This article explores the establishment of the banana trade in Sweden, from the founding of the first import company in 1906 to the outbreak of World War II. The Swedish banana trade was consolidated in the space of a few short years despite the fact that optimal conditions for success were not obviously present from the beginning. The Swedish banana market, characterized by the dominance of one import company for the most part of the period, matured rapidly. This outcome was driven by a combination of technological advances, the creation of a corporate structure, effective advertising as well as a popular and scientifically backed view of bananas as a source of wellness for the Swedish people. The case of the establishment of the banana trade in Sweden is an example of how a global product was adapted and embraced by a remote market, while it also reveals interesting features of Swedish business and food cultures.
The Community Action Programme for Education and Training for Technology (COMETT) played a key role in paving the way for increased cooperation between the member states of the European Community (EC) in the field of education and in the promotion of intra-Europe mobility. In this article, COMETT is considered as a non-traditional education and training programme for solving economic challenges in the context of technological change that was focused on the training of a highly skilled workforce. The process of setting the agenda for COMETT is studied through an analysis of official EC policy documents and archival material from the EU’s historical archives in Florence. Our analysis suggests that the challenge posed by new information technologies acted as a catalyst for a new approach to education governance that was based on closer cooperation between European universities and industry. Promoting intra-Europe mobility among highly skilled workers and students was a key part of the programme, which defined an economic and social strategy for Europe in response to technological change. Educational and social goals were secondary in the design and implementation of the COMETT programme, which, first and foremost, was motivated by the EC agenda to boost the competitiveness of European industry.
The European Community (EC), afraid of lagging behind the United States and Japan in the technology race, developed a series of strategies in the 1980s and 1990s to enhance their position in the field of information and telecommunication technologies (ICT). One key strategy was the training and retraining of citizens to deal with the shortage of a highly skilled labor force. At the same time, women’s issues were being raised as part of the EC’s political agenda, with a particular emphasis on the effects of technological change on the employment of women. We claim that despite the advantageous conditions for promoting women’s advanced education in ICT, the EC’s strategy was to promote only basic computer literacy, following a discourse that victimized women, due to their alleged lack of skills and flexibility. Although by the late 1980s, the view of women as constituting potential economic assets in the EC’s economy became more prominent, the concrete measures for women’s education and training did not substantially change and remained scantily funded and short-sighted throughout the whole period.
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