Upcoming Mid-Seminar: Domingos Langa on Universities and Innovation in Africa

Achim Klüppelberg , 2023-03-27

Mid-Seminar: Universities and innovation in Africa: Contemporary histories of innovation policy and practice in a selection of African universities

Doctoral student: Domingos Langa
Supervisors: Sverker Sörlin, KTH; Urban Lundberg, Dalarna University College; Erik Arnold, Technopolis; Teboho Moja, New York University
Opponent: Charles Edquist, researcher and Holder of the Ruben Rausing Chair in Innovation Research at CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden

Join and let’s discuss Domingos’ work!

Time: Mon 2023-04-03 13.15 – 14.45

Location: the seminar room at the Division (Teknikringen 74 D, level 5)

Language: English

Brief introduction of the Kappa and its structure

The primary goal of this study is to understand how university innovation policies and practices have evolved in three African countries:

Mozambique, Kenya, and Uganda. In this thesis, I present a review of the literature on higher education and innovation in Africa, as well as the study objectives and research questions, key concepts, methods, and sources for the first two papers related to the Mozambican case study, a summary of the first two papers, and the full papers.

Kostenlose Illustrationen zum Thema Schild

Breathing Swiss air – A research stay at the University of Bern

Sofia Jonsson , 2023-01-09

Text: Alicia Gutting, doctoral student at the Division

The fun thing about writing a PhD thesis on the nuclear Rhine in Sweden is that it is actually necessary for me to visit the nuclear sites on the Rhine as well as local archives. My three supervisors and I therefore decided that it would be an enriching experience to spend some time at the Section of Economic, Social and Environmental History of the History Department at the University of Bern. In this rather fast-paced academic world, I wanted to get the most out of my stay as well as get to know fellow historians in Bern. Therefore, a three months visit from the beginning of October until the end of December sounded suitable. Having all the archives and the nuclear sites at my doorstep was also a major motivation to stay a little bit longer.

My plan was to use the time to focus on finishing two articles. Both these articles deal partially with the Swiss nuclear development as well as cooling water negotiations between Switzerland and Germany and the accompanying risks. I dreamt of being in Switzerland, taking the good air of Bern in and the articles would magically write themselves. This clearly did not happen. However, through a presentation of my work at the history department I received valuable input from Swiss colleagues. Some critical, which I very much appreciated, but mostly very positive and insightful. The discussion showed me that I am on the right track and that my work is still a research desideratum, even in Switzerland.

The second-last week of my stay in Switzerland was the absolute highlight of the whole three months. My main supervisor Per Högselius took the time to visit me for five days. We started with a day at the state archive in Aarau, where we looked at maps of the Beznau nuclear power plant. Beznau, built in 1969, is an especially interesting case as it is the first Swiss nuclear power plant. It is also the oldest operative nuclear power plant up until today. Apart from that it uses a freshwater cooling system and therefore does not cool the water down with the help of cooling towers. Per and I could take a close look at the significantly warmer water that was led back into the considerably small river Aare.

The NPP Beznau and one of its cooling water outlets

Before we visited Beznau, we went to see the newest nuclear power plant Leibstadt, built in 1984. When we just got out of the car, Per received a call from a journalist from the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. His expertise was requested on the Swedish nuclear power plant Ringhals and the current electricity prices in Sweden. This turned our field trip into a much more current issue than we had originally anticipated.

Per on the phone while looking at Leibstadt’s cooling tower

On our last day we went to see the Mühleberg nuclear power plant, which was decommissioned in 2019. Mühleberg was built from 1967-1971 also without a cooling tower. For builders of nuclear power plants this was the last chance to build without a cooling tower as Switzerland made them compulsory in 1971. What is also interesting is that Mühleberg is located above Lake Biel and the planners roughly calculated with the lake being able to diffuse the warm cooling water. The hope was that Mühleberg’s cooling water would not interfere with the cooling capacity of the Aare further downstream.

