As digitisation and computers in general are advancing rapidly, many engineers and scientists work on the possibilities and challenges developing artificial intelligence might pose. AI as a topic is also being researched by a handful of members of our division.
As such, researcher Lina Rahm has published a new article with the title “Education, automation and AI: a genealogy of alternative future” in the journal Learning, Media and Technology. She discusses the co-development of education technologies with both new trends in digital advancements and views on these issues from the past. The way we do education as humanities scholars has already changed profoundly during the ongoing pandemic. Furthermore, change is an ongoing thing and thus Lina’s research is necessary more than ever.
If you are interested in the article you can find it here.
Abstract:
The relationship between technical development and education is a reciprocal one, where education always stands in relation to those skills, competencies, and techniques that are anticipated as necessary in a technological future. At the same time, skills and competencies are also necessary to drive innovation and technical development for the progressive creation of desirable futures. Jumping back to the 1950s, this article illustrates how automation and AI have been anticipated as both problems and solutions in society, and how education has been used to solve these problems or realize these solutions. That is, computerization debates have concentrated on both the growing opportunities and the increasing risks, but almost always also on the need for corresponding education. The article uses a genealogical approach to show how, from the 1950s and up until today, education has been mobilized as an important tool for governance in computer policies.
Life moves on, a new term has started and we as a division are very glad to welcome our new PhD-student Erik Ljungberg, who works in the History of Media and Environment with a focus on AI and autonomous systems. We have asked him a few questions to introduce himself and you can read his answers below.
Given that you had to switch countries for your new position, how was your transition to KTH?
I have to say that KTH has made the transition very easy. With the opportunity to get an apartment within a short space of time through KTH Relocation, making the jump from Oslo to Stockholm has been pretty effortless. Although shifting COVID restrictions have made the process a little unpredictable at times.
Could you please tell us a bit about yourself and the topics you are working on, especially within your PhD?
I am a historian of knowledge and started at KTH as a PhD student in August. I am more or less associated with the Mediated Planet project, which looks at how data gathering practices, data access and data ownership shape environmental perception and politics. Though my project is also a bit freer to go in different, but related directions. I have backgrounds in both history of knowledge, which was the discipline I wrote my M.A. thesis in at the University of Oslo, and cultural anthropology, which I did a second B.A. in while doing my masters. Specifically my M.A. thesis looked at the advent of phenology, or in other words the measurement of rhythms of nature, in British natural science in the 18th-century. Phenology is a fascinating endeavor to study from a history of knowledge perspective because the possibility of mapping seasonal variations among plants and animals only really came into being once there was a knowledge infrastructure capable of gathering and processing big amounts of data. Basically you had to make daily observations over several years. Particular ways of handling paper were really at the center of this process. But you also needed ways to structure the recorded data in purely visual terms in order to streamline the process of recording and reading data. So one of the things I highlighted in my research was the importance of the table as the condition of possibility for this kind of knowledge production, stressing the fact that knowledge is simultaneously material and cognitive.
My PhD project will maintain this media theoretical focus on how knowledge emerges through being circulated through socio-material infrastructures, but focuses instead on the role of AI and autonomous systems in environmental understanding. It is exceedingly likely that AI and autonomous systems will fundamentally change the way that human society monitors, models, and manages the Earth’s natural systems. What is interesting to me is placing this development within a longer history of shifting Earth-human relationships wherein mediation plays a crucial role. As the environment becomes increasingly dataified, a central question also revolves around usage and access to data. This becomes especially salient once the issue of monetization comes into the picture. Who should capitalize on the use of data that is public, free, and ubiquitous? Questions such as these are important to address as big tech companies currently stand a fair chance of developing a hegemony of expertise when it comes to these issues.
What is coming up right now? What do you aim for in the near future in terms of research, (side-)projects, or public outreach?
