Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2018.1457291
T. Bleie
{"title":"Historic settlements and pastoralism in the Arctic and Tibetan Plateau: towards a comparison","authors":"T. Bleie","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2018.1457291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2018.1457291","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Historic settlement processes of, respectively, the Northern Sámi and Western Tibetan pastoralists have so far not been subjected to any comparative social science analyses. This study contributes to such a conceptual platform, drawing on the constructs dwelling, settlement, herding unit, pastoral landscape and the labour–animal–pasture triangle. Ethnographic and archival evidence of transitions from sedentary/semi-sedentary to full-fledged pastoralist societies and transitions from a pastoral adaptation to sedentary and semi-sedentary life are analysed and debated in light of the influential theoretical proposition of a categorical difference between a nomad’s and a farmer’s dwelling. At the core of this, comparative inquiry is two highly dynamic pastoral herding societies. It is argued that a comparative approach to the study of settlements requires a theoretical and analytical reframing – informed by a more adequate comprehension of the dwelling–settlement nexus. This preliminary scrutiny of dwelling designs and settlement practices of Sámi and Tibetan pastoralists indicates that nomads in both regions internalized and activated different spatial models and inventively mediated between different spatial models according to seasonal or irreversible shifts of leaving the nomadic adaptation altogether. Further rigorous empirical inquiry into accommodation, innovation and possible failures to mediate gaps in the making/remaking of dwellings and settlements are called for.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2018.1457291","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44306519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2018.1456073
Hannelene Schilar, E. Keskitalo
{"title":"Ethnic boundaries and boundary-making in handicrafts: examples from northern Norway, Sweden and Finland","authors":"Hannelene Schilar, E. Keskitalo","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2018.1456073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2018.1456073","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT When ethnicity is said to be manifest and practised through handicrafts, these seemingly innocent objects become political. They raise questions concerning who can do what handicraft, who can use what symbols or what developments are “allowed”. They illustrate the continuous production of ethnic norms and boundaries, especially when global tourism enters into the equation. Taking a social constructivist perspective, our study addresses ethnic boundaries and boundary-making in handicrafts in northern Sweden, Norway and Finland. Our findings are based on fieldwork (35 interviewees) with people of diverse local backgrounds making and selling handicrafts. Methodologically, we avoid preselecting people based on ethnicity, but instead contribute to an understanding of the constitutive processes of ethnicity by looking at how ethnic talk comes into conversations about handicrafts. Our findings demonstrate that the interviewees draw an ethnic divide between “Sámi”/“non-Sámi”, while other ethnic-choices move to the background. This divide can be seen to be amplified by tourism. The boundary for who can make a Sámi handicraft or use Sámi symbols remains significant, yet also fluid. The article deepens the understanding of the Sámi/non-Sámi ethnic categorization, here in relation to handicrafts. It also helps unravel the complexities between tourism, ethnicities and handicrafts more broadly.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2018.1456073","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42493193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2018.1456765
I. Bergman, Per H. Ramqvist
{"title":"Hunters of forests and waters: Late Iron Age and Medieval subsistence and social processes in coastal northern Sweden","authors":"I. Bergman, Per H. Ramqvist","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2018.1456765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2018.1456765","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT During the course of the 14th century the Swedish Crown and the Catholic Church made robust attempts to include the areas beside the Bothnian bay within their central fiscal and clerical organization. Salmon fishing in the productive river rapids became major targets for external commercial interests. Written records inform us about the situation from the perspective of the exploiters. However, there is a story running in parallel – that of the local population already occupying the lands and the fishing grounds. The study aims to analyse the significance of hunting and fishing to the overall subsistence of coastal communities in northern Sweden during the period AD 500–1600. The social context is of particular interest, specifically in relation to the successive conformation by the local communities to the Swedish fiscal system. The study draws on archaeological records and on historical records from the 14th to the 17th century, in addition to ethnographic accounts for hunting and fishing. We conclude that the legal cultures embraced by the indigenous population and that of the Swedish central powers were in essence incompatible. The acquisition of land and fishing rights was never settled between two equal parties, but one-sidedly enforced by the party holding the pen.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2018.1456765","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47686533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2018.1457316
Mikkel Berg-Nordlie
{"title":"The governance of urban indigenous spaces: Norwegian Sámi examples","authors":"Mikkel Berg-Nordlie","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2018.1457316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2018.1457316","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT How do different ways of governing urban indigenous social spaces facilitate or frustrate local indigenous self-government? A major challenge in Norway is the absence of actors that represent the entire local indigenous population. The main Norwegian Sámi NGO is a driving force in establishing and governing indigenous spaces, but is now one of several and often competing organizations due to specialization (new organizations form to promote specific subgroups' interests) and partisanization (organizations compete in elections to the Sámediggi representative organ). Social media facilitate communication across organizational divides, but do not produce any unified local indigenous “voice”. Private businesses and public cultural institutions take part in establishing and governing indigenous spaces – the former often in complete autonomy from Sámi NGOs, the latter more likely to seek cooperation or coordination. Local and regional state-based actors generally do not take initiatives to establish indigenous spaces, but involve themselves as co-organizers with Sámi leads and as sources of (often unstable) economic support. The state-based Sámediggi is increasingly proactive: financing, facilitating contact between actors, and occasionally participating directly in urban indigenous governance. The Sámediggi provides a unifying representative voice at the macro level that is missing at the local level.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2018.1457316","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46698722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2017.1397397
J. Nordin, Carl-Gösta Ojala