Mühleberg NPP with the hydro power plant Mühleberg upstream, which secured the cooling water supply

Apart from looking at nuclear power plants and maps of the area, Per and I had also the chance to present our work during a workshop on the nuclear renaissance by the Research Network Sustainable Future at the University of Basel. During the workshop different researchers from all kind of fields presented their findings on nuclear power and its potential future. We got to hear about the ethical side of nuclear power, in what way nuclear power plants are megaprojects and about the entanglement of the industry with the military concerning nuclear in the UK. With our presentation on the risk of warming rivers in a warming climate, we rounded up the theoretical discussions from the morning with case studies from the Rhine, the Elbe and the Danube.

Nuclear Power in Times of Climate Change and the Water Risks Around It – Environmental History Now

Sofia Jonsson , 2022-11-14

Alicia Gutting is one of three doctoral students, active in the ERC-project Nuclearwaters at the Division and supervised by prof. Per Högselius. In the thesis „The Nuclear Rhine“ she is researching transnational nuclear risk perception in Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany from the 1960s to 2018. In November the Environmental History Now blog published a text by Alicia on nuclear power, climate change and water risks focusing geographically on the Rhine river. Read an extract below, and get the link to the full text.

Low water levels at sunset, Upper Rhine in Karlsruhe Maxau (2018, next to the Rhine bridge between Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate). Photo by Alicia Gutting.

When I decided to write my PhD thesis on the history of the nuclear Rhine in the summer of 2018, the front pages of the newspapers were dominated by news of the record summer and that several nuclear power plants on the Rhine had to be shut down. Headlines focused on the topics of the low water level of the Rhine and to what extent the use of cooling water can affect flora and fauna, but also the danger posed by a lack of cooling water for the operation of nuclear power plants. By then, I had already planned to take a closer look at the effects of heat waves on the operation of nuclear power plants. In the course of my research, I found out that while heat waves are a problem, the thermal load on water bodies caused by the recirculation of cooling water is an equally pressing issue.

The Rhine River basin is, in relation to its flow per watershed, the most thermally polluted river basin globally mainly due to nuclear power plants. Thermoelectric power plants such as coal and nuclear power plants are major drivers of thermal pollution. Even though the European Union has set a limit of three degrees Celsius, the limit is exceeded by five degrees Celsius every year. The majority of thermal excess heat comes from nuclear and coal power plants that were built in the 1970s and 1980s.[1]

At the end of the 1960s, a planning boom began in the countries along the Rhine. Switzerland was one of the countries that wanted to roll out nuclear power in a big way and even slowly turned away from its role as the pioneer of hydropower. In addition, Germany and France also wanted to use the water resources of the Rhine for cooling purposes, which quickly led to conflicts on the fair distribution of cooling water. Switzerland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands planned to build roughly around twenty-five nuclear power plants in the Rhine River basin (including the Aare and the Moselle), which would have made the Rhine one of the most nuclearized river basins in the world.[2] Especially problematic was that energy companies were tempted to build nuclear power plants without external cooling systems as experts deemed the water resources of the Rhine to be sufficient.

In Germany, nuclear accidents hardly played a role in the early risk perception of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This is because the broad public knowledge about the extreme effects of a nuclear accident was almost non-existent. Instead, the focus was on the immediate effects of nuclear power plants that were unavoidable during operation, such as thermal pollution of water bodies. It was also in these early years that water management authorities were the most vocal administrative opponents of nuclear energy. Political supporters of nuclear energy tried to counteract the opposition by handing over water competences to the Federal Ministry of Atomic Energy. However, this decision did not lead to the desired decrease in criticism. In the 1970s, criticism regarding water became even louder when it came to the thermal pollution of the Rhine and the Weser.[3]

Source: Nuclear Power in Times of Climate Change and the Water Risks Around It – Environmental History Now.

CfP: Book in EU-initiative SOS Climate Waterfront

Achim Klüppelberg , 2022-10-31

Linking Research and Innovation on Waterfront through Technology for Excellence of Resilience to face Climate Change

The shrink of bio-diversity, unprecedented climate swings and the raising costs of maintenance are symptoms of a planet struggling with Climate Change. To reestablish a healthy condition, cities seek to develop strategies of adaptation to make the built environment more resilient to face floods, droughts, high tides, tropical hurricanes and urban heat islands effect. Resilient urban environments are able to face the present challenges like sponges are able to absorb without degrade.

