Tidens krav: Framveksten av det vitenskapelige husstellet i Norge, 1900 - 1940
MA Thesis, Department of History, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2001.
My Master Thesis was on the emerging discourse of scientific management of housekeeping and the home in Norway, 1900-1940. The main emphasis of my study is on the 1930s. In this debate the kitchen was compared to both a factory and a laboratory; It was a place where women could be scientific and use modern production methods. Through this they could participate in the modern and scientific transformation of Norway.
The new science of Home Economics took shape at the beginning of the twentieth century. From the 1920s on, the scientific kitchen also became a political topic in the Norwegian Parliament. During World War Two, the emphasis changed from utopian visions of a scientific and socialist society into a more moderate focus on nutritional science.
In this period the modern consumer also emerged. This consumer was construed as a very rational consumer, especially by institutions such as the National Institute for Household Research (which later became the National Institute for Consumer Research), as well as post-war Norwegian consumer policy.
My thesis argues for the strong connection between the modern scientific mindset and the modern consumer society, and demonstrates how this connection was used, and to a certain degree negotiated and created, by women’s associations and other entrepreneurs. These processes of negotiations and cultural translations were vital to the creation of the modern consumer society.
This project was completed in December 2001. An on-line full-text version of the thesis is available here.