Welcome to a book discussion about the book “Bankminded. Banks as Intimate Agents of Everyday Life in Welfare State Sweden” (PalgraveMacmillan, 2025). The author Orsi Husz talks with historian and writer David Larsson Heidenblad and journalist Jonas Malmborg.
The presence of banks in our everyday lives – including BankID, Swish, card payments, credits, and ISK – today feels like an almost obvious infrastructure. But when and how has this feeling of obviousness been created? The history goes further back than digitization and the deregulations and market shift of the 1980s and 90s. It goes back to the 1950s when Swedish commercial banks sought to broaden their customer base and encourage ordinary men and women to start using the banks’ services. The bankers expressed it as wanting to make Swedes more “bankminded” – but what did they mean by that?
In the book Bankminded, ideas and economic historian Orsi Husz describes how banks during the first decades after the war entered various arenas of everyday life, including the workplace, family life, consumption, and the world of popular movements. They even came to play a dominant role in matters of identity checks. The book explores the “bankification of everyday life” and the cultural clashes that this transformation exposed in terms of class, gender, morality, ideology, and identity.
The book is published by PalgraveMacmillan and is also freely available as an e-book.
PARTICIPANTS IN THE DISCUSSION
- Orsi Husz, professor of intellectual history at Uppsala University.
- David Larsson Heidenblad, author and associate professor of history at Lund University.
- Jonas Malmborg, economic journalist and author. He currently works as a host and reporter at EFN Ekonomikanalen. His latest book The Great Credit Party: The Story of Klarna was published in 2024 by Albert Bonniers Publishing.
- Anders Houltz (moderator), associate professor of technology and science history and research director at the Centre for Business History.
PRACTICAL INFO
- When: Tuesday, March 3, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
- Where: Centre for Business History, Grindstuvägen 48–50, Bromma. (How to find us.)
- After the discussion, there will be mingling with refreshments. Interested participants are also invited to an archive viewing where we take a look at source material on which the book is based.
Register by February 27. Feel free to share the link with anyone you think might be interested.