The concept of sponge implies porosity, urban waterscapes, sustainable strategy and cultural heritage. It requires a shift in the way cities have been designed in terms of dealing with Green infrastructure; planning with nature; regionalization, infrastructure; transportation; sustainable urban development and circular economy. Sponges take and give, they are passive and active and open a new realm of opportunities. Which urban strategies should be implemented? How solutions to adapt and mitigate will be able to enhance the resilience of cities?

Sustainable open solution on waterfront, facing climate change emerges from interdisciplinary and comparative cases to preserve the setting/world/locality. Recent research that proposes innovative resilience methodologies is also increasingly relevant.

Call for papers

SOS Climate Waterfront invites original high-quality papers presenting current research, accommodating a broad spectrum of approaches ranging from speculative, informal investigations to conventional scientific research, including but not limited to the following topics:

Sustainable strategy and Cultural heritage
Urban waterscapes
Porosity

This is a call for a peer reviewed book. Paper acceptance will be subject to a two-stage reviewing process, consisting of an initial abstract review and a later double-blind peer review of full-length manuscripts. The paper publication will be subject to review acceptance, compliance with submission deadlines and formatting guidelines.

OS Climate Waterfront Editorial Board

Pedro Ressano Garcia Lusófona University of Humanities and Technologies
Maria Rita Pais Lusófona University of Humanities and Technologies
Claudia Mattogno La Sapienza University of Rome
Tullia Digiacomo La Sapienza University of Rome
Lucyna Nyka Gdansk University of Technology
Justyna Borucka Gdansk University of Technology
Alkmini Paka Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Anastasia Tzaka Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Katarina Larsen KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm
Lina Suleiman KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm

Call for Papers as PDF – Details of How to Apply

*Photo by Mathias Wichman, Unsplash

New article: Out of steam? A social science and humanities research agenda for geothermal energy

Sofia Jonsson , 2022-09-12

Andreas Roos, researcher at the Division and the EHL, active in the Harnessing the heat below our feets project, newly published an open access article together with Rozanne C. Spijkerboera, Ethemcan Turhana, Marco Billi, SofiaVargas-Payera, Jose Opazo and Marco Armiero in the paper Energy Research & Social Science. Read the abstarct below and follow the link for full text.

Photo by Punyashree Venkatram on Unsplash

Abstract

The potential of geothermal energy for energy transition is increasingly recognized by governments around the world. Whether geothermal energy is a sustainable source of heat and/or electricity depends on how it is deployed in specific contexts. Therefore, it is striking that there is only limited attention to geothermal energy from a social science and humanities (SSH) perspective. Geothermal energy is largely conceptualized as a technological and/or geological issue in both science and practice. This perspective article aims to go beyond such conceptualizations by positioning social science research as an important lens to explore the promises and pitfalls of geothermal energy. We first provide an overview of the current state of geothermal energy as a decarbonization strategy. Second, we move on to review the existing literature. This review shows that studies that do address geothermal energy from an SSH perspective tend to be of a descriptive nature and lack analytical diversity. Third, we discuss three complementary theoretical approaches that are used in the social sciences to observe and address other forms of energy and energy transition. We believe that socio-technical assemblages, systems, and imaginaries can provide fruitful analytical lenses to study the promises, pitfalls and spatialization of geothermal energy. We conclude the paper with a research agenda and call for further engagement with this topic in SSH research, with attention to specificities of global South and North contexts.

Keywords

Assemblage

Socio-technical systems

Imaginaries

Infrastructures

Narratives

Geothermal

Read the full article, open access: Out of steam? A social science and humanities research agenda for geothermal energy

To Durham by train

Sofia Jonsson , 2022-05-09

Text by Nina Wormbs

I received an invitation to go to Durham university to speak at a conference and engage with PhD students. I immediately considered it, but I also let my host know that having me over would probably cost more, as taking the train is more costly these days. And I like to take the train. The offer remained and I said yes.

Come spring and planning, I postponed this for too long. Perhaps due to the war, perhaps because of workload. It worked fine in the end, but in hindsight I would most likely have chosen a slightly different route back home.

