Janina Priebe | Umeå University (original) (raw)

Papers by Janina Priebe

The Polar Journal, 2024

This study examines the history of oil development in Greenland with a focus on test wells – the ... more This study examines the history of oil development in Greenland with a focus on test wells – the physical sites where and when the future of Arctic oil as an energy source was established and eventually abandoned. The processes surrounding the establishment of the first offshore test wells in the 1970s and the first onshore test well in the 1990s illustrate different contexts of oil development, as well as the similarities between the different phases. Looking at these periods through the lens of infrastructural delay, an umbrella concept that unites anthropological analyses of unfinished, delayed or unrealised infrastructure, this study shows how common themes of potential, exploration and verdict emerge that accompanied the establishment of physical test wells. Based on a thematic analysis of historical scientific and policy reports as well as Greenlandic media accounts, this study brings together a top-down and a local perspective on the construction of test wells in the 1970s and 1990s. This study advances research on the history of Arctic oil development by identifying the different phases of its delay that accompanied the creation of its physical infrastructure, each of which generated different social processes of hope and despair, and which also lay the foundation for future perspectives on the use of Greenland’s subsurface beyond oil.

Water History, 2024

This article examines how and by whom the future of glacial energy was imagined in Greenland betw... more This article examines how and by whom the future of glacial energy was imagined in Greenland between the 1950s and 1970s, with a specific emphasis on the intersection of discourses of energy and political autonomy. The focus lies on the years from 1953, marking the end of Greenland’s colonial status and its integration into the realm of its former colonial authority, Denmark, until 1979, when the Greenland Home Rule Agreement was enacted. The futures of hydropower are explored through the lens of energy imaginaries, a notion that underscores the interconnectedness between different forms of energy and the organization of social structures. These imaginaries revolving around hydropower circulated in the public-political space in Greenland decades prior to when the first operational hydropower plant came online in 1993. Through a historical empirical analysis, this article identifies the energy imaginaries linked to envisioned hydropower and delineates key phases of their emergence. It also discusses these envisioned futures of hydropower in the historical context of Arctic oil exploration and Greenland’s strivings toward political autonomy. The energy imaginaries of hydropower, especially glacial hydropower generated adjacent to Greenland’s inland icesheet, built on a long-term timeline and autonomous society, in contrast to the oil development that was favoured by Danish authorities at the time. Ultimately, it was the considerations of the sources and scale of the necessary investments that deferred the implementation of hydropower until the late 1980s. However, the groundwork for viewing Greenland’s water resources as a cornerstone for its future independence had been laid.

We have entered a new phase in how we consider and seek to govern the fate of the planet in these... more We have entered a new phase in how we consider and seek to
govern the fate of the planet in these increasingly unpredictable
times. Everywhere in the world, relationships within societies
and environments, and between humans and nature, are rapidly
changing. The notion of “sustainability transformation” generally
captures both the challenges of these disrupted relations and profound
solutions to restore them at a global scale, but the Arctic
in particular is seen either as a hotspot for hope and possibilities,
or as a social and ecological flashpoint under increasing pressure
of resource use. What, then, is Arctic sustainability transformation?
And what can or does it need to be?

This booklet, with contributions from researchers working in the Arctic and with Arctic issues, is a result of our collaboration within the Arctic
Five Chair initiative and has come to form a central part of our
work of reflecting on Arctic sustainability transformations. The
Arctic Five is a collaboration among five Nordic universities,
namely Luleå University of Technology and Umeå University in
Sweden, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and the University
of Lapland and University of Oulu in Finland. Our work on
Arctic transformations is conducted within the Future Challenges
in the Nordics program and the research project Peripheral
Visions, jointly funded by the Society of Swedish Literature
in Finland, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, the Finnish Cultural
Foundation, the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland,
Stiftelsen Brita Maria Renlunds Minne, and the Kamprad Family
Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Research & Charity.

Sustainability Science

Integrated approaches to knowledge that recognize meaning, behavior, culture, and systems as doma... more Integrated approaches to knowledge that recognize meaning, behavior, culture, and systems as domains of knowledge are increasingly employed in holistic views on sustainability transformation but often remain conceptually driven. In this study, we analyze empirical data from a collaborative process with local forest stakeholders in Sweden through the lens of individual, collective, interior, and exterior knowledge dimensions. We show that the participants’ understanding of knowledge about forests and climate change presents a nuanced picture of how knowledge and acting are connected. Meaning-making, cultural frames, and techno-scientific knowledge conceptions converge, interact, and, at times, replace or diminish each other. The connection and interplay of these dimensions, we suggest, can be understood as a knowledge spectrum. These insights into integrated knowledge, based on an empirical case, must be addressed in the production of knowledge, both to grasp the climate and sustainability issues that face us and to support action in response to them.

