[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] My Visit to IKEA
Oct. 21st, 2004 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI get up now at 5 o'clock in the morning to go to work; my regular 9-to-5 shifts have been pushed down two hours. As I stumbled about my room Tuesday morning, trying to avoid tripping over my boxed monitor in the early morning darkness, I decided that I badly needed to go to IKEA.
You see, I need more furniture, particularly a computer desk. For three and a half months, my desktop computer has lay, disassembled, in several boxes which manage to dominate the two-thirds of my room not included within my sleeping area. I want my desktop back, I want the gigabytes of mp3s and copied music back, I want at least the theoretical possibility of playing Alpha Centauri. I'd even be able to enjoy the Internet from the comfort of home, if only because a) Internet cafés are expensive and b) their sticky keyboards keep producing embarrassing spelling mistakes in my postings. Actually having floor space would also be a pleasant innovation.
Almost a month ago, I'd asked for help in finding the location of the nearest IKEA store. Given my lack of vehicles, the consensus was that the North York IKEA, located off of the Shepard Avenue subway line east of Bessarion station, would be by far the most convenient places to go. So, when I got off of work at 3 o'clock Tuesday, I ended up heading north, and then east.
For whatever odd reason, IKEA never saw fit to exploit the dynamic and growing market of Prince Edward Island by setting up a shop. I'd never been to an IKEA before, though I'd of course heard of the chain before and knew some basic facts about it: that it was founded in Sweden, and is now a major multinational corporation with stores worldwide; that it bears much of the responsibility for the popularity of Scandinavian-designed goods; that it has a reputation for being inexpensive and for having helpful staff; that, at least on Canadian television, it has some funny commercials; and, via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pompe, that IKEA represents one of Sweden's most potent tools in its quiet plan for world conquest. I had, in short, only a few expectations.
It wasn't difficult to spot the North York IKEA store, even from Sheppard Avenue, since its exterior is entirely blue and gold, colours of the Swedish flag. Walking closer through the immaculately landscaped grounds, I could see flying in front of the entrance, in a neat line from north to south, the flags of Sweden, Canada, and finally Ontario.
Well, at least IKEA's open about its goals.
The thing that struck me most about IKEA, even when I was in the store entrance area and hadn't yet gone to the second-floor showroom to look at desks, was how the very store environment was helpful. By the stairs, for instance, in an attractive sans-serif font invited shoppers to pick up a store pamphlet containing a detailed map, instructions on shipping, and a space for a shopping list, a tape measure, and a golf pencil, the better to keep track of our intended and potential purchases.
On actually entering the store proper, I was interested to see that the layout of the store was fairly conventional, with furniture sets arranged in apparent rooms and with individual pieces of furniture (like, say, computer desks) in larger showroom areas. The furniture was definitely, well, Scandinavian: attractive, with clean lines and bright uncomplicated colours.
The biggest difference between IKEA and other furniture stores was the signage. Inscribed on the walls, in the same attractive sans-serif font and written in a friendly if concerned tone, were what I can only identify as recommendations. In the children's area, for instance, prospective buyers could read brief synopses of the behaviour of toddlers and the implications of this behaviour (grabbing shiny things, say) on children's toys and furniture. In the cafeteria area, you could read a friendly statement recommending customers to put their dishes away themselves, since doing so would benefit them in the long run by ensuring short service times and lower costs.
The first instance of these recommendations struck me as odd, but amusing. As I kept walking past them, though, they began to have an interesting effect on me. I began to feel unusually safe, comfortable and protected, secure. The recommendations didn't work alone, of course; the whole store environment seemed to produce an unusually soothing effect, with its white and pine backgrounds and the attractive bold colours in the foreground. By the time that I made it to the cafeteria, I had begun to feel almost as if I wanted to read the collected works of Gunnar Myrdal, found a local branch of the Social Democratic Party, and listen to some ABBA or the Cardigans. It was a bit unnerving.
To the left as I entered the cafeteria was a photographic mural of Småland province--IKEA's home turf--covering the entire wall; the cafeteria counter and cashiers were to my right. The cafeteria only sold Swedish food and drink: daim cake, Swedish apple cake, open-faced shrimp sandwiches, gravad lax, and of course, Swedish meatballs. I decided to indulge the moment, and ordered the Swedish meatballs, with daim cake, coffee and kristall brand lingonberry pop. The pop, incidentally, was a light red-orange colour with an interestingly mild but sweet taste.
In the end, I decided to wait until Friday to order the desk from IKEA. I'm leaning towards a tall and narrow model, something that can fit in my room with a bit of rearrangement. Both of the models I'm thinking of run at a bit below 200 dollars; perhaps fortunately, the Royal Bank has upped my credit card limit.
I was really surprised, and to be honest a bit frightened, by how effectively IKEA exerted a calming and comforting effect on me. I don't think I'm susceptible to this kind of effect; I certainly didn't enter IKEA expecting it,pompe's warning aside.