Stockholm – Durham is rather long. I discarded ferries early on since I now know – through an earlier mistake – know that they are not good from a CO2 perspective. I also decided not to sleep on the train. The reason was mainly Covid and the lack of flexibility if you want to have your own compartment. Thus I was left with travelling during the day and stopping on the way. Since I have family in Lund, that was a natural place for my first night.

That allowed me to make an early start on the travel across Germany for Köln. The trip had four legs: I changed trains in Copenhagen, Fredericia and Hamburg. This went smooth and without incidents. I arrived in Köln and had time for a long walk in the city and then dinner with a friend who also hosted me for the night. Great stop.

Next day I took the high-speed train to Brussels and then the Eurostar to London St Pancras. This gave me ample time in the afternoon and night in London and also the possibility for a long walk the next morning. Lovely as they say.

The train for Durham left from King’s Cross which is next to St Pancras. This train was also without incident and I arrived less than three hours later in a magnificent city. The river Wear makes a loop around a hill on which the old town with its castle and world heritage cathedral is built. It is to a high degree a university town, with most of the campus south of the inner city.

The conference and PhD spring school lasted four days and I left on the fifth. When I got around to make reservations, options were few due to Easter, and I ended up taking the Eurostar to Paris. That was a late train to start with, which also became delayed. Still, I managed to walk around and smell Paris before I went to sleep in a tiny little room on La Fayette.

Easter Saturday started with a high-speed train to Köln via Brussels. No worries. In Köln I had time to buy lunch and walk a bit around the cathedral which is just outside of the station. However, the train to Hamburg turned out to be delayed and I could have missed my connection. The train waited, however, which was a relief. Normally the trip between Copenhagen and Lund is effortless, but during Easter construction work was undertaken and I had to take the bus between the airport and Hyllie. In the end it did not take longer actually, but was slightly more inconvenient. I was rather tired when I put my head on the pillow, after that 15 hour journey. I stayed on in Lund and eventually managed the last leg to Stockholm.

With this many trips, an interrail mobile pass is the cheapest option. The app mostly worked well and a mobile pass is really useful as it also has search functions, Q&A, community and is flexible. I made reservations on all trains, also those where I did not need to.

Stockholm – Durham can perhaps be done in two days. But it would be tough and you are vulnerable to delays. I only had two delays and only one was serious. With more travel days the risk diminishes of unexpected major changes to your itinerary.

And mobility becomes more travel and less transport.

Coming up: Higher Seminar Series in Spring 2022

Achim Klüppelberg , 2022-01-10

Gott nytt år! – Happy New Year! After snow-induced Christmas and winter holidays, the division is slowly but surely bustling back into busy work mode.

Our Higher Seminar Series, the colloquium of our division, starts again in two weeks. We are very glad to announce that Aliaksandr Piahanau, Wenner-Gren postdoc at the division, will be presenting his ongoing research. His talk “The Great Energy Supply Crisis: Fuels & Politics in Central Europe, 1918–21″ will be given on 24 January at 13.15-14.45 Stockholm time. If you want to join us from outside KTH, please send an email to higher-seminar@kth.se before 10 am (CET) the day you wish to attend.

Abstract

Even a short breakdown in fuel supplies can have profound and dramatic consequences for modern economies. This paper explores a major coal shortage in Central Europe after WW1 which shook local societies for two years. The dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 provides a narrower context to this study, while its immediate focus lies upon the development of diplomatic and economic relationships between Czechoslovakia – a WW1 winner state and an important coal exporter, and Hungary – a war losing state, which was a net coal importer. Underlining the scale of the Hungarian reliance on fuels from Czechoslovakia, this paper suggests that this dependence was one of the chief arguments that motivated Budapest to cede Slovakia to Prague’s control and, in general, to accept the peace terms proposed at the Paris conference. The paper demonstrates that cross-border energy interdependence substantially affected diplomatic relations in Central Europe immediately after WW1, privileging coal-exporting states over coal-importing states.