Marine Mammal Science, 2005

Forests, 2022

The theoretical concept of “climate-smart forestry” aims to integrate climate change mitigation a... more The theoretical concept of “climate-smart forestry” aims to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation to maintain and enhance forests’ contributions to people and global agendas. We carried out two local transdisciplinary collaboration processes with the aim of developing local articulations of climate-smart forestry and to identify barriers, pathways and indicators to applying it in practice. During workshops in northern and southern Sweden, local stakeholders described how they would like forests to be managed, considering their past experiences, future visions and climate change. As a result, the stakeholders framed climate-smart forestry as active and diverse management towards multiple goals. They identified several conditions that could act both as barriers and pathways for its implementation in practice, such as value chains for forest products and services, local knowledge and experiences of different management alternatives, and the management of ungulates. Based o...

Science of The Total Environment

Environmental Science & Policy

Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest res... more Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest restoration. To gain a more comprehensive view of forest restoration, this paper compares the US forest restoration debate of the 1940s and 1990s, in the disciplines of ecology and forestry. The paper focuses on historical approaches to pasts and futures, and on “sociotechnical imaginaries” providing societal legitimacy to restoration ventures. Historical scientific papers constitute the paper’s empirical sources. The analysis shows that, among ecologists and foresters, forest restoration of the 1940s was oriented towards efficiency and challenges such as wood demands during World War II, whereas restoration of the 1990s was oriented towards conservation and environmental challenges. The approaches of the 1940s′ ecologists and foresters seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to societal progress, whereas the approaches of their 1990s′ counterparts seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to the task of mitigating society’s impacts. Based on the conclusions, it is argued that future research on forest restoration would benefit from comparing the idealized pasts of both yield- and conservation-oriented conceptions of forest restoration.

Nature and Culture, 2021

The institutionalization of sustainability agendas on the local and global levels has largely fai... more The institutionalization of sustainability agendas on the local and global levels has largely failed to deliver the promised change. In this essay, we develop the idea of sustainability metamorphosis as a way to break with the pathological paradigm of sustainable development that weakens society’s capacity to transform in the face of global crises. Sustainability metamorphosis, in our understanding, draws on the Bakthian perspective of carnivalization and dialogical truth. In this sense, sustainability metamorphosis is an outlook on change in society and a source of strategies for long-term societal change. Our understanding of metamorphosis is inspired by the historical and literary understandings that saw ungraspable forces, acting upon both inner and outer worlds, and suspended hierarchies as the sources of necessary but inconvenient change.

Sustainability Science, 2022

Transformation acquires its meaning within contexts and particular settings where transformative ... more Transformation acquires its meaning within contexts and particular settings where transformative change is experienced, and where people engage in meaning-making. We used the forest–climate nexus in Sweden as an empirical case study, and the leverage-points perspective as an analytical lens. The aim was to investigate contextual leverage for transformative change, and how our use of context and relations shapes our understanding of transformation and leverage for change. The empirical basis was a whole-day workshop, held in both northern and southern Sweden, for local forest stakeholders. To detract from current conflict and barriers to change, we asked the stakeholders to reflect on transformative change in the past and in the future, and the spatio-temporal relations that form the forest–climate nexus. Our analysis suggests that leverage associated with a transformative change in the future is commonly seen as universal and detached from context, reflecting, for example, national ...

Environment and History, 2018

As a fisheries consultant to the colonial administration, Adolf Severin Jensen (1866-1953) follow... more As a fisheries consultant to the colonial administration, Adolf Severin Jensen (1866-1953) followed, and was an active commentator on, all stages of the commercialisation of Greenland's fishing industry - from its early assessment shortly after 1900 to the sector's peak in the 1930s, and the first signs of a changing trend in the 1940s. This paper puts Jensen's perceptions of Greenlandic fisheries in dialogue with the ideas of scientific rationalisation, economic efficiency and colonial power. The accounts of the fisheries scientist offer a glimpse into the complicated interplay of applied science in natural resource exploitation and state interests at the turn of the twentieth century. His research agenda was coined by the goals of fisheries science to connect knowledge production to markets. However, Jensen's findings also merged with Denmark's aim to secure its colonial authority in Greenland and to exert effective power over both resources and people.

