NAF conference

Norwegian Anthropological Association Annual Conference

The NAF conference will be arranged November 25-26 2021 in Bergen.

Welcome to Bergen in November 2021 for the NAF Conference 2021.

Photo:

Nina B. Dahl/Colourbox

Main content

On this page you will find information about conference theme, important dates and practical information.

Program NAF Conference 2021

Thursday the 25th of November

Place: Grand Hotel Terminus

11:00-12:00 NAF Conference: Registration

12:00-12:15 Opening

12:15-13:15 Honorary lecture. Professor Leif Manger (UiB): The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

13:15-13:30 Break

13:30-15:00 Workshops:

Workshop 2 - Protracted Displacement in and beyond Time: research collaborations and funding frameworks

Workshop 7 - Nye konfigurasjoner: Spenningsfeltet sosialantropologi og sosialt arbeid

Workshop 8 - Antropologiske tilnærminger til paradokser og kompleksitet i offentlige sektor

Workshop 10 - Coexistence, conflict, and complexity: ethnographies of social and political change in urban communities

Workshop 11 - Comparative perspectives on entrepreneurship, organisational culture, and social changes

Workshop 13 - Transitional justice and contested memorialization after terror: the Norwegian 22 July attacks

Film: A peaceful place (70 min), made by Trond Waage (UiT)

15:00-15:30 Break

15:30-17:00 Workshops:

Workshop 3 - Moral economy in Scandinavia

Workshop 4 - Klima og miljøkamp: etnografiske nyansar

Workshop 6 - Paradoxes of polarization and post-politics in the Nordic welfare regimes and services.

Workshop 7 - Nye konfigurasjoner: Spenningsfeltet sosialantropologi og sosialt arbeid

Workshop 9 - Exterminate All the Brutes! Exploring the Global Colony and its Resistance

Workshop 11 - Comparative perspectives on entrepreneurship, organisational culture, and social changes

Workshop 12 - Panelsamtale: Fremtidens etnografi – i lys av GDPR

17:00-18:00 Break

18:00-19:00 Public Anthropology panel discussion with Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Hilde Frafjord Johnson. Moderated by Antonio De Lauri.

19:00-20:00 Book launch: Anthropology in Norway: Directions, Locations, Relations. Royal Anthropological Institute Country Series, Vol. 3. Synnøve Bendixsen and Edvard Hviding (eds.) Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing 2021.

20:00 Conference dinner at Grand Hotel Terminus

Friday the 26th of November

Place: SV-fakultetet, Egget (at the Student Centre) and the University Aula (at the University Museum)

9:15-11:00 Workshops:

Workshop 1 - Teknologi og polarisering

Workshop 5 - What on Earth! Outrage and Anthropology on a Disrupted Planet

Workshop 12 - Panelsamtale: Fremtidens etnografi – i lys av GDPR

Workshop 14 - Anthropological forays into urban polarization

Film: The Lost Child (85 min), made by Rolf Scott (UiB) and Olaf H. Smedal (UiB)

Film: A Kali Temple Inside Out (83 min), made by Dipesh Kharel and Frode Storaas (UiB) and based on anthropological research by Kathinka Frøystad (UiO)

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:15 Annual meeting of NAF

12:15-13:15 Lunch in the University Aula

13:15-14:15 The Fredrik Barth Memorial Lecture 2021, given by Professor Marianne Lien (UiO): Beyond the Ethnographic Presence; Landscapes as relational archives. Please click here for the paper abstract.

14:15-14:30 Break

14:30-15:50 NAT debate "Anthropology does not need to decolonize in order to make sense of conflicts in today's polarized world." The statement will be argued for by Samwel Moses Ntapanta (UiO) and Kjetil Knaus Fosshagen (Høgskulen på Vestlandet) and against by Carmeliza Rosario (UiB) and Cindy Horst (PRIO).

16:00-16:10 Closing of the conference

Registration

Polarization: Anthropological Explorations

The world is becoming increasingly polarized. Intensifying border controls, the amplification of new and old political antagonisms, increasing economic and social inequalities, new macro-political and geo-political constellations and positions, novel forms of activism across the political spectrum, and a proliferation of hate-speech create a sense of exacerbated polarization across regions, nations, ideologies, religions, race, social class, and political beliefs. As anthropologists we may ask: how can anthropology read and interpret these polarizing processes? What are the strengths and weaknesses of our discipline in capturing such complex and compound developments? In which way can applied anthropologists contribute as in-house social interpreters as well as sparring partners with the academic community from within the respective workplaces? And, does a more polarized world correspond to a more fragmented anthropology? Is, for instance, the growing hyper-specialization of anthropology an effect of a more polarized and fragmented world? And, finally, is polarization a useful conceptual tool to understand the ongoing dynamics mentioned? The conference invites reflections on both a polarized and fragmented contemporaneity and a polarized and fragmented anthropology.

A key characteristic of contemporary political landscapes is that political fault lines are in flux and difficult to pin down and define. Whilst political differences in the latter part of the 20^th century were by and large mediated through left and right or liberal and conservative political categorizations, political orientation and identification now seems to be more fluid – and yet more divisive and violent. As the public sphere has increasingly become a cacophony blurring the lines between truth and lies, information and noise, significant and insignificant, politics and entertainment, opinion and propaganda, news and spin, the result is a seemingly growing sense of fragmentation, alienation, and people increasingly retreat into fenced-off identity positions and group belongings.

Meanwhile, in a world characterized by rising social and economic inequalities, and an accumulative concentration of capital amongst national and transnational elites, class-in-itself and class-for-itself is lesser and lesser a platform for political mobilization. Rather, as the language of class has lost currency and legitimacy, class-determined interests have become objects for manipulation across the political spectrum; thereby obscuring structural, political, and financial processes reproducing and exacerbating socio-economic inequalities. Consequently, societies are characterized by increasingly separated and segregated life-worlds across social groups, but without a language to denote and explain how and why these differences and inequalities are produced. The results we are witnessing, not least in the UK and the US, are increasingly polarized societies and a loss of faith in politics, politicians, and democratic processes with unknown outcomes. At the same time, we are witnessing a resurgence of social activism and social mobilization that points towards new forms of political identity formations and forms of solidarity (think of grassroots aid initiatives or vernacular forms of humanitarianism). New climate concerns and actions mobilize actors across the whole spectrum of politics, ranging from biodynamic agriculture to environmental activism. Increasingly polarized public opinion on immigration and asylum is expressed both in technologies of bordering and confinement (e.g. walls and fences), as well as amplified voluntarism and political action to assist people on the move. Different modalities of polarization clearly intersect, as in the case of political and religious divisions, for example when minorities such as Muslims in Europe and the USA or Christians in some African countries become targets of political violence. While exacerbating existing inequalities and creating new social and economic challenges and divisions, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its repertoires of governmental responses has ignited polarized understandings and visions. Mostly swallowed by the official narrative, it could be argued that the voice of anthropologists has not been sufficiently public and thus not as relevant as it could, given the profound societal impact of the (series of) event(s).

In face of this scenario, we ask what conceptual and methodological tools anthropologists can use, in the academia and beyond, in trying to grasp and make sense of these various conflictive and polarizing entanglements. We invite contributions that engage with the issue of polarization from different ethnographic contexts and analytical perspectives, whilst at the same time trying to engage actively and critically with the very notion of polarization. For instance, how may we approach it as an emic and/or ethic category? Claims regarding polarization are not always empirically explored. Anthropologists are trained to analyze social processes in a holistic perspective to situate and embed it within historical processes of structural, social and political formations, as well as in relation to different symbolic, discursive, and cultural expressions and articulations. What is the role of anthropology in contributing to better understandings of the polarized phenomena at hand? If polarization is a key zeitgeist of our time, why is that so and how does it play out in different sites and contexts? Is it correct to state that we are witnessing emergent modes and forms of polarization, or is it merely continuations and reconfigurations of time-old conflictive fault lines?

The conference is open to researchers, scholars, students applied anthropologists, and practitioners from all fields of social and cultural anthropology. Panels and papers can be submitted in any of the Scandinavian languages or English. We accept panel proposals that already include a list of speakers as well as panel proposals that will have open call for papers. We are also open to other alternative workshop formats than the more traditional panels with papers (e.g. roundtable discussions, monitored debates, discussion of workplace concepts, processes and practices, etc.).

Honorary Lecture

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

Polarizations as zones of ambiguities.

Leif Manger, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen

The theme of polarization directly speaks to some of anthropology’s favorite activities, for instance, to point at ambiguities and to argue that any point of view depends on the positionality of who is watching. The lecture will discuss some empirical examples from Sudan that relate to such ambiguities. One type of ambiguity lies at the intersection of legality and illegality in the context of the civil war in Sudan, which ended with the separation of the South. In the Nuba Mountains where I did fieldwork, smuggling was informally accepted during the war by the Sudanese government, and it was part of an international rhetoric about “corridors of hope”.

After the secession of the South, some groups in the Nuba area continued the struggle against the regime, and now similar smuggling activities were classified as treason, and soldiers were ordered to shoot to kill. In the same border areas between north and South Sudan, accusations about slavery and slave-like conditions emerged during the civil war, but it turned out to be difficult to establish a clear view about what was really going on. There was the legal problem of providing evidence that some atrocities – like Arab pastoralists kidnapping children from the South – could be classified as slavery.

Another problem was to understand why the slavery accusations were not pointed at the practices of cattle rustling between tribes in the South, activities that also involved the kidnapping of children and women. Such activities were understood as “traditional culture”. Ambiguities could also be found in the accusations about slavery-like conditions in the trafficking among the refugee populations using Sudan as a transit country on their way towards Europe. While some tribes were the target of such accusations, it was far from clear who was doing what in the movement of refugees.

In discussing these cases, I will also reflect on the need of anthropology to move beyond empirical descriptions and theorize such processes of ambiguity. This will give me the opportunity to address the key questions posed by this conference, that is, how can we as anthropologists read and interpret polarizing processes? Are they signs of a new world that requires a new anthropology, or are they new versions of old forms of polarizations that keep us within the framework of how to theorize continuities as well as changes in a post-colonial world with clear colonial characteristics?

The Fredrik Barth Memorial Lecture 2021

Important dates for 2021

Practical Information

Workshops

1 - Technology and polarization

Organisers:

Håkon Fyhn, Norwegian University of Science and Technology: hakon.fyhn@ntnu.no

Jens Røyrvik, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Technology (whether we talk about specific technologies, or technology as a form of emerging worldview in Heidegger's sense) intervenes and shapes life in ways that make it interesting to look at polarization in new ways, locally as well as globally.

In Norway, polarization for example is taking shape in the form of resistance to specific technologies such as wind turbines. This resistance reveals stories of powerlessness in the face of authorities, financial interests and the green shift in general, and an increasing distance between urban and rural areas, but also completely different narratives. Globally, it is possible to see similar patterns, in some cases where even more is at stake. Another technology that has aroused resistance is vaccines, where the resistance entails everything from caution, to general mistrust of dominant biomedical science and industry. Alternative facts and alternative realities form their own ecosystems in various social media, aided by normal scientific arrogance, and algorithms aimed at communities of interest. Perhaps the distance to dissenters and objects of hatred increases as fellow human beings become virtualized? Even work colleagues can experience the distance of virtualization through the digital management systems' pull-down-menu-power. Expressions of polarization are also characterized by contemporary technological rationality, predisposed for clear boundaries and entities. The technologies that connect us and organize us also have the ability to capture and divide us. Not all human perspectives are equally easily expressed in the absolute logic of digital systems, and one must fight to be seen. Some are even left completely outside the digital community in a kind of analog marginalization. What does the digital world look like from here?

Nevertheless, on closer inspection, it may turn out that what looks like polarization from a distance, turns out to contain nuances, diversity and far from clear boundaries. This diversity is something we want to make visible in this session, in addition to the dynamics that make it relevant to talk about polarization.

Program:

Innledning til tematikken

Jens Rørvik og Håkon Fyhn

Nye former for aktivisme: brudd eller kontinuitet?

Martin Thomassen

Da klima- og miljøminister Sveinung Rotevatn i starten av februar 2020 varslet at Norge skrur opp sine klimamål, fikk pensjonisten Knut Amundsen fra Askøy kommune i Midthordland nok. Han opprettet en Facebook-gruppe som raskt ble til «Folkeaksjonen mot klimahysteriet». På to uker passerte antallet medlemmer 100.000. I sin metaforiske lek med ord antyder Amundsen at klimaproblemer er å regne for innbilte problemer. Det tok ikke mange dagene før Eirik Stridsklev Nilsen, som beskriver seg selv som en vanlig fyr fra Moss, tok initiativ til et opprør mot opprøret gjennom Facebook-gruppen «Folkeopprøret mot folkeopprøret mot klimahysteriet». Medlemstallet nådde på samme tid 42.000. Nilsen, som i sin lek med ord anvender en ironisk trope, antyder at det er kokko at 100.000 folk – hvis eneste grunnlag for å mene noe om klimaspørsmålet er at de har sett ut av vinduet i dag -, får oppmerksomhet.

Det er fristende å beskrive konfrontasjonen mellom disse to folkeaksjonene som uttrykk for, og eksempler på, steile fronter. Men er dette utrykk for ‘polarisering’? Begrepet polarisering i etisk forstand sikter gjerne til en skjerping av standpunkter, slik at to klart motstridende og ofte ekstreme oppfatninger får økt tyngde. Mao. prosesser som oppviser en skismogenetisk dynamikk. I mitt innlegg argumenterer jeg for at begrepet polarisering har begrenset analytisk verdi når det gjelder å ta pulsen på ‘motstand’ i Norge. Digitalisering muliggjør nok nye former for aktivisme, men store deler av denne aktivismen står godt plantet på skuldrene av en rotnorsk demokratisk tradisjon med klare ikke-polariserende og ikke-skismogenetiske trekk.

Boundaries in flux - Shifting enactments of ‘we’ for protecting the journalistic craft in a digitalised newsroom

Gudrun Rudningen

Boundaries for journalism are in flux, also the social boundaries between news workers in a digitalised news organisation. In this paper, I explore how journalistic professionalism is largely protected through practices of shifting enactments of ‘we’ as a collective concept for protecting the craft and establishing harmony and internal trust. Based on one-year fieldwork in a small Norwegian newsroom, I display how the changing social interaction in a digitalised newsroom contributed to new mechanisms for (re)establishing collective belonging from three different angles: spatially, verbally and relationally. Since digital ways of performing journalism hold potential for fostering more individualism as well as different forms of control, a protective ‘we’ and an invasive ‘we’ affected each other in the identity formation. My findings show that shifting collectives of ‘we’ did not necessarily mean less individual autonomy. Rather, professional autonomy was guaranteed through the collective community as well as the core values and mission embedded in the journalistic craft.

Automatisering i maritime industrier: en utforskning av nye terreng

Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard og Marianna Betti

Ny teknologi, digitalisering og automatisering bringer med seg både skepsis og bekymring, håp og entusiasme. Hvordan kan vi som antropologer utforske teknologisk endring på en måte som kaster lys over ulike aspekter, implikasjoner og erfaringer, uten å binde oss opp til masternarrativene som gjerne dominerer (og polariserer) debatter? Hvordan skape kunnskap om endringsprosesser innen teknologi, som ofte foregår svært hurtig og ofte på arenaer med vanskelig tilgang for etnografiske studier? I norsk akademia har det vært relativt lite samarbeid mellom sosialantropologer og industrielle aktører, delvis grunnet en motvilje blant mange antropologer mot denne typen samarbeid. På samme tid opplever vi at akademiske institusjoner i stadig økende grad må dokumentere og styrke akademiske disipliners arbeidslivsrelevans, en type krav som gjerne møtes med en blanding av tidligere nevnte motvilje - og rådvillhet. I dette innlegget vil vi utforske mulighetene for antropologisk samarbeid med industrien, med utgangspunkt i vår ambisjon om å studere effektene av automatisert teknologi i maritim sektor. Vi vil presentere NFR-prosjektet «Automation shift in the martime sector of the offshore oil and gas industry: assessing risk and safety, protecting labor» (ASMOG), et samarbeid mellom sosialantropologer, maritime industrier, Sjøfartsdirektoratet og lokale myndigheter i Haugesund. I prosjektet søker vi å ha som utgangspunkt at sosialantropologer og industrielle aktører kanskje kan ha mer til felles enn man skulle tro, nemlig utforskningen av nye og ukjente terreng og fenomener; der man ikke alltid på forhånd vet hvordan utfallet vil bli, og der nye spørsmål stadig dukker opp underveis. Med dette utgangspunktet vil ASMOG-prosjektet arbeide med problemstillinger utviklet gjennom en kontinuerlig dialog mellom våre egne antropologiske spørsmål og spørsmål og erfaringer fra industri og arbeidstakere – og på denne måten utforske forholdet mellom menneskelig og automatisert arbeidskraft. Spesielt vil simuleringssesjoner for sjøfolk være sentralt både som forskningsarena og som ny metode for observasjon og utveksling. I innlegget vil vi diskutere hvilke muligheter og utfordringer denne tilnærmingen kan innebære.

Ungdom med dataspill/e-sport som utdanning- og karrierevei: opplevelser av muligheter og utfordringer

Stian Overå

På kort tid har e-sport (et samlebegrep for konkurranseorientert dataspilling) beveget seg fra å være en subkultur blant gamere til å bli et globalt fenomen som tiltrekker et stort antall spillere og seere. I dag er det flere videregående skoler og folkehøgskoler i Norge som tilbyr utdanning innen e-sport. Hvordan er det å satse å på elektronisk sport - såkalt e-sport - som utdanning og karrierevei?