Right now I am making an outline of my project, and also simply trying to get an overview of the field, or several fields actually, that I will be working in. Otherwise, I have a couple of things on the agenda. I am working on a paper for the Nordical Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and I had a paper accepted for one of the panels at the upcoming 4S conference. Also, I hope to have a blog up and running in the next months which can serve as a kind of outlet for some of the developments that are unfolding so rapidly within the field of AI and the environment.
Starting during the pandemic is challenging, although we all hope that regular work routines can be resumed during this term. What kind of impact has Covid-19 had on your work?
Actually I got a scholarship to go to London and spend time in the archives, but that proved unfeasable during the pandemic. Certainly my M.A. thesis suffered from this. On the other hand, since a lot of workshops and conferences have gone digital, it has been possible for me to take part in discussions that I never would have been able to if I had to fly. Hopefully the landscape of post-COVID academia will include a lot less flying, while still acknowledging our need to interact face-to-face.
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Thank you, and “Välkommen!” Erik, it is good to have you with us!
On this Friday, 20 August 2021, at 4pm Stockholm Time PhD-Candidate Dmitry V. Arzyutov will defend his dissertation with the title “Reassembling the Environmental Archives of the Cold War”. Dima’s opponent is Assistant Professor Bathsheba Demuth from Brown University in Providence, USA (State of Rhode Island). We are looking forward together with his supervisors Peder Roberts (Stavanger), Per Högselius (KTH) and Julia Lajus (St. Petersburg) to this major event in our division’s PhD-education.
If you want to join check out the official announcement including the Zoom-link here.
Abstract
To what extent the environmental history of the Arctic can move beyond the divide between Indigenous peoples and newcomers or vernacular and academic ways of knowing? The present dissertation answers this question by developing the notion of an environmental archive. Such an archive does not have particular reference to a given place but rather it refers to the complex network that marks the relations between paper documents and human and non-human agencies as they are able to work together and stabilise the conceptualisation of a variety of environmental objects. The author thus argues that the environment does not only contain information about the past but just like any paper (or audio and video) archive is able to produce it through the relational nature of human-environment interactions. Through the analysis of five case studies from the Russian North, the reader is invited to go through various forms of environmental archives which in turn embrace histories of a number of disciplines such as palaeontology, biology, anthropology, and medicine. Every case or a “layer” is presented here as a contact zone where Indigenous and academic forms of knowledge are not opposed to each other but, on the contrary, are able to interact and consequently affect the global discussions about the Russian Arctic. This transnational context is pivotal for all the cases discussed in the dissertation. Moreover, by putting the Cold War with its tensions between two superpowers at the chronological center of the present work, the author aims to reveal the multidimensionality of in situ interactions with, for instance, the paleontological remains or the traces of all-terrain vehicles and their involvement into broader science transnational cooperations and competitions. As a result, the heterogeneous archives allow us to reconsider the environmental history of the Russian North and the wider Arctic and open a new avenue for future research transcending the geopolitical and epistemic borders of knowledge production.
Abstract på svenska
I vilken grad kan en miljhöhistorisk analys av Arktis undvika klyftan mellan ursprungsfolk och nykomlingar, samt mellan folkliga och akademiska form för vetenskap? Avhandlingen svarar på denna fråga genom att utveckla begreppet ”miljöarkiv.” Ett sådant arkiv hänvisar inte till en särskild plats, men heller till et komplex nätverk som samlar ihop förhållande mellan dokument i papper och båda mänskliga och icke-mänskliga aktörskap. Tillsammans stabiliserar och konceptualiserer de ett antal miljöobjekten. Författaren argumenterar därför att miljö omfattar inte bara information om förtiden men liksom andra form för arkiv (antingen papper-baserat eller elektronisk) kan reproducera förtiden genom att belysa interaktioner mellan människor och natur. Genom fem case studier från det nordliga Ryssland bjudas läsaren på en tur av fem olika miljöarkiv som omfattar olika disciplinära traditioner, t. ex. paleontologi, biolog, antropologi, och medicin. Varje case eller ”lager” presenteras här som kontaktzon var ursprungliga och akademiska form för vetenskap inte nödvändigtvis står i opposition, men tvärtom påverkar varandra, och därmed får inflytelse över diskussioner om det ryska Arktis även på global nivå. Denna transnationella kontext är avgörande för alla cases i avhandlingen. Genom att sätta det kalla kriget i analysens centrum (kronologisk sett), med fokus på spänningarna mellan stormakterna, hoppas författaren att belysa de flerdimensionella interaktionerna mellan t. ex. paleontologiska fynd och spår från bandfordon och hur dessa interaktioner var kopplad till bredare frågor kring multinationella samarbete och konkurrens. En så heterogen uppfattning av arkivet öppnar för nye perspektiv på miljöhistorien av båda det ryska Arktis och Arktis set i sin helhet, samt öppna för nya forskningsfrågor som överskrider nuvarande geopolitiske och epistemologiska gränser innanför kunskapsproduktion.