I felt relaxed and comfortable; I also felt partly assimilated into a sort of Swedish cultural experience. I note, here, that since I've never been to Sweden, I have no way of judging how closely the North York IKEA replicates actual conditions in Sweden, and I've no interest in embarrassing myself by doing so. For my purposes, though, it doesn't actually matter that much what Sweden is like, since what's important for IKEA is the image of Sweden.
It's common knowledge that for most of the half-century after the Second World War, Sweden was the model of the ideal welfare state, of the perfect and most complete implementation of social-democratic ideals in the world, with a population enjoying guaranteed minimal living standards in the context of a highly developed export-oriented economy. Coupled with its stated Cold War policy of neutrality and peace (somewhat compromised by the abandoned Swedish nuclear weapons program and the quiet cooperation with NATO) The Swedish ideal was looked to worldwide. Michel Vastel, for instance, in his biography of the late Québec premier Robert Bourassa, pointed to Sweden as a successful example of an advanced social-democratic society not much larger than Québec as proof that Québécois independence wouldn't doom the new nation-state to poverty.
The concept of a fully autonomous Swedish model failed in reality, of course. Tor Wennerberg's article "Undermining the Welfare State in Sweden", available online and originally published in the June 1995 issue of Z Magazine, provides a left-wing view of how the Swedish model's economic underpinnings collapsed in the early 1990s thanks to Sweden's integration into world markets. Aspompe wrote last month, early 21st century Sweden--no longer particularly rich, no longer particularly neutral, no longer especially homogeneous--doesn't represent an exportable model.
One thing about Swedish culture that many critical observers of Sweden have repeatedly claimed to identify is a sort of pervasive moral pressure. This has been manifested in different ways. For instance, in responding to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Sweden (along with the United States and the German länd of Bavaria) did the most to implement the traditional methods of epidemic control, including quarantine and contact tracing, unlike the other neighbouring Nordic states. Some (apparently, particularly Danes and American right-wingers) have even identified this as a Swedish tendency towards totalitarianism.
Again, I don't pretend to claim the ability to comment on Swedish culture given my complete lack of first-hand experience. It doesn't strike me as unexpected, though, that there might well have been--and depending on your hopes for the Swedish model, might continue to be--tendencies towards group conformity in Swedish culture. Societies which have aspirations to serve as models for the way all people and all societies should live (the United States and France fairly benignly, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran fairly malignly) always produce this sort of pressure on their component individuals, if only to try to prove that the model does in fact work. Perhaps it's ironic that this trait is most visibly present in a multinational chain store, but it isn't much of an irony: the welfare state does constitute a very materialist set of institutions, and isn't anti-consumerist.
You see, I need more furniture, particularly a computer desk. For three and a half months, my desktop computer has lay, disassembled, in several boxes which manage to dominate the two-thirds of my room not included within my sleeping area. I want my desktop back, I want the gigabytes of mp3s and copied music back, I want at least the theoretical possibility of playing Alpha Centauri. I'd even be able to enjoy the Internet from the comfort of home, if only because a) Internet cafés are expensive and b) their sticky keyboards keep producing embarrassing spelling mistakes in my postings. Actually having floor space would also be a pleasant innovation.
Almost a month ago, I'd asked for help in finding the location of the nearest IKEA store. Given my lack of vehicles, the consensus was that the North York IKEA, located off of the Shepard Avenue subway line east of Bessarion station, would be by far the most convenient places to go. So, when I got off of work at 3 o'clock Tuesday, I ended up heading north, and then east.
For whatever odd reason, IKEA never saw fit to exploit the dynamic and growing market of Prince Edward Island by setting up a shop. I'd never been to an IKEA before, though I'd of course heard of the chain before and knew some basic facts about it: that it was founded in Sweden, and is now a major multinational corporation with stores worldwide; that it bears much of the responsibility for the popularity of Scandinavian-designed goods; that it has a reputation for being inexpensive and for having helpful staff; that, at least on Canadian television, it has some funny commercials; and, via
pompe, that IKEA represents one of Sweden's most potent tools in its quiet plan for world conquest. I had, in short, only a few expectations.It wasn't difficult to spot the North York IKEA store, even from Sheppard Avenue, since its exterior is entirely blue and gold, colours of the Swedish flag. Walking closer through the immaculately landscaped grounds, I could see flying in front of the entrance, in a neat line from north to south, the flags of Sweden, Canada, and finally Ontario.
Well, at least IKEA's open about its goals.
The thing that struck me most about IKEA, even when I was in the store entrance area and hadn't yet gone to the second-floor showroom to look at desks, was how the very store environment was helpful. By the stairs, for instance, in an attractive sans-serif font invited shoppers to pick up a store pamphlet containing a detailed map, instructions on shipping, and a space for a shopping list, a tape measure, and a golf pencil, the better to keep track of our intended and potential purchases.