Høsten 2020 startet jeg på et postdoktorprosjekt som handler om unge menneskers erfaringer fra e-sportsverdenen. I årene fremover skal jeg undersøke hva slags utfordringer og muligheter gamere møter innen e-sportmiljøet, og hvordan gaming farger andre arenaer i livet, slik som helse og trivsel, skole og utdanning og sosiale relasjoner.

I denne presentasjonen vil jeg blant annet sette søkelys på hvordan ungdommene opplever omgivelsenes syn og reaksjoner (fra f.eks. foreldre, venner og storsamfunnet) på deres hobby og utdannings- og karrierevei. I innlegget vil det bli trekket veksler på innsikt fra teknologisk antropologi.

Motstandens karakter og mangfold: utformingen og mottakelsen av klimapolitikk og klimateknologi

Jens Rørvik og Håkon Fyhn

During 2019 and 2020 a substantial police force has been engaged in protecting the construction site of a wind-turbine plant from people resisting the implementation, at the small island Frøya in Mid-Norway. The situation is similar at several constructing sites in Norway. The protesters claim they have to bear the cost of the green shift locally while others make profit from it, and that their democratic rights are being violated, among other things. People resisting toll roads formed their own political party and put their mark on the municipality election in 2019. Innumerable Facebook groups are formed promoting hate towards technology associated with the green shift, such as Tesla and other electric cars (which don’t pay road toll).

All these events, attempts and examples of active resistance to stop energy policy and technology associated with the green shift show that the resistance is heterogeneous and seem to be grounded in many different reasons, concerns and life situations. Many members left the mentioned Facebook group against wind power when the founders were identified as nationalistic anti-immigrants, but many chose to remain. The politician behind the toll roads policy, Annemarie Lan, has received several death threats. While some protests against energy policy and technology seem to be fair and necessary, extremist and anti-democratic tendencies are also present in these debates, and the amount of hate and confrontation is high. This makes difficult both to understand and act upon such challenges. Things threatens to spin out of control.

The design and implementation of energy policy faces something much more severe than simply lack of acceptance, it deals with, and stirs up forces that even can threaten democracy itself, not to mention belief in scientific knowledge. Understanding these forces and this dynamic is essential, not only for the successful design and implementation of energy policy, but for the well-being of democracy itself. In the newly started research project CURE, we aim to understand the dynamics of resistance towards energy policy and technology and suggest ways to include different concerns and actors making the implementation of energy policy and technology more democratic.

2 - Protracted Displacement in and beyond Time: research collaborations and funding frameworks

3 - Moral economy in Scandinavia

Organisers:

Sarah Tobin, Chr. Michelsen Institute: sarah.tobin@cmi.no

Mari Norbakk, Chr. Michelsen Institute: mari.norbakk@cmi.no

Taking the intersections of economy, ethics and morality as our starting point, this panel is organized around questions of how finance and economy are entangled with ethical considerations, religious morals, as well as practices linked to welfare, consumption, investment, banking and business development. We are particularly interested in contributions that look at these issues in the Scandinavian or Nordic context, but other cases are also most welcome.

Scandinavian economic systems have often been espoused as a hybrid – somewhere between market liberal principles and heavily state-regulated economies with comprehensive welfare systems. The linkages between “private” capital and welfare are not necessarily always explored in the Scandinavian context precisely due to the ideological focus on welfare and a collectivist state narrative. This does not mean that these entanglements are not present, and we are seeing a shift to increased dependence on private capital to take over certain aspects of welfare. Polarization may take the form of increased inequality, and this panel is interested in ways capital may intersect with state practices to undermine levelling factors built into the welfare system. As we look to these linkages, the panel is therefore also interested in contributions that deal with issues such as public ownership, accountability and transparency.

People’s practices of money-making, saving, investment and their moral and ethical deliberations on these issues; and how they seek to find insights, support, and consensus for how things are to be done “properly” are all of core anthropological interest. What was formerly viewed as livelihoods, integral to the organization of small-scale societies may in this panel’s explorations be redefined to look at how peoples’ economic practices are still very much tied to their world-making, their cosmologies, as well as self-making. On the flip side, the panel also opens to contributions that explore how certain economic scripts may be transposed onto other identity-categories and boundaries, contributing to increased polarization and inequality. Economic practices are for many people a very tangible way to envision state-individual relationships and conceptualize state, bureaucracy, or community – also in a transnational sense.

Economic practices offer a productive locus for examining topics like integration, nationality, identity, value, and worthiness. Further – looking at conceptualizations of banks and bankers; fund-managers constructions of citizens, customers, investors; and basic dualisms like good and bad credit; growth-potential and risk may open new paths for ethnographic enquiry of inequality and polarization. This panel will show the potentials for anthropological contributions to economic and financial research in Norway.

Program:

The reluctant entrepreneurs: outsourcing employment, immigrant entrepreneurial training in Norway

By Mari Norbakk, Post-doctoral Fellow, Chr. Michelsen Institute and Chisom Udeze, CEO and founder, Diversify

This paper presents preliminary findings from scoping fieldwork with an entrepreneurial training for immigrants in a Norwegian city and seeks to place and discuss one cross-cutting observation of reluctance:

The Norwegian state offers financial and structural support to entrepreneurial trainings for immigrants as one aspect of the employment and integration policy. This manifests in different ways, one may be to integrate entrepreneurial modules in the “introduction-program”, and another is to support and fund NGOs offering trainings and capacity building. As Norbakk spent a week observing one such NGO-based entrepreneurial training, one striking observation was the way the budding entrepreneurs had made their way to the course. They all told tales of a long list of rejections—having been unemployed and job-seekers for long durations, and the consequential sensation of lost identity and challenges with mental health and socio-economic wellbeing. In the end, they felt the only way out of the rut was to become entrepreneurs.

Exploring the (un)employment trajectory and feelings of social exclusion presented by many participants, this paper is an attempt at placing this phenomenon in the wider literature on work-policy and integration in Norway, with a particular view to “Arbeidslinja”. We aim to arrive at a tentative argument that the state outsources the employment of immigrants to the immigrants themselves.

Islamic Finance in Norway

Sarah Tobin, Research Professor, Chr. Michelsen Institute

Norway is home to some estimated 200,000 Muslims, many of whom are immigrants and entrepreneurs. Due to Islamic proscriptions, interest is to be avoided in economic transactions. This has the potential to limit the economic activity amongst this already-marginalized population. What are the dynamics that keep Muslim immigrant entrepreneurs in Norway from growing micro- and small-sized businesses into medium- and large-sized enterprises, and thus keep them from becoming enhanced sources of socio-economic equality and integration? How can they be overcome? This paper focuses on cases like: Mohammed, a 35 year-old Syrian refugee, arrived in Oslo in 2013. He opened a small grocery store, using informal financing from the local mosque. The small business is doing well, but he would like to expand to improve his family’s living conditions. However, Mohammed is reluctant to take out a formal business loan because the interest charges (riba’) are forbidden in Islam. He approached his local mosque, but there have not been any feasible financing alternatives. He has hit the “invisible ceiling” of financial exclusion. Like other Muslim immigrant entrepreneurs in Norway, he experiences inequalities in his integration in Norway and obstacles to fully realizing his active citizenship. Research reveals that such Muslim immigrant entrepreneurs are often unable to access acceptable financial tools formally, and instead rely on informal avenues for financing that limit their growth potential and impede integration. Drawing on fieldwork with Muslim immigrant entrepreneurs and Muslim religious authorities in Norway, we discuss preliminary findings and explore the possibilities for further research.

Data, Finance, and Ethics: The Case of ESG in Sustainable Finance

Ainur Begim, Associate Professor, NTNU

Long championed by climate activists, the idea that the climate change is a profound threat to global prosperity has gained important momentum in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Governments and companies around the world are devising ambitious plans for energy transitions and conjuring visions of net-zero futures. In these “building back better” blueprints, the finance sector figures as an important enabler by moving the flow of capital away from fossil fuels toward “green” projects and sustainable solutions. Many financial institutions embraced the sustainability agenda, incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in financial decision making and decarbonizing their portfolios. Financial professionals see sustainability as a strictly financial, not a moral matter, underscoring the importance of ESG in risk management as well as profit seeking. Drawing on fieldwork in Scandinavian investment firms, I trace the everyday sustainability work of portfolio managers as they educate themselves about the climate change, biodiversity, and water management; collaborate with governments and other financial institutions to develop standards and disclosure mechanisms to make more ESG data available; and ultimately seek to harness “non-financial” data and knowledge to beat competition and earn profit. My interlocutors single out ready to use quantitative data or a lack thereof as the single most important challenge in doing sustainability work. This preoccupation with non-financial data, I argue, suggests a major paradigm shift within finance – an attempt to push beyond the limits of what is financial (data, analysis, practice). In this paper, I examine the tension between financial and non-financial, quantitative and qualitative, pragmatic and ethical, exploring how financial asset valuation intersects with nature valuation and markets with climate and people.

Doing global investments the Nordic way. The “business case” for Equinor’s support to union work among its employees in Tanzania

Siri Lange, Professor, University of Bergen

In the Nordic countries, unions are represented in company boards and can influence companies’ policies toward labor abroad. This paper focuses on the Norwegian national oil company Equinor and its support of unionization of its employees in Tanzania. This was inspired by the Nordic tradition of social dialogue between corporations and strong, independent unions. Corporation managers and union representatives tend to refer to this social dialogue as “the Norwegian model,” but this is a narrow conceptualization of the model that disregards the role of the state. I argue that while it is beneficial for the Tanzanian workers to be organized, it is probably also “good for business” to have unionized workers who have adopted the Nordic collaborative model, rather than a more radical union model.

4 - Klima og miljøkamp: etnografiske nyansar

Organisers:

Nils Haukeland Vedal, University of Bergen: nils.vedal@uib.no

Klima og miljøkamp: etnografiske nyansar

Er klima- og miljøkamp eit eliteprosjekt? Klimaendringar og miljøøydeleggingar blir ofte omtala som ei krise og som vår generasjon si store utfordring. Trass i stor semje om at ulike grupper blir ulikt råka, blir ofte klima- og miljøkrisa snakka om som ei fellesmenneskeleg erfaring som råker på tvers av tradisjonelle sosiale og økonomiske skiljelinjer. Samstundes har diskusjonar omkring korleis ein skal møte klima- og miljøkrisa i aukande grad prega samfunn i ulike deler av verda i ein slik grad at den ofte dannar grunnlag for politikk som blir grunngitt gjennom å vise til vitskapleg fakta og slik sett stilt utanfor det politiske. Debattar omkring korleis ein best skal møte utfordringar knyta til ein førestilt ressursknapphet tek sikte på å finne løysingar som garanterer kontinuiteten av den gjeldande sosiale, økonomiske og politiske ordenen. Slike løysingar tek ofte sikte på å bevare, atterreise eller restaurere landskap og økosystem som er sett på som degraderte eller øydelagde, og har forgreiningar til måten ein tenkjer skiljet mellom det urbane og det naturlege landskapet på. Vegen er ofte kort frå førestillingar om ei verd i krise til malthusianske idear om overbefolkning og ressursknapphet, eller til generelle argument om at eit vagt definert “oss” må redusere forbruket. Ofte blir dei foreslåtte løysingane på klima- og miljøkrisa forstått som eit angrep på legitime aspirasjonar om sosial mobilitet og velstandsauke blant dei segmenta av befolkninga med marginal representasjon i det politiske systemet. Antropologar ulike stader i verda observerer aukande konfliktar om tilgang til land, eigedom og arbeid, der klima- og miljøretorikk blir nytta på ein måte som garanterer privilegia til høgare samfunnslag og kontinuiteten til ein sosial orden basert på den private eigedomsretten.

Me ynskjer å utforskekorleis nyare debattar i antropologifaget er med på å forme vår forståing av samspelet mellom natur, menneske og samfunn og korleis desse er med på å forme den globale debatten omkring klima- og miljøkrisa. Står nyare antropologiske perspektiv i fare for å fetisjere urfolksperspektiv som ei løysing på klima- og miljøkrisa? Korleis kan antropologiske studiar synleggjere større globale tendensar i måten klima- og miljødiskurs er med på å forme ulike samfunn?

Program:

#MatagiMalohi: klima- og miljøkamp i Oseania

Miriam Ladstein, Doktorgradsstipendiat, UiB

Over de siste ti årene har Stillehavsregionen sett en historisk mobilisering av ungdom i respons til klimakrisen. Engasjementet blant yngre generasjoner har spilt en viktig rolle i å forme narrativ i internasjonal diskurs rundt regionens fremtid i møte med klimaendringer, og å bygge opp om øyfolks særskilte rett til å bli sett og hørt i globale arenaer som FN. Kulturarv som trekker på forhold mellom mennesker, hav og øyer i praksis og diskurs har hatt en spesiell betydning i dette arbeidet, i å bidra til å belyse hva som står på spill for øyfolk i klimakrisen og hvordan Stillehavssamfunn kan bidra til håndteringen av hav- og klimaproblematikk. Internasjonalt har klima- og miljøaktivister i samspill med diplomater og politiske ledere fra Stillehavet aktivert materiell og immateriell kulturarv for å understreke fremtidige generasjoners krav på klimarettferdighet, et globalt konsept som belyser den skjeve fordelingen av miljøutfordringer i klimakrisen. På lokal skala har konsepter som klimarettferdighet i gjengjeld åpnet dører for unge mennesker å delta i sosiopolitiske rom og prosesser tidligere lukket for dem. I disse rommene synes kulturarvpraksiser å danne samlingspunkt som tillater ungdom å fremme deres agens og agendaer med minimal friksjon; dette ved å bidra til brobygging og forløsning av spenninger mellom yngre og eldre generasjoner, mellom forestilt fortid og fremtid, og i forholdet mellom natur og kultur i Oseania.

I dette innlegget vil jeg fokusere på det kreative potensialet i kulturarv som fremtidsrettet praksis i møte med hav- og klimaendringer. Med fokus på unge aktivisters samspill med hav, mennesker og klimapolitikk, vil jeg utforske noen av spørsmålene som oppstår i startfasen av doktorgradsprosjektet mitt, som ser på nettopp klima- og miljøengasjement ved grasrota i Stillehavet.

Hvordan snakker de som snakker for urfolk, med urfolk?

Nils Haukeland Vedal, Doktorgradsstipendiat, UiB

Internasjonale retningslinjer for hvordan man skal bevare et stadig mer sårbart miljø er fortsatt i stor grad tuftet på en Vestlig måte å begrepsfeste Naturen på. Det moderne skille mellom natur og kultur kan føres tilbake til Opplysningstiden, men som vi har forstått så er ikke dette skille praktisert på samme av alle – noen argumenterer for at et slikt skille ikke lenger kan forsvares i det heletatt (se eksempelvis Latour 2014). Etnografisk arbeid har vist at variasjonen av lokale praksiser og tanker ikke rettferdiggjør en universell distribusjon av en naturalistisk kosmologi; et møte mellom mennesker kan derfor også være et møte mellom kosmologier (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 2004). Det er disse møtene som er gjenstanden for mitt bidrag, samt hvordan korresponderende erfaringer fra disse møtene blir kommunisert videre: Hvordan snakker de som snakker for urfolk, med urfolk? Under mitt opphold i høylandsjungelen i Peru arbeidet jeg med Awajún-folket som tilhører språkfamilien Jivaro. Mitt etnografiske utgangspunkt for å diskutere overnevnt problematikk er møtet mellom ikke-statlig organisasjoner og lokale bønder. Sistnevnte var representanter fra lokalsamfunnene som fikk muligheten til å delta på et seminar om bærekraftig kakao- og hagedyrking. Seminarene var holdt av to ingeniører med spesialisering i agrikultur.

Kultivering av verdifull natur i Johannesburg, Sør-Afrika

Oda Eiken Maraire, Doktorgradsstipendiat, UiB

Johannesburg, Sør-Afrikas største by, omtales ofte stolt som verdens største menneskeskapte urbane skog med over ti millioner trær. I oktober måned dekkes byens velstående nabolag av et lilla teppe med blomstene til de importerte Jacaranda-trærne, til glede for innbyggerne. Den menneskeskapte skogen preger også utbyggeres markedsføring av nye bolig-prosjekter, og på facebook organiserer innbyggere seg som «venner» og frivillige for å støtte og bevare offentlige parker. Selv om frykten for kriminalitet i stor grad preger det urbane landskapet i Sør-Afrika med høye murer, piggtråd og overvåkningskameraer, øker fokuset på grønn utvikling og miljøvennlige tiltak hos både utbyggere og innbyggere. Med utgangspunkt i feltarbeid utført i Johannesburgs velstående forsteder og eiendomsmegler-bransjen fra 2019-2020, er jeg interessert i å utforske spenningen mellom miljøvennlige tiltak og ønskede urbane livsstiler. Jeg spør også hvor vidt, tidvis nostalgiske, natur-sentrerte praksiser hos eliten oppstår for å skape stedstilhørighet og en legitim rett til å eie land nettopp fordi et fokus på natur og forestillingen om en «akutt økologisk fare» (Raidoo 2020) tar blikket vekk fra betente diskurser om rase og eierskap i post-apartheid Sør-Afrika. Ved å flytte blikk over på natur-sentrerte praksiser spør jeg hva natur er. Ved å se på hvordan forestillinger om verdifull natur praktiseres, vil innlegget belyse spørsmål om urbanisering, naturvern og tilhørighet som er like relevant innenfor som utenfor de sørafrikanske grensene.

