Competing Arctic Futures
Description
This edited collection explores how narratives about the future of the Arctic have been produced historically up until the present day. The contemporary deterministic and monolithic narrative is shown to be only one of several possible ways forward. This book problematizes the dominant prediction that there will be increased shipping and resource extraction as the ice melts and shows how this seemingly inevitable future has consequences for the action that can be taken in the present. This collection looks to historical projections about the future of the Arctic, evaluating why some voices have been heard and championed, while others remain marginalised. It questions how these historical perspectives have shaped resource allocation and governance structures to understand the forces behind change in the Arctic region. Considering the history of individuals and institutions, their political and economic networks and their perceived power, the essays in this collection offer newperspectives on how the future of the Arctic has been produced and communicated.
Reviews / Votes
"This volume stresses that it is the responsibility of academics - especially social scientists and those working in the Arctic - to tell stories that reveal how if people can change the climate, the voices they raise, the resources they render (and don't render) and the governance they enact can also lead to more just and equitable outcomes." (Mia M Bennett, The Polar Journal, October 17, 2019)
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Person
Nina Wormbs is Associate Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. She has worked on media history and recently on environmental history and climate change. She co-edited, with Christensen and Nilsson, Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change and contributed to the edited collection The New Arctic.
Content
Chapter 1 Introduction Back to the Futures of an Uncertain Arctic; Nina Wormbs.- Chapter 2 Constructing Arctic Energy Resources: The Case of the Canadian North, 1921-1980; Paul Warde.- Chapter 3 Extracting the Future in Svalbard; Dag Avango.- Chapter 4 "Red herring": The Unpredictable Soviet Fish and Soviet Power in the 1930s; Julia Lajus.- Chapter 5 A Reindeer Herding people? Political Visions of Sami Futures; Patrik Lantto.- Chapter 6 Creating a Safe Operating Space for Business: The Changing Role of Arctic Governance; Annika E. Nilsson.- Chapter 7 Voicing Bipolar Futures: The Antarctic Treaty System and Arctic Governance in Historical Perspective; Lize-Marié van der Watt and Peder Roberts.- Chapter 8 Political regime influences in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region; Alexander Gnatenko and Andrian Vlakhov.- Chapter 9 The Telecoupled Arctic: Assessing Stakeholder Narratives of Non-Arctic States; Eric Paglia.- Chapter 10 Arctic Modernism: New Urbanisation Models for the Soviet Far Northin the 1960s; Ekaterina Kalemeneva.- Chapter 11 Conclusion Anthropocene Arctic: Reductionist Imaginaries of a "New North"; Sverker Sörlin.