Suchergebnisse

In late 2017, protesting the ongoing forced slaughter of indigenous reindeer herds in Norway, a young Sámi artist traveled to Oslo to set up a "curtain" of some 400 reindeer skulls in front of the national parliament. The demonstration drew considerable attention, both nationally and internationally, and mobilized a complex range of historical resonances—from the first Sámi protests against the Alta hydroelectric project, half a century earlier, to the vast piles of bison skulls that accumulated during the US campaign against the Plains Indians in the 19th century. Situating the curtain in a context of chronic state violence, indigenous invisibility, and crisis biopolitics, the article examines the multiple apocalyptic logics summoned in the work.

The article describes an experiment in captive-bred supplementation of a highly endangered wild bird species that took place in the Norwegian Arctic a few years ago. Following the fate of a single bird, over the course of two years, the argument lays out some of the powerful conceptual, political and affective stakes involved in the experiment. The brief life of the bird, named A16, was contained almost entirely within an unresolved tension between salvific urgency and a purist biopolitics, deeply committed to the preservation of vanishing (or vanished) forms. Behind the scenes of the experiment, ornithological factions clashed over issues like genetic purity, the integrity of migration routes and the potential for behavioral contamination. Laying out the stakes of this, the argument begins to develop an account of salvific violence in conservation work—a framework for questioning the affective investments that drive purificatory biopolitics, especially during a time of planetary turmoil. What stands to be saved, what must be destroyed? What is a species, exactly, such that it can (or cannot) be saved in certain ways? What was A16?

The article describes an experiment in captive-bred supplementation of a highly endangered wild bird species that took place in the Norwegian Arctic a few years ago. Following the fate of a single bird, over the course of two years, the argument lays out some of the powerful conceptual, political and affective stakes involved in the experiment. The brief life of the bird, named A16, was contained almost entirely within an unresolved tension between salvific urgency and a purist biopolitics, deeply committed to the preservation of vanishing (or vanished) forms. Behind the scenes of the experiment, ornithological factions clashed over issues like genetic purity, the integrity of migration routes and the potential for behavioral contamination. Laying out the stakes of this, the argument begins to develop an account of salvific violence in conservation work—a framework for questioning the affective investments that drive purificatory biopolitics, especially during a time of planetary turmoil. What stands to be saved, what must be destroyed? What is a species, exactly, such that it can (or cannot) be saved in certain ways? What was A16?

International audience ; Sacrifice is an ancient and powerful idea, rich with contradictions. These days it can seem ubiquitous: from the rhetorical mobilizations of one war after the other, to the ideological pressures of austerity, to the "necessary" disruptions of life in neoliberal democracies, to the urgent adjustments demanded (and ignored) for a changing climate. Everywhere you turn, it seems, some form of sacrifice is rearing its head, demanding tribute. The history of the concept runs deep, open to many readings. Here I will parse it as violence, because I think that today this is how sacrifice presents itself most forcefully as a problem.

For decades now, the dominant narrative about indigenous reindeer pastoralism in northern Norway has been that there is a crisis of excess: an oversized reindeer population, poorly held in check by poorly governed herders, is overgrazing the tundra, degrading the pasture grounds, spilling over into urban spaces and precipitating moral crises by starving to death "out there," on the tundra. Set against the background of this ongoing crisis, the present paper focuses on a set of particularly dense conceptual intersections that cluster around the notion of weight , and the manner in which weight functions both as a crisis indicator and a metric for assessment in contemporary Norwegian pastoral governance. Tracing the work and structure of the weight concept as applied to reindeer–against a dominant government narrative that parses numerical indicators as neutral, objective and apolitical–the paper outlines some of the erasures that the weight metric simultaneously carries out and occludes. The aim of the exercise is to specify and critically reframe certain core issues in the current management of Norwegian pastoralism, by problematising the supposedly neutral, scientific operation of quantitative metrics and assessment practices.

