Pub Date : 2020-03-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2020.290101
Frida Hastrup, M. Lien
This article outlines the thematic section’s main anthropological interventions and introduces the inherently ambiguous notion of welfare frontiers, implying allegedly benign practices of resource development. Through ethnographic analyses from Iceland, Norway, and Greenland, it shows that Nordic Arctic landscapes become resourceful through careful crafting, entangled with practices and ideals of nation-building, egalitarianism, sustainability, good governance, and a concern for liveability for legitimate citizens. Further, the authors suggest that seeing natural resource development as linked to specific welfare state projects, with attention to the sometimes colonizing aspects of such practices, specifies and captures the current era, bringing the Anthropocene back home.
{"title":"Welfare Frontiers? Resource Practices in the Nordic Arctic Anthropocene","authors":"Frida Hastrup, M. Lien","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2020.290101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2020.290101","url":null,"abstract":"This article outlines the thematic section’s main anthropological interventions and introduces the inherently ambiguous notion of welfare frontiers, implying allegedly benign practices of resource development. Through ethnographic analyses from Iceland, Norway, and Greenland, it shows that Nordic Arctic landscapes become resourceful through careful crafting, entangled with practices and ideals of nation-building, egalitarianism, sustainability, good governance, and a concern for liveability for legitimate citizens. Further, the authors suggest that seeing natural resource development as linked to specific welfare state projects, with attention to the sometimes colonizing aspects of such practices, specifies and captures the current era, bringing the Anthropocene back home.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89509893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2020.290106
N. Brichet
This article explores the emergence of a Greenlandic mineral resource landscape against the background of the current establishment of an industrial ruby mine in Greenland. Anthropological fieldwork combined with a close reading of scientific reports, articles, and geological assessments about Greenlandic gemstones show a recurrent feature, namely that Greenlandic minerals get scaled and valued in ambiguous ways. This ambiguity is telling of a type of Danish (post-)colonial activity, even if such geological mapping was and is motivated by a dream of welfare, development, and economic sustainability shared by Danish experts and Greenlandic politicians alike. An overall point is to argue that the very practice of describing mineral resources also configures their perceived value and posits a yardstick by which to measure their potential.
{"title":"A Piece of Greenland? Making Marketable and Artisan Gemstones","authors":"N. Brichet","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2020.290106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2020.290106","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the emergence of a Greenlandic mineral resource landscape against the background of the current establishment of an industrial ruby mine in Greenland. Anthropological fieldwork combined with a close reading of scientific reports, articles, and geological assessments about Greenlandic gemstones show a recurrent feature, namely that Greenlandic minerals get scaled and valued in ambiguous ways. This ambiguity is telling of a type of Danish (post-)colonial activity, even if such geological mapping was and is motivated by a dream of welfare, development, and economic sustainability shared by Danish experts and Greenlandic politicians alike. An overall point is to argue that the very practice of describing mineral resources also configures their perceived value and posits a yardstick by which to measure their potential.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73376399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2020.290102
K. Hastrup
Located in Northwest Greenland, the Thule region is a remarkable frontier zone. This article focusses on the undecided nature of the frontier in both time and space. The article explores the unstable ground upon which ‘resources’ emerge as such. The case is made in three analytical parts: The first discusses the notion of commons and the implicit issue of spatiality. The second shows how the region’s living resources were perceived and poses a question of sustainability. The third centres on the Arctic as a ‘contact zone’; a place for colonial encounters and a meeting ground between human and nonhuman agents.
