Voices from the North: New Trends in Nordic Human Geography

by Jan Ohman

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780754634256
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/25/2003
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

’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

From the Publisher

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.

Allan Pred