1st Edition
Knowing from the Indigenous North Sámi Approaches to History, Politics and Belonging
Focusing on the Sápmi region of Northern Europe as a point of departure, this book enriches and sharpens the concept of 'the North.' It combines detailed empirical research on the Sámi people and their life-worlds with theoretical contributions from leading scholars. The authors consider the European North not only as a geographical site or an object of academic research, but as a particular way of knowing and being, with its own needs, practices, concepts, and imaginings. The North, as an epistemic position, offers its own conceptions of politics, human agency, history, and social relations, which this book studies and describes. The volume challenges us to consider social scientific knowledge, its significance, and the practices of producing it in a new way.
1. Introduction 2. On local Knowledge 3. Evasive strategies of defiance – everyday resistance histories among the Sámi 4. Returning home – the different ontologies of the Sámi collections 5. The paradox of autonomy 6. Belonging to Sápmi – the Sámi conceptions of home and home region 7. Reindeer herding, snowmobiles and social change – and a word on identity 8. The North is everywhere 9. 'I’ll show you the tundra' – the Sámi as an Indigenous people in the political thought of Nils-Aslak Valkeapää 10. Conceptual governance on defining indigeneity – the Sámi debate in Finland 11. The politics of belonging in the Indigenous North
Biography
Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway.
Sanna Valkonen is a Sámi scholar and Associate Professor of Sámi Research at the University of Lapland, Finland.
Jarno Valkonen is a Sámi scholar and Professor of Sociology at the University of Lapland, Finland.