Karte, Kartographie, Reliefkarte, Berge, Mitteleuropa

Apart from this exciting talk focussed on the subject of Eastern Central European History, many more presentations are coming up. Here is the current schedule:

24 January 13.15-14.45 CET: The Great Energy Supply Crisis: Fuels & Politics in Central Europe, 1918–21. Aliaksandr Piahanau, Wenner-Gren postdoc, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

7 February 13.15-14.45 CET: PM for PhD project. Erik Ljungberg, doctoral student, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

21 February 13.15-14.45 CET: Air Epistemologies: Practices of Ecopoetry in Ibero-American Atmospheres. Nuno Marques, postdoc, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

7 March 13.15-14.45 CET: From modern to modest imaginary? Learning about urban water infrastructure by comparing Northern and Southern cities. Timos Karpouzoglou, researcher, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. Collaborators in this work: Mary Lawhon, Sumit Vij, Pär Blomqvist, David Nilsson, Katarina Larsen.

21 March 13.15-14.45 CET: Warriors, wizards, and seers: representations of Saami in 17th and 18th century Sweden. Vincent Roy-Di Piazza, Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, University of Oxford, UK

4 April 13.15-14.45 CET: Historian’s toolbox: Technical solutions for doing research. Kati Lindström and Anja Moun Rieser, Division of History of Science, technology and Environment

2 May 13.15-14.45 CET: Mid-seminar in doctoral education. Gloria Samosir, doctoral student, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

16 May 13.15-14.45 CET: Nuclear Nordics: Histories of Radioactive Waste in the Nordic Region. Melina Antonia Buns, visiting postdoc KTH

30 May 13.15-14.45 CET: A theoretical seminar on Heritage and Decay. Lize-Marie Van Der Watt, researcher, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

13 June 13.15-14.45 CET: Science, the arts and engineering – dialogues and co-creative methods between KTH and Färgfabriken. Katarina Larsen and David Nilsson, researchers, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

You can find the full and always updated Higher Seminar schedule here.

The Afterlives of a Windowfarm

Sofia Jonsson , 2021-03-22

Anna Svensson was a doctoral student with the Division and the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, and successfully defended her thesis A Utopian Quest for Universal Knowledge – Diachronic Histories of Botanical Collections between the Sisteenth Century and the Present in 2017, when she left us for new flowers to pick. Anna was our unofficial florist, and could often be seen decorating even the darkest day with brilliant flowers and plants. One of her contributions during her time with us, other than being a wonderful colleague, was the window farm. Today’s blogpost is a text about the story of the Window Farm, written by Anna for the Stories of the Anthropocene Festival (26–29 October 2016).

This is the story of a window farm – the beginning, the end, and the afterlife.

This story begins with the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment (home of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory) moving to a newly built, climate controlled premises. It had a spacious kitchen and big windows. As these windows could not be opened, however, the air felt stale and dry. Building a windowfarm was a practical measure to improve our common working environment, improving the air quality and making ourselves feel more at home.

Over the past two years, these plants have breathed with us, and the humming of the pump and the dripping along the chains have filled the pauses in our conversations over lunch. The first attempt was a mediocre success: a few plants (basil and lemon balm) died almost immediately; the ivy and coffee plants fared much better, but eventually succumbed to systemic problems. The nutrient solution evaporated too quickly – we added plastic pipes along the chains to minimise splashing, but this did not fix the problem – eventually causing the system to clog up completely.

Learning from past mistakes, the next reincarnation of the windowfarm in the fall 2015 only contained plants that have robust root systems and survive for a long time in water without the addition of nutrient solution. The result was astonishing. The spider plants grew explosively, sending out shoot after shoot like a verdant fire-work show. (The pump died and was replaced.) Gradually, however, this enthusiastic growth became a cause for concern. The many shoots were thirsty, and eager roots began to seek their way through the water holes at the bottom of the bottles and creep along the chain. Several Monday mornings I was greeted by the silence of a system run dry. The roots and chains were so interlaced that replanting was not an option. We could either dismantle it or watch it wither.