This week the Environmental Humanities Laboratory at the division is hosting the long-awaited STREAMS-Conference (STREAMS-Transformative Environmental Humanities) digitally in Stockholm.
We are delighted that despite all the problems the organising committee had encountered during the Covid-19-pandemic the conference can finally take place – albeit only in a virtual format. The team has put together a very differentiated programme, encompassing a vast array of presentations, films, artwork, keynotes, roundtables and networking events. Scholars of Environmental Humanities, Energy History, Climate Change and the Anthropocene will meet artists, activists (e.g. from Extinction Rebellion Sweden) and editors on the new Streams EventsAIR Virtual Platform to facilitate a great networking experience despite the challenges of the new home-office-normality. The keynote-speakers are among others: Jürgen Renn, Adeline Johns-Putra, Michelle Bastian, Julie Sze, James Ogude and Dipesh Chakrabarty.
The WaterCentre@KTH is a hub of expertise in water research at our university. Its director and longstanding researcher at our division, David Nilsson, is working together with several scholars from the fields of EKV Kraft- & Värmeteknologi, Vatten- och Miljöteknik, Industriell Bioteknologi, Resursåtervinning, and Hållbarhet, Utvärd och Styrning. Furthermore, it cooperates with Stockholm Vatten och Avfall. Partners of the centre are ivl – Svenska Miljöinstitutet, Stockholms Stad, Stockholm Environment Institute and Värmdö Kommun. Multiple researchers at our division are also involved in the centre’s work or have been in the past, such as the Water Centre’s Research Coordinator Timos Karpouzoglou.
Water is crucial not only for the survival of living organisms, but also for many industrial purposes. It is here that the research interests of the Water Centre converges with ongoing projects at our division. Since the research project Nuclear Waters tries to put water at the centre of its historical nuclear studies, common interests occur frequently. The following is a repost from a text published on the Water Centre’s Blog, highlighting one example where both interests came together.
Kola Nuclear Power Plant at Lake Imandra, above the Arctic circle. RIAN Archive, Licence CC BY-SA 3.0.
We tend to associate nuclear power plants with many different things: smoking cooling towers, Homer Simpson-like operators, or dramatic TV series like HBO’s Chernobyl. But something people generally do not associate nuclear power plants with are massive amounts of water. Still, water is at the centre of nuclear power’s historical development, contemporary challenges, and further future.
The connection between water and generating nuclear power goes back to the Industrial Revolution, when steam technologies such as boilers and steam generators were used to heat up water, turn that water into steam, and use the energy of that steam to generate power. However, this led to many steam explosions with deadly casualties. Countries like the U.S., France and Sweden enforced safety rules, which stipulated how the boilers had to be designed and what the allowed pressures and temperatures were.
In the 1950s, more and more countries saw the potential of using nuclear technologies to generate power. With its Atoms for Peace-program, the U.S. took the lead and promoted the reactor type they developed: the light water reactor. This reactor type uses normal water as a coolant and had its origins in both naval propulsion and fossil fuel power generation. This continuity thus made water-cooled reactors a relatively simple way of rolling out nuclear power fast.