Grønt skifte eller grønn kolonialisme? Diskurser rundt omstilling og vindkraftutbygging i Norge

Ragnhild Freng Dale Seniorforsker, Vestlandsforsking

Omstillingen fra en petroleumsdrevet verdensøkonomi til et samfunn bygget på fornybar energi foregår over hele verden. Parallelt har begrepet rettferdig omstilling vokst frem, en diskurs som fylles med ulikt innhold alt ettersom hvilke interesser som skal forsvares. ‘Alle’ er enige om at omstilling kreves for å nå klimamålene, men hva en slik omstilling innebærer, og hva ‘rettferdig’ betyr, er gjenstand for konflikter når ulike grønne prosjekt skal realiseres. Dette blir særdeles tydelig rundt utbygging av fornybar energi. På samme måte som petroleumsutvinning kan forstørre og forsterke ulikheter (Gross 2019), kan også utbygging av fornybar energi føre til at allerede marginaliserte grupper får ytterligere utfordringer å forholde seg til. Nyere antropologisk arbeid har for eksempel undersøkt hvordan vindkraft kan være like ekstraktivt som gruve- og petroleumsutbygginger (Boyer and Howe 2019), og hvordan en konstruksjon av periferien muliggjør utbygging av storskala fornybar industri (Franquesa 2018). De siste årene har vindkraftutbygging satt fyr i debatten i Norge, og konsesjonsprosessene har blitt omarbeidet for å imøtekomme lokal motstand. Samtidig er flere av de største vindkraftprosjektene som allerede er påbegynt eller ferdigstilt lokalisert i viktige beiteområder for samisk reindrift. Sametingspresident Aili Keskitalo har omtalt dette som «grønn kolonialisme», fordi utbygginger i det grønne skiftets navn nok en gang tar landområder og levebrød fra det samiske samfunnet (Normann 2020). Her kolliderer altså ulike diskurser rundt grønt skifte, fornybar energi, naturområder og urfolksrett. Dette inviterer til antropologisk refleksjon rundt energi, infrastruktur og koloniale strukturer som fortsatt er virksomme i Norge i dag, også med en historisk linje til Alta-konflikten for 40 år siden. Jeg vil diskutere dette med utgangspunkt i et pågående forskningsprosjekt (JUSTNORTH) rundt vindkraft i Øst-Finnmark, hvor både samiske og ikke-samiske aktører har engasjert seg for å stanse utbyggingen av et vindkraftprosjekt som vil endre betingelsene for reindrift og utmarksbruk. Ved å undersøke hvordan slike lokale grupperinger møter diskurser om grønn omstilling, kan antropologien bidra til å skape forståelse for konflikter og ‘friksjon’ som oppstår når global klimadiskurs materialiseres i konkrete prosjekt.

URBANISERING FOR FRAMTIDA? Elitisme og naturvern i Patagonia

Tomas Salem. Doktorgradsstipendiat, UiB

Eitt av nyliberalismens best kjente litterære verk, De som beveger verden av Ayn Rand, skildrar ei dystopisk verd i oppløysing. Heltane i boka, forretningsmenn og entreprenørar, gøymer seg i ein dal i Rocky Mountains, i protest mot det som Rand skildrar som eit korrupt samfunn av snylterar som lever av dei rike sitt arbeid og innsats.

Under feltarbeidet mitt i Patagonia i 2020 kom eg over ein underleg parallell til Ayn Rand si fiktive verd. Like nord for landsbyen der eg budde, i ein skogkledd dal omslutta av spisse fjell, store brear, og verna naturområder, vart det i 2004 oppretta eit privat utbyggingsprosjekt der ei gruppe rikfolk frå Buenos Aires kjøpte tomter i det som for omverda vart presentert som eit privat verneområde. 17 år seinare er det i tillegg til ein skogvoktarstasjon, eit klubbhus, eit høgfjellshotell og ein lukseriøs villmarksresort bygd ni ekslusive hytter på dei til saman hundre oppmålte tomtene, som foreløpig først og fremst tener som spekulasjonsobjekt.

Prosjektet kombinerer urban utvikling med strenge reglar for vern av naturområdet det er oppretta i, som klare reglar for arealbruk og avfallshandtering, og begrensa tilgang for publikum. Utbygginga er regulert som eit sjølvstendig sameige, utan offentlege tenester, men planlagt etter ein økonomisk modell som sikrar drift av verneområdet og tilgang til infrastruktur for eigarane gjennom inntekter frå hotellverksemda.

Vernediskursen som projektet trekk på er med på å rettferdiggjere ekslusiv tilgang til eit urørt naturområde for eliter frå Buenos Aires, samstundes som innbyggjarane i landsbyen lenger nede i dalen kjemper for retten til eigen bolig som resultat av eksplosiv vekst i turismen. I dette innlegget spør eg korleis utbyggjinga i dalen speglar større globale trendar for urbanisering som set vekst og vern opp mot kvarandre, og kva slags dystopiske framtidscenarioer peiker den mot.

5 - What on Earth! Outrage and Anthropology on a Disrupted Planet

Organisers:

Natalia Magnani, University of Tromsø: natalia.magnani@uit.no

Peter I. Crawford, University of Tromsø

This work group will reflect and exemplify how research in the context of research group EA:RTH, as indicated by the subtitle, is based on ethnography (fieldwork-based) and dealing with a topic related to disruption of the planet in one way or the other, be it climate change, environmental change, abuse of human rights, armed conflicts, forced migration, etc.. It has grown out of a book project in which chapters deal with outrage, as an object of study and/or as a dimension of critical anthropological research, by attending reflexively to the question “who is outraged here and why?” We want to try to trace the changing constellations between wonder, urgency, advocacy and outrage in anthropology from salvage anthropology to the Anthropocene. There is no doubt that ‘outrage’ is also an almost obvious reaction to the forms of polarization covered by this conference.

The rhetorical question “what on Earth (is happening)?” indicates surprise or wonder and sometimes the start of a moral outrage or disapproval. “What on Earth” relates to the puzzlement that is anthropology’s classic trademark. What is happening and what makes people tick in that place? In what world could this particular thing happen “as a matter of course”? These conventional “small questions” of anthropology usually lead to the bigger (and political) issue: could the world be otherwise? We would like to suggest that the conventional anthropological wonder implied by the rhetorical question “what on Earth is happening” has become a literal and acute concern in the Anthropocene. At a time in which humans are arguably a geological force of nature, the question “what on Earth” combines a standard anthropological inquisitive puzzlement about human worlds with the concrete question: “what is happening to the Earth?” and the moral concern “how on Earth could this happen?”. Answering this simultaneously inquisitive, concrete, and moral question in ethnographic practice implies a re-focussing and retooling of anthropology. It means attending to local and planetary scales at the same time. It also means attending to the connections in time and space between human worlds and geological, environmental and nonhuman worlds.

Program:

9:15-9:35: Introduction: Peter Crawford and Natalia Magnani

9:35-9:50: ‘They are killing our future children’: Local and global implications of a land invasion in Namibia

Jennifer Hays, Professor of Social Anthropology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway (jennifer.hays@uit.no)

In May 2009, a group of cattle-herding families illegally entered the Nyae Nyae Conservancy in northern Namibia with their livestock, violating several local, national and international policies and laws – including those upholding local land and resource rights. The conservancy is managed by the Ju/’hoansi, an indigenous hunter-gatherer community, and is one of the only places in the world in which such a community has access to their ancestral land and control over their resources. It is often presented as a model case for community land rights. However, none of the protections that are supposed to be in place are being upheld, and the numbers of cattle in the area are continuing to increase, with devastating effects. As reflected in the title, the Ju’hoansi clearly see the continuation of this state of affairs as spelling their demise. What they find shocking is the complete disregard being shown for the laws regarding land and resource that have been carefully negotiated with the government.

The Nyae Nyae area is also significant globally – it has been identified by leading scientists as among the Earth’s few remaining intact ecosystems. There should be enormous interest in upholding their rights – why is nothing happening? Based on long-term ethnographic research, this presentation takes a close look at this seemingly small-scale event, taking place in a remote area of the world and contextualizes it historically and globally. What are the driving forces behind these national and international patterns of increasing violations of indigenous land rights? How can we connect this to the increasing recognition of the inherent value of their land tenure systems? At what level can these questions be addressed?

9:50-10:05: Ethnographic action. Collaborative applied anthropology among war refugees

Trond Waage, Associate Professor of Visual Anthropology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway (trond.waage@uit.no)

Agnes, a teenager from the Central African Republic, was babysitting her siblings when the village was attacked. The rebels set fire to their huts and killed people. She fled in panic, through the forest, ending up in a village in Cameroon. She looks into the camera, saying: there was war, we didn’t have shoes and food, we were afraid. I came to Cameroon, I married, got a son, the baby died, and if you say you want to understand how we live, what are you going to do about that?

Yes, what on Earth can we do? The situation in this part of Africa is desperate. Droughts, conflicts, radicalization, an opioid crisis and increasing violence are among the many challenges. The crippling fact is that the many marginalised groups and communities have no arenas or opportunities for developing inter- and intra-community solidarity. To increase the anthropological impact factor it will not be enough to «tear down “The Wall”» as Thomas Hylland-Eriksen (2020) suggests, we have to do more than “tell compelling stories trying to convince those who can make changes.”

This paper will present one concrete example from an ongoing project, Sahel on Sahel, in which representatives from local communities, having experienced violent conflicts in the region, are taught to make collaborative, character-driven films. The presentation will thus discuss how ethnographic action, fieldwork-based knowledge, and video-based ethnographic methods may contribute to meet these challenges.  

10:05-10:20: From Outrage to Mobilization: China’s Environmental Action following Food and Health Scandals

Carolina Némethy, PhD Fellow, UiT The Arctic University of Norway (carolina.nemethy@uit.no)

China’s food scandals were much cause for political outrage towards practices that had led to harm and much uncertainty about food safety in China, contributing to a national interest in boosting environmental initiatives. From melamine in milk that led to the hospitalization of countless infants to exploding watermelons, gutter oil and human hair in soya, these scandals reached headlines internationally, stigmatizing food and health safety in China. Central to this outrage is the question of morality – what does it take to transgress a moral boundary from tolerable to unacceptable? And how do producers (i.e. local farmers and food chains) impacted by the outrage cope with its stigmatizing effects? This paper takes a sociotechnical approach to reflect over the environmental action that followed outrage in public responses to food scandals in China. Tracing the development from outrage towards said scandals in public media to assembling stories of efforts toward a safer and more environmental China, this investigation will unpack imaginaries of progress and betterment that undergird new ways of coping with uncertainty in the stigmatized domain of food and health in China. I argue that efforts towards environmental action reveal coping mechanisms that work to counter the underlying stigmatization of “Made in China” in new and innovative ways. Examples of such efforts include rural China’s blockchain chicken farms, organic certifications (i.e. organic tea), as well as high-tech chopsticks that sense food contamination. These methods and innovations attend to situated uncertainties that reveal a complex interplay between public outrage and local, moral imaginaries, including technological solutionist claims that hinge on the promise of novelty and progression. At the same time, this progression causes a polarization between affordable produce and expensive but ‘safe’ produce.

10:20-10:35: Climate change, COP21, and Imagining the Future

Richard Fraser, Postdoctoral Fellow in Social Anthropology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway (r.fraser28@hotmail.com)

In this talk I explore the social and cultural dimensions of the COP21 climate conference in Paris. In it I ask: what might an ethnographic lens offer in revealing the wider culture (and cultures) of global climate change - and how might we connect this to the rhetorical question “what on Earth (is happening)? and the bigger (and political) question: could the world be otherwise? Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out at the COP21 site - as well as at various locations and actions around Paris at the time - I describe the structural setting of the event, the physical presentation of the space by the COP institution, and the engagement of diverse actors including academics and politicians, NGOs, civil society groups, indigenous representatives, activists and others. In the process, I argue that COP itself can be seen as a cultural performance - with ritualistic, liminal, and symbolic dimensions which afford space for debate and action. In conclusion, I show how ritual and performance offer a useful lens through which to understand the performativity of global climate change politics and the importance of human culture for imagining hope, change, and alternate futures.

10:35-10:50: “This is not a forest.” – exploring ethnocentric and biocentric interfaces of ecosystem management through ethnographies beyond the human

Bente Sundsvold, Associate Professor Department of Social Sciences, UiT the Arctic University of Norway (bente.sundsvold@uit.no)

“This is not a forest. It is a meadow”, the biologist stated to the anthropologist as we approached a forest-like cluster of trees during a mapping fieldtrip in Northern Norway. The statement was related to the mapping methodology of an environmental scheme, Nature-in- Norway, NiN, which is a national strategy for documenting the status of biodiversity, due to the Convention of Biodiversity (CB) and to the ‘shrubification’ (the expansion of shrubs and trees) on previous pastures and farmland. The paper will explore the reasoning behind the statement juxtaposed to a local management scheme, national designated agricultural landscapes (Utvalgte kulturlandskap I jordbruket, UKL) in a coastal Sámi community in Finnmark. The data illuminate and question the harmonizing and polarizing role of nature science models in cultural landscape management, and the difficulties and potentials these create for local practitioners maintaining and stewarding outlying field areas.

10:50-11:00 Concluding Discussion

6 - Paradoxes of polarization and post-politics in the Nordic welfare regimes and services.

Arrangører:

Anette Fagertun, Høgskolen på Vestlandet: anette.fagertun@hvl.no

Democratic governance involves grounded social institutions and functional arrangements, but also contingency and political re-articulations – thus, difference and division, antagonism and polarization, are predicaments of a democratic polity (Stavarakakis 2018: 49). The Nordic welfare state aims at counteracting societal divisions through inclusive welfare policy and universal and accessible welfare service provision (Vike 2018). Thus, public welfare services can be conceptualized as ‘a commons’, referring to the complex of systems, practices and conflicts connected by a commitment to life beyond self-regulating markets. Neoliberalism – as rationality and form of governance – is ‘multi-vocal’ and articulates differently in various contexts. Yet, it has challenged and changed the welfare state through logics at odds with for example egalitarianism and universalism. The welfare state is currently conceived of as in ‘crisis’, and welfare policies are increasingly surrounded by turmoil that produces tight sequences of reforms in the name of ‘sustainability’ driven by a logic of ‘evidence-based’ innovation. The current political and institutional landscape is characterized by rising polarization and insurgent grass root resistance, yet, also by a consensus-mode through which neoliberal rationality is supported across all political party lines. This situation may represent a disjuncture, a triple movement overlapping Polanyi’s description of the structural properties of the ‘double movement’, yet, it is also different because of fragmented counter-hegemonic projects in the era of post-politics narrowing ‘the political’ (Fraser 2017; Mouffe 2019).

The aim of this panel is to scrutinize paradoxes of polarization and consensus-making as they articulate in public welfare services within changing welfare regimes shaped by the ‘triple movement’ of the forces of ‘marketization’, ‘social protection’ and ‘emancipation’ (Polanyi 1944; Fraser 2017). In order to theorize and operationalize the concept of polarization, this panel makes an analytical distinction between ‘societal polarization’ understood as the formation of (new) social divisions, and ‘political polarization’ understood as the increasing ideological distance between poles where the middle ground is abandoned and policy-making takes a new form and/or is made difficult.

Panel organizer and discussant: Anette Fagertun, Associate Professor, Centre for Care Research west, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, HVL.

Program:

All the presentations are planned for max 15 min and 3 min for comments and questions.

Introducing the theme of the panel and the panellists.

Anette Fagertun

Silencing labour in welfare production.

Anette Fagertun

The public welfare systems of Europe are today portrayed as being in constant crisis, resulting in unsettling processes of political crisis management and relentless state interventions and reforms. Innovative policies in Norway are influenced by global changes in the political economy, and one of the current and dominant political logics of all Western health care reforms is ‘co-creation’ (samskaping). Healthcare is a strongly politicized field, yet, Fagertun explores what she conceive of as a recent trend of de-politicizing. Through a critical policy analysis, inspired by Carol Bacchi’s (2009) formulation of “what is the problem represented to be?”, Fagertun shows that labour is rendered outside of current healthcare policy frames and that this has implications for how ‘service innovation’ is practiced in the municipalities. When the actual work and bodies of producing agent are invisible in the hegemonic policy imagery, this indicates a devaluation of care and a silencing of labour. Women dominate the municipal healthcare services, and the work here is feminized. Thus, the silencing of labour also has gendered implications. The more general argument is that although public healthcare is fiercely debated and massively regulated, one of the effects of the ongoing naturalization of neoliberal capitalist relations is a broader de-politicization and de-basing of labour.

Anette Fagertun is a social anthropologist working as an Associate Professor at the Centre for Care Research west, HVL. Her ethnographic regions of research are South East Asia/Indonesia and Europe/Norway/the Netherlands. Her main research interests are labour, gender, class, welfare regimes and social policy.

What is in the “co” in co-creation of welfare services? Chasing the moving targets of “the private” and “the market” in discourses of co-creation in older people’s care in Norway.