Since taking it down, it has left an emptiness in the kitchen. I still register the silence that meant the tanks were empty or the system had clogged. In a concrete way, the windowfarm has played out like a pageant of the technofix, a microcosmic drama between the biosphere and technosphere that hovers between comedy and tragedy. Is this a story of survival? The windowfarm is itself a DIY innovation (and later corporate venture) encouraging a growing global community of windowfarmers to green the city beginning with each individual home, a promise towards self-sufficiency. What initially seemed so straightforward gave way to complication after complication, in which the very successful growth of the second planting required its destruction: there are limits to growth in the technosphere.

What, then, is the afterlife of the windowfarm? The shoots have been rooting in glass jars along the kitchen windowsill, with the main plants in pots of water. The torn bottles and rusty chains cannot be used again. While the windowfarm made the office kitchen more home-like for me, the university is not my home and with the migratory life of an academic I could not ensure its survival through the empty summer months. It became a burden.

Politics, industry, and tourism: The conceptual construction of the blue highway/Blå vägen: Politik, industri och turism

Sofia Jonsson , 2021-01-25

Division researcher Fredrik Bertilsson is published in the scientific journal the Journal of Transport History. In the article Politics, industry, and tourism: The conceptual construction of the blue highway Fredrik focus on Swedish governmental reports and national press between the 1950s and the 1970s to examine how the Blue Highway was conceptualized. The Highway runs from Mo i Rana on the Norwegian Atlantic coast through Västerbotten in Sweden, Ostrobothnia in Finland and to Pudozh near Petrozavodsk (Petroskoj) in Russia. Today seen upon as a tourist attraction, but the highway played a role in both political and industrial agendas in the mid-twentieth century. Please find the abstract and link to the publication as well as a blog post (in Swedish) from Fredrik below.

Fredrik Bertilsson came to the Division of History of Technology, Science, and Environment in 2018. His main research focus is within the area of knowledge management and research policy.

Abstract

This article contributes to the research on the expansion of the Swedish post-war road network by illuminating the role of tourism in addition to political and industrial agendas. Specifically, it examines the “conceptual construction” of the Blue Highway, which currently stretches from the Atlantic Coast of Norway, traverses through Sweden and Finland, and enters into Russia. The focus is on Swedish governmental reports and national press between the 1950s and the 1970s. The article identifies three overlapping meanings attached to the Blue Highway: a political agenda of improving the relationships between the Nordic countries, industrial interests, and tourism. Political ambitions of Nordic community building were clearly pronounced at the onset of the project. Industrial actors depended on the road for the building of power plants and dams. The road became gradually more connected with the view of tourism as the motor of regional development.
Full article: Politics, industry, and tourism: The conceptual construction of the blue highway

Sininen tie sign by Santeri Viinamäki . https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sininen_tie_sign_20190603.jpg

Blå vägen: Politik, industri och turism

Fredrik Bertilsson

Många av samhällets grundläggande funktioner bygger på vägtransporter. Utbyggnaden av det svenska vägnätet under efterkrigstiden spelade stor roll för samhällets utveckling. Vägar är inte bara materiella konstruktioner. Meningsskapandet kring vägar pågår i förhållande till bredare sociala, ekonomiska, politiska och kulturella förändringsprocesser. I historien om det moderna vägnätets expansion under andra halvan av 1900-talet står ofta den tekniska expertisen eller betydelsen av personbilen i centrum. Turismens inflytande har väckt mindre intresse i den historiska forskningen. Blå vägen är ett exempel på hur politiska initiativ, den industriella utvecklingen och turistnäringen samverkade.

Blå vägen går nu från Mo i Rana vid den norska atlantkusten genom Västerbotten i Sverige, Österbotten i Finland och till Pudozj nära Petrozavodsk (Petroskoj) i Ryssland. Numer betraktas vägen vanligen som en turistväg men flera intressen låg bakom dess tillkomst. Initiativet till att bygga vad som senare blev Blå vägen togs på 1950-talet men det fanns färdvägar och marknadsplatser längs sträckan långt tidigare. Vägen mellan Umeå och Lycksele byggdes under första delen av 1800-talet. Blå vägen invigdes 1964 och blev i början av 1970-talet en europaväg. Namnet Blå vägen anspelar på att vägen går längs med Umeälven i Sverige men det lär i själva verket ha tillkommit efter att vägen markerats ut på en karta med en blåfärgad penna.

