This study explores the ways in which literature reading is motivated as something valuable in the public discourse. We specifically focus on the research-society-school interactions that enable specific dominant interpretations of reading, readers and literature, while shadowing others. Historically, reading can be understood as an activity that holds society together as well as carrying important cultural knowledge, and reading has often been motivated by humanistic ideas and ideals of understanding various dimensions of being human. Rationales for literature reading are hence often attached to issues such as the development of common cultural and historical references (see for example; Graff, 2010; Smidt, 2016; Sundström Sjödin, 2019) and the acquisition of democratic skills (Langer, 2011; Nussbaum, 2003). In our study we investigate how societal institutions, public and media discourse, local practitioners and researchers reason and make arguments about the necessity of reading literature. In this we acknowledge a possible epistemic shift in the reasons and arguments put forward - from reading motivated by humanistic ideals into emphasizing the importance of reading with the use of ‘numbers’ aggregated through various measurements and quantifications. One example of such ‘numbers’ that circulate about reading are the amounts of words that seventeen-year-olds who read a lot are said to have (50 000 words), compared to those seventeen-year-olds who do not read a lot (15 000 words). These kinds of statements are rarely questioned and they disseminate into the societal discourse of reading, but where is this kind of truth-making and knowledge created, what kind of empirical data is used for such statements and based on what legitimacy do they act? In the study we have analysed material from sites in what we call “the Swedish reading-industrial complex” (Sundström Sjödin & Persson, forthcoming). We focus on actors that specifically and publicly define themselves as promoters of reading, both from sites with traditionally governing functions and from commercial and cultural actors. Although we draw on Swedish cases, and as such they are as most situated and sensible within its own context, it resonates well with a global tendency of quantification and measurement in education. Drawing on Science- and Technology Studies, we present actors that take part in the legitimation and valuation of reading, and we show in what ways and with help of what actors reading becomes naturalized as a societal problem that school is expected to solve.

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