Frode F. Jacobsen

After decades of New Public Management (NPM), with focus on efficiency and sustained efforts at treating public service organizations as if they were private companies, the idea of “co-creation” has emerged. Co-creation, emphasizing collaborative interaction in networks and partnerships between state, market and civil society, seems to capture some newer trends at national and local government level in many OECD countries including Norway (Torfing et al. 2019). While NPM treats all types of organizations in a homogenizing way, a belief that a plurality of different and unique actors together may be capable of improving the public sector services has gained terrain (ibid.). This development has been coined under New Public Governance (Osborne 2006), where a culturally constructed crisis (Roitman 2014) legitimizes the quest for a plurality of actors, including private actors, in welfare services in general and in older people’s care in particular (Meagher & Szebehely 2013). However, who the private actors and the “market” of older people’s care “are” and how they are represented in public discourses, is a complex matter where the different parties in working life and different political parties engage in a rather polarized discourses.

Frode F. Jacobsen is a social anthropologist working as professor and research director at the Centre for Care Research west, HVL, and professor II at VID Specialized University, Bergen, Norway.

Paradoxes of polarization in the child welfare services: an analysis of children’s participation practices.

Tone Jørgensen and Mari Husabø

Children’s rights and the concept of “the child’s perspective” have become important in public child welfare in Norway and internationally (Skivenes & Strandbu, 2006). The child welfare services (CWS) increasingly involve children as ‘partners’ in decision making processes, signalling a social and cultural shift in understanding children as ‘beings’ rather than ‘becomings’ (James and Prout, 1997). At the same time, a polarized public opinion about CWS` child centred practice is expressed, both in parents organising grass root movements to reform the child welfare as well as in rulings to protect family life and parental rights in the European Court of Human Rights. Following Howarth & Stavrakakis (2000) perspectives on discursive hegemony, this situation may illustrate competing discourses involved in a struggle for the power of representation in child welfare policies. This paper analyses the ongoing polarization within the field of child welfare through a case concerning practices for participation for children in low-income families in contact with the CWS and the Labour and Welfare Services (NAV). We argue that one implication of a one-sided rights-based approach to child welfare services reinforces an individualization of families` social needs.

Associate professor Tone Jørgensen is a social anthropologist in the department of Welfare and Participation, HVL. Her research interests are professional practices in the child welfare services, user involvement and power.

Phd-student Mari Husabø is a social anthropologist in the department of Welfare and Participation, HVL. Her research interests are professional knowledge, gender and marginalization.

The new elderly of the new welfare state.

Heidi Haukelien

Elderly care represents perhaps the most central symbol of the universalistic Nordic welfare model. Massive expansion of welfare services took place over a period from 1950/60th until around 2000. Compared to other welfare states, elderly care in Norden and Norway played an exceptional central role. However, during the last couple of decades we can identify shifts in the public discourse on elderly care from a cultural model of older people in need for care towards a cultural model of older people as active, rehabilitative and in search for autonomy – as agents who continuously manage the responsibility for maintaining their own independence. Parallel to these shifts the increasing number of old people is pictured as a big wave threatening to undermine the sustainability of the welfare state. Based on an analytical understanding of the significance of cultural models in institutional change, this paper investigates how these changes might be implemented in the elderly care services without an in-depth political and professional discussion about what kind of welfare regime the population wants and needs. Elderly care is an excellent prism for understanding regime change because it constitutes the most comprehensive and demanding form of service and forms (some of) the core of the universalist welfare schemes.

Associate Professor, social anthropologist Heidi Haukelien (PhD) heads the Centre for Care Research South at USN and holds a senior research position at Telemark Research Institute. She has experience from ethnographic studies of welfare services and politics at the municipal-, specialist- and political level.

7 - Nye konfigurasjoner: Spenningsfeltet sosialantropologi og sosialt arbeid

Organisers:

Anne Sigfrid Grønseth, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences: anne.gronseth@inn.no

Christian Sørhaug, Østfold University College: christian.sorhaug@hiof.no

Marianne Rugkåsa, OsloMet: marirug@oslomet.no

I dag jobber mange sosialantropologer opp mot virksomheter knyttet til sosialt arbeid. I denne arbeidsgruppen er vi interessert i å utforske nye mulighetsrom, sammensetninger og utfordringer som gjør seg gjeldende i dette kryssningsfeltet. Den pågående pandemien har skapt økt polariseringer og større sosial ulikhet som gjør seg gjeldene både for antropologiske studier og sosialt arbeid.

Både sosialantropologi og sosialt arbeid har vokst ut av gode intensjoner om å bedre sosialt liv, samtidig som begge sliter med en historie av «sivilisering» og «kolonialisering» av «den andre». En sentral tematikk er «den andre», og helst den underpriviligerte andre. Mens sosialt arbeid utviklet seg fra et ønske om å forbedre fattiges livsbetingelser, ville antropologien forstå de «eksotiske» andre, deres kultur, og således skape et utgangspunkt for å kunne iverksette sosiale reformer (Taylor 1871), renovere «vestlig kultur» (Durkheim 1912) og overføre kunnskap til Vesten (Levi-Strauss 1971), Sammen skaper disse tilnærmingene en forståelse av kunnskap og sosial reform som harmoniske tiltak, og utgjør en anvendt og kritisk antropologi, eller det som nylig er blitt kalt en «moralsk forpliktelse» (Scheper-Huges 1995), også kalt en «moralsk angst» (Faubion 2003).

I antropologien holdes kulturrelativisme, forstått som en metodisk relativisme, høyt. Vi skal kontinuerlig etterstrebe å forstå andres livsverden. I sosialt arbeid framheves det at for å hjelpe den andre, må du forstå den andre. Tross slike likheter er det en forskjell ved at sosialarbeideren ser seg som en aktiv ‘endringsagent’ mens sosialantropologen strekker seg mot en fortolkende forståelse, og vil helst intervenere minst mulig. Slike og andre spenningsfelt kan åpne nye konfigurasjoner, nye perspektiver på eget fag, nye produktive arenaer og studiefelt for sosialantropologien.

Arbeidsgruppa ønsker med dette å utforske følgende – og andre - relevante spørsmål:

Hvordan kan antropologi påvirke sosialt arbeid?
Kan relasjonen mellom antropologi og sosialt arbeid rekonfigureres?
Hvordan kan antropologi og sosialt arbeid spille på lag for å dempe sosial polarisering?
Hvordan kan antropologer forbli ‘a community of critics’ (Marilyn Strathern) og samtidig jobbe bekreftende med sosial endring, sosialt arbeid og deres praksiser?
Hvordan forstår de to fagene innholdet, etablering og opprettholdelse av sosiale relasjoner?
Utover å forstå sosialt arbeids posisjon og destabilisere våre egne disiplinære vaner og antakelser, spør vi om det finnes andre måter å samarbeide på?
Hvordan kan vi legge til rett for produktive, inkluderende, rettferdige og ulike framtidige scenarier i kjølvannet av pandemien?
Kan sosialantropologi og sosialt arbeid finne nye felles perspektiver i møte med pandemien?

Program:

Kort innledning v/Christian Sørhaug

Sesjon 1 Ordstyrer: Marianne Rugkåsa

1. Studentblikk

Maria Fredriksen Kvamme, UiT, maria.f.kvamme@uit.no

Problematikkene psykisk helse og trivsel har fått stadig større plass i norsk offentlighets bekymring over ungdom og unge voksne, ofte knyttet til publiserte resultater fra større nasjonalt dekkede spørreundersøkelser med fokus på enkeltvariabler, eller generaliserte risikofaktorer. Flere kritiske innspill har pekt på en mangel på kompleksitet og nyanser i måten forskning om ungdom har blitt tolket - med potensielle rekursive effekter på unges selvforståelse og rammer for tiltak. For eksempel har vektleggingen av jenter/ unge kvinner som mer psykologisk sårbare enn gutter/ menn vært kritisert. Aktualiseringen i problematikker knyttet til begrepene psykisk helse og trivsel kan også knyttes til transformasjoner i utdanningsfeltet, hvor stadig flere unge med ulik bakgrunn kanaliseres inn mot høyere utdanning på vei mot voksenlivet.

Norsk folkehelsepromotering er ofte begrepsliggjort som et spørsmål om hvorvidt evidensbasert kunnskap om risikofaktorer og anbefalinger er tilgjengeliggjort, slik at den enkelte borger kan settes i stand til å utføre optimale selv-omsorgs teknologier. Et eksempel på et universelt tiltak i utdanningsfeltet, tilsynelatende tråd med en slik logikk, er det ny-innførte pensumet i ”livsmestring” på samtlige videregående skoler landet jmf. Madsen 2018. Samtidig øker fokuset på sosial ulikhet på nasjonale politiske og forskningsagendaer igjen, som kompliserer nyliberale ideer om frihet og ansvar for egen helse og trivsel gjennom individuelle valg (jmf. Mol 2008). Koronapandemien har ytterligere aktualisert studenters psykiske helse, men denne gang med et tilsynelatende sterkere fokus i forståelse og handtering på betydningen av relasjoner, omsorg og sosialitet for både trivsel, helse og læringsmål.

Med begrepene psykisk helse og trivsel deler antropologen en felles terminologi med fagfolk i helse- og sosialt arbeid, folkehelseforskningen, media og offentlige byråkratiske dokumenter. Sosiale prosesser som leder fram til erfaringer som grupperes under dem og betydningen de har for de unge selv i ulike faser er imidlertid ikke gitt (eg. Kleinman 1986, Lock 1993, Hay 2008, Hochschild 1978).

I dette innlegget utforsker jeg utfordringer og muligheter for antropologisk kunnskapsproduksjon i et prosjekt som anvender deltagende, visuelle tilnærminger med unge studenter – i dialog med ulike aktører som vil dem vel innen medisin og folkehelseforskning (på instituttet hvor prosjektet er organisatorisk plassert), ideelt organisasjonsliv (som finaniserer de største deler av prosjektet) og sosialfaglig arbeid (ved aktører som bidrar i deler av rekrutteringen).

2. Konfliktmegling, stormøter og gatemegling: Et transformativt felt for refleksiv dialog mellom ulike livsverdener? Dypderefleksivitet og kontekstsensitivitet i sosialt arbeid og antropologi.

Espen Foss, HiØF, Espen.m.foss@hiof.no

Refleksivitet er sentralt både i sosialt arbeid og sosialantropologi. I dette paperet vil jeg diskutere en forståelse av dybderefleksivitet som strekker seg tilbake til klassikere som Van Gennep og Victor Turner og framover mot samtidige antropologer som Bruce Kapferer og Lisette Josephides. Dette perspektivet går utover en tradisjonell vitenskapsteoretisk forståelse av refleksivitet, med fokus på hvordan forskjellige livsverdener praktiserer refleksivitet i ulike former for (ritualisert) liv. Her forstås dybderefleksivitet som en ritualisert prosess der livets vitale aspekter og habitus gjøres til gjenstand for eksternalisering, forhandling og nyskapning, og da ikke snevert i betydningen av intellektuell refleksjon.

I min ph.d. (2006-2016) studerte jeg et globalisert praksisfelt som går under paraplyen restorative practice/gjenopprettende praksis gjennom et flerfeltsarbeid i Norge: Konfliktrådet, Røde kors gatemegling, Minhaj konfliktråd og ungdomsgruppa HYWA, som oppstod spontant etter et drap mellom jevnaldrende. Et sentralt funn var at disse praksisene i varierende grad kunne forstås som dyprefleksive prosesser. Samtidig er det et empirisk og kontekstavhengig spørsmål hva som bidrar til transformativ dialog og/eller reproduksjon av status quo (f.eks. individualisering av storsamfunnets problemer).

Spørsmål jeg ønsker å utforske i paperet:

Hva kan sosialt arbeid lære mht. transformative/spontanterapeutiske prosesser fra det gjenopprettende praksisfeltet slik det utspiller seg i hhv. statlige og frivillige/sivile kontekster?
Hvilken betydning har refleksivitet og kontekstsensitivitet for utøvelsen av verdier/ideologi innen praksisfelt (innen GP-feltet: medvirkning og eierskap til egen prosess/profesjonskritisk holdning; likeverdighet mellom partene; tilretteleggers upartiskhet; åpen dialog og nettverksprosess)?
Hvilke øvrige former for dybderefleksivitet og transformative felt finnes i sosialt arbeid, f.eks i åpen dialog og nettverksarbeid?

I lys av pandemien er det også interessant å utforske hvordan en framskyndet teknokratisk digitaliseringstrend innvirker i slike antatte dialogisk-transformative prosesser.

3. Sosialantropologiens kvalitative perspektiver som redskap for læring i sosialt arbeid med barn og unge

Trond Heitmann, HiØF, trond.heitmann@hiof.no

Denne studien tar utgangspunkt i gjennomføring av kommunale nærmiljøprosjekter som er rettet mot sosial inkludering og forebygging av utenforskap blant barn og unge. Nærmiljøene er ofte presentert som avgrensede skolemiljøer eller bydeler hvor kommunene oppleve at det foreligger særskilte sosiale utfordringer og problemer med utenforskap. Prosjektene er finansiert gjennom fylkeskommunen og er en del av Helsedirektoratets tiårige satsning på folkehelsearbeid i kommunene, som igjen er utledet av Folkehelsemeldingen Mestring og muligheter (St.mld. 19 (2014-2015)).

Studien tar utgangspunkt i deltakelse i fylkeskommunens oppfølging av flere av prosjektene, samt intervjuer med prosjektkoordinatorer i fem av kommunene som har fått tildelt midler.

Prosjektene er preget av at de er et resultat av fortolkningsprosesser av det som ses på som sosiale problemer på ulike nivåer i forvaltningen, fra det nasjonale nivået til den daglige interaksjonen i de ulike nærmiljøene. På lokalt nivå påvirkes denne fortolkningen av en rekke eksterne forhold slik som kommunal omorganisering, utskifting av ansatte, økonomiske rammebetingelser og andre uforutsette forhold. Prosjektene er avhengige av at de har aksept og legitimitet hos en rekke lokale aktører, representert ved blant annet politisk og administrativ ledelse i kommunene, frivillige aktører, tilgrensende offentlige velferdstjenester og overordnede innen samme etat, foruten de unge selv. Samtidig skal de rapportere jevnlig til sentrale myndigheter slik som fylkeskommunen og nasjonale myndigheter representert ved helsedirektoratet. Dette medfører at prosjektkoordinatorene, som sjelden selv deltok i utformingen av prosjektene, bedriver et omfattende fortolknings-, endrings- og kontekstualiseringsarbeid på flere fronter og nivåer for å gjennomføre og skape mulighetsrom for prosjektene

Foreløpige funn viser at prosjektene inngår i mange ulike relasjoner som i vesentlig grad styrer prosjektenes gjennomføring, men som bare i begrenset grad er eksplisitt artikulert i utlysninger, søknader og rapporteringer. Antropologiske perspektiver som vektlegger meningskonstruksjon i samhandling synliggjør de faktiske relasjonene som er vesentlige for prosjektenes gjennomføring. Studien viser hvordan akkumulering av kvalitativ kunnskap som ikke uten videre fanges opp i standardiserte rapporteringsregimer og må anses som grunnleggende for å bidra til læring som har overføringsverdi på tvers av kontekster.

4. Destabilisering av relasjoner av ansvarlighet: Utforsking av kunnskapsproduksjon og praksisformer

Anne Sigfrid Grønseth, HINN, Lillehammer, anne.gronseth@inn.no

Basert på min forskning fra mellomliggende og overlappende felt innenfor medisinsk antropologi og migrasjon har jeg utviklet en interesse for helse, velvære og mobilititet. Med studier av tamilske flyktninger i helsevesenet, asylsøkere i mottak, minoritetsfamilier i barnevernet og lav-inntekt migrantfamilier i kommunal bosetting, har jeg sett behov for kunnskap fra sfærene av livet som det leves og erfares. En forskningstilnærming som berører «levd liv» vekker en rekke etiske spørsmål, hvorav jeg i dette innlegget fokuserer på ansvarlighet og relasjoner av ansvarlighet, slik det er sentralt på like og ulike måter i både antropologi og sosialt arbeid. Ved å undersøke møtepunkter mellom disiplinene og praksisene, vil jeg forsøke å kaste lys over hvem som er ansvarlige, ansvarlige i forhold til hva, og med hvem sin autoritet ansvarlighet er benevnt? Jeg vil referer til caser fra tidligere nevnte forskningsprosjekter knyttet til migranter og flyktninger for å si noe om hva slags relasjoner ansvarlighet trekker på. Jeg vil mer spesifikt se på hvordan disse relasjonene definerer personer og grupper, hvordan slike relasjoner spiller inn i akademisk og institusjonelle praksiser for måter å skape kunnskap, og hvordan de spiller inn i former for evaluering og modeller for intervensjoner.

PAUSE

Sesjon 2 Ordstyrer: Anne Sigfrid Grønseth

5. Antropologiske perspektiver i sosialt arbeids forskning

Marianne Rugkåsa, OsloMet marirug@oslomet.no

Forskning i sosialt arbeid rettes gjerne mot utsatte grupper, hushold, familier eller individer som er i kontakt med sosiale hjelpetjenester. Kunnskap om mennesker som har behov for støtte fra det offentlige systematiseres, ofte i sammenheng med velferdsstatens behov for å planlegge og kontrollere tjenestene. Kunnskap om hvem klientene er, og hvordan deres sårbare posisjon kommer til uttrykk er nødvendig for å tilrettelegge for tjenesteutøvelsen.

