“Outer space” as Cold War spirituality: Students’ drawings and texts on “life questions” in 1980s welfare-state Sweden

Since the post-WWII space race, images of “outer space” circulated globally. Produced in late 1980s welfare-state Sweden, “beings from other planets” and artifacts related to “outer space” pop up from an archived data material consisting of 2nd to 3rd grade students’ drawings and written text. The material was created in an education development project aiming at generating knowledge about “children’s life questions” and making them part of curriculum. Drawing on history of emotions methodologies, the article explores which role “outer space” occupies in the images and narratives and what this can tell us about the transformations of the religious and spiritual and the emotional economy of late Cold War welfare-state childhoods.