Total defence for whom? Investigating the boundary-making of Sweden’s preparedness efforts

Sweden is increasingly pursuing its goal of ‘total defence’. The overarching aim is “all-encompassing military preparedness” (Åse and Wendt 2022: 226; see also Ericson, Svenbro and Wester 2023) throughout all levels of society. Within the civil sphere, this is reflected in the re-issuing of the ‘if crisis or war comes’ pamphlet, adapted from its original Cold War issue to the context and potential crises of today. Likewise, Swedish politicians have repeatedly appealed to Swedish citizens to take preparedness seriously and the most recent slogan of the annual national preparedness week was “get going!” – calling all Swedish citizens to get involved and to be prepared. However, the extent to which these preparedness efforts are inclusive, i.e. directed at all of Swedish society, is unclear. Prior critical research on war and militaries has shown that processes of militarisation rely on and perpetuate the making of boundaries, both materially and imaginary (Sylvester 2010, 2013; Parashar 2015; Ridden 2024). I investigate this boundary-making within the context of preparedness. Who is represented in Swedish preparedness efforts? How are questions of gender, race and class dealt with or incorporated in these efforts? I conduct a critical discourse analysis of all material concerning preparedness within the Swedish context, these include pamphlets, reports, government documents and speeches, as well as museum exhibitions about (historical) preparedness – mapping how war preparedness is packaged to the Swedish public.