I innlegget vil jeg diskutere hvordan antropologiske tilnærminger og metoder kan bidra i utviklingen av forskning i sosialt arbeid. Hovedfokus vil være hvordan deltakende observasjon muliggjør en holistisk tilnærming, gjennom å ta utgangspunkt i både klientenes, sosialarbeidernes og forskernes perspektiv, og hvordan dette kan belyse klientenes situasjon og situasjonen de befinner seg i på en fruktbar måte. Begrepsparet emisk – etisk, som to måter å beskrive og forstå samme hendelser eller fenomener på, og oversettelsen mellom informantenes emiske og forskerens etiske kategorier blir sentralt for forståelse og formidling av det som studeres. «Thick description», og hvordan handlinger tolkes i lys av etablerte koder og kategorier gir en utvidet og kontekstuell beskrivelse og forståelse er også verdifullt. Med utgangspunkt i empiri basert på deltakende observasjon ved arbeidsmarkedstiltak og av analyse tekster skrevet av sosialarbeidere i barnevernet, vil jeg argumentere for at antropologisk metode og teori har potensial for teoriutvikling for forskning og praksis i sosialt arbeid, i retninger som hittil har blitt viet liten oppmerksomhet.

6. Endringsarbeid- kan sosialantropologisk kunnskap være et bidrag?

Wenche Bekken, OsloMet, webe@oslomet.no

Endring er sentralt i sosialt arbeid med individer, familier og grupper. Arbeidet er ofte konsentrert rundt individer og familier, men også opprustning av områder og interessepolitisk arbeid kan inngå i sosialt arbeid. Målet er bedring og et trygt og godt miljø å leve i hvor man kan være en aktiv medborger. Sosialantropologien bidrar med kunnskap om stabilitet og endring i kulturer. Hva endres i lukkede samfunn, hva bevares når teknologien rundt oss endres raskere enn vi mennesker klarer å henge med på eller hvordan kan vi forstå individer som endringsaktører, er noen av spørsmålene sosialantropologer studerer. Forholdet mellom kontinuitet og endring for sitt uttrykk avhengig av kontekst. For eksempel kan objekter som tas ut av sin kontekst gjøre at det blir tillagt ny mening. I forhold til sosialt arbeid er dette interessant. Når problemer i hverdagen skal gjøre noe med tas de ut av en sammenheng og inn i en annen og nytt meningsinnhold blir tilført. I dette innlegget vil jeg ved empiriske eksempler diskutere sosialantropologiens bidrag til forståelse av endring i sosialt arbeid.

7. Et forsøk på remontering av sosialt arbeid: NAV-mottakets romlige, materielle og teknologiske inskripsjoner

Christian Sørhaug, HiØF, christian.sorhaug@hiof.no

”At man, naar det i Sandhed skal lykkes En at føre et Menneske hen til et bestemt Sted, først og fremmest maa passe paa at finde ham der, hvor han er, og begynde der” (Kierkegaard, 1859).

Søren Kierkegaards blir hyppig brakt på banen av sosialarbeidere og velferdsvitere som vil påvirke menneskers livssituasjon. Hamilton lot seg inspirere av Kirkegaard, til det som i den sosialfaglige litteraturen refereres til som sosialt arbeids mantra: personen-i-situasjonen (Hamilton, i Kokkinn, 2005, s. 87). Situasjonen som personen befinner seg i vil ofte utspille seg i en institusjonell arkitektur. I dette paperet er vi interessert til å vend blikket mot offentlige institusjoners rommelige design, teknologiske, materielle og interiørmessige forhold – altså elementer i situasjonen som ofte blir lagt i bakgrunnen (backstage) for å forstå nettopp personen-i-situasjonen. Dagens situasjon i mange NAV-mottak er i endring som følge av kanalstrategien som etterstreber å orientere bruker mot rett kanal. I hovedsak dreier «rett kanal» seg om å flytte brukere over til digitale plattformer. Tilbakemeldingen fra brukere er i stor grad positiv, og strategien fremstår langt på vei vellykket. Samtidig ønsker vi å understreke at endringene ikke nødvendigvis fungerer for alle. For hva kan være konsekvensene av de store endringene som har utspilt seg på dagens NAV-kontorer? Gitt at kanalstrategiens mantra har vært «å frigjøre tid til de som virkelig trenger det», er de endringene som har utspilt seg i NAV-kontoret til fordel for folk som har sosiale problemer? Fungerer dagens NAV-mottak som en god eller dårlig plattform for utøvelse av sosialt arbeid? Med utgangspunkt i observasjoner og noen intervjuer ønsker vi å få fram noen betydninger romlig organisering for sosialt arbeid.

8.Antropologisk film som intervensjon i rusfeltet

Kirsti Sarheim Anthun, SINTEF, kirsti.sarheim.anthun@sintef.no

Siren Hope, NTNU, siren.hope@ntnu.no

Innlegget presenterer erfaringer og refleksjoner fra vårt samarbeidsprosjekt med sosialarbeidere knyttet til et lavterskeltilbud for personer med rusproblemer: Dagsverket i Trondheim. Hit kan personer som har, eller har hatt, rusproblemer møte opp og delta i arbeid.

Som forskere skulle vi evaluere tilbudet, og fordi vi hadde bakgrunn fra visuell antropologi og bruk av photovoice, avgjorde vi sammen med Dagsverkets ansatte og deltakere å lage en film om Dagsverket. En dag i uka i ett år arbeidet vi sammen med deltakerne samtidig som vi med filmkamera dokumenterte arbeid, samspill, rutiner og deltakernes synspunkter på Dagsverket, samfunnet og egne liv.

Rusmisbrukere er blitt fremstilt på ulike måter - som kriminelle, som offer for vanskelige sosiale forhold, som syke og behandlingstrengende. Alle disse konstruksjonene henger igjen i nåtidas diskurs om rusmisbrukerne – de demoniseres og stakkarsliggjøres på samme tid. Videre forskes de ofte på, eller blir re-presentert, når de er i rusbehandling, i rus eller abstinens. Slik trer bildet av "Den Andre", den avvikende, den maktes- og hjelpeløse frem.

Filmen om Dagsverket viser en positiv side av deltakernes hverdagsvirkelighet; et arbeidslag som liker å jobbe, som mestrer arbeidet og trives i et fellesskap som ikke vektlegger identiteten deres som rusavhengige. Filmen blir en mot-historie. Og fordi mediet er film, kommer deltakernes kapasiteter, i form av kroppsspråk, stemmer, deres fysiske bevegelser og den sosiale stemningen frem og validerer mot-historien. David MacDougall, visuell antropolog, argumenterer for den antropologiske filmens ‘transkulturelle potensiale’: dens evne til å formidle ørsmå detaljer, væremåter og rutiner fra en kultur til en annen, få frem det fellesmenneskelige som visker ut forskjeller og gjør det ukjente gjenkjennbart. Møtet med rusmisbrukere på film, kan derfor bidra mer effektfullt enn andre medier til å utfordre diskursene om den avvikende, maktes- og hjelpeløse rusmisbrukeren.

Oppsummering og veien videre v/Anne Sigfrid Grønseth

8 - Antropologiske tilnærminger til paradokser og kompleksitet i offentlige sektor

Organisers:

Gard Ringen Høibjerg, NAV, Design Researcher: Gard.ringen.hoibjerg@nav.no

Maria Taivalsaari Røhnebæk, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences: Maria.rohnebak@inn.no

Organisasjoner i offentlig sektor håndterer kontinuerlig en rekke motstridende verdier, krav og forventninger. Det er organisasjoner som er satt til å forvalte fellesskapets interesser og ressurser, og de skal samtidig ivareta individet og tilby tjenester som er tilpasset individers forutsetninger og behov. Det forventes at fellesskapets ressurser forvaltes på kostnadseffektive måter, samtidig som det skal være formålseffektivt og etiske og moralske hensyn skal ivaretas. De mange motstridende verdiene og kravene som ligger til grunn for virksomheter i offentlig sektor innebærer at dette er organisasjoner preget av paradokser og med høy grad av kompleksitet.

I teorier om organisatoriske paradokser er man opptatt av paradokser ikke kan løses, men at de kan forstås og håndteres på mer eller mindre hensiktsmessige måter. Utgangspunktet for denne arbeidsgruppen er at antropologi er egnet for å fortolke, analysere og sette ord på slike paradokser, og at antropologer derfor kan spille en viktig rolle i offentlige organisasjoners håndtering av kompleksitet og spenninger. Antropologers ‘verktøykasse’ er basert på en holistisk tilnærming til problemstillinger, og den vektlegger evnen til å forstå fenomener fra ulike perspektiv. Men hvordan fungerer denne verktøykassen i praksis, og i møte med offentlig sektors organisasjoner paradokser og kompleksitet?

I denne arbeidsgruppen inviterer vi til refleksjoner og diskusjoner rundt disse temaene. Bidragene kan være basert på innsikt fra forskning på eller i organisasjoner i offentlig sektor; fra praktisk erfaring med å jobbe som antropolog i slike organisasjoner; eller fra erfaring med konsulent eller rådgivningsvirksomhet.

Målet med sesjonen er å skape en møteplass der praksisnær empiri og forskningsfronten møtes i samtale for å utvikle en forståelse av antropologiens relasjon og mulige innflytelse på offentlig sektors evne til å håndtere kompleksitet.

Kommentator: Halvard Vike (USN)

Program:

Integrering, samfunnsutfordringer og offentlige tjenester: antropologiske perspektiver

Gard Ringen Høibjerg, Design Researcher, NAV IT Gard.ringen.hoibjerg@nav.no

I denne artikkelen vil jeg vise hvordan introduksjonsprogrammet, som et eksempel på en offentlig tjeneste satt til å løse et komplekst sosialt problem, blir opplevd fra ulike perspektiver. Jeg argumenterer for at de tjenestene som har blitt implementert for å hjelpe nyankomne flyktninger med å finne sin plass i samfunnet tidvis kan se ut til å fungere mot sin hensikt. Dette kommer av integrering som det sentrale begrepet forstås ulikt av det som her vil defineres som tjenesteytere (staten/kommunene) og tjenestemottakere (de bosatte flyktningene). Der ansatte i de offentlige tjeneste er satt til å forvalte integreringspolitikken gjennom å tilby et spenn av tjenester som har gitte målsetninger, viser jeg hvordan bosatte flyktninger ser på sin inngang til samfunnene de har blitt bosatt i som en mer sosialt fundamentert prosess.

For å forstå ulike perspektiver på integrering setter jeg empirien i kontekst av hvordan offentlig sektor i økende grad har tatt på seg et sosialt ansvar, noe jeg i neste rekke argumenterer for at endrer forholdet innbyggere imellom, og mellom innbyggerne og statsapparatet/offentlig sektor. For å utforske denne prosessen setter jeg funnene mine i kontekst av teoretiske forståelser av offentlig sektor og kollektivisme som to ulike former for sosial organisering.

Integrering av flyktninger fungerer gjennom artikkelen som et eksempel på de paradoksale konsekvensene som kan oppstå når en stat tar på seg det som kan tolkes som en sosial oppgave, og argumenterer for hvordan dette kan føre til at det sosiale ansvaret staten tar på seg kan bidra til å endre forholdet mellom innbyggere (og da særlig nylig bosatte og lengeværende) i Norge.

Kopiere eller transformere? Demenslandsby som modell for fremtidens demensomsorg.

Maria Røhnebæk: Maria.Rohnebak@inn.no

Med en aldrende befolkning øker antall personer som rammes av demens, og dette skaper press og nye utfordringer for helse og omsorgstjenestene. Det fører til utprøving av ulike typer tiltak som kan bidra til mer effektivitet og bedre kvalitet i tjenestene. Én type tiltak er utvikling av såkalte demenslandsbyer. Demenslandsbyer er omsorgsinstitusjoner hvor man forsøker å skape større grad av et hjemmemiljø, eller ‘hjemlighet’ innenfor trygge rammer. Det legges mer vekt på de sosiale, relasjonelle og miljømessige aspektene ved omsorgen, som et alternativ til demensomsorg med hovedvekt på det somatiske og medisinske.

Utbygging av demenslandsbyer handler om å skape og utforske betydningen av nye fysiske omgivelser for demensomsorg, men også om forsøk på å lage rom for en ny type omsorgsfilosofi. I Norge tas prinsipper og tankegods knyttet til demenslandsbyer inn i eksisterende bygg og omsorgsinstitusjoner, men det bygges også egne demenslandsbyer.

Dette paperet tar utgangspunkt i et forskningsprosjekt som følger bygging og utviklingen av en slik demenslandsby Norge. Landsbyen er basert på inspirasjon fra De Hogweyk i Nederland profilert som verdens første demenslandsby. Paperet vil belyse og diskutere dilemmaer og spenninger som oppstår i utvikling av demenslandsbyen. Diskusjonen knyttes til hvordan demenslandsbyen som modell kontekstualiseres når den ‘reiser’ på tvers av land. Hva bevares fra den opprinnelige modellen, hva endres og hvorfor? Empirien viser at utviklingen av demenslandsbyen preges av spenninger og kontroverser knyttet til spørsmål om likhet, likeverd og likebehandling. Teori om translasjon og meningsskaping (sensemaking) brukes som teoretiske innganger i analysen.

Forståelse i motsetning til konflikt – Om å jobbe i møtet mellom grupper, interesser og verdier

Tone Seppola-Edvardsen: tone.seppola-edvardsen@uit.no

I dette fremlegget vil jeg fortelle om mine erfaringer med antropologien som et godt som redskap for forskning og tilbakeføring av kunnskap i prosjekter/offentlig virksomhet. Dette inkluderer situasjoner der det finnes flere parter og/med motstridende interesser, hvor man kan oppleve å være ønsket som både forsker og en slags budbringer mellom grupper/aktører.

Som del av mitt postdoktor-prosjekt gjør jeg følgeforskning på et tiltak som heter HelseIArbeid, og er et samarbeidsprosjekt mellom NAV og spesialisthelsetjenesten/UNN (Universitetssykehuset i Nord-Norge). Formålet med tiltaket er hovedsakelig å redusere sykefravær gjennom informasjonsmøter på arbeidsplassen om muskel-/skjelettplager, psykisk helse og smerter. Budskapet er at det vanligvis er bedre for helsa å komme på jobb, eventuelt med tilrettelegging, enn å bli hjemme. Gjennom intervjuer og noe deltakende observasjon forsøker jeg å finne ut av hvordan det oppleves for de ansatte og ledelsen å delta i tiltaket. Samtidig er både NAV og spesialisthelsetjenestens intensjoner og gjennomføring av tiltaket en del av bildet.

To eksempler på dilemmaer er: Hvordan være kritisk på en måte som bidrar til refleksjon heller enn forsvar? Og: Hvordan bringe frem partenes kritiske meninger om hverandre, uten å skape splid og dårlig samarbeidsklima for fremtida?

Jeg vil bruke konkrete eksempler fra egne dilemmaer i tidligere og nåværende forskningsprosjekter og vise hvordan en antropologisk måte å se verden på, for eksempel med tanke på perspektiver, kontekst og bevisstgjøring av aktørene på deres egen «kultur» ble nyttige redskap.

«Når ingenting fungerer gjør vi mer av det samme». Paradokser i offentlige tjenesters arbeid med flyktninger med svake lese- og skriveferdigheter.

Linda Dyrlid og Turid Sætermo: Linda.Dyrlid@ntnu.no

I dette paperet tar vi utgangspunkt i empiri fra et forskningsprosjekt om offentlige tjenester som arbeider med flyktninger med svake lese- og skriveferdigheter. Utfordringene denne gruppen av flyktninger opplever er ofte sammensatte, noe som utløser innsats fra ulike hjelpetjenester. I dette komplekse landskapet forsvinner det helhetlige blikket og innsatsen kan bli fragmentert, repetitiv, og ha glippsoner. I intervjuene vi gjennomførte med tjenesteytere kom det frem at arbeidet som gjøres på mange måter oppleves som lite hensiktsmessig, men at kravene som ligger til grunn for arbeidet og strukturelle forhold gjør at løsningen ofte blir å fortsette med det samme. Paperet beskriver hvordan aktørene i de ulike tjenestene reflekterer over og gir mening til en innsats som de selv ofte beskriver som nytteløs. I materialet kommer det også frem hvordan systemet oppleves som motsetningsfylt og ‘umulig’, noe som blant annet kommer til uttrykk ved at manglende resultater systemforklares, mens suksessfortellinger knyttes til individer. Vi vil her bruke våre funn til å drøfte antropologiens potensielle nytte når det gjelder å fortolke og analysere slike paradokser.

Erfaringer som sosialantropolog og samfunnsplanlegger i Bømlo kommune

Alf Helge Greaker: alfenomen@gmail.com

Med ansvar for overordna planar, så er ein sentral motsetnad korleis involvere innbyggarar som er grunneigarar og utbyggjarar, vs dei som ikkje grunneigarar eller har interesser som kan komme i konflikt med utbygging (barn og unge, natur- og friluftsliv, havbruk vs kystfiske etc).