The safety in nuclear power plants was therefore determined by the control of water and the understanding of thermal-hydraulic phenomena, such as transients and steam explosions. The pressure vessels, steam generators, valves, pipes, tubes, and pumps of nuclear power plants suddenly became subjected to the steam regulations of the Industrial age. This created new risks since these codes and regulations did not consider radiation. One of the codes that underwent revision was the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The Code started travelling and was, for instance, almost directly implemented in all Swedish nuclear power plants. Gradually but surely, nuclear safety regulations in the West became more ‘nuclear’ as the intersection between water, steam, steel, and radiation became better understood and nuclear accidents, such as Three Mile Island, pushed governments for more safety legislation.
For the USSR water was equally crucial along all steps of the nuclear lifespan, such as mining, fuel element production, exploitation, and the storage of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. In general, all nuclear power plants were placed next to either a river, a lake or the coast – the latter being an exception. The most common source of coolant was river water. Interestingly, those rivers usually had to be previously ameliorated and often artificial water reservoirs were created.
A specific setup was used for so-called energy complexes, a special form of nuclear-hydrotechnical combine. They embodied the combination of nuclear and hydro power, agricultural irrigation, and fish cultivation in one location. Furthermore, constructing them meant to manipulate water bodies with newly created dams. In this way an energy complex was created to procure valuable synergies through the multiple usage and partial recycling of water.
Finding the right location was crucial for an envisioned energy complex. It needed to be a location with sufficient water supply, with suitable ground conditions, without earthquake or flood dangers. In addition, the complex needed to be within reasonable distance towards a (potential) industrial settlement to provide this population centre with electricity. Safe and ample water supply had to be considered during site selection and was one of the essential criteria for their construction. If there was not enough water, the complex could not be built.
A leading institute for the creation of energy complexes was Gidroproekt (Hydroproject). As the name suggests, Gidroproekt was a Soviet hydraulic research, design and construction agency. By joining its hydraulic expertise with newly introduced nuclear engineering, this institute was the very place where knowledge transfer between these two prestigious engineering communities took place. Here, the water-focused perspective prevailed and embedded nuclear technology into hydro-ameliorated aquatic systems. It promised prestige as well as quick results – and Gidroproekt readily delivered.
In sum, both in the East and the West, water played a crucial role in the development of nuclear power. In the West, knowledge about water was essential for developing nuclear safety practices. In the East, water was seen as a crucial resource, for powering energy complexes in the struggle for building a Communist state. Nuclear’s reliance on water meant that nuclear power plants and energy complexes were meeting places of different long-standing traditions and communities. Given the large number of water-cooled reactors in the world today, and including those under construction, it is fair to say that this crucial connection is there to stay.
Timos Karpouzoglou, researcher at the division, has published an article together with Art Dewulf, Jeroen Warner, Anna Wesselink and nine other scholars on the social implications of hydrological systems.
If you are interested in their work, you can find the abstract below and the full text here.
Abstract
Since the early work on defining and analyzing resilience in domains such as engineering, ecology and psychology, the concept has gained significant traction in many fields of research and practice. It has also become a very powerful justification for various policy goals in the water sector, evident in terms like flood resilience, river resilience, and water resilience. At the same time, a substantial body of literature has developed that questions the resilience concept’s systems ontology, natural science roots and alleged conservatism, and criticizes resilience thinking for not addressing power issues. In this study, we review these critiques with the aim to develop a framework for power-sensitive resilience analysis. We build on the three faces of power to conceptualize the power to define resilience. We structure our discussion of the relevant literature into five questions that need to be reflected upon when applying the resilience concept to social?hydrological systems. These questions address: (a) resilience of what, (b) resilience at what scale, (c) resilience to what, (d) resilience for what purpose, and (e) resilience for whom; and the implications of the political choices involved in defining these parameters for resilience building or analysis. Explicitly considering these questions enables making political choices explicit in order to support negotiation or contestation on how resilience is defined and used.