This dissertation is a contribution to the ethnography of contemporary indigenous reindeer pastoralism in Norway: specifically, to the study of the neglected fields of reindeer killing and slaughtering practice. Its central contention is that in recent decades, the proliferation of human powers vested in the conduct of reindeer slaughter has created new conditions for practice, placing the identities of reindeer and herders at stake in new and still only dimly conceptualized ways. By exploring these, the dissertation aims to broaden existing debates concerning the so-called modernization of pastoral practice in Norway, drawing attention to some of its neglected aspects and inscribing them in a new register. Two principal strands inform the theoretical framework: one, approaches to the social study of knowledge that emphasise its practical, non-verbal and material aspects; and two, Foucauldian concepts of biopower as these may or may not be applicable to the human management of animal life.Individual chapters examine, in turn: the local politics of space on the Varanger peninsula, focusing particularly on links between the spatial management and the killing of reindeer; the practices and social relations of slaughter as it is conducted at the round-up corral; the social effects of the introduction of slaughterhouses, and of the regime of which they form a part; controversies surrounding specific slaughtering techniques and instruments, particularly the curved knife; and the politics of animal welfare discourse and practices in their application to reindeer herding. Finally, using the figure of animal sacrifice as a guiding trope, the concluding chapter attempts to situate some key aspects of the modernization of reindeer slaughter in relation to the operation of broader sacrificial economies that regulate the destruction of life at aggregate or populational levels. ; Research Council of Norway

This volume breaks new ground in the study of landscapes, both rural and urban. The innovative notion of this landscape collection is rupture. The book explores the ways in which societal, economic and cultural changes are transforming the meanings and understandings of landscapes. The text explores both how landscapes are contesting changes in society and changing society. The volume combines empirically fine-grained accounts of landscape rupture, from different parts of the world, with a sustained effort to explore, rethink and analytically extend the concept of rupture itself. The book therefore combines fresh empirical data with innovative theoretical approaches to open understanding of landscape as a dynamic, living entity subject to abrupt change and unpredictable disruptions. Through this dual reflection the volume is able to provide a powerful demonstration of the possibilities that are available for human action, social change and material landscape to combine.

We present comparative ethnographic material on volunteer biodiversity monitoring from environmental organisations in three postcommunist countries: Poland, Slovenia, and Lithuania. We chart and discuss aspects of the heritage from socialism and communist rule in terms of their effect on the present-day running and operations of four case-study organisations in these countries, focusing particularly on challenges posed by the legacy of compulsory volunteering, inherited organisational cultures, economic reorganisation, and internationalisation of the volunteering sector. In closing we indicate certain key differences between our case-study organisations, focusing on factors that influenced their ability to operate in the postcommunist nongovernmental organisation sector, and offer some observations of more general relevance.

"….Taking the structure and functioning of the Arctic regional economies and the degree of economic dependence as a point of departure, these region's self-reliance and comparative socio-economic performance is analyzed. The fundamental problem is still the dependency Arctic regions have on their mother economies in the south" "….the impact from climate changes and the global economy strongly influence the self-sufficiency constraints and potentials of the Arctic societies. Traditional approaches to economic valuation may not be sufficient to capture these relationships. Neo-classical economics and the trade off model look upon nature as a good commensurable with all other goods, and henceforward there is a substitution possibility. The rational self-interest and 'homo economicus' is however, not the same as responsible self-interest included in ecological economics. This suggests broader approaches to environmental uncertainties, which take into account ethical values and conflicts of interest". Contributors: Hans Aage, Iulie Aslaksen, Andrée Caron, Gérard Duhaime, Solveig Glomsröd, Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, Ivar Jonsson, Jack Kruse, Joan Nymand Larsen, Svein Mathiesen, Anna Ingeborg Myhr, Birger Poppel, Rasmus Ole Rasmussen, Erik Reinert, Hugo Reinert, Chris Southcott, Gorm Winther, Lyudmila Zalkind.