{"title":"Thule as Frontier","authors":"K. Hastrup","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2020.290102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2020.290102","url":null,"abstract":"Located in Northwest Greenland, the Thule region is a remarkable frontier zone. This article focusses on the undecided nature of the frontier in both time and space. The article explores the unstable ground upon which ‘resources’ emerge as such. The case is made in three analytical parts: The first discusses the notion of commons and the implicit issue of spatiality. The second shows how the region’s living resources were perceived and poses a question of sustainability. The third centres on the Arctic as a ‘contact zone’; a place for colonial encounters and a meeting ground between human and nonhuman agents.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76619363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2020.290104
M. Lien
An old tractor serves as an ethnographic entry point to shifting articulations of resources in coastal Finnmark, North Norway. Idle since the 1970s, the tractor is a relic of agricultural dreams, turned to rubble as novel layers of the Varanger landscape are conjured as resourceful. Farming in Finnmark was a geopolitical strategy to secure national borders and to expand a post-war welfare state, it was also a colonial effort to cultivate farmers in the far north. This article details the back-breaking practices required to make thin Arctic topsoil collaborate in realizing modernist dreams of agricultural growth, while state interventions sought to ensure national borders and national identity. The author highlights dialectic relations between mapping and forgetting, crucial in the making of resources and colonizing practices.
{"title":"Dreams of Prosperity – Enactments of Growth","authors":"M. Lien","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2020.290104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2020.290104","url":null,"abstract":"An old tractor serves as an ethnographic entry point to shifting articulations of resources in coastal Finnmark, North Norway. Idle since the 1970s, the tractor is a relic of agricultural dreams, turned to rubble as novel layers of the Varanger landscape are conjured as resourceful. Farming in Finnmark was a geopolitical strategy to secure national borders and to expand a post-war welfare state, it was also a colonial effort to cultivate farmers in the far north. This article details the back-breaking practices required to make thin Arctic topsoil collaborate in realizing modernist dreams of agricultural growth, while state interventions sought to ensure national borders and national identity. The author highlights dialectic relations between mapping and forgetting, crucial in the making of resources and colonizing practices.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87269671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2019.280209
Liesa Rühlmann, S. McMonagle
This article highlights issues of Othering and linguicism and identifies the challenges of undoing taboos of race and racism in popular and academic discourses in Germany. We discuss the prospect of introducing critical race theory to expose these issues that we see as especially urgent, as Germany remains host to very large numbers of international migrants. A monolingual and monocultural idea of Germany does not befit this country of immigration in the twenty-first century.
{"title":"Germany's Linguistic 'Others' and the Racism Taboo","authors":"Liesa Rühlmann, S. McMonagle","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2019.280209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2019.280209","url":null,"abstract":"This article highlights issues of Othering and linguicism and identifies the challenges of undoing taboos of race and racism in popular and academic discourses in Germany. We discuss the prospect of introducing critical race theory to expose these issues that we see as especially urgent, as Germany remains host to very large numbers of international migrants. A monolingual and monocultural idea of Germany does not befit this country of immigration in the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72387773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2019.280208
Freya Stancombe-Taylor
This article assesses the identity politics of language in post-conflict Northern Ireland, where language debates at a political level have been encased in questions of identity. However, despite the continued existence of ethnocentric narratives around language, opportunities have emerged for individuals to cross linguistic barriers and challenge the perspective that certain languages ‘belong’ to certain communities.
{"title":"Linguistic Identites in Post-Conflict Societies","authors":"Freya Stancombe-Taylor","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2019.280208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2019.280208","url":null,"abstract":"This article assesses the identity politics of language in post-conflict Northern Ireland, where language debates at a political level have been encased in questions of identity. However, despite the continued existence of ethnocentric narratives around language, opportunities have emerged for individuals to cross linguistic barriers and challenge the perspective that certain languages ‘belong’ to certain communities.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76831789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2019.280202
Matt Rosen
‘Business as usual’ in contemporary Albania takes place between different and conflicting systems of meaning and value. Drawing from ethnographic material collected in Tirana, Albania, this article examines the complexities of social and economic life in a city where distinct moral economies routinely clash with the capitalist principle of profit. Starting from the ethnographic impulse to learn how two local booksellers made sense of the contradictory systems of meaning operating in their everyday lives, the analysis shows how a grinding of discordant value systems produced the more general paradox of an ‘ordinary tragedy’.