From Transformative, to Defining, to the Intergrative Humanities. The Division has published reports since the beginning of the 1990s, but only in the last six years on a biennial basis. The first years the reports were annual, basic information on staff, courses, seminars, and activities. Since 2015 the reports are themed and open up to all the voices at the Divison with a mix of deep analyzis of publishing patterns, basic information on projects, staff, events etc. and personal reflections from the people who worked with the Divison during the two years represented. The report on Intergrative Humanities was released on June 17, and sums up the two very diverse years, 2019 and 2020.
The theme of the current report reflects our thinking around how humanities knowledge is gaining in significance, which is increasingly by engaging in broad and complex problems that require multiple competencies. – Sverker Sörlin
From two hectic but very exciting years with numerous new projects, employees and events, the pace indeed slowed down somewhat during 2019 at the Division. We continued to fill our calendars with both bigger and smaller events. We also ordered noise-cancelling earphones and started a subscription to plants for our corridors. We stopped expanding and instead settled on a number of around 50 employees, which remained steady through the end of 2020. During this period, we also hired our third administrator, making the admin team complete.
Home office in Älvsjö, Ziggy Stardust the Cat
Trying to think back to 2019 during an ongoing pandemic is slightly challenging. We remember that it was the usual busy year full of events and full of the small things we all took for granted then. We started the year with an on-site Higher Seminar with our doctoral student Jean-Sebastién Boutet, and we continued with Marco Armiero’s Docent lecture. Per Högselius held his inaugural lecture as a new professor in history of technology. These events were likely framed by cake in the kitchen. We also initiated a Thursday afternoon fika, a regular coffee break for the intake of cake and other sweets. Our work environment was very much stomach-steered. Work place meetings would always involve the traditional “fralla” or bun. Our two corridors were filled with employees and guests, we met over a lunch, a coffee and a chat in the kitchen most every workday. Our families joined us for the annual picnic to kick off the summer break. To kick off the fall term, we travelled to Falun and climbed down into the old copper mines. A happy crowd decorated for Christmas before we all sang carols to a nice cup of “glögg” before the Holidays.
Being such a social work place, with a spirit built on collegiality, food, and a friendly atmosphere on site, the pandemic and the new restrictions it entailed were a huge adjustment and a struggle for many of us. In March 2020, new regulations sent us all into home office and our guests were forced to return to their home countries. Our workplace meetings moved to Zoom and the archives around the world were left unexplored. The spontaneous chat over a coffee in the kitchen seemed impossible to replace in the digital space. Some of us ended up in complete lockdown with kids at home, adding Teletubbies to their workday. On top of this, we experienced Zoom fatigue from all our online meetings and we developed a vulture neck after sitting crouched in a bad working position at a temporary desk for far too many hours.
Home office, Sabine Höhler
Was it all that bad? No, we did manage to create some great memories together after all. In June we had an open-air party to celebrate Daniele Valisena’s PhD defense. In August we had a “hub” kick off, where we met in smaller groups spread out over Stockholm in colleagues’ gardens, discussing teaching and work environment both in smaller groups on site and over Zoom. We had a small and spread-out mingle for Jesse Peterson when he defended his PhD thesis in October, with cheese, songs and tears in the kitchen. Not to forget that at long last we could welcome our overseas colleagues to our online Division meetings. In addition, we got to enjoy the unexpected delivery of a piano to the Division in Real Time during a work place meeting!
Lina Rahm, Ragnar Holm postdoc at the division (Posthumanities Hub), has published a new article in Socialmedicinsk Tidskrift on Sweden’s approach to the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. In “Folkbildning som krishantering och krishantering som folkbildning“ a strategy was analysed, which instead of putting emphasis on restrictions and prohibition, focussed on citizen’s self-regulation. This highly relevant article joins the discourse at a time, in which the Swedish way of getting through the pandemic is hotly debated in other European countries. The article is a valuable contribution, definitely worth a read.