Blå vägen förankrades i ett politiskt arbete med att förbättra relationerna mellan Sverige och Norge efter andra världskriget. Det skapades en större rörelsefrihet mellan de nordiska länderna. Från 1952 kunde skandinaver resa utan pass mellan Sverige, Norge och Danmark. Passfriheten sträckte sig till Finland 1953 och Island 1955. Passkontrollen för samtliga resande flyttades till Nordens yttre gränser 1958. Det fanns under mitten av 1960-talet förhoppningar om att Blå vägen skulle dras ända in i dåvarande Sovjetunionen, vilket skulle bidra till att öppna upp de rigida gränserna mellan Öst och Väst under kalla kriget. Det dröjde till slutet av 1990-talet innan den vägsträckningen blev verklighet.

Den stora statliga planen för utbyggnaden av svenska vägnätet som presenterades i slutet av 1950-talet utgjorde en grundplåt för moderniseringen av de svenska vägarna. Bättre vägar skulle lösa dels ett kapacitetsproblem som skulle uppstå när fler fordon måste trängas på vägarna, dels ett säkerhetsproblem: trafikolyckorna befarades öka om vägarna inte förbättrades. Blå vägen inrymdes inte i den ambitiösa vägplanen. Vägen finansierades istället av Vattenfall och genom kommunala insatser.

Aerial view of Umeå Arts Campus. Wikimedia Commons.

Industriella aktörer hade tydliga intressen i en ny väg. En väg till en isfri norsk hamn skulle gynna den omfattande transporten och exporten av trä och virke. Viktiga delar av den väg som fanns var stängd vintertid. Skogsindustrins intresse i en moderniserad väg förstärktes av att flottningen alltmer ersattes av lastbilstransporter. Det fanns också ett tydligt intresse av att rusta upp den befintliga vägen för att klara av den trafik som uppstod i samband med att vattenkraftverken i Umeälven byggdes.

Fler intressenter involverades successivt. Den så kallade Blå Vägen-föreningen bildades i början av 1960-talet för att påskynda vägbygget. Föreningen bestod av representanter från politiken, näringslivet och turistnäringen. Det fanns representanter även från Norge och Finland. Kommersiella intressen stod ofta i fokus. Blå vägen-föreningen fick draghjälp av den svenska pressen där den kunde föra ut sitt budskap och stärka intresset för vägen både lokalt, regionalt och nationellt. Det gjordes även program i radio.

Blå vägen betraktades som en lösning på flera stora problem som Västerbottens inland ansågs stå inför, inte minst vad gällde avfolkning och arbetslöshet. Byggandet av vägar hade varit ett sätt att skapa arbetstillfällen under lågkonjunkturerna under 1920- och 1930 talen. Vägarbetet var ett säsongsbetonat komplement till övriga inkomster men det genomfördes vanligen under svåra omständigheter och ersättningen var ofta låg. Från ett längre perspektiv var det ett led i en omställning från ett jordbruksbaserat samhälle till ett där industrier och servicenäringar har större betydelse.

The Blue Highway, Kattisavan Västerbotten. Wikimedia Commons.

Vägens betydelse för turistnäringen betonades allt tydligare. Västerbotten låg länge efter andra områden vad gällde turismen. Redan i slutet av 1800-talet fanns turistförbindelser till fjällvärlden i Abisko. Turistnäringen i Jämtland var också utvecklad. När Västerbottens turism drog igång på allvar var det inte längre aktuellt att satsa på järnvägar. Bilen betraktades dessutom som ”folkligare” än järnvägen.

Blå vägen laddades med stora förväntningar. I riksmedia målades en bild upp av en omfattande turisttrafik. Enligt en uppskattning i Expressen (26/7 1963) skulle hundratusentals turister åka längs Blå vägen under det första året och sedan väntades trafiken öka. Dagens Nyheter (7/12 1963) påpekade att Hemavans fjällhotell kunde byggas ut i samband med Blå vägens expansion. Turismen till skidanläggningarna i Västerbottensfjällen är en viktig inkomstkälla. Det går att spekulera i vilken betydelse turistekonomin fått för utvecklingen av skidnäringen i stort. Från Tärna kommer flera av Sveriges mest kända skidåkare, bland andra Anja Pärsson, Ingmar Stenmark och Stig Strand.

