As I had mentioned previously, there are some striking differences between Swedish and American societies that seem really alien to me. The first one I encountered is the Swedish belief in absolute equality; no one is better than anyone else and no one should get preferential treatment. This is deeply ingrained in their society, for example they have paternity leave (which I am totally for, btw) and the question "How do you feel?" must be answered "I feel good." and not "I am good." The latter implies that you are prideful, that by being good you are better than others. Somewhat silly but the absolute equality idea is still a sweet one. The problem arises when you put this into the educational system. In Swedish high schools there are no (or at least extremely few) advanced classes for students. No GATE, no Honors, no AP. Now most of the people I know back home are veterans of those kind of classes, imagine having to be in the same classes with people who don't know how many sides a triangle has. I don't mean to sound arrogant (which is even worse in Sweden than it is in the US) but for most AP students being in all the same classes as everyone else is almost like being held back a grade. I understand everyone is created equal but it's what happens after creation that sets people apart. Some people are better at math than others, some at writing, languages, history you name it, this is an accepted fact of life in the US. If these people aren't challenged then their potential is squandered. What would the Swedes do? "Easy with those equations there Mr. Einstein, you're making the rest of us look bad." I guess that's also why their high schools aren't very cliquish, everyone is trained to think everyone is equal.
The other difference is in etiquette. When you are invited to a private dinner at someone's house you are expected to compensate the host. Among students it is customary to pay the host the amount of money spent on food and drink divided by the number of people. Among adults the guests commonly bring a gift, it is in fact very rude not to. Now, in the US asking your guests for money is really rude, after all being a good host is about generosity and hospitality. Guests can always bring gifts, but it's not mandatory to do so. These differences collided at Thanksgiving when, after dinner, my co-host wanted to know how much I spent on groceries so I could be adequately compensated. I stopped short of insisting that I didn't want his money, since I wasn't sure what that might imply in Swedish culture. He ended up giving me a relatively small 30kr, but my guests paying me for dinner, especially Thanksgiving, just seemed wrong. Apparently not paying me would have felt equally wrong to the Swedes, sort of like taking advantage of my hospitality. There's a potential for some real cultural misunderstandings there.
To contrast those two with a third culture's etiquette, in Morocco the host is incredibly generous to the guests; catering to their every need with lavish food, drink and entertainment. No gifts or money ever changes hands BUT the guests must later throw an equal or greater party sometime in the future. If they do not then the host, with his generosity, gains favor with Allah and sort of owns a part of his guests' souls in the afterlife.
7 comments:
nope. They're part of the EU but they still have the kroner. 7.5 kr to the dollar last I checked.
8.10 actually, and it's still going up.
How curious...I thought one of the requirements for joining the EU was switching to the euro. Why doesn't (won't?) Sweden switch? And if they don't have to, why does anyone else? What else is optional?
not really. Sweden joined EU 1994, and the first european countries to switch to the euro did it in 2002. in most countries it wasn't such a big deal (esp the old members of EU), but Sweden held a referendum in 2003 regarding the issue, and (unfortunately) the majority voted no to the euro. consequently, it's us, denmark and great britain outside of the EMU membership, but i think denmark and gb have a formal agreement on it. it's not really optional, sweden's stalling using formal loopholes.
So what are the disadvantages (perceived or real) to using the euro? I had thought one of the major benefits of joining the EU was increased economic power.
Well, the thing with a unified currency is that if it goes down it goes down everywhere. Their economies become linked even more, so for the Baltic States it's great cuz their economy can only benefit from the Euro. But the Nordic countries have very solid economies, Norway for example has such a strong economy that EU membership would actually be a detriment. I believe Sweden is is a similar situation and that's why they're stalling for time.
Depends on what you mean by strong economy. Ever since beginning of 1990s, when the Swedish currency became a floating exchange rate, the Swedish krona has been devaluating. This means more Swedish export, i guess. In my opinion, there are no real disadvantages in switching to the euro (that cannot be outweighted by the advantages), but there's always been a stable majority against joining the EMU here in Sweden. The biggest perceived threat is that of an inflexible interest rate that cannot be adapted to each individual country, so that one country's economy may become overheated, and another's restrained. Then again, one may argue that with the globalization, it's no longer possible to adjust one country's economy independent of the rest of the world. In the end, the main reason the majority voted against joining EMU was probably because a majority of Swedes are suspicious of more centralization, don't identify themselves as europeans and don't feel EU has done anything for the country (the last part is probably true, we pitch in a lot more than we get back, unlike for example France or Poland who get huge agricultural benefits from EU). Generally, people in the cities voted yes and the rest of Sweden no.
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