Voices From the North New Trends in Nordic Human Geography

About this book

While contemporary human geography has widely acknowledged that knowledge has both contingent and contextual character, international literature has tended to blot out differences and reproduce hegemonic Anglo-Saxon discourses. Any interest in destabilizing such power-knowledge systems calls upon interventions from "other voices". Nordic "voices" in particular have not been well represented in contemporary human geography. This book redresses the balance by offering an assessment of the geographical research being undertaken in the Nordic countries and by demonstrating the way in which these voices contribute to international debate. It brings together a range of Nordic authors, each of whom has made a significant contribution to such debates, and considers the relationship between production and social institutions in local development. It also examines the ambiguous role of the welfare state in the Nordic countries, issues of social practice and identity and their relationship to spatiality, new approaches to landscape and environment, and the significance of difference and relations of power. Theoretical discussion, illustrated by empirical examples, reveals the interweaving in Nordic human geography of international affiliations and Nordic "situatedness".

Contents

Localized capabilities and industrial competitiveness, Anders Malmberg and Peter Maskell; On the new economic geography of post-fordist learning economics, Bjorn T. Asheim; Economy-culture relations and the geographies of regional development, Jorgen Ole Baerenholdt and Michael Haldrup; Welfare states and social polarization, Frank Hensen; Does welfare matter? ghettoization in the welfare state, Hans Thor Andersen and Eric Clark; Geography, local planning and the production of space - a Swedish context, Jan Ohman; Everyday life and urban planning - an approach in Swedish human geography, Ann-Catherine Aguist; Geography, space and identity, Jouni Hakli and Anssi Paasi; The embodied city: from bodily practice to urban life, Kirsten Simonsen; Rural geography and feminist geography - discourses on rurality and gender in Britain and Scandinavia, Nina Gunnerud Berg and Gunnel Forsberg; Choreographs of life, youth, place and migration, Anders Lofgren; In search of the Nordic landscape - a personal view, Kenneth R. Olwig; "Samhallgeografi" and the politics of nature - tracing the Nordic forest regimes in the era of globalization, Ari Lehtinen; Racialization and migration in urban segregation processes - key issues for critical geographers, Roger Andersson and Irene Molina; "In visible city" - insecurity, gender and power relations in urban space, Hille Koskela; Landscape of landscapes, Gunnar Olsson.

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