visible in where publishers who don’t take “responsibility” are seen as a cause of the book market crisis. Morality is used to protect literature from market values, but to focus on moral delegitimizes the autonomy of the art.