Senses of Place

In the spring of 1997 one Norwegian newspaper wrote about a young woman from Spain who had walked from Oslo to the North Cape. A distance of over 2100 km. She made the headlines not only because she had walked the distance, but because she said she was walking in search of her own, personal north point. Her extraordinary journey caught my curiosity, and when I read about her, I knew I wished to talk to her to find answers to my questions: What is the north? What is so important about the North Cape? The reason for my curiosity was that I was researching the meanings of the North Cape, a place located in the northernmost part of Norway and a popular tourist destination for travellers and holiday-makers from all around the globe. I intuitively felt that there were answers to my questions in this woman’s journey, though I did not understand exactly what these might be at that point.  This is the start of the introduction to my boo...

Chora is a Greek word, and means place. Place is, just like nature and culture , a concept with many meanings, and there are several ways to understand place. Maybe it is time to begin to learn anew what place is, and what place means in our lives. There is a general tendency today to understand the world’s cultural and biological diversity as threatened. Place is a part of this diversity. Our human condition is rooted in the surroundings, that is, nature, place, and body. These are the material conditions for life. Many people experience placeless-ness and loss of place, which means a lack of rooted-ness in the surroundings. Placeless-ness is not only a modern phenomenon, while modern placeless-ness is, however, characterized by a crisis in the understanding of human surroundings. Placeless-ness is an attitude and a part of modern culture expressed through public planning, habitation, and settlement. It is ways of acting and thinking that we are socialized into over t...

New book: Cultural sustainability and the nature-culture interface: Livelihoods, policies, and Methodologies (Routledge, 2018), edited by Inger Birkeland, Constanza Parra, Rob Burton and Katriina Soini  Understanding how culture can act as a resource to promote sustainability, rather than a barrier, is the key to the development of cultural sustainability. This book explores the interfaces between nature and culture through the perspective of cultural sustainability. A cultural perspective on environmental sustainability enables a renewal of sustainability discourse and practices across rural and urban landscapes, natural and cultural systems, stressing heterogeneity and complexity. The book focuses on the nature-culture interface conceptualised as a place where experiences, practices, policies, ideas and knowledge meet, are negotiated, discussed and resolved. Rather than looking for lost unities, or an imaginary view of harmonious relationships between humans and nature based...

Dette er et utdrag fra mitt kapittel i "Maktens strateger" (Pax 2000) og den første boka i Makt- og globaliseringsutredningen redigert av Iver B. Neumann. Kapittelet har tittelen "Luce Irigaray: Mors makt". Det er på tide igjen å fokusere mer på forskjellsfeminisme, og Luce Irigaray har mye å bidra med her.  "Den franske lingvisten, filosofen og psykoanalytikeren Luce Irigaray har vært kjent en god stund i Skandinavia, men vi ser nå en ny interesse for hennes ideer. Irigaray er blitt tolket på mange måter av ulike grupperinger innenfor den feministiske forskningen, og hennes ideer har skapt stor debatt. Arbeidene hennes berører svært mange og store temaer, og de anvendes på fruktbare og forskjellige måter av forskere fra ulike fag. Hvorfor diskutere makt med utgangspunkt i Luce Irigarays arbeider? Makt er ikke et begrep Irigaray bruker svært ofte. Irigaray er egentlig mer opptatt av rettigheter enn av makt, hevder Margaret Whitford (1991b:184). Irigara...

Published in TICCIH Bulletin nr 69, 3rd quarter 2015 On the 5th of July, 2015, UNESCO has inscribed Rjukan-Notodden Industrial Heritage Site on the World Heritage list. This represents great opportunities for the local communities of Rjukan and Notodden, located in the interior southern part of Norway. According to the proposal, the site is a unique expression of new industrial developments during the second industrial revolution, based in hydroelectric power production, industry, transport system and urban communities. The development of industry here depended however totally on the presence on the water landscape, so that the cultural and physical features of landscape here is a total production system (Birkeland 2015). How are we to value industrial heritage in the Anthropocene? The Anthropocene refers to the human-dominated, geological epoch that we are now living in. It is a concept that covers the last 250 years’ immense human impact on the earth where global warming, envi...

Debattinnlegg på trykk i Aftenposten 15. juli 2015: HVEM EIER DENNE ARVEN? Jubelen sto høyt da UNESCO nylig tildelte verdensarvstatus til Rjukan og Notodden. Folk flest assosierer Rjukan og Notodden med starten på det norske industrieventyret. Kommer 2015 til å husket som året da et nytt eventyr startet i Øvre Telemark? Jeg har fulgt nominasjonsprosessen i en tiårsperiode gjennom forskning på kultur og omstilling. Prosessen har vært bredt forankret, og har vært drevet av ildsjeler med stor kunnskap. Med en verdensarvstatus kommer nye utfordringer, spesielt i lys av at norske myndigheter ønsker å bruke verdensarvstatusen til å skape ny vekst i Øvre Telemark. Det er ikke vanskelig å støtte dette, men det er viktig å peke på noen utfordringer: 1) Framstillingen av hva Rjukan og Notodden ”er” som verdensarv begynner nå å bli omskrevet til en fortelling vi alle må favne om og være enige i. Vi begynner å bli fortalt hva som er Sannhetene med stor S om industrieventyret. Dett...

The main results of COST Action Investigating Cultural Sustainability have been published in  "Culture  in ,  for  and  as  Sustain able Development. Conclusions of the COST IS1007 Action Investigating Cultural  Sustainability" .  The publication  defines and describes the three roles of culture  in sustainable development identified by the Action and illustrates them with real-life cases. Furthermore it reflects the implications for policies and developing assessment frameworks.  The publication  is addressed to scientific community, policy-makers and practitioners interested in the field. It is a 72-page-publication, which is available as hard copy and as pdf, by clicking link above.    A new book series   Routledge Studies in Culture and Sustainable Development   was introduced by the Action and the Action Chairs, Katriina Soini and Joost Dessein are the editors of series. The follo...