1st Edition
Voices from the North New Trends in Nordic Human Geography
While contemporary human geography has widely acknowledged that knowledge has both contingent and contextual character, international literature has tended to blot out differences and reproduce hegemonic Anglo-Saxon discourses. Any interest in destabilizing such power-knowledge systems calls upon interventions from other voices. Nordic voices in particular have not been well represented in current human geography. This book redresses the balance by offering a unique assessment of the geographical research being undertaken in the Nordic countries and by demonstrating the way in which these voices contribute to international debate. It brings together a range of Nordic authors, each of whom has made a significant contribution to such debates, and considers the relationship between production and social institutions in local development. It also examines the ambiguous role of the welfare state in the Nordic countries, issues of social practice and identity and their relationship to spatiality, new approaches to landscape and environment, and the significance of difference and relations of power. Theoretical discussion, illustrated by empirical examples, reveals the interweaving in Nordic human geography of international affiliations and Nordic situatedness.
Biography
Jan Öhman, Associate Professor, Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden Kirsten Simonsen, Professor, Department of Geography and International Development Studies, Roskilde University. Denmark
’Voices from the North is a fresh, stimulating wind from the North. Combining pieces in keeping with a long tradition of applied research and work informed by a variety of poststructual and feminist theories, this anthology splendidly displays - yet again - that the cutting edge of human geography is not a monopoly of British and North American scholars. For many of the voices in question are not merely well-informed, but original in important ways.’ Professor Allan Pred, University of California, Berkeley, USA ’...an excellent reflection of a characterisitc of research in the Nordic countries: its strong integration with international research...The book gives a good overview of the diversity of the discipline in the Nordic countries as well as a couple of very interesting contributions to the interdisciplinary research field of clusters, innovation systems, and firms' and regions' responses to globalization.’ Journal of Regional Science ’...it helps us understand how useful it can be to think about our own speciality fields in relation to the wider contexts in which they are located or against which they are formed.’ Economic Geography