Journal of Northern studies, 2015

The Arctic scramble revisited : the Greenland consortium and the imagined future of fisheries in ... more The Arctic scramble revisited : the Greenland consortium and the imagined future of fisheries in 1905

Att skapa narvaro och gemenskap med hjalp av video, ljud och bild : kvalitetsutveckling av idehis... more Att skapa narvaro och gemenskap med hjalp av video, ljud och bild : kvalitetsutveckling av idehistorisk avancerad niva pa nat

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2020

Two frames dominate present-day interpretations of sustainability and approaches to sustainabilit... more Two frames dominate present-day interpretations of sustainability and approaches to sustainability transformation in national and global policy arenas. One frame relates to transformation in global environmental governance that promotes goal-oriented agendas. The other frame relates to earth system sciences where sustainability transformation means breaking the devastating trends of the Anthropocene. In this paper, we examine the historical and cultural underpinnings of these two frames, each invoking particular relations and approaches to sustainability transformation. Our contribution is to discuss the role of the past in these frames and to illuminate how current outlooks toward the future still rely on principles that emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and thus hinder alternative approaches to transformation in the present.

The Polar Journal, 2018

During the first half of the twentieth century, the coalmine of Qullissat on Disko Island in west... more During the first half of the twentieth century, the coalmine of Qullissat on Disko Island in western Greenland was at the centre of visions of an industrial future for the then Danish dependency. The closure of the mine and resettlement of the community in 1972 was thus marked by confusion, and became a key event in the political development of modern Greenland. This qualitative study analyses the representation of Qullissat in two Greenlandic newspapers, Grønlandsposten and Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, between 1942 and 1968. It seeks to add a layer of understanding to the history of the mining community by drawing attention to the framing of Qullissat's future in public discourse, using newspapers as a historical source. During the Second World War and well into the 1950s, media coverage of Qullissat focused on the modernisation measures initiated by the Danish mine management based on expert assessments. From the mid-1960s, however, the representations of Greenlandic workers as not matching modern industrial ideas created the impression of a community that was no longer viable in the postcolonial setting. In many respects, this media discourse reflects a perceived dichotomy between Denmark as a modern society, and Greenland as non-modern and dependent.

Journal of World History, 2016

The White Horse Press eBooks, Nov 1, 2022

Environmental Science & Policy, 2022

Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest res... more Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest restoration. To gain a more comprehensive view of forest restoration, this paper compares the US forest restoration debate of the 1940s and 1990s, in the disciplines of ecology and forestry. The paper focuses on historical approaches to pasts and futures, and on “sociotechnical imaginaries” providing societal legitimacy to restoration ventures. Historical scientific papers constitute the paper’s empirical sources. The analysis shows that, among ecologists and foresters, forest restoration of the 1940s was oriented towards efficiency and challenges such as wood demands during World War II, whereas restoration of the 1990s was oriented towards conservation and environmental challenges. The approaches of the 1940s′ ecologists and foresters seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to societal progress, whereas the approaches of their 1990s′ counterparts seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to the task of mitigating society’s impacts. Based on the conclusions, it is argued that future research on forest restoration would benefit from comparing the idealized pasts of both yield- and conservation-oriented conceptions of forest restoration.

Salongen. Nettidsskrift for Filosofi og idéhistorie, 2022

Dette essayet er en del av Salongens tekstserie om fremtid. Essayet er en oversatt og forkortet v... more Dette essayet er en del av Salongens tekstserie om fremtid. Essayet er en oversatt og forkortet versjon av: Erland Mårald och Janina Priebe. ”Sustainability Metamorphosis: An Inconvenient Change” publicerad i Nature and Culture. 1

Är det möjligt att på bara några år genomföra en centralt dirigerad global hållbarhetsomställning? Än så länge finns få indikationer att det etablerade hållbarhetsparadigmet har en förmåga att bryta den negativa utvecklingen. Kanske är en hållbarhetsmetamorfos ett alternativ?

The Polar Journal, 2024

This study examines the history of oil development in Greenland with a focus on test wells – the ... more This study examines the history of oil development in Greenland with a focus on test wells – the physical sites where and when the future of Arctic oil as an energy source was established and eventually abandoned. The processes surrounding the establishment of the first offshore test wells in the 1970s and the first onshore test well in the 1990s illustrate different contexts of oil development, as well as the similarities between the different phases. Looking at these periods through the lens of infrastructural delay, an umbrella concept that unites anthropological analyses of unfinished, delayed or unrealised infrastructure, this study shows how common themes of potential, exploration and verdict emerge that accompanied the establishment of physical test wells. Based on a thematic analysis of historical scientific and policy reports as well as Greenlandic media accounts, this study brings together a top-down and a local perspective on the construction of test wells in the 1970s and 1990s. This study advances research on the history of Arctic oil development by identifying the different phases of its delay that accompanied the creation of its physical infrastructure, each of which generated different social processes of hope and despair, and which also lay the foundation for future perspectives on the use of Greenland’s subsurface beyond oil.