The Swedish strategy for handling the coronavirus pandemic is internationally distinctive. While other countries shut down big parts of society and order citizens to stay at home, the Swedish approach is one of information and ”enlightenment” where citizens are expected to voluntarily regulate themselves. Swedish citizens are to be educated rather than prohibited. This article is based on interviews with 10 voluntary civil organizations, and explores the ”educational imaginaries” that signifies their actions during the crisis. The article shows that citizen education becomes a way to manage the crisis, by relaying governmental information to target groups that would otherwise be hard to reach, but also that the crisis becomes a way to initiate educational efforts both broadly and specifically, within the organization as well as towards its target groups.
Abstract in Swedish
Den svenska strategin för att hantera coronapandemin särskiljer sig internationellt. När andra länder stänger ner stora delar av samhället och beordrar medborgarna att stanna inne är istället Sveriges styrningsrationalitet en form av informations- och upplysningskampanj där medborgarna genom ökad kunskap förväntas frivilligt reglera sig själva för att minska den samhälleliga spridningen av viruset. Sveriges medborgare ska folkbildas snarare än hindras och förbjudas. Denna artikel bygger på intervjuer med 10 frivilligorganisationer och utforskar de ”utbildningspolitiska tankefigurer” som kännetecknar deras agerande under krisen. Artikeln visar att folkbildning blir sätt att hantera krisen på ett flertal sätt, genom att återge myndigheters budskap till grupper som annars kunde varit svåra att nå, men också att krishanteringen blir ett sätt att initiera utbildningsinitiativ på bred och fokuserad front, både inom organisationen och till dess målgrupper.
If you are interested in Corinna’s outstanding work, you can join via Zoom and in case that you need technical assistance for joining please contact history[at]abe.kth.se.
Here is the abstract of this valuable contribution:
The Arctic has long been perceived as a static, timeless place of shielded wilderness. This perception extended to the reindeer as both part of the Arctic environment and of traditional Indigenous livelihoods. Physically, the reindeer of Swedish Sápmi looks largely the same today as it did a century ago – an animal ostensibly unaltered and unchanged.
Nevertheless, this thesis argues that the reindeer has undergone a number of fundamental shifts of meaning in Swedish Sápmi over the past century. The dissertation asks how the reindeer’s roles and functions evolved in Swedish Sápmi from ca. 1920 to 2020 and examines how, why and by whom the reindeer has been negotiated. It explores the changing understanding of the reindeer’s role in society, studies emerging idea(l)s and purposes, and considers what mark they left on the animal.
This study is a history of the ideas, discourses and practices that shaped the modern reindeer. It examines ways of understanding and making reindeer. At different points in time, varying combinations of actors have sought to control, shape and re-define this Arctic animal. The meaning attached to it changed as a result, and with it reindeer-related policies. Swedish state policies towards the Sámi and reindeer husbandry have especially deeply impacted the way reindeer were understood and governed. Over the course of a century, policy efforts aimed to control the reindeer’s movements, health, reproduction and death, with varying success. Discourse and associated practices generated multiple versions of the reindeer. In terms of these changing versions, the thesis conceptualizes the reindeer as a changing technology and a socially constructed resource.
Five empirical chapters trace how the reindeer was negotiated, especially between the Swedish state and Sámi herders. They show how the reindeer’s role and purpose has been under repeated negotiation and discuss some of these roles. Restrictive border and grazing policies made the reindeer a trespasser at the turn of the twentieth century. From the 1950s onwards, a modernist improvement project envisioned it as economic resource. In the course of such rationalization efforts, the reindeer became an object of techno-scientific interest. Improvers attempted to transform reindeer into productive, reliable meat machines. These efforts faced a severe setback when the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 contaminated considerable numbers of reindeer, turning it into a toxic animal and a threatened bearer of Sámi culture. In more recent years, we find the reindeer at an intersection of consumer demand for natural foods and Sámi agency. It has become a symbol for claims to self-determination. Sámi champions of food sovereignty and land rights have started to reclaim and promote the reindeer as traditional and wholesome source of food through the Slow Food Sápmi movement.
