Arctic Environmental Modernities (original) (raw)
Related papers
Science, environment, and the New Arctic [proof copy; final published version vol. 44, pages 2-14].
This essay underlines the timely importance of research into historical geographies of science and technology as a basis for better understanding the emerging 'New' Arctic, where climate change has heightened international interest in northern navigation routes and mineral exploitation. It introduces five studies from two international collaborative research projects: 'Colony, Empire, Environment' (funded by the BOREAS Program, European Science Foundation) and 'Large-Scale Industrial Exploitation of Polar Areas' (LASHIPA, funded by the Dutch and Swedish Research Councils), situating them in terms of changing interpretations of the Arctic and its environment primarily since the late nineteenth century. With emphasis on the role of science and technology in the production of knowledge about the environment of the far north, these five studies highlight significant shifts in the conception and utilization of the Arctic -- from heroic representations of Arctic exploration through the International Polar Year (1932-1933), the post-1945 militarization of the Arctic, the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958), and the subsequent recasting of the Arctic as a fragile environmental bellwether -- using comparative and transnational approaches to reconsider Arctic historical geographies of science and technology within the larger frameworks of recent regional, colonial, and postcolonial studies.
This book and its comprehensive Introduction offer a diverse and groundbreaking account of the intersections between modernities and environments in the circumpolar global North, foregrounding the Arctic as a critical space of modernity, where the past, present, and future of the planet’s environmental and political systems are projected and imagined. Investigating the Arctic region as a privileged site of modernity, this book articulates the globally significant, but often overlooked, junctures between environmentalism and sustainability, indigenous epistemologies and scientific rhetoric, and decolonization strategies and governmentality. With international expertise made easily accessible, readers can observe and understand the rise and conflicted status of Arctic modernities, from the nineteenth century polar explorer era to the present day of anthropogenic climate change.
Human/nature relations in the Arctic: changing perspectives
Polar Record, 1992
Differing conceptions of the relationship between humans and the environment shape policies regarding Arctic development and protection. From the fifteenth century to the early twentieth century, conquest and colonization perspectives prevailed. While vestiges of these views still color Arctic policy, the dominant approach of governments today is balanced development. On the horizon, alternative conceptions are gradually changing both policy decisions and decision-making processes in the Arctic. These include sustainable and regenerative development, rational ecology, ecofeminism, and indigenous perspectives. Contents Introduction Conquest and colonization Balanced development Sustainable and regenerative development Rational ecology The ecofeminist perspective Indigenous perspectives The future: beyond rational development Acknowledgements References
Special Collection: Rapid Landscape Change and Human Response in the Arctic and Subarctic
2008
T he body of a prehistoric Aboriginal man (Kwäday Dän Ts'ìnchí, Long Ago Person Found) was recovered in 1999 from a melting glacier in northwestern British Columbia. The frozen man was lying at 1,600 metres above sea level and about fifty kilometres from the Chilkat River estuary in southeastern Alaska. Archaeobotanical studies, ethnobotanical research, and forensic palynology have been carried out to address the following questions: What had he been doing there? Where had he come from? What was his lifestyle and diet? Was his death related to sudden climate change at the start of the Little Ice Age? We can now answer some of these questions partially or completely, and point towards the start of his last journey in a salt marsh on the coast of southeastern Alaska.
[with Ulrike Spring] The Useless Arctic: Exploiting Nature in the Arctic in the 1870s
What is the discursive genealogy of an ecological approach to the Arctic? Building on distinctions suggested by Francis Spufford and Gísli Pálsson, this article examines a specific juncture in the history of European–Arctic interaction – the reception of the Austro-Hungarian Arctic Expedition in 1874 – and traces the potential for ecological and relational understandings in what seems to be an orientalist and exploitative material. Examining the medial reception in Austria and in Norway, along with certain key texts in which Arctic wildlife is described, we find that the Norwegian reception of the expedition emphasizes practical issues connected with resource exploitation in the Arctic, while the Austrian reception mostly sees the Arctic as a symbolic resource with which to negotiate issues of identity and modernity. The Austrian discourse revolves around a set of paradoxical contradictions, the most central being those between materialism and idealism and emptiness and fullness; we argue it is the instability of such ambiguities which produces the possibility of a future ecological discourse.
Arctic FROST Young Scholars Panel Arctic anthropology and sustainability-1.pdf
Arctic FROST Young Scholars Panel – Arctic anthropology and sustainability
Sustainability continues to be a widely debated subject. The cross-disciplinary panel “Arctic FROST Young Scholars Panel – Arctic Anthropology and Sustainability” at the Alaska Anthropological Association’s meeting, organised by Alexander Meitz and Susanna Gartler (both University of Vienna, Austria) and funded by Arctic FROST, invited graduate students and other early career scholars to present and discuss their research. This platform allowed six speakers to present their work: Jon Krier (Oregon State University) spoke about “GIS Applications for Predictive Modeling of Submerged Sites”, Josie Oliva and Alexandra Taitt (both University of Alaska Anchorage) presented their research about “Anchorage Sister Cities: Exploring sustainable Arctic connections” and Kate Yeske (Colorado State University) talked about “Communal hunting game drive systems in Alaska”.
Scandinavian-Canadian Studies
This edited anthology showcases many of the major contributions from the three-year international interdisciplinary Arctic Modernities research project, led by Anka Ryall and based at The Arctic University of Norway (UiT) with major funding support by the Research Council of Norway. The striking image on the book cover-a woman in bright red Sámi attire standing on a trampoline in a seemingly desolate field of snow-provides a fitting invitation to explore this series of fourteen articles, which both challenge traditional and dominant discourses surrounding the Arctic, and provide valuable new perspectives related to gender and indigeneity. The articles challenge both long-held and more recently constructed stereotypes and oversimplified representations of this complex and dynamic region by drawing on historical, literary, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives. In their engaging introduction, editors Heidi Hansson and Anka Ryall, both well-known literary scholars who work extensively with Arctic texts, unpack the cover image to frame their discussion of the ways in which the Arctic and modernity have been conceptualized and defined in various times, places, and spaces, focusing on the intersection of these notions and some of the seeming paradoxes and contradictions that result. Hansson and Ryall position the articles in this anthology within the following Arctic discourse framework, which is reflected in the book's subtitle: "the Arctic understood as threatened environment, the Arctic perceived as the exotic opposite of modernity and the Arctic described as the everyday, lived reality of its inhabitants" (4, italics mine). The editors also note that a hypothesis common to many of these contributions is "the Arctic may be seen as a stark embodiment of the paradoxes of modernity" (8). The geographic and thematic foci of the articles span the circumpolar north-from Russia and the former Soviet Union to northern Canada to the northern reaches of the Nordic region, including Sápmi, Greenland, and Svalbard-with Canadian and Norwegian content being particularly well represented. The areas of expertise of the contributors, all of whom are connected to European and North American universities, range from literature and culture (comparative, Nordic, English, Russian, and Slavic) to art history, Arctic history, and cross-cultural, gender, film, and media studies. By presenting such a wide range of perspectives, Hansson and Ryall effectively highlight the broad and timely range of work related to the Arctic and modernity taking place in the field of humanities. Arctic Modernities also demonstrates the importance of paying attention to often understudied perspectives and areas such as "the impact of … air travel, industry, tourism, urgent environmental concerns and changing gender