Marknadsföringen av Blå vägen spelade på stereotyper eller fantasier om norra Sverige. Det talades om en omvandling av landskapet, ett slags återanvändning av det gamla jordbrukssamhället som skulle bli till pittoreska vyer för moderna turister. Enligt Göteborgs-Tidningen (21/6 1964) gav en resa längs Blå vägen ”hela skalan av det svenska landskapets olika nyanser”, dvs. en modern universitetsstad i Umeå, bördig jordbruksbygd i kustlandet, gles bebyggelse i inlandet, ”milsvida skogar” och en ”fascinerande fjällvärld där snön ligger kvar året runt”. Samtidigt skulle turisterna få ta del av det moderna samhällets alla bekvämligheter.

Korpberget, Raven mountain, in Lycksele, with the E12 Blue Highway crossing the Ume river. Photo by Mikael Lindmark, WikiCommons

I många nutida sammanhang beskrivs Blå vägen främst som en turistväg utan att kopplingarna görs till det industriella arvet. De politiska betydelser som satte igång vägbygget träder också i bakgrunden. Den berättelsen ska ses i ljuset av de historiska narrativ som nu etableras om norra Sverige där turismen snarare än den industriella produktionen och utvinningen samt förädlingen av råvaror står i fokus. Blå vägens historia ger en inblick i hur politiska ambitioner, den industriella utvecklingen och efterkrigstidens turistnäring hängde ihop. Det skapades nya former av samverkan men det fanns också slitningar mellan olika intressen.

*

Texten bygger på en artikel som publicerats i Journal of Transport History, ”Politics, Industry and Tourism: The Conceptual Construction of the Blue Highway” (https://doi.org/10.1177/0022526620979506). Forskningen har finansierats av Brandförsäkringsverkets stiftelse för bebyggelsehistorisk forskning.

New Article: Claiming Value in a Heterogeneous Solid Waste Configuration in Kampala

Sofia Jonsson , 2020-11-19

Division and EHL researcher Henrik Ernstson, together with Mary Lawhon, University of Edinburgh and Hakimu Sseviiri, Shuaib Lwasa and Revocatus Twinomuhangib from Makerere University (Urban Action Lab) are published in a forthcoming issue of the scientific journal Urban Geography. In the peer review article “Claiming value in a heterogeneous solid waste configuration in Kampala” they examine recycling in Kampala, the city’s complex waste systems and why little waste moves through it.

Photo: Henrik Ernstson http://www.situatedupe.net/hiccup/hiccup-resources-outputs/

Abstract

Kampala has a complex set of regulations describing actors, rules and procedures for collection and transportation of waste, and requires waste to be disposed of at the landfill. Yet little of the city’s waste moves through this “formal system”. Building on wider scholarship on urban infrastructure and calls to theorize from southern cities, we examine recycling in Kampala as a heterogeneous infrastructure configuration. Kampala’s lively recycling sector is socially and materially diverse: it is comprised of entrepreneurs, publicprivate partnerships and non-governmental organizations, as well as a range of materials with different properties and value. We articulate how actors assert claims, obtain permissions, build and maintain relationships as they rework flows away from the landfill. We argue that recognizing sociomaterial heterogeneity throughout the waste configuration enables a clearer analysis of contested processes of claiming value from waste. We also demonstrate how these efforts have pressured the state to reconsider the merits of the modern infrastructure ideal as a model for what (good) infrastructure is and ought to be. Various actors assert more heterogeneous alternatives, raising the possibility of alternative modes of infrastructure which might generate better incomes and improve service provision.

This article is a part of the Heterogenous Infrastructure Configurations in Uganda (HICCUP) project, funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Henrik is a long time research fellow of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory and the Division. He is a political ecologist, lecturer at the University of Manchester, world wide resident, honorary associate professor of the University of Cape Town, a postcolonial urbanist and a filmmaker to mention only a few things on a long list of engagements. Keep up with Henrik on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhizomia

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