{"title":"Copper worlds: a historical archaeology of Abraham and Jakob Momma-Reenstierna and their industrial enterprise in the Torne River Valley, c. 1650–1680","authors":"J. Nordin, Carl-Gösta Ojala","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2017.1397397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2017.1397397","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyses the industrial enterprise of the Dutch-born brothers Abraham and Jakob Momma-Reenstierna and their investments in Sápmi and the upper parts of the Torne River Valley, northern Sweden, during the second half of the seventeenth century. The aim is to explore the driving forces behind the industrial projects of the two brothers in a larger global and colonial context. With inspiration from recent critical studies on the simplifications, and Eurocentrism, in earlier understandings of the birth of modernity, we focus on the modernizing processes taking place in the upper part of the Torne River Valley as a meeting zone between local populations and landscapes and external capital. Metal extraction was booming in the seventeenth-century Sámi areas. Both the Danish-Norwegian and the Swedish Crowns invested heavily in the mining of silver, copper and iron. The scientific focus in archaeology and history has hitherto been very much on the state-governed projects, and limited interest has been directed towards the private enterprises. Moreover, there is also a need to study the roles of the local Finnish and Sámi populations, as well as the global connections, in these colonial industrial projects.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2017.1397397","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41675936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2017.1397440
Petia Mankova
{"title":"Heterogeneity and spontaneity: reindeer races, bureaucratic designs and indigenous transformations at the Festival of the North in Murmansk","authors":"Petia Mankova","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2017.1397440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2017.1397440","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article seeks to understand the Festival of the North in Murmansk as an event incorporating different logics of design and political projects. It pays particular attention to the reindeer races and their changing historical significance, and puts forward the argument that the spontaneity of the reindeer races provides for the constant renewal of meanings attached to them and thus for the longevity of the festival. Combining a historical overview of available written sources with empirical observations from the 78th Festival of the North in Murmansk, the article examines the reindeer races through the notion of “indigenous sports” as applied in local context. In this way it complements the existing body of scholarly works on indigenous cultural festivals and on the Festival of the North within the context of the reindeer-herding practice.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2017.1397440","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43077940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2017.1398537
H. Amundsen
{"title":"Changing histories and ethnicities in a Sámi and Norse borderland","authors":"H. Amundsen","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2017.1398537","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2017.1398537","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Hedmark County is a large inland district in southeast Norway that represents the southern part of the Sámi settlement area, and a Sámi–Norse borderland. Centred on the municipalities Rendalen and Engerdal, the study investigates the long-term cultural and social processes involved in the construction and maintenance of a borderland using theories of ethnicity and cultural tradition. Over time, different groups of people have used the diverse landscapes, and two periods are highlighted: the Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age (2350–500 BC), and the Iron Age and the Middle Ages (500 BC–AD 1500). The focus is on how different groups of people used the landscapes as seen through variation in settlement, subsistence, borders and contact networks with neighbouring and distant regions.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2017.1398537","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45926542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2017.1390662
I. Bergman, Per H. Ramqvist
{"title":"Farmer-fishermen: interior lake fishing and inter-cultural and intra-cultural relations among coastal and interior Sámi communities in northern Sweden AD 1200–1600","authors":"I. Bergman, Per H. Ramqvist","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2017.1390662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2017.1390662","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Although the productive fishing grounds had long attracted the Crown and the Church to northern Sweden, it was not until the sixteenth century that the judicial and fiscal powers of the Swedish Crown were exercised in full. Records show that the regular fishing in interior lakes formed a prominent enterprise among coastal farmer communities. This paper examines the social and economic context of farmers engaged in interior fishing with respect to the internal organization of village communities, principles of private and collective ownership, land-use strategies and inter-community relations. There are no a-priori assumptions about the coastal population being “Swedish”. Instead of applying ethnonyms, the terms “farmer” and “coastal” are used throughout the paper. The main area of investigation includes the coastal area of northernmost Sweden and the western parts of Finnish Lapland. The study shows that interior lakes fitted into village resource areas, long sanctioned by usage, and that usufruct belonged to village members collectively. A large part of the fishing lakes are situated in interior Sámi territory. Fishermen were internalizing Sámi place names, implying close relations between the groups. Archeological investigations point to subsistence strategies including systemic interior lake fishing being established before AD 1200. The authors propose that coastal and interior communities should be perceived as two economic strategies representing indigenous and pre-colonial land-use schemes.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2017.1390662","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49273834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Acta BorealiaPub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08003831.2017.1317981
K. Johnsen, T. A. Benjaminsen
{"title":"The art of governing and everyday resistance: “rationalization” of Sámi reindeer husbandry in Norway since the 1970s","authors":"K. Johnsen, T. A. Benjaminsen","doi":"10.1080/08003831.2017.1317981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2017.1317981","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since the late 1970s, a policy objective in Norway has been to rationalize Sámi reindeer husbandry. Among the government officials, there is, however, a concern that this objective has not been successfully met in West Finnmark due to “too many reindeer” and “too many pastoralists” degrading the pastures and jeopardizing the economy of pastoralism. Engaging with the concepts of “the art of governing” and “everyday resistance”, we examined the state rationalization programme. We identified four “techniques of power” used by the state to stimulate “rational” pastoral practices: discipline, neoliberal rationality, sovereign power, and truth. Based on in-depth interviews with pastoralists and government officials, observations, and written sources, we examined the public and hidden transcripts about rationalization. The analysis demonstrates how everyday forms of resistance are used by pastoralists to maintain control of their own livelihoods and practices. A common strategy is to partly adopt and partly avoid state regulations. Individual responses to the rationalization are determined by personal desires and capacity, as well as relationships to and the behaviour of fellow pastoralists. However, the governance of Sámi pastoralism since the 1970s affected power relations between the state and the pastoralists, as well as within the herding communities.","PeriodicalId":44093,"journal":{"name":"Acta Borealia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08003831.2017.1317981","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43530602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}