A closer look at these re-definitions reveals that the reindeer is no timeless, passive backdrop to human action. The reindeer itself has history – it is a historical animal with agency of its own, able to challenge efforts of control. Nevertheless, the different notions of the reindeer materialized into policies and ways of governing not only the reindeer but also their Indigenous herders. The (re)negotiations of what reindeer are or ought to be provide insights into the relationship between representatives of the Swedish state and of Sámi reindeer husbandry, as well as colonial legacies and persistently unequal power relations.
In Swedish:
Arktis har länge uppfattats som en statisk, tidlös och avskild ödemark. Denna uppfattning gäller även renar, som setts som en del av både den arktiska miljön och urfolkens traditionella levnadssätt. Renen i svenska Sápmi ser fysiskt i stort sett likadan ut idag som för hundra år sedan – ett djur som till synes förblev oförändrat genom tiden.
Ändå argumenterar denna avhandling för att renen har genomgått ett antal grundläggande betydelseförskjutningar i svenska Sápmi under det senaste århundradet. Den utforskar den föränderliga förståelsen av renens roll i samhället och den studerar framväxande idéer och syften och hur dessa påverkade djuret. Avhandlingen frågar hur renens roller och funktioner har utvecklats i svenska Sápmi mellan 1920 och 2020 och undersöker hur, varför och av vem renarnas förvandling har genomförts.
Denna studie är en historia som innefattar de idéer, diskurser och metoder som formade den moderna renen. Den undersöker sätt att förstå och “göra” renen som djur men också som inslag i ekonomi och samhälle. Vid olika tillfällen har olika kombinationer av aktörer försökt kontrollera, forma och omdefiniera detta arktiska djur. Som resultat förändrades dess betydelse, och därmed även den politiska styrningen av renen. Särskilt den svenska statliga politiken gentemot samerna och renskötseln har djupt påverkat hur renar förstods och styrdes. Under ett helt århundrade har politiska ansträngningar syftat till att kontrollera renens rörelser, hälsa, reproduktion och död, med varierande framgång. Diskurs och tillhörande praktiker genererade flera versioner av renen. Med tanke på dessa föränderliga versioner konceptualiserar avhandlingen renen som en socialt konstruerad resurs.
Fem empiriska kapitel spårar hur renen förhandlades, speciellt mellan svenska staten och samiska renskötare. Restriktiv gräns- och renbetespolitik gjorde renen till en inkräktare vid 1900- talets början. Från 1950-talet och framåt sågs renen som en ekonomisk resurs i ett statligt modernistikt förbättringsprojekt. Under dessa rationaliseringsinsatser blev renen till ett objekt av teknovetenskapligt intresse. Reformatorer försökte omvandla renar till produktiva, pålitliga köttmaskiner. Dessa ansträngningar mötte ett allvarligt bakslag när kärnkraftsolyckan i Tjernobyl 1986 förorenade ett stort antal renar och gjorde det till ett giftigt djur och en hotad bärare av samisk kultur. På senare år ser vi renarna i skärningen mellan konsumenternas efterfrågan på naturliga livsmedel och samisk agens. Renen har blivit en symbol för anspråk på självbestämmande, där samiska förkämpare för livsmedelssuveränitet och markrättigheter har börjat återta och främja renen som traditionell samisk och hälsosam matkälla genom Slow Food Sápmi-rörelsen.
En närmare granskning av dessa omdefinitioner visar att renen inte är någon tidlös, passiv bakgrund till människornas handlingar. Renen har en egen historia – det är ett historiskt djur med egen agens, som kan utmana kontrollförsök. Ändå omsattes de olika föreställningarna om renen till politik och sätt att styra inte bara renen utan också dess samiska ägare. Att förstå (om)förhandlingarna om vad en ren är eller borde vara ger insikter i förhållandet mellan representanter för den svenska staten och samiska renskötare, liksom förhållandets koloniala arv och kvarvarande ojämna maktförhållanden.