FN sine berekraftsmål er etter kvart sentrale i heile kommunen si overordna planleggjing men her kan og vere målkonflikt. Til dømes er et mange kvinner som jobbar deltid i regionen. Samstundes er det eit mål, også politisk, med full sysselsetting og heile stillingar i det offentlege. Her kan det ver konflikt mellom dei som ønskjer å vere heime, og eit av delmåla til FN er å "sette pris på all omsorg", og dei som kjempar for fullt arbeid.

Kommunane og det offentlege blir oppmoda om å arbeide meir og meir tverrsektoriel. Som organisasjon kan kommunen då oppleve ulike "arbeidskulturar" eller metodar frå uike sektorar som kjem i konflikt. T.d. er innhaldet i skule og oppvekst-sektor svært styrt av nasjonale føringar, mens helse og omsorgssektor har mykje meir lokal fridom. Dette pregar og dei tilsette.

9 - Exterminate All the Brutes! Exploring the Global Colony and its Resistance

Organisers:

Jennifer Hays, University of Tromsø: jennifer.hays@uit.no

John Andrew McNeish, The Norwegian University of Life Sciences

In a recent documentary produced by Raul Peck, and based on a book by Svein Lindquist, the phrase “Exterminate All the Brutes” is said to sum up the underlying logic of the genocidal history of colonialism and current global order. In the four-part documentary Peck attempts to uncover the “origin story” of white supremacy. Focused mostly on the US and its original sins – the long slow genocide of Indigenous peoples, and slavery – its often-artistic narration draws on wider source material dealing with the European partition of Africa, the rise of the political right, and the “techniques of killing at a distance”.

It is this documentary and its textual foundations, including Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Dunbar Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past, we propose to use as reconsideration of our anthropological work. Papers in this panel will ask, what empirical evidence do we have in our work of this “origin story”, and of its persistence into the present? What details of our work reveal critiques and adjustments to this narrative? What does ethnography reveal about forms of resistance to this “order”, and our possible replication its logics and actions? Social anthropology had a role in the history of colonialism. Does it now have a role in confronting this past, or in aiding and abetting continued “extermination”?

With these questions in mind we invite contributions to this panel from a spectrum of interlinked themes. For example, we invite contributions exploring topics relating to the violence waged against indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities across the world; the social and environmental consequences of land acquisition, resource extraction, and attribution of economic value to nature; and the responses of marginalized peoples and other forms of activism to persisting forms of colonialism (racism, patriarchy, anthropocentrism). We welcome papers connecting these processes with the rise of the political right in Europe and elsewhere; and/or exploring them in relation to the problem of “whiteness” and scientific racism. We seek insights regarding the role of social anthropology both as a force to confront the colonial past and its possible flaws, and the complicity of our field with its logics and practice, and reflections on decolonization and different directions in decolonial theory. It is in the conversation between these disparate directions in anthropology we wish to interrogate and come to terms with the long shadow of a dark legacy: exterminate all the brutes.

Introduction to Panel:

John McNeish

Reprisals against Indigenous human rights defenders – a growing trend or business as usual?

Jennifer Hays, UiT Arctic University of Norway

Over the past few decades, the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ human rights at the global level has increased, giving the impression of an overall trend towards improvement in the situation of Indigenous peoples. But this apparent progress hides a more brutal reality that characterizes the daily experience of indigenous peoples around the world. This is evident statistically; globally Indigenous peoples have lower life expectancies, overall worse health statistics, higher rates of suicide, incarceration, and alcoholism – the list goes on – than other social groups within their nations. Especially dramatic are recent figures showing that, in a global context in which murders of human rights defenders are reported to be increasing around the world, Indigenous human rights activists are targeted at an extremely disproportional rate – in particular for defending their land against extractive industries. Based on recent research undertaken at the global level for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this paper highlights findings relating to reprisals initiated by governments and non-state actors against indigenous activists. These include reprisals directly related to participation in UN programs, and also ongoing campaigns of fear waged daily against many indigenous communities that resist violations of their land and their human rights. This paper argues that these murders and threats do not represent a new trend, but are part of a long and ongoing process of attempted extermination of Indigenous peoples.

Resource Extraction, Colonialism, and the Wild Man in Colombia and Further Afield

John McNeish, The Norwegian University of Life Sciences

The extermination of the brutes has continued in Colombia. Indeed, it has not ended in many contexts of natural resource extraction around the world. In this paper I highlight the persisting record of violence and displacement of Indigenous and Afro-descendent populations in Colombia and its direct relationship to a linked legacy of colonialism, para-militarism, and economic and political corruption. Despite the government´s strong overtures of peace, rights, inclusion, and development at the end of a half century of civil war, Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities in the country continue to be targeted in rural areas as the undesirable “wild man” (Taussig 1989): a blockage to resource extractive development and threat to white/ criollo civilization to be met with force. Since the signing of the Peace Accords with the FARC in 2016 over 600 land defenders, most of them indigenous and afro-descendent, have been targeted by threats and assassination. Whilst recognizing the extreme and exceptional nature of Colombia, this paper highlights that there are nonetheless noticeable similarities with contexts of resource extraction in other parts of the world. Resource extraction- and with it the push for sustainability- is revealed here to not only be a reason for expanding frontiers of development and impacts on the natural world, but a reworking of the expression of racism and brutality that has so strongly characterized world energy development since the industrial revolution (Malm 2021).

‘Control: Attempting to Tame the World’. An example of efforts to decolonize museum practices.

Gro Ween, Cultural History Museum, University of Oslo

The brutishness of museums is widely exposed, this term of course, from Hicks’ exposé of the British Museum with its ‘Curated spoils of Empire’ (2020). Anthropologists have a long being mindful of our museums’ traditions of aiding and abetting, and their authorization of foundational narratives of Western civilization. Included in such practices are collecting activities, ordering and classifying of objects and materials, and our exhibition techniques. As for example described by Haraway (1985) and Latour (2005) such technologies include dioramas, chronological displays -efforts that naturalise scientific orders, evolution and hierarchy, as well as foundational binaries.

This paper describes the exhibition at the Oslo Cultural History Museum, Control: Attempting to Tame the World. I focus on the part of the exhibition called Order. Order introduces Linnaeus’ Flora Lapponica (1737) assembled with five vitrines, speaking to central Enlightenment themes: slavery; the subordination of women; the domestication of indigenous people; the use of animals in colonial enterprises; and the effect of domesticated animals on wild species. To complicate and resist former museum technologies, and subsequently, narratives, Order triggers new relations or disputes, and bring into focus both problematic histories and alternative possibilities.

When culture becomes nature: observations from the Namibian context

Velina Ninkova, UiT

In the years since Namibian independence in 1990, indigenous San communities have increasingly gained access to formal education. A progressive education policy stipulates that teachers can adjust the curriculum to include material that reflects the cultural background of diverse students – but what this means, or how to do it, is not always clear. This paper will contextualize efforts to include “San culture” in Namibian schools within a historical perspective. During German colonization and the subsequent South African apartheid regime, the San were systemically dehumanized and relegated to the natural, rather than the social, world. In independent Namibia today, teachers and government officials often refer to the San as the only group who “still have culture”. In this paper, I will focus on the construction of the notions of nature and culture in both colonial and independent Namibia. I will argue that, although they are often seen as opposed, the two concepts share similar connotations and are used to erase and exclude the San from the national civilizational narrative. Furthermore, this paper argues that, despite progressive policy, the modern education system is not disconnected from historical efforts that sought to exterminate the San.

Organisers:

Bruno Lefort, Tampere University: bruno.lefort@tuni.fi

Eeva Puumala, Tampere University.

Largely shaped by neoliberal policies that intensify inequalities, cities are becoming the sites of increasingly polarized battles on growing income disparities, segregation and cultural differences related to immigration, the place of religion in the society, or national identities. These tensions disrupt the social and political fabric calling into question what living together means. This panel seeks to understand how people move through, exist in, and make sense of difference and complexity in the urban everyday.

Anthropological examinations discuss communities and their dynamics mostly through cultural identity. Growing complexity in urban settings is generally addressed against the backdrop of ethnic, linguistic religious, cultural or other group-based attributes. Even the notion of hybridity, despite its contribution to the study of complexifying identities, remains ontologically connected to a group-based understanding of the social as it essentially supposes “an anterior pure”. Anthropological insights into diversity, in turn, have largely revolved around the concept of citizenship, illuminating how regimes of citizenship translate into dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. This has normalized the nation-state as an entity of reference in discussions around community.

This panel wishes to engage with the affective and emotional experience of living with, in, and through diversity in its complexity. How can we think of community beyond the state, society or group-based accounts? We propose adopting not a cultural, but an existential perspective to belonging to grasp its personal and interpersonal, as well as affective and embodied modes. Furthermore, to understand the heterogeneous and changing nature of human lives, we suggest moving from a communal, consensus-based understanding of living towards a relational and dissensual understanding of coexistence. This double inflection makes it possible to rethink community through emergence, understood as ever-coming-into-being temporary negotiations that make coexistence possible amidst differences, tensions, and conflicts.

Program:

1. Policies and everyday practices of ”social cohesion” in a mixed neighbourhood in Malmö, Sweden

Tina Gudrun Jensen and Erica Righard (Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM), Malmö University)

The neighbourhood of Sofielund in Malmö is marked by coexistence in terms of, for instance, its population’s diverse native and migrant backgrounds and its varying architecture and types of housing. It is also marked by social divisions, including poverty, housing exploitations and criminality. Over time, a large number of interventions have been implemented to better the situation. A new wave of interventions, implemented since the mid-2010s, has gained national attention and are described in terms of success: The neighbourhood is becoming safer and criminality is lowered. The interventions are, among other things, inspired by the Business Improvement District (BID) model and include efforts to enhance social cohesion through a strategy of “opening up Sofielund”. This policy strategy seeks to involve associations in Sofielund as a bottom-up way to ensure inclusion and residents’ ownership in the process. Yet, many residents in Sofielund are both ambivalent and critical towards this development, and ask if the ongoing development in the long run may lead to exclusion. This presentation draws on research conducted within the project Governance and Lived Experiences of Urban Diversity in SEGregated and MIXed Neighbourhoods (SEGMIX). It includes policy analysis of plans for Malmö and Sofielund, but also of national policy and of projects funded through EU cohesion policy, along with ethnographic fieldwork carried out from 2020 in Sofielund. The presentation provides an analysis of multi-level policies and the lived experiences of residents in Sofielund, and shows how policy efforts on “social cohesion” are implemented and how they are perceived by residents. The presentation thus explores the various positions and normative assumptions about what constitutes a good neighbourhood and “social cohesion,” and consequently issues of citizenship, inclusion and exclusion in a mixed neighbourhood.

2. Encounter and Coexistence: Development of the Political Thought on Urban Thresholds

Ebru Sevik (TaSSu - Tampere Centre for Societal Sustainability, Tampere University)

The growing complexity within urban societies renders a transformative effect on the socio-political condition of cities. Although the postmodern metropolis accommodates diverse social, cultural, ethnic and economic actors building interdependent relationships with each other, a paradoxical situation, on the other hand, arises from this multilayered structuring leading to the emergence of a divided society. The persistence of inequalities and growing distances among communities give rise to the fragmentation of urban space, which can be conceptualized as the ‘city of enclaves’. Partitioning of the urban environment into so-called ‘hegemonic territories’, which are homogeneous within themselves, through the framing of identities as 'the self' and 'the other' leaves little room for public debate. In order to reclaim the political by overthrowing the oppressing consequences of this post-political condition, the public sites of the city can serve as a common ground where different identities encounter and create a collective hybrid culture through self-expression and deliberation. Within this framework, this paper revisits the idea of ‘urban threshold’ as an agonistic spatiality having the potential of provoking political thought for an emancipatory urban experience. With a close examination of the spatial emergences that occurred during the Gezi Park Occupation in Istanbul, Turkey in 2013, the in-between spatiality of thresholds is argued to offer a negotiating zone, where conflicting identities are resolved through various solidarizations. The paper investigates the agonistic insights found within the various form of spatial appropriations with regards to the collective resistance occurred during the uprisings. Urban thresholds are argued to frame a deliberative conception of space where debate and dissensus can lead to a collective culture of coexistence.

3. Urban everyday peace

Anna Sofia Suoranta (TAPRI, Tampere University)

Everyday peace is too often distanced from the lived surroundings of people. The city is taken as a given for conflicting or peaceful encounters that constitute everyday peace. The question of space is central to supplementing the social and structural aspects already theoretically emphasized. Addressing the city as the central stage where coexistence and conflict take place grounds everyday peace. It also gives opportunity to test the idea that everyday peace could be applied to “peaceful” societies and communities, not only to conflict or post-conflict situations. A shift in focus gives room for studying larger processes of how societies become divided or stick together. This will only be possible through understanding peace and conflict as simultaneous and ordinary parts of everyday life. This theoretical exploration into the connection between everyday peace and the urban is part of a PhD project in which the context will be youth living in diverse urban areas in Sweden and Finland.

4. Community formation of religiously segregated communities during communal conflicts in Ambon, Indonesia

Abellia Anggi Wardani (Department of Culture Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia)

Studies on communal conflicts tend to showcase the conflicts through the intensity of violence over time. On the contrary, scholars working on peace studies have argued that the absence of violence does not (necessarily) constitute peace. Others consider it negative peace, which allowed society to step ahead towards the post-conflict period. However, for a society that comprises complex entities such as diverse communities, conflict periodization cannot be simplified to fit into: prior to, during, and post conflicts. Such division begs explanations on what were happening in people’s everyday lives during the in-between violent incidents, the period when it was kind of safe, but not yet safe or peaceful. In Ambon, where communities were geographically segregated along the religious lines of Muslims and Christians throughout the conflicts period, any contact between communities was considered dangerous. Although, such intercommunal contact was necessary to rebuild trust. Driven by communities’ survival needs, people from both communities, Muslim and Christian started to engage in border trade surrounding the conflict hotspots. Once the exchange took place, the narratives of togetherness and brotherhood of the Ambonese people became prominent, and each tried to ensure one’s safety and offered to step in the border area and conducted trade in the proximity. People started to develop a common narrative to indicate the shift from critical moments to somewhat normalcy, where they would say, “it was kind of safe, let’s go to the market”. This phrase has long been overlooked in studying Ambon conflict which was the most severe communal violence in the history of modern Indonesia. This article analyzes the formation of ethnoreligious coexistence in the border trader points during the conflict periods in Ambon. Guided by a “kind of safe” feeling, people chose to fight their own battle, which was to survive, and such attempts eventually cemented interreligious interactions through economic exchanges. Findings were derived from 2016 – 2019, including 10-month intensive ethnographic fieldwork on Ambon island, Indonesia. This article confirms grassroots level anecdote of “peace happened (started) at the market” by reflecting on the emergence of communities that trespassed borders to access affordable basic needs. Furthermore, peace was understood by the ability of people from both conflicting communities to coexist and achieve a common goal in the same space.

Organisers:

Carla Dahl-Jørgensen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology: carla.dahl-jorgensen@ntnu.no

Benedicte Brøgger, BI Oslo

Tone Danielsen, Kristiania University College

The work of Fredrik Barth in The Role of the Entrepreneur in Social Change in Northern Norway (1963), was a seminal anthropological work illuminating the role of entrepreneurs, the meaning of a working environment and organization to understand processes of social change. Now – in the middle of the pandemic – it is time to make a new seminal workshop on social changes.

Over the years, we have witnessed a move towards understanding entrepreneurship more in line with a neoliberal approach, more individualistic and self-centred. Entrepreneurs are defined as neoliberal subjects where they craft their subjectivities, their identities, and are the optimal examples of the embodiment of neoliberalism. In these narratives, the role of the working environment or the organization, as a space of cultural and social meaning-making, have receded to give way to individuals in their economic drive, self-making and identity practices – analyzed independent of work settings, collectives, and community belonging. Furthermore, ethnographic studies on local and social entrepreneurship have been signalling empirical variations of the nature and role of entrepreneurs; as not necessarily economic and utility maximizing agents. As such the role and production of entrepreneurship is contested and empirically differentiated.

By providing fine-grained ethnography, anthropologists can illuminate the cacophony and intrinsic complexity of entrepreneurship. Stories about individuals, analysed within the larger cultural context of both their ‘communities of practice’ as well as the ‘global marketplace’ in which we are all entangled. Thick descriptions can challenge static models and taken-for-granted trend analyses, so that we can have better-informed discussions on social changes in our current era.

In this session we are inviting empirical and ethnographic based studies on entrepreneurship, organizations and social changes from a diverse range of cases. Topics related to, but not limited to, the following themes are welcomed:

What are the roles of entrepreneurs and who are they? How is the diverse ways of entrepreneurship practices and organizational culture manifested in ethnographic works of today? How do we understand the relationship between entrepreneurship and organized action in the Global North and the Global South? Does entrepreneurship transcend the current polarizing tendencies? Do they contribute to them? How can anthropologists contribute to the concept and debate of indigenous, spiritual, and social entrepreneurship?

This panel should be of interest to anthropologists doing ethnographic studies, but also anthropologists working for NGO’s, public organizations, or private firms who are extending the boundaries of the discipline through their work and by engaging anthropology as a source of intervention and knowledge production.

