Lyckans hjul eller lastens akademi? : ekonomiska ideal och hotbilder i debatten om lotterispel i Sverige 1809–1840

Sammanfattning: Wheel of Fortune or Academy of Vice? : Economic Ideals and Threats in the Swedish Lottery Debate, 1809–1840. This master’s thesis examines how ideas pertaining to economic and moral behaviour, ideals and threats were expressed, shaped and understood in the public debate about the state lottery – kungliga nummerlotteriet – in Sweden during early nineteenth century. At the time, state lotteries were debated and prohibited in several Western countries, including Sweden, but while scholars have devoted a fair share of attention to this subject internationally, the Swedish case has virtually been ignored by historians. Thus, this study aims to fill this gap of knowledge and provide a better understanding of economic and moral ideas during the period. Moreover, by viewing lottery playing as consumption, the purpose is to explore the discursive tensions of the debate in order to demonstrate how lottery playing was connected to larger economic and cultural themes, e.g. personal responsibility, desire, rationality, thriftiness, hope and disappoint-ment. Specifically, the conflicts between the theoretical concepts of hedonism–absistence and desire–rationality are at the core of the analysis. Using mainly parliamentary records and newspapers as source material, a discourse analysis is applied to identify the central themes and rhetorics of the debate. Four aspects are analyzed: the lottery players, the reasons for playing, the consequences of playing, and, finally, how the playing should be handled. Three predominant discourses of lottery playing are identified, com-piled and analyzed: the affirmative discourse, the threatening discourse, and the pragmatic di-scourse. The affirmative discourse emphasized the pleasure and amusement of playing the lottery, providing mainly poor people with hope and an opportunity for a better future. Furthermore, it asserted that the players behaved moderately and participated out of their free will. The threatening discourse, on the other hand, depicted lottery playing as a harmful vice, morally, socially and economically, both for the individual and for the society. The lottery was an immoral institution which exploited and capitalized on poor and ignorant people; hence, it should be abolished. Navigating between these two discourses, a third pragmatic disourse gave priority to the national economy. According to the pragmatic discourse, the lottery provided the state with much needed revenue, and while lottery playing could cause harm and unwanted behaviour, securing the finances of the state was more important than erasing all immorality.