Water History, 2024

This article examines how and by whom the future of glacial energy was imagined in Greenland betw... more This article examines how and by whom the future of glacial energy was imagined in Greenland between the 1950s and 1970s, with a specific emphasis on the intersection of discourses of energy and political autonomy. The focus lies on the years from 1953, marking the end of Greenland’s colonial status and its integration into the realm of its former colonial authority, Denmark, until 1979, when the Greenland Home Rule Agreement was enacted. The futures of hydropower are explored through the lens of energy imaginaries, a notion that underscores the interconnectedness between different forms of energy and the organization of social structures. These imaginaries revolving around hydropower circulated in the public-political space in Greenland decades prior to when the first operational hydropower plant came online in 1993. Through a historical empirical analysis, this article identifies the energy imaginaries linked to envisioned hydropower and delineates key phases of their emergence. It also discusses these envisioned futures of hydropower in the historical context of Arctic oil exploration and Greenland’s strivings toward political autonomy. The energy imaginaries of hydropower, especially glacial hydropower generated adjacent to Greenland’s inland icesheet, built on a long-term timeline and autonomous society, in contrast to the oil development that was favoured by Danish authorities at the time. Ultimately, it was the considerations of the sources and scale of the necessary investments that deferred the implementation of hydropower until the late 1980s. However, the groundwork for viewing Greenland’s water resources as a cornerstone for its future independence had been laid.

We have entered a new phase in how we consider and seek to govern the fate of the planet in these... more We have entered a new phase in how we consider and seek to
govern the fate of the planet in these increasingly unpredictable
times. Everywhere in the world, relationships within societies
and environments, and between humans and nature, are rapidly
changing. The notion of “sustainability transformation” generally
captures both the challenges of these disrupted relations and profound
solutions to restore them at a global scale, but the Arctic
in particular is seen either as a hotspot for hope and possibilities,
or as a social and ecological flashpoint under increasing pressure
of resource use. What, then, is Arctic sustainability transformation?
And what can or does it need to be?

This booklet, with contributions from researchers working in the Arctic and with Arctic issues, is a result of our collaboration within the Arctic
Five Chair initiative and has come to form a central part of our
work of reflecting on Arctic sustainability transformations. The
Arctic Five is a collaboration among five Nordic universities,
namely Luleå University of Technology and Umeå University in
Sweden, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and the University
of Lapland and University of Oulu in Finland. Our work on
Arctic transformations is conducted within the Future Challenges
in the Nordics program and the research project Peripheral
Visions, jointly funded by the Society of Swedish Literature
in Finland, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, the Finnish Cultural
Foundation, the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland,
Stiftelsen Brita Maria Renlunds Minne, and the Kamprad Family
Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Research & Charity.

Sustainability Science

Integrated approaches to knowledge that recognize meaning, behavior, culture, and systems as doma... more Integrated approaches to knowledge that recognize meaning, behavior, culture, and systems as domains of knowledge are increasingly employed in holistic views on sustainability transformation but often remain conceptually driven. In this study, we analyze empirical data from a collaborative process with local forest stakeholders in Sweden through the lens of individual, collective, interior, and exterior knowledge dimensions. We show that the participants’ understanding of knowledge about forests and climate change presents a nuanced picture of how knowledge and acting are connected. Meaning-making, cultural frames, and techno-scientific knowledge conceptions converge, interact, and, at times, replace or diminish each other. The connection and interplay of these dimensions, we suggest, can be understood as a knowledge spectrum. These insights into integrated knowledge, based on an empirical case, must be addressed in the production of knowledge, both to grasp the climate and sustainability issues that face us and to support action in response to them.

