1st Edition

Encountering the North Cultural Geography, International Relations and Northern Landscapes

By Frank Möller, Samu Pehkonen Copyright 2003

    This title was first published in 2003. This volume is concerned with the European north above the Arctic Circle and its representations in Cultural Geography and International Relations. The chapters in the book deal with cultural, geographical and political imaginations of northern peoples and landscapes. Emphasis is placed on the triangle of and interrelationship between culture, geography and politics. The historical and contemporary variations of meaning assigned to the north point to real processes which need to be studied in their own right. To achieve this aim, the book does not plainly specify the sites and levels of discourses (be they academic, political or popular), but it does take into account the material circumstances making the context of the European north. Illustrated by a coherent set of specially written case studies, the volume explores issues such as history, literature, gender, folk culture, pictorial representations, environment and climate change and links these issues with the (geo-)politics of the region.

    Contents: Discursive landscapes of the European north, Frank Möller and Samu Pehkonen; Mnemonic north: multilayered geographies of the Barents region, Ari Aukusti Lehtinen; Shades of white: an essay on a political iconography of the north, Frank Möller; Two Skolt geographies of Petsamo during the 1920s and 1930s, Paulo Susiluoto; Rosa Liksom's literary north: traditional confrontations or new discursive practices?, Juha Ridanpää; Explorers in the Arctic: doing feminine nature in a masculine way, Hanna-Mari Ikonen and Samu Pehkonen; The thing as an incarnation of Nordic political culture and its roots, Ulrich Albrecht; The northern antipode to European integration, or why everybody expects northern Norwegians to be sceptical of European integration, Jochen Hille; Spaces of change frozen in time: global climate change in the Arctic, Monica Tennberg; Competing industries and contested nature in Finnish Lapland after World War II, Leena Suopajärvi; Can Europe be told from the north? Tapping into the EU's northern dimension, Pertti Joenniemi; Bibliography; Index.

    Biography

    Frank Möller and Samu Pehkonen are both Research Fellows at Tampere Peace Research Institute, University of Tampere, Finland.

    ’...reveals a spectrum of insight into the multi-layered interactions of nature and culture, landscape and identity, environment and development. A refreshingly welcome contribution to both geography and international politics in the twenty-first century.’ Professor Anne Buttimer, University College Dublin, Ireland ’Encountering the North is an extraordinary contribution to political analysis. Combining the insights generated by critical international studies scholars and cultural geographers, the authors add a lot not only to our knowledge of the cultural and material aspects of the European north but also to our general purchase on the interactions among culture, space, political economy and global interactions...’ Professor Michael Shapiro, University of Hawaii, USA