Program:

13.30 Intro og velkommen, Benedicte Brøgger, Carla Dahl-Jørgensen, Tone Danielsen

13.40-13.50 Moral money making and entrepreneurship maneuvering - economies of abundance and economies of scarcity

Kris Ervik, seniorrådgiver, Gottlieb Paludan Architects kris.ervik@gmail.com

An anthropological view of entrepreneurship may heed the processes of creation by highlighting the embeddedness of economic activity, and the moral aspects of novel translations between different spheres of economic considerations (Barth, 2013; Bråten, 2013). Most notably in western culture, is a polarization between the embedded economies of abundance where a complex whole is relevant, such as family, love and community, and economies of scarcity where money makes comparison easy.

When one wishes a creative output, which cannot be specified in advance (Hjorth 2003; Meyer 2007), the economy of scarcity suffers from a failure of not being able to predict anything that has never happened before. Daniel Hjorth takes on this problem of a society now wanting innovation and entrepreneurship, but within the controlled environment of the organization. In the book titled "Organizational Entrepreneurship"(2004), he claims organizational entrepreneurship is a contradiction in terms, since entrepreneurship demands creative destruction and a disregard for conventions and moral boundaries, whilst organizations need some kind of control. Yet, organizations have to balance exploitation of existing resources with exploration of new possibilities to remain relevant in an economy where change is ever-present. This paper presents several examples of how this problem is handled with navigating between the different economies of abundance and scarcity.

13.50-14.00 Being part of the community

Tone Danielsen, førsteamanuensis, Høyskolen Kristiania, tone.danielsen@kristiania.no

The Armed Forces are stereotypical known to be rather conservative, top-down controlled hierarchical organisations. These organisations do not give much space for either individual or institutional innovation and entrepreneurship. However, like all institutions, there are always exceptions. The military special operations forces are unconventional units, which over the last decades globally have been prioritised with resources. Even in the military, innovation takes more than money and political goodwill. It takes an entrepreneurial mindset and skillset: an ability to connect resources in new ways and be willing to take risks to do so (Brøgger 2010). Special operations forces need an entrepreneurial mindset to accomplish special missions. The Norwegian Naval Special Operations Commando (Marinejegerkommandoen) has a large number of entrepreneurs. Throughout their apprenticeship, Marinejegers are encouraged to use their initiative and creativity to “improve things,” “invent stuff,” and “make things work better.” They learn from their masters, peers, and other special forces operators during exercises and deployments—and use their gaze and sense to use resources and concepts in new ways. It is part of their unit’s culture (Danielsen 2018).

According to Barth (1962: 1) “entrepreneurs must initiate and coordinate a number of inter-personal relationships in a supervisory capacity to effectuate his enterprise”. This paper will describe and discuss how some Marinejegers use their entrepreneurial mindset and skillset even when they leave the unit – with the support of their military community. People join in kinship-like relations because “they long to belong” (Strathern 2005). The selection and training of special forces are hard and makes solid ties and social networks. It gives them a strong belonging. Petter, Didrik, and Børge served as Marinejegers almost three decades ago. After they left the unit, they all started small adventure companies. Over the years they kept working together whenever needed and supported each other in different ways. This paper investigates how military ‘brothers’ still makes their supervisory capacity in their entrepreneurial activities.

14.00-14.10 Innovasjon, organisasjonskultur og sosial endring i offentlig sektor

Ole Magnus Totland, seniorrådgiver, Forsvarsdepartementet, ole-magnus.totland@fd.dep.no

Hvordan skaper man innovasjon i en organisasjon der ansvaret for endring overlates til systemet, og hvor menneskene gis begrenset mulighet til å påvirke måten man jobber på? Hvordan forbedrer man produkter og tjenester, eller utvikler nye, bedre og mer effektive måter å løse oppgavene på, når kravene til måloppnåelse, styring og kontroll ikke gir rom for kreativitet, prøving eller feiling?

Spørsmålene stilles på bakgrunn av 20 års erfaring fra helse- utdannings- og forsvarssektoren.

Regjeringen har bestemt at offentlig sektor skal være gode på innovasjon. Politiske og strategiske målsetninger definerer rammene for hvordan dette skal skje. Til grunn legges prinsipper om handlingsrom, insentiver, lederskap og kompetanse, samt detaljerte beskrivelser av hvilke ferdigheter, tankesett og praksiser regjeringen mener er nøkkelen til god innovasjonskultur.

Krav til effektivisering i offentlig sektor innebærer samtidig at færre mennesker skal produsere og levere bedre og billigere tjenester enn før. Ledere på ulike nivåer tar stadig initiativ til forbedring av egen virksomhet. Organisasjonen endres, arbeidsoppgaver flyttes, og rutiner og arbeidsprosesser blir redefinert. Når initiativet likevel ikke kommer fra de som faktisk skal produsere eller levere tjenestene, forblir endringene strukturelle, og verken velmenende ledere eller tavlemøter med de ansatte klarer å endre vesentlig på etablert praksis.

Ikke alle ledere er fortrolige med å rette et kritisk blikk mot egen rolle og egen kultur. Dette virker å være særlig fremtredende i hierarkiske organisasjoner med høye krav til kontroll og produksjon, og hvor først og fremst sjefene synliggjøres ved suksess. Konforme lederne ønsker gjerne kultur- og verdidebatten velkommen, men kun så lenge det ikke utfordrer ens egne handle- og væremåter.

Innovasjon krever først og fremst modige og endringsvillige ledere som forstår hva som skal til for å skape en organisasjon som rekrutterer og verdsetter kreative, nytenkende og risikovillige medarbeidere. Mangelen på gode kulturanalyser gjør det imidlertid utfordrende å argumentere for betydningen av dette internt. Som antropolog i offentlig sektor vil jeg argumentere for at det er behov for mer forskning og flere virkelighetsbeskrivelser av disse forholdene.

14.10-14.30 Discussant (5 min) Q/A (15 min)

14.30-14.40 Smallholder as entrepreneur? The quest for business potential in rural Latvia

Agnese Cimdina, post doc, University of Latvia, agnese.cimdina@mfa.no

Based on a long-term field research on organic and bath house farms in Latvia from 2010 to 2012 and repetitive visits in 2020 this article illuminates complexities of conceptualizing entrepreneurship and innovation in the context of rural development discourse in Latvia. While challenging policy makers’ conceptions of rural areas as sites of backwardness and spaces where entrepreneurs lag behind due to inability to adapt to changing circumstances, the author focuses on entrepreneurial micro-practices and articulations of innovation in smallholdings.

Entrepreneurship in this article is seen as the creation and exploitation of new economic niches. The role and character of rural entrepreneur as a change maker is subjected to ethnographic scrutiny and discussed from economic and anthropological approaches, questioning the simplicity of economic assumptions and illustrating the role of tradition within innovation. By portraying innovation as the capability to discover opportunities that are matters of cultural interpretation, the article highlights innovative and cultural component of entrepreneurship and maintains that a polarized view of innovation and tradition, economic productivity and lifestyle reflect neither the potential of the rural space nor the entrepreneurial spirit.

14.40-14.50 From underprivileged youth to technology entrepreneurs: a South African public-private development project.

Bjørn Inge Sjødin, PhD fellow, University of Helsinki, bjorn.sjodin@helsinki.fi

Since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s politicians, educational institutions and different foreign actors have promoted a discourse of upward social mobility, encouraging South Africa’s youth to dream big. Yet, unemployment rate is close to 40 percent and many young people struggle to find stable employment. In this context, the state has tried to advance upward mobility by fostering entrepreneurial behavior, through education and business policies. In congruence with international corporations and their corporate social responsibility programs, NGOs, politicians, and other actors expect entrepreneurs to contribute to social change by solving sociopolitical issues like economic inequality, turning them into instruments of neoliberal restructuring.

In this paper I investigate how the socioeconomic background of trainers and to-be entrepreneurs influences how they understand and enact entrepreneurship in a Johannesburg based startup incubator, where, aspiring entrepreneurs receive training, internet access and opportunities to network. The setting mimics incubator in US and Europe, while finding inspiration from famous technology entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Drawing in ethnographic data gathered during a 12-month fieldwork in Johannesburg, I show how the incubator operates in a complex field characterized by constant grant hunting and attempts to attract contracts with foreign donors, to secure funds for its daily operations. The underprivileged youth, who constitute the ‘target population’ of the betterment schemes of the incubator, work in a field where entrepreneurial traits like personal initiative and resilience are explicitly valued. Nonetheless, in lived reality, education and social background are often more important to succeeding as entrepreneurs. To uncover the different dynamics at the incubator I ask: What are the effects of this contradiction on the incubator and on its aspiring entrepreneurs? How is entrepreneurship practiced in this environment? How is the neoliberal discourse on personal initiative contested?

14.50-15.10 Discussant (5 min) Q/A (15 min)

15.10-15. 30 Pause

15.30-15.40 Entrepreneurial complexities in the Indian Ocean

Leif Manger, prof, University of Bergen, leif.manger@uib.no

The entrepreneurial processes I will focus on in this paper are taken from the Hadrami diaspora around the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean context is full of variation, over time, in terms of different waves of globalization, and in space in terms of markets, currencies, trade goods, understandings of values in different religions, and generally of economic systems. Hence, it is a good place to reflect on what processes of commercialization are about, about how such processes are linked to processes of entrepreneurship and what Jane Guyer calls “composition”, rather than “accumulation” (Guyer, 1995). Entrepreneurship is embedded (Polanyi, 2001) and as Barth states, “profit” is not only monetary economic profit, but may also “take the form of power, rank, or experience and skill”, and hence entrepreneurial activity is related to linking the economic with such other values (Barth, 1962).

In spite of all the variations in Hadrami identities and processes of ethnic assimilation, Hadramis always consider themselves to be Muslims. Over time the migrant individual’s ethnic identity seemed to be pushed into the background and became subordinate to religious identity. Such a religious identity is expressed through specific actions and is also shaped through participation in religious organizations. But it also has a global element, in that Muslims, as part of the umma, are considered members of “an imagined community” with a global reach. At the same time, religion’s global dimensions must be balanced against its local expression. This is also the case with Hadramis. Hence, the processes producing tensions among the Hadramis have changed from an internal process relating to the stratification system consisting of groups of Sadas and non-Sadas, to one in which the Hadramis are but one of several Muslim communities producing candidates for international terrorist activities through capital owning interests.

The Hadrami early trade links have remained important to this day, and the diasporic links and entrepreneurial initiatives are still important in producing a rather exceptional position for Hadramaut within Yemen, the wider Islamic world and global trade.

15.40-15.50 entrepreneurial role of the CEO

Cornelius Heyse, post doc, NTNU, Cornelius.heyse@ntnu.no

The communal values of indigenous sharing economies are deliberately used by commercial Native-owned corporations to brand themselves as extensions of tribal communities in Alaska.

It is my contention that those corporations have generated “imagined communities” (Anderson 1983) and consolidated ethnic self-determination for indigenous people in ways that conventional constitutional recognitions of Native tribes in the U.S. could not have achieved otherwise. However, the relevance that these corporations have for Alaskan Natives exposes a basic dilemma as there are zones of cultural frictions and discourses in the indigenous shareholding communities about the nature of these corporations. They strengthen and might even reinforce Native identity by applying symbols of a subsistence lifestyle in their marketing. But because of their investments in unsustainable large-scale extraction of Alaska’s gold and oil deposits, these business operations pose a potential threat to fish and game resources on which their rural shareholders depend. The corporations’ involvement in the extraction industry is deemed incompatible with the subsistence lifestyle of their indigenous stockholders.

Various facets of the corporations’ importance for people in the community will be scrutinized through the role of the CEO. In his capacity as a cultural and entrepreneurial broker, he mediates between the needs of the company to work efficiently for-profit maximization and the needs of his employees to procure country foods and maintain a subsistence lifestyle. His mediating role demonstrates on an interpersonal level the everyday challenges of running a village corporation in rural Alaska. Along with the ins and outs of a factionalized bush community, the manager must become familiar with the local subsistence traditions that play an important role in people’s lives. I will show how the CEO handles situations in which the subsistence needs of employees collide with the requirements of their office jobs and disrupt the smooth functioning of the company.

15.50-16.00 Sosiale entreprenører i statsforvaltningen

Marianne Sørtømme, seniorrådgiver, Direktoratet for forvaltning og økonomistyring, msortomme@outlook.com

Den norske statsforvaltningen er ifølge europeiske studier i dag av høy kvalitet og nyter stor grad av tillit i befolkningen. Vår statsforvaltning håndterte oljerikdommen slik at den kommer fellesskapet til gode, som et eksempel på hvilken betydning en statsforvaltning kan ha for sosial endring. Men hva med sosialt entreprenørskap i statsforvaltningen?

Rundt 160.000 mennesker jobber i den norske statsforvaltningen. Lov- og regelverk, som er grunngitt i historien, gjør statsforvaltningen på mange måter konservativ innenfra, og det er et ufravikelige krav om politisk styrbarhet. Statsforvaltningen kan dermed synes som et kulturelt system med lite rom for entreprenørskap. To eksempler vil vise at det likevel er mulig. I 2012 opprettet toppledere SKATE (Styring og Koordinering Av Tjenester i E-forvaltning) som et samarbeidsforum mellom virksomheter som har ansvar for nasjonale felleskomponenter. Først senere ble dette formalisert med mandat fra Regjeringen (Difi-rapport 2014:07: Mot alle odds). Det andre eksempelet handler om ildsjelenes betydning som er blitt påpekt i arbeidet med å hindre frafall fra videregående skole (Difi-rapport 2014:07: Mot alle odds).

Tre trikotomier vil belyse dette: Eduardo Ongaros beskrivelse av offentlig forvaltning som vitenskap, håndverk eller yrke er tre måter å forstå statsforvaltningen. Gjennom de tre kunnskapsparadigmene kollegiet, hierarki og nettverk, som Tian Sørhaug har beskrevet, kan vi se ulike sosiale konstellasjoner som gir forskjellige muligheter for entreprenørskap. Til slutt ser FAFO tre roller hos arbeidstakeren (Fafo-rapport 2007:15; Ledelse og samarbeid i staten). Entreprenørskapet kan videre belyses med at statsforvaltningen kan sees som et forestilt fellesskap, og statsansatteundersøkelsen har vist gang på gang at statsansatte har høyt jobbengasjement. DFØ-rapporten Da statsforvaltningen flyttet hjem beskriver til dels engasjementet og hvordan statsansatte vurderer muligheter og mening i arbeidssituasjonen.

16.00-16.10 Between enterprise and ecosystem. Social entrepreneurship in the Peruvian highlands

Benedicte Brøgger, prof, BI, benedicte.brogger@bi.no og Carla Dahl-Jørgensen, prof, NTNU, carla.dahl-jorgensen@ntnu.no

An unresolved issue in social entrepreneurship research is whether it has wider societal impact or not. The argument in the paper is that the question about societal impact is due to a conceptual limitation in social entrepreneurship theory and not empirical social realities. Social enterprises must be conceptualized as entities separate from the incessant flows of relations and business exchanges to come into view. However, to document their wider societal impact, it is necessary to map their social dependencies and then the enterprises as such ‘disappear’ from view. We test this proposition in a study of an NGO as a social enterprise working in the Peruvian highlands. The social enterprise works with the most marginalized people in Peru, the indigenous population, who lives under the most marginal conditions, the highlands. The conclusion is that it has impact on both business and society, but that the impact appears only when its operations are analyzed in terms of both social enterprise and social ecosystem.

16.10-16.30 Discussant (5 min) Q/A (15 min)

16.30-17.00 Åpen diskusjon, planlegging av spesialnummer og skriveworkshop

13 - Transitional justice and contested memorialization after terror: the Norwegian 22 July attacks

Organisers:

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, University of Oslo/PRIO: k.b.k.sandvik@jus.uio.no

Denne arbeidsgruppen vil foregå på norsk- vi satser på en samtale basert på korte intervensjoner fra et museumsfaglig perspektiv, fra et minnefaglig ( 22 juli senteret og Falstad) og et etnografisk perspektiv. Vi har følgende stikkord: Kobling til fortiden, Minne-entreprenører, Re-politisering av minne og Det levde livet i minnesmerker.

In the contemporary context, in many locations in the so-called Global north communities and governments are grappling with how to come to terms with the aftermath of religious and right-wing extremism and mass-death terror attacks. While contestations and failings over issues pertaining to healing, security and inclusion share many empirical similarities with struggles common in more traditional transitional justice contexts (as carefully documented by a large ethnographic literature), there has been no analysis of these attacks through the frame of transitional justice. Using the 22 July attack as a case, the panel welcomes ethnographic and socio-legal contributions exploring the aftermath of terror.

In the 22 July 2011 terror attack, a car bomb in the Oslo government district killed eight people, injured about 200 and destroyed a large tract of urban space. 69 children, women and men were massacred at Utøya Island. Thousands of individuals – survivors, family and friends of victims and survivors, rescuers, and bystanders – continue to be directly affected. The government responded with a call for ‘more democracy, more openness’.

Yet, only now, Norwegian society is moving from framing 22 July as an attack against ‘us all’, democracy and the rule of law, to a difficult recognition of the attack as a large-scale political assassination carried out against the Labor party and its Youth wing: executed by a lone terrorist but through the prism of a political ideology. At the same time, the States attempts to settle this conflict and provide a recognition of the political nature of the terror attack through the construction of a memorial site, a gigantic new government quarters and the renaming of streets have been met with fierce resistance from ordinary citizens who oppose the reframing of their lifeworld as a ‘political’ site of post-terror commemoration.