Marine Mammal Science, 2005

Forests, 2022

The theoretical concept of “climate-smart forestry” aims to integrate climate change mitigation a... more The theoretical concept of “climate-smart forestry” aims to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation to maintain and enhance forests’ contributions to people and global agendas. We carried out two local transdisciplinary collaboration processes with the aim of developing local articulations of climate-smart forestry and to identify barriers, pathways and indicators to applying it in practice. During workshops in northern and southern Sweden, local stakeholders described how they would like forests to be managed, considering their past experiences, future visions and climate change. As a result, the stakeholders framed climate-smart forestry as active and diverse management towards multiple goals. They identified several conditions that could act both as barriers and pathways for its implementation in practice, such as value chains for forest products and services, local knowledge and experiences of different management alternatives, and the management of ungulates. Based o...

Science of The Total Environment

Environmental Science & Policy

Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest res... more Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest restoration. To gain a more comprehensive view of forest restoration, this paper compares the US forest restoration debate of the 1940s and 1990s, in the disciplines of ecology and forestry. The paper focuses on historical approaches to pasts and futures, and on “sociotechnical imaginaries” providing societal legitimacy to restoration ventures. Historical scientific papers constitute the paper’s empirical sources. The analysis shows that, among ecologists and foresters, forest restoration of the 1940s was oriented towards efficiency and challenges such as wood demands during World War II, whereas restoration of the 1990s was oriented towards conservation and environmental challenges. The approaches of the 1940s′ ecologists and foresters seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to societal progress, whereas the approaches of their 1990s′ counterparts seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to the task of mitigating society’s impacts. Based on the conclusions, it is argued that future research on forest restoration would benefit from comparing the idealized pasts of both yield- and conservation-oriented conceptions of forest restoration.

Nature and Culture, 2021

The institutionalization of sustainability agendas on the local and global levels has largely fai... more The institutionalization of sustainability agendas on the local and global levels has largely failed to deliver the promised change. In this essay, we develop the idea of sustainability metamorphosis as a way to break with the pathological paradigm of sustainable development that weakens society’s capacity to transform in the face of global crises. Sustainability metamorphosis, in our understanding, draws on the Bakthian perspective of carnivalization and dialogical truth. In this sense, sustainability metamorphosis is an outlook on change in society and a source of strategies for long-term societal change. Our understanding of metamorphosis is inspired by the historical and literary understandings that saw ungraspable forces, acting upon both inner and outer worlds, and suspended hierarchies as the sources of necessary but inconvenient change.

Sustainability Science, 2022

Transformation acquires its meaning within contexts and particular settings where transformative ... more Transformation acquires its meaning within contexts and particular settings where transformative change is experienced, and where people engage in meaning-making. We used the forest–climate nexus in Sweden as an empirical case study, and the leverage-points perspective as an analytical lens. The aim was to investigate contextual leverage for transformative change, and how our use of context and relations shapes our understanding of transformation and leverage for change. The empirical basis was a whole-day workshop, held in both northern and southern Sweden, for local forest stakeholders. To detract from current conflict and barriers to change, we asked the stakeholders to reflect on transformative change in the past and in the future, and the spatio-temporal relations that form the forest–climate nexus. Our analysis suggests that leverage associated with a transformative change in the future is commonly seen as universal and detached from context, reflecting, for example, national ...

Environment and History, 2018

As a fisheries consultant to the colonial administration, Adolf Severin Jensen (1866-1953) follow... more As a fisheries consultant to the colonial administration, Adolf Severin Jensen (1866-1953) followed, and was an active commentator on, all stages of the commercialisation of Greenland's fishing industry - from its early assessment shortly after 1900 to the sector's peak in the 1930s, and the first signs of a changing trend in the 1940s. This paper puts Jensen's perceptions of Greenlandic fisheries in dialogue with the ideas of scientific rationalisation, economic efficiency and colonial power. The accounts of the fisheries scientist offer a glimpse into the complicated interplay of applied science in natural resource exploitation and state interests at the turn of the twentieth century. His research agenda was coined by the goals of fisheries science to connect knowledge production to markets. However, Jensen's findings also merged with Denmark's aim to secure its colonial authority in Greenland and to exert effective power over both resources and people.

Journal of Northern studies, 2015

The Arctic scramble revisited : the Greenland consortium and the imagined future of fisheries in ... more The Arctic scramble revisited : the Greenland consortium and the imagined future of fisheries in 1905

Att skapa narvaro och gemenskap med hjalp av video, ljud och bild : kvalitetsutveckling av idehis... more Att skapa narvaro och gemenskap med hjalp av video, ljud och bild : kvalitetsutveckling av idehistorisk avancerad niva pa nat

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2020

Two frames dominate present-day interpretations of sustainability and approaches to sustainabilit... more Two frames dominate present-day interpretations of sustainability and approaches to sustainability transformation in national and global policy arenas. One frame relates to transformation in global environmental governance that promotes goal-oriented agendas. The other frame relates to earth system sciences where sustainability transformation means breaking the devastating trends of the Anthropocene. In this paper, we examine the historical and cultural underpinnings of these two frames, each invoking particular relations and approaches to sustainability transformation. Our contribution is to discuss the role of the past in these frames and to illuminate how current outlooks toward the future still rely on principles that emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and thus hinder alternative approaches to transformation in the present.

