Introduction

In Selma Lagerlöf 's (1891/1997) Gösta Berling's Saga the powerful major's wife, Mrs Celsing, is cast out into the cold winter, both literally and socially, because of her bad behaviour. Out there, in the cold, there is no responsibility on the part of the public to help or support her. Instead, this formerly powerful lady has to rely on the kindness of others for something to eat and somewhere to sleep. Lagerlöf 's fictional world, as with pre-urban communities, is rooted in an environment where farmers and crofters lived in a feudal system, and the survival of such an individual was a matter of benevolence on the part of the church, villages or generous individuals. This literary parallel sometimes helps Swedish students to understand the historical dimensions of social constructions and that state interventions in relation to citizens are, to a large extent, variable across time and space. When the major's wife was excluded, care of the individual was a spontaneous moral reaction within families and between people. It was not a subject for debate, either within the education system or in pre-urban society.

The aim of this chapter is to explain how a care discourse was elaborated within the Swedish welfare state with universal rights for the care of citizens. The author's focus will be on the care of older people, a matter of social and political importance because of the ageing population and the complex difficulties within welfare of balancing services and expenditure. We should remember, however, that the care of older people is but one element in the welfare state, which, due to the macro-economic crisis at the beginning of the 1990s and throughout that decade, became the subject of major changes. These changes included an increase in decentralisation to the municipalities and an increase in user financing as well as higher fees and income-linking for services delivered to citizens. Another important change was an increase in the publicly financed services provided by private agencies (Lundberg and Palme, 2002). (See also Korpi and Palme, 2003, for a discussion about how new financial situations in the postindustrial welfare states influence, among others, old-age pension systems and an increase in pre-retirement pensions as a consequence of mass unemployment.)