On actually entering the store proper, I was interested to see that the layout of the store was fairly conventional, with furniture sets arranged in apparent rooms and with individual pieces of furniture (like, say, computer desks) in larger showroom areas. The furniture was definitely, well, Scandinavian: attractive, with clean lines and bright uncomplicated colours.
The biggest difference between IKEA and other furniture stores was the signage. Inscribed on the walls, in the same attractive sans-serif font and written in a friendly if concerned tone, were what I can only identify as recommendations. In the children's area, for instance, prospective buyers could read brief synopses of the behaviour of toddlers and the implications of this behaviour (grabbing shiny things, say) on children's toys and furniture. In the cafeteria area, you could read a friendly statement recommending customers to put their dishes away themselves, since doing so would benefit them in the long run by ensuring short service times and lower costs.
The first instance of these recommendations struck me as odd, but amusing. As I kept walking past them, though, they began to have an interesting effect on me. I began to feel unusually safe, comfortable and protected, secure. The recommendations didn't work alone, of course; the whole store environment seemed to produce an unusually soothing effect, with its white and pine backgrounds and the attractive bold colours in the foreground. By the time that I made it to the cafeteria, I had begun to feel almost as if I wanted to read the collected works of Gunnar Myrdal, found a local branch of the Social Democratic Party, and listen to some ABBA or the Cardigans. It was a bit unnerving.
To the left as I entered the cafeteria was a photographic mural of Småland province--IKEA's home turf--covering the entire wall; the cafeteria counter and cashiers were to my right. The cafeteria only sold Swedish food and drink: daim cake, Swedish apple cake, open-faced shrimp sandwiches, gravad lax, and of course, Swedish meatballs. I decided to indulge the moment, and ordered the Swedish meatballs, with daim cake, coffee and kristall brand lingonberry pop. The pop, incidentally, was a light red-orange colour with an interestingly mild but sweet taste.
In the end, I decided to wait until Friday to order the desk from IKEA. I'm leaning towards a tall and narrow model, something that can fit in my room with a bit of rearrangement. Both of the models I'm thinking of run at a bit below 200 dollars; perhaps fortunately, the Royal Bank has upped my credit card limit.
I was really surprised, and to be honest a bit frightened, by how effectively IKEA exerted a calming and comforting effect on me. I don't think I'm susceptible to this kind of effect; I certainly didn't enter IKEA expecting it,
pompe's warning aside. I felt relaxed and comfortable; I also felt partly assimilated into a sort of Swedish cultural experience. I note, here, that since I've never been to Sweden, I have no way of judging how closely the North York IKEA replicates actual conditions in Sweden, and I've no interest in embarrassing myself by doing so. For my purposes, though, it doesn't actually matter that much what Sweden is like, since what's important for IKEA is the image of Sweden.
It's common knowledge that for most of the half-century after the Second World War, Sweden was the model of the ideal welfare state, of the perfect and most complete implementation of social-democratic ideals in the world, with a population enjoying guaranteed minimal living standards in the context of a highly developed export-oriented economy. Coupled with its stated Cold War policy of neutrality and peace (somewhat compromised by the abandoned Swedish nuclear weapons program and the quiet cooperation with NATO) The Swedish ideal was looked to worldwide. Michel Vastel, for instance, in his biography of the late Québec premier Robert Bourassa, pointed to Sweden as a successful example of an advanced social-democratic society not much larger than Québec as proof that Québécois independence wouldn't doom the new nation-state to poverty.
The concept of a fully autonomous Swedish model failed in reality, of course. Tor Wennerberg's article "Undermining the Welfare State in Sweden", available online and originally published in the June 1995 issue of Z Magazine, provides a left-wing view of how the Swedish model's economic underpinnings collapsed in the early 1990s thanks to Sweden's integration into world markets. As
pompe wrote last month, early 21st century Sweden--no longer particularly rich, no longer particularly neutral, no longer especially homogeneous--doesn't represent an exportable model.One thing about Swedish culture that many critical observers of Sweden have repeatedly claimed to identify is a sort of pervasive moral pressure. This has been manifested in different ways. For instance, in responding to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Sweden (along with the United States and the German länd of Bavaria) did the most to implement the traditional methods of epidemic control, including quarantine and contact tracing, unlike the other neighbouring Nordic states. Some (apparently, particularly Danes and American right-wingers) have even identified this as a Swedish tendency towards totalitarianism.
Again, I don't pretend to claim the ability to comment on Swedish culture given my complete lack of first-hand experience. It doesn't strike me as unexpected, though, that there might well have been--and depending on your hopes for the Swedish model, might continue to be--tendencies towards group conformity in Swedish culture. Societies which have aspirations to serve as models for the way all people and all societies should live (the United States and France fairly benignly, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran fairly malignly) always produce this sort of pressure on their component individuals, if only to try to prove that the model does in fact work. Perhaps it's ironic that this trait is most visibly present in a multinational chain store, but it isn't much of an irony: the welfare state does constitute a very materialist set of institutions, and isn't anti-consumerist.