Otso Kortekangas, postdoc at the division, has written a new book. In “Language, Citizenship, and Sámi Education in the Nordic North, 1900-1940” Otso investigates how Sámi people were affected by nation state education doctrines in Finland’s, Norway’s and Sweden’s North.
One important part of the political context in the genesis of this book is the announcement of the Finnish government to form a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2019. Its task is to investigate, showcase and discuss injustice and oppression done by the Finnish state towards the Sámi, with the aim of reconciliation and a better future.
The year 2021 will witness the start of the work of a Sámi Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Finland. A TRC is already working in Norway, and in Sweden, the planning for a Sámi TRC is under way. The main aim of the TRCs in each country is to review and assess earlier governmental policies targeting the indigenous Sámi population in Norway, Finland and Sweden, make Sámi voices and experiences visible, and to point toward ways forward.
Differently from the Canadian TRC (2008–2015) that focused on indigenous education and residential schools, the Nordic Sámi TRCs will take a comprehensive approach to historical policies targeting the Sámi and, in the case of Norway, the Finnish-speaking Kven minority. However, governmental educational policies will be a very important theme for the commissions to investigate, as assimilation and segregation applied in education is one of the external forces that have molded Sámi culture the most during the 20th century.
As elucidated in my book Language, Citizenship, and Sámi Education in the Nordic North, 1900-1940 (MQUP 2021), different educational actors had different approaches. Sámi education was traditionally organized by the Lutheran churches in each country. The high priority the Lutheran dogma ascribes to the intelligibility of the gospel and Christianity education by large entailed that Sámi language varieties were in use as languages of instruction in many schools with Sámi pupils in the Nordic north. Gradually, the governments of Norway, Sweden, and Finland took over the responsibility for elementary education from the church around the turn of the century 1900. The governmental educational authorities and politicians downgraded the importance of Sámi language in education, as quality of education and the mastering of each country’s majority language became paramount educational aims. In Norway and Finland, assimilation to the majority population was the norm in the governmental elementary schools, with certain exceptions. The nomadic reindeer herding Sámi in Sweden’s mountain regions were de jure separated to their own group, with the obligation to place their children in specific schools. These so called nomad schools were designed after the idealized notion Swedish elementary authorities had on the “true” Sámi way of life and efficient reindeer herding.
Sámi poet and teacher Pedar Jalvi in 1905. Credit: Armas Launis. Copyright: CC BY SA 4.0.
The educational reforms of the early twentieth century that led, in many individual cases, to the tragic loss of Sámi language, had a brighter side, as well. As in many other instances of minority education, the skills and knowledge Sámi pupils gained in the schools had, at least in some cases, an empowering function. Most of the powerhouses spearheading the early and mid-twentieth century Sámi cultural movements and the Sámi opposition to government policies were teachers, educated at schools and on teachers’ training courses to navigate both the Sámi and the majority culture contexts. These teachers were pioneers of promoting Sámi culture as an active, independent culture that existed alongside and independent of other Nordic cultures and states.
While the TRCs in each country are paramount for the future relations of the Sámi and the majority populations, it is important to keep in mind that the Sámi existed and exist also outside of the frame and borders of each of the three nation states. There is a certain risk of nationalization and further minoritization of the Sámi in Norway, Sweden and Finland if the various Sámi groups are always first and foremost treated as a national minority rather than a transnational population. It is critical that this historical transnational fact, together with the diversity of voices and perspectives within Sámi education, are included in the work of the TRCs in each country. Only by so doing will it be possible to reproduce a rightful picture of historical events as a base for future reconciliation processes.
If you are interested in reading more, check out Otso’s book here.
the division’s Higher Seminar Series. Her dissertation with the title 
