The rhetoric of political visions. A case study on ‘Sweden – The New Culinary Nation

Abstract

The article focuses on the rhetoric of visions in contemporary Swedish politics. Is there a specific visionary genre in present-day politics, and how is it in that case communicated? As example, I discuss the current government’s vision of Sweden as The new culinary nation in Europe (2008-). The discourse of political vision is described as a constitutive rhetoric, a symbolic discourse where ideas about present Sweden and Swedish food culture, as well as future fantasies, are constructed and projected onto the food sector, its stakeholders and onto people in general in Sweden. These visions in politics are dramatized discourses attempting to get people to cooperate and reproduce the dreams and ideas of the political program. They are influenced by the corporate world with its market-based approach to public organization, its language and economistic outlook. The article discusses the strategic communication of the vision, and argues that the political program blurs the boundaries between the political domain and the civic sphere, between making politics and marketing, between the role of the politician on the one hand, and the role of the promoter, entertainers and the citizen on the other.