The Polar Journal, 2018

During the first half of the twentieth century, the coalmine of Qullissat on Disko Island in west... more During the first half of the twentieth century, the coalmine of Qullissat on Disko Island in western Greenland was at the centre of visions of an industrial future for the then Danish dependency. The closure of the mine and resettlement of the community in 1972 was thus marked by confusion, and became a key event in the political development of modern Greenland. This qualitative study analyses the representation of Qullissat in two Greenlandic newspapers, Grønlandsposten and Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, between 1942 and 1968. It seeks to add a layer of understanding to the history of the mining community by drawing attention to the framing of Qullissat's future in public discourse, using newspapers as a historical source. During the Second World War and well into the 1950s, media coverage of Qullissat focused on the modernisation measures initiated by the Danish mine management based on expert assessments. From the mid-1960s, however, the representations of Greenlandic workers as not matching modern industrial ideas created the impression of a community that was no longer viable in the postcolonial setting. In many respects, this media discourse reflects a perceived dichotomy between Denmark as a modern society, and Greenland as non-modern and dependent.

Journal of World History, 2016

The White Horse Press eBooks, Nov 1, 2022

Environmental Science & Policy, 2022

Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest res... more Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest restoration. To gain a more comprehensive view of forest restoration, this paper compares the US forest restoration debate of the 1940s and 1990s, in the disciplines of ecology and forestry. The paper focuses on historical approaches to pasts and futures, and on “sociotechnical imaginaries” providing societal legitimacy to restoration ventures. Historical scientific papers constitute the paper’s empirical sources. The analysis shows that, among ecologists and foresters, forest restoration of the 1940s was oriented towards efficiency and challenges such as wood demands during World War II, whereas restoration of the 1990s was oriented towards conservation and environmental challenges. The approaches of the 1940s′ ecologists and foresters seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to societal progress, whereas the approaches of their 1990s′ counterparts seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to the task of mitigating society’s impacts. Based on the conclusions, it is argued that future research on forest restoration would benefit from comparing the idealized pasts of both yield- and conservation-oriented conceptions of forest restoration.

Salongen. Nettidsskrift for Filosofi og idéhistorie, 2022

Dette essayet er en del av Salongens tekstserie om fremtid. Essayet er en oversatt og forkortet v... more Dette essayet er en del av Salongens tekstserie om fremtid. Essayet er en oversatt og forkortet versjon av: Erland Mårald och Janina Priebe. ”Sustainability Metamorphosis: An Inconvenient Change” publicerad i Nature and Culture. 1

Är det möjligt att på bara några år genomföra en centralt dirigerad global hållbarhetsomställning? Än så länge finns få indikationer att det etablerade hållbarhetsparadigmet har en förmåga att bryta den negativa utvecklingen. Kanske är en hållbarhetsmetamorfos ett alternativ?

The aim of this paper is to illuminate how scientific knowledge about the marine environment was ... more The aim of this paper is to illuminate how scientific knowledge about the marine environment was used to mount arguments for economic deregulation within a Nordic colonial context.
It illuminates the ambiguous role of fisheries scientists that produced both knowledge and concrete economic advice, and how that contributed to make the exploitation of fisheries a political object and means of power inwards and outwards in the context of Greenland's early commercialization of fisheries. By looking at official submissions and scientific reports regularly sent to the colonial administration, I analyse the narratives taken up by fisheries scientists who paved the way for industrialized fisheries in order to understand how their accounts of this economic transition, from seal hunting to fishing, were part of a larger discourse on scientific rationalization, economic efficiency and colonial power.
The paper concludes with reflections on the political role played by science in legitimizing or contesting the authority of state authority over colonial spaces – and the growing recognition that rational administration of natural resources was a hallmark of legitimate rule.

Resource Policy in a Changing Environment - Perspectives on Greenlandic Fisheries in the 1920s

Boundaries without Borders - The Problem of Parcelling Ocean Territories for Resource Management ... more Boundaries without Borders - The Problem of Parcelling Ocean Territories for Resource Management Purposes