Program:

Chair: Thorgeir Kolshus

Joakim Gusland: tidsvitner/det levde livet i minnesmerker
Ingeborg Hjorth: minne-entreprenører
Maja Vestad: hverdagslige/temporære minnesmerker
Anne Talsnes: minnet fremover

A contested national script: the politics of litigating memorials

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik

Across Norway, enormous amounts of commemorative work have gone into the design and location of 22 July memorials, sometimes resulting in contested administrative or juridified processes. In this paper I focus on the legal mobilization by local residents against the plans for a national monument in the Municipality of Hole, the site of the Utøya massacre: first the proposal for Memory Wound at Sørbråten, later followed by a different proposal for a memorial at the Utøya quay. This mobilization included intensive use of administrative complaints procedures, threats of ‘going to court’ and the subsequent use of lawyers, legal action and legal proceedings as means to terminate processes relating to the national monument. Originally, the plan was for a memorial to be ready near Utøya in 2015. In March 2021, after a difficult court case, it was finally determined that the memorial could be completed at the Utøya quayside.

The tensions embedded in post-terror commemorative work and the sometimes-contradictory role of law in these processes are important to unpack. Grassroots legal mobilization is often framed as a progress narrative about ordinary people on a quest for justice: while local actors may not win their cases or be able to achieve social change through the use of administrative procedures or legal strategies, stories about mobilization are often stories about participation and empowerment. However, the organized local opposition to a national monument, the arguments used to bolster this resistance and the decision to engage in legal mobilization have been surrounded by considerable stigma and condemnation. Legal proceedings after atrocities are generally expected to contribute to a national healing process. In the present narrative, law and grassroots legal mobilization occupy highly ambiguous places. Norway is generally described as a high-trust society: it is also a society with a great deal of emphasis on societal and cultural cohesion and political consensus.

I suggest that these values also constitute a national script for the use of law to address the aftermath of 22 July. A legacy of the highly publicized criminal law proceedings against the terrorist is that the courtroom becomes a metaphor for justice whenever 22 July is ‘on trial’. A decade after the attacks, the use of law to deal with the memorialization of the attack creates its own ripple effects that stand in tension with these values. Contested commemorative work does not fit the national script and as a result, the avoidance of legal conflict has been a desirable goal. Paradoxically then, as illustrated by the struggles over the national memorial, going to court and avoiding going to court both entails costs in terms of money, time, trust and emotions.

The nation as memorial cartography: mapping commemorative sites outside the canon

Maja Vestad and Kristin B. Sandvik

This exploratory paper investigates the notion of the nation as a memorial cartography. As of July 2021, the canon of memorials commemorating the 22 July attack include the Government Quarter, with the temporary memorial plaque and the 22 July Centre; Hegnhuset on Utøya; the 1000 iron roses next to Oslo Cathedral; and 52 identical commemorative stone sculptures in affected municipalities across Norway. However, it also includes multiple other memorials situated in hospitals, parks and public places. Importantly, commemoration also happens through naming buildings and streets after victims: A sports hall in Orkdal called ‘Sondrehallen’ , a Swim course named after Mona Abdinur or a street in Oslo called ‘Isabels vei’.

In this paper we propose to cluster these ‘other’ memorials into three categories: the future, the past and the virtual. First, we consider the everyday, non-monumental and forward looking quality of some these sites – such as those connected to sports and leisure. Second, we suggest that there is an evolving tapestry effect whereby the threads of the past are interwoven with the threads of the presence: not only that 22 July is informed by the Second World War, but that our understanding of the War is informed by the terror attack. We exemplify this with reference to the Cissi Klein High School in Trondheim and the references used by the Telavåg museum as ‘the greatest terror attack before the 22 July. Finally, we discuss the tentative category of virtual commemoration, through the iconic imagery of Memory Wound and the documentation of the struggle to save the Y-bloc in the government quarter. Together, these examples make up the memorial cartography of the nation. We ask what they can tell us about the place and role of 22 July – increasingly remote for many Norwegians –in Norway today.

Remembering mass violence in the neighbourhood

Ingeborg Hjorth

14 - Anthropological forays into urban polarization

Organisers:

Trine Olsen Møgster, Norwegian University of Science and Technology: trine.o.mogster@ntnu.no

Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, University of Bergen

Christine Jacobsen, University of Bergen

Knut Rio, University of Bergen

This session is dedicated to anthropological studies of cities and urban formations—especially focusing on the social life of cities. In particular, we are interested in providing comparative perspectives on the multiform and multisemic effects of neoliberal tendencies within urban development and urban planning. Concretely, such tendencies may include processes which redefine and restrict urban commons, class-based forms of spatial access, ghettoification, systems of surveillance and control that suffuse our everyday lives and urban spaces, as well as the emergence of privately engineered, privately built and fully privately owned cities. Such tendencies generate, we claim, various and contested urban forms of polarization that are not only accessible for anthropological analysis but should be of keen interest to our discipline, reflecting a long-standing interest in friction, conflict, resistance, and modes of governance in socio-spatial circumstances.

Based on this broad and deliberatively inclusive focus, in this session we explicitly hope for a range of papers that deal with different parts of the globe. This is done not only to juxtapose formal commonalities and similarities between in urban contexts around the globe but also to open up a broader discussion which approaches, in critical fashion, common understandings of the private-public distinction, the relations between the material constitution of the city and its many imaginaries, or the ways in which urban governance relates to various forms of capitalist transformation, to name some.

09.15: Welcome and Introduction.

09.20 – 09.35: Conjuring compassion: Auditive and visual affective signification in Maputo.

Bjørn Bertelsen, professor, institutt for sosialantropologi, Universitetet i Bergen Bjorn.Bertelsen@uib.no

When approaching large-scale and/or highly unequal urban orders as analysts, one may easily reach for template descriptors of structural/neoliberal violence, portrayals of multiform patterns of exclusion, narratives of the excesses of militarized/securitized urbanism or other analytical short-hands denigrating (the potential for) human sociality, relationality and care. While such analyses are enormously important, not least in the context of novel dire forms of inequality brought on by the recent global pandemic, there are, I hold, crucial and identifiable practices in cityscapes oriented towards forms of compassion or, at least, mutuality of being. In this paper I will explore two such practices in Maputo, namely contemporary rap music and the names given to the overcrowded minibuses (chapas) and cars in the form of painted or printed signs. Both practices engage the sensory apparatus of urbanites but as they do, there is a tangible commonality of direction to at least some of what is conjured: a desire for a new sociality, an attack on non-compassion itself and a conjuring desire for creating affective spaces of love, care and mutuality. In mapping the auditively and visually affective in Maputo, I will also draw on other contemporary urban work from African contexts to argue for a more nuanced understanding of African urban spaces.”

09.35 – 09.50: Occupation, expulsion, and collapse: Housing migrants in the city of Marseille.

Christine M. Jacobsen, professor, institutt for sosialantropologi, Universitetet i Bergen Christine.jacobsen@uib.no

In November 2020, as France was envisaging a gradual exit from its second national COVID-lockdown, the police forcibly evacuated several low-income apartment blocks (HLM) in the Quartiers Nord of Marseille, one of the poorest suburbs in Europe. The city council had issued a decree of imminent danger due to the unsafe condition of the buildings, a topic that had been high on the political agenda since the collapse of several houses in the inner city two years earlier. The apartment blocks had been squatted by between 150 and 300 West-African asylum seekers and undocumented migrants for around a year, denouncing the failure of authorities to offer them housing. The squat was one of several instances in later years of migrants occupying urban space. In this paper I take these events of occupation, collapse, and expulsion as points of departure for discussing the intersection between modes of migration governance, neo-liberal urban policies, and the materialities of political struggle.

09.50 – 10.05: Eierskap til besvær: Om privatisering av byrom.

Trine Olsen Møgster, stipendiat, institutt for bygg- og miljøteknikk, NTNU, Trine.o.mogster@ntnu.no

I mitt bidrag til arbeidsgruppen ønsker jeg å se nærmere på hvor grensene går for eiendomsrettigheter i private by-allmenninger og hva privatiseringen betyr for byutviklingen og for felleskapet. I den norske byutviklingsdiskursen pågår en debatt om hvordan privatisering av byrom kan medføre begrensninger på det demokratiske ytringsrommet. Som Bjerkeseths kategorisering av byromsbruk viser (Bjerkeseth 2021) så er det en tydelig sammenheng mellom eierskapet til byrommet og graden av offentlighet som innbyggerne opplever. Dette er selvfølgelig viktige og kritiske aspekter ved det privateide byrommet. Samtidig mener jeg vi ikke kan forstå hva privatisering av byrom betyr for fellesskapet uten at vi tar inn i analysen finansialiseringen av eiendom og den utvinning av verdier fra kollektivet som dette medfører. Etnografien er hentet fra den pågående byutviklingen på Fornebu, en del av hovedstadsområdet i Norge. Fokus her er først og fremst på eierskap og hvordan eierforhold virker inn i byutviklingen. I presentasjonen skal jeg se nærmere på hva eierskap gjør i konkrete planprosesser og hva det gjør med forvaltningen av felles arealer, byallmenninger eller ‘urban commons’, nærmere bestemt Fornebu Felles, og Nansenparken. Jeg håper å vise at eierskap, og da særlig det kapitaliserte eierskapet gjør en betydelig forskjell, som kjennetegnes mest av at den har en makt og innflytelse som er ureflektert og uartikulert i samarbeidet mellom kommune, grunneiere, planrådgivere og innbyggere Analysen av byplanutviklingen som pågår på Fornebu vil vise og forsøke å forklare hvordan den norske urbanismen og samfunnsplanleggingen er forankret i et verdensbilde og en etos som er i utakt med transformerende finanskrefter.

Short Break

10.15 – 10. 30: Electronic Waste Valuation: The art of scavenging and its malcontents in Dar es Salaam city's landscape.

Samwel Moses Ntapanta, stipendiat, sosialantropologisk institutt, Universitetet i Oslo, s.m.ntapanta@sai.uio.no

A Scavenging waste is a critical sector of global south cities. On the one hand, scavenging complement the gap of under-resourced waste collecting and handling institution. Furthermore, on the other hand, it offers employment and steady income to many who are crumbling from the high unemployment rate. How can we understand the art of scavenging methodologically?

Based on 12cmonths of ethnographic fieldwork among informal electronic waste recyclers in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, I want to present walking as a method of understanding value and valuation during waste salvaging. By walking with my interlocutors during their labour, I walked along the trail of value production; things moved, and people moved to generate value. Value is not only produced through labour and exchange; things move from one place where they are valueless to another place where they are valorised to ending up as valuables. Walking enables my interlocutors to connect between different parts of the city, enhances the city's knowledge and materiality essential in the valorisation of e-waste. The connection to the heat, soil, dust and puddles, urban vegetation and concrete, the shadows and thousands of sunray droplets under Neem and Flamboyant trees, the smell of food and rotten garbage, perfumes and sweat, tranquillity and noise, words and gestures, are equally important in the process of valuation.

By exploring Tim Ingold concept of "becoming knowledgeable," I want to argue that e-waste scavenging in the global south cities can be very well understood through walking. Walking not only exposed the ethnographer to physical obstacles, ingenuity, valorisation processes and violence of post-modern consumerism, it also involves experiences from other sensory organs that give unique experiences about the city while observing.

10.30 – 10. 45: Walking in the differentiated city of Paris.

Knut Rio, professor, Universitetsmuseet i Bergen Knut.Rio@uib.no

A big city such as Paris no doubt presents a challenge to the anthropologist. It is a city of many levels, of social plurality, and vast depths of historicity. These aspects of the city as a differentiated and complex place entail a longer discussion in anthropology. Marilyn Strathern (1991) provocatively suggested that anthropologists have tended to exaggerate when representing the city as a complex system. In contrast to presumably less complex field-sites, we should not take for granted that there is more variety, less coherence, and less order across the big city. She pointed out that such complexity can be fractal; that is, the phenomenon which appears to reveal different scales might be “the same all the way through”. Strathern’s simple lesson for the study of the big city, then, is to not take complexity for granted but to search for different social scales. What are the breaking points between what kinds of social arenas displayed in the city? I think an important clue for actually finding different scales in the city is to look at public spaces and their role in accommodating different social formations, and also different symbolic regimes. It is of interest to observe that different streets, squares, and greens might feature differently motivated crowds assembling for different symbolic purposes. This is linked to De Certeau’s point that when people walk in the city they construct, by their footsteps, the differentiated symbolic reality of the various city spaces as they walk into them and populate them. This approach also requires us to draw our methodological focus away from family life, institutions, factories and shops and towards the spaces in between, towards the public domains of street, squares and parks.

10.45 – 11. 00: Hvorfor mobiliserer de ikke? Utforsking av klasse, naboskap og motstand i en slum i New Delhi.

Anne Waldrop, professor i utviklingsstudier, OsloMet anwal@oslomet.no

India er historisk sett kjent som et svært hierarkisk samfunn der kastesystemet rangerer folk som iboende forskjellig, og der det er enormt store forskjeller mellom rike og fattige. I perioden fra India ble selvstendig i 1947 fram til 1990-tallet, kan urbane områder sies å ha vært preget av fysisk nærhet og sosial avstand mellom folk fra forskjellige kaster, klasser og religioner. Til tross for de enorme forskjellene i inntekt og levekår, har det i denne perioden vært lite polarisering og generelt liten grad av klassebevissthet og mobilisering blant de fattige. Med økonomisk liberalisering fra 1990-tallet av har klasseforskjellene blitt ytterligere forsterket, og i byer som New Delhi har det vokst fram ‘gated communities’, en vrimmel av privatskoler, og shoppingsentre og eksklusive markeder med egne vakter, samtidig som de mange slumområdene som tidligere lå spredt rundt sentralt i byen, har blitt flyttet til byens perifere utkanter. Byen preges nå i sterkere grad av både fysisk og sosial avstand. Samtidig med denne forsterkingen av klasseforskjeller, har kaste tilhørighet endret betydning i India. På den ene siden, har kaste fått mindre betydning i dagliglivet, men på den andre siden, har kaste blitt politisert gjennom dannelsen av politiske kaste-partier, og kaste for de nederst i hierarkiet antar en mer klasselignende form. Til tross for disse endringene, er det i New Delhi generelt en svært liten grad av polarisering, konflikt eller kollektiv mobilisering blant de fattige.

I dette innlegget vil jeg med utgangspunkt i et 40 år gammelt slumområde i utkanten av New Delhi, utforske fraværet av dette. Teoretisk sett ligger forholdende her godt til rette for kollektiv mobilisering: Området er relativt homogent klassemessig og folk flest har usikre, dårlig betalte jobber i uformell sektor; som slumbeboere deler de en felles marginalisering; det er et generelt godt naboskap der smugene mellom husene fungerer som fellesområder og barn leker sammen; og selv om de har krav på visse kommunale minimumsgoder, er tilbudet dårlig, og de lever med usikkerhet rundt områdets videre skjebne.

11.00 – 11.15: Discussion.

Films

A peaceful place (2021)

The Lost Child (2020)

A Kali Temple Inside Out (2018)

NAF conference 2021

Annual conference supported by the Norwegian Anthropological Association.

concurrent events

Join us for the Bergen Anthropology Day and the Fredrik Barth Memorial Lecture. Both events will be arranged during the conference.

Department of Social Anthropology is arranging the conference in cooperation with Christian Michelsen Institute.

Photo:

UiB

Christian Michelsen Institute logo.

Photo:

CMI

26.11.2021

25 April	Panel Submission Deadline
15 May	Panel Acceptance Notification
6 August	Paper Abstract Deadline
20 August	Extended Paper Abstract Deadline
3 September	Paper Acceptance Notification
12 November	Regular Payment Deadline for all participants (both with and without contributions)
22 November	Late birds Payment Deadline (surcharge +600NOK)
25-26 November	Conference Days

Permanent staff	members	2000 kr
Permanent staff	non-members	2600 kr
PhD/Post-docs	members	1000 kr
PhD/Post-docs	non-members	1600 kr
Students		600 kr
1-day pass		half price
Dinner		to be announced

Norwegian Anthropological Association Annual Conference

Main content

Program NAF Conference 2021

Registration

Polarization: Anthropological Explorations

Honorary Lecture

The Fredrik Barth Memorial Lecture 2021

Important dates for 2021

Practical Information

Workshops

1 - Technology and polarization

2 - Protracted Displacement in and beyond Time: research collaborations and funding frameworks

3 - Moral economy in Scandinavia

4 - Klima og miljøkamp: etnografiske nyansar

5 - What on Earth! Outrage and Anthropology on a Disrupted Planet

6 - Paradoxes of polarization and post-politics in the Nordic welfare regimes and services.

7 - Nye konfigurasjoner: Spenningsfeltet sosialantropologi og sosialt arbeid

8 - Antropologiske tilnærminger til paradokser og kompleksitet i offentlige sektor

9 - Exterminate All the Brutes! Exploring the Global Colony and its Resistance

10 - Coexistence, conflict, and complexity: ethnographies of social and political change in urban communities

11 - Comparative perspectives on entrepreneurship, organisational culture, and social changes

12 - Panelsamtale: Fremtidens etnografi – i lys av GDPR

13 - Transitional justice and contested memorialization after terror: the Norwegian 22 July attacks

14 - Anthropological forays into urban polarization

Films

A peaceful place (2021)

The Lost Child (2020)

A Kali Temple Inside Out (2018)

NAF conference 2021

concurrent events