Claiming the North: (Re-)territorializing the “Westnordic Arctic”
Symposium 4th of October 2013 (13.00-18.00) organized by the Centre for Arctic Policy Studies, Denmark and the New North Atlantic and EDDA – Center of Excellence
All are welcome
This international and cross-disciplinary symposium will facilitate a discussion on current and potential restructuring in the circumpolar north with a focus on the West-Nordic Arctic and Subarctic regions. Particular attention is paid to identity politics and minorization and majorization processes there within. Discussions will envelope the multiple transnational effects of colonial ties, climate change, industrial activity and increased mobility on sovereign and indigenous rights, broad security concerns, economic interests and notions of cultural sustainability An integral part of this discussion is the current transnational jockeying – with the participation of the region’s small states – to carve out a role in the “re- territorialization” of the Arctic as a natural-resource base, an eco-system, and a potentially contested cultural and political terrain. In addition to vertical perspectives of policy-making this symposium will also look at the vernacular practice of these political, cultural, and territorial discourses. In addition the conference will address the recent counter-narratives produced in the public arena and the arts.
The keynotes are:
Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University); Where Ambiguity Serves the Interests of Power: Testing the Fuzzy Edges of Crypto-Colonialism
Kirsten Thisted, (University of Copenhagen) Imperial ghosts in the North Atlantic – old and new narratives about the colonial relations between Denmark and Greenland
Panels and Participants will be:
Panel 1: Obscure histories, emerging trends and the crypto-colonial North
Panel 2: Mobility and arctic discourses in the “region-to-be”
Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University); Keynote: Where Ambiguity Serves the Interests of Power: Testing the Fuzzy Edges of Crypto-Colonialism; Kirsten Thisted, (University of Copenhagen), title pending; Sumarliði Ísleifsson (INOR – University of Iceland) Hellas of the North; Anna Karlsdóttir, Neo-colonialism in Arctic tourism; Edward Hujbens Arctic ‘concessions’ and icebreaker diplomacy? Chinese tourism development in Iceland; Ian Watson (Bifröst University), Post-colonial echoes in the Icelandic consumer experience; Katla Kjartansdóttir (EDDA), Kristinn Schram (CAPS/EDDA), Mobile People in West Nordic Performative Spaces; Ólafur Rastrick (EDDA) Imagining Greenland as an Icelandic Colony 1924–1955, Ebbe Volquardsen (Justus-Liebig Universität Giessen) Danish narratives about a humane kind of colonialism, Ann-Sofie Gremaud (University of Copenhagen/EDDA), To be or not to be post-colonial – Iceland as center and periphery; Guðmundur Hálfdánarson(discussant); Ágúst Þór Árnason (University of Akureyri), title pending; Valur Ingimundarson (EDDA), title pending. Bergur Rønne Moberg (University of Copenhagen) and Damien Degeorges.
Location: Askja 132 University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland
Ann-Sofie Gremaud 