En koloniverksamhets gränsarbete

Abstract

Swedish summer camps were created in a time when great differences existed between the rural and urban parts of Sweden. The summer camps were organised to save children from the un-healthy cities and to restore traditional values that had been lost through the urbanisation and the move from the traditional life close to nature on the country-side.

Today, more than 100 years later, this dichotomy between the traditional life, a life close to nature and the unnatural life in the city, is still widely used by summer camps.

We are arguing that this can be analysed through the use of the borderwork theory. This article focuses on how a process of borderwork is undertaken in one Swedish summer camp to create difference between the summer camp and the surrounding world.

Different aspects of the summer camp praxis and rhetoric are examined in this article. The investigation unveils that there is an immanent and reoccuring aspect of border work in the organisation of the summer camp as well as in the camp leaders' talk about the summer camp. The life at the summer camp is put forward as traditional, closer to nature and containing a closer community feeling. A reoccuring distinction between "us" and "them", between the summer camp world and the outside world is produced through this borderwork.