Sweden’s Pandemic Experiment (The Politics of Pandemics)

This book considers Sweden’s pandemic management which differed so significantly from much of the rest of the world: it provoked intense and wide-reaching interest, curiosity and criticism. Trans-disciplinary Swedish authors from the humanities, life sciences, social sciences, and cultural studies use a variety of tools to mine deeper into some of the central elements and dimensions in their country’s pandemic management such as understandings of freedom, the execution of power, denialism, exceptionalism, patriotism, the role of expertise and trust in the national state to give a deeper understanding of Sweden’s decisions, failures, successes, and the lessons to be learned.

Aimed at readers with interest in global health and politics it will also be of interest in disciplines such as virology, epidemiology, history, cultural studies, ethics, media studies, medicine and economics.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Sigurd Bergmann is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim; Visiting Researcher at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University; and Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center at Munich University. His research covers religion and the environment, and religion, arts and architecture, and among his multiple books and articles are Weather, Religion and Climate Change (2020), Religion, Space and the Environment (2014), In the Beginning Is the Icon (2009), and God in Context (2003).

Martin Lindström is Professor of Social Medicine at the Medical Faculty, Lund University, Sweden. He holds a PhD in Social Medicine (2000) and a second PhD in Economic History (Historical Demography) (2015). Lindström is a Fellow of the Center for Economic Demography (CED) and EpiHealth, both at Lund University. His research covers social capital and health, socioeconomic differences in health, life course epidemiology and historical demography (including epidemics in the 18th and 19th centuries). Lindström has authored many international research articles and chapter contributions in edited books.