{"title":"Between Conflicting Systems","authors":"Matt Rosen","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2019.280202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2019.280202","url":null,"abstract":"‘Business as usual’ in contemporary Albania takes place between different and conflicting systems of meaning and value. Drawing from ethnographic material collected in Tirana, Albania, this article examines the complexities of social and economic life in a city where distinct moral economies routinely clash with the capitalist principle of profit. Starting from the ethnographic impulse to learn how two local booksellers made sense of the contradictory systems of meaning operating in their everyday lives, the analysis shows how a grinding of discordant value systems produced the more general paradox of an ‘ordinary tragedy’.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90041506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-01DOI: 10.3167/AJEC.2019.280205
P. McDermott, S. McMonagle
This article introduces the present forum edition on linguistic identities in twenty-first-century Europe. We consider how discourses of inclusion and exclusion, embedded in discourses of the nation, continue to be relevant in understanding and interpreting the social, cultural and political status of (minority) languages and their speakers. In order to introduce the various studies that comprise this forum, we relay how language debates provide a lens through which wider systems of prestige and hierarchy may be focused. Such debates can, at one and the same time, both alter and reflect the meanings and interpretations of Europe itself.
{"title":"Language and a Continent in Flux","authors":"P. McDermott, S. McMonagle","doi":"10.3167/AJEC.2019.280205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/AJEC.2019.280205","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces the present forum edition on linguistic identities in twenty-first-century Europe. We consider how discourses of inclusion and exclusion, embedded in discourses of the nation, continue to be relevant in understanding and interpreting the social, cultural and political status of (minority) languages and their speakers. In order to introduce the various studies that comprise this forum, we relay how language debates provide a lens through which wider systems of prestige and hierarchy may be focused. Such debates can, at one and the same time, both alter and reflect the meanings and interpretations of Europe itself.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79618928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2019.280206
Ricardo Rivera
This forum piece provides a brief discussion of the mediation of religious and ethnic identity through language in Adjara, an autonomous region of southwestern Georgia. The piece considers the emergence of a consolidated ‘Georgian Muslim’ identity in the post-Soviet period. It thus sheds light on how language acts as a site for the navigation of religious and historical difference in Adjara.
{"title":"Translating Islam into Georgian","authors":"Ricardo Rivera","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2019.280206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2019.280206","url":null,"abstract":"This forum piece provides a brief discussion of the mediation of religious and ethnic identity through language in Adjara, an autonomous region of southwestern Georgia. The piece considers the emergence of a consolidated ‘Georgian Muslim’ identity in the post-Soviet period. It thus sheds light on how language acts as a site for the navigation of religious and historical difference in Adjara.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80103701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2019.280201
Cristina Clopot, U. Kockel, Vytis Ciubrinskas
At the end of last year, the AJEC team received the sad news that Christian Giordano had suddenly died during his Christmas holidays in Vilnius. Christian was one of the founders of AJEC, shaped the journal significantly during its early years as co-editor (1990–2001) and, for a time (1992–1998), publisher. He remained connected with it over the years, regularly acting as peer reviewer and informal advisor during Ullrich’s tenure as editor. His final contribution to AJEC (Giordano 2018) was an essay for last year’s special issue in memory of Ina-Maria Greverus, reflecting on their encounter through a shared interest in Sicily, their long personal friendship, and their often-theatrical academic relationship.
{"title":"Obituary for Christian Giordano","authors":"Cristina Clopot, U. Kockel, Vytis Ciubrinskas","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2019.280201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2019.280201","url":null,"abstract":"At the end of last year, the AJEC team received the sad news that Christian Giordano had suddenly died during his Christmas holidays in Vilnius. Christian was one of the founders of AJEC, shaped the journal significantly during its early years as co-editor (1990–2001) and, for a time (1992–1998), publisher. He remained connected with it over the years, regularly acting as peer reviewer and informal advisor during Ullrich’s tenure as editor. His final contribution to AJEC (Giordano 2018) was an essay for last year’s special issue in memory of Ina-Maria Greverus, reflecting on their encounter through a shared interest in Sicily, their long personal friendship, and their often-theatrical academic relationship.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90285916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}