New Book Available:
Narrating the Arctic, A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices
Michael Bravo and Sverker Sörlin, Editors
To order this book see:
http://www.amazon.com
or
Science History Publications
http://www.shpusa.com/books/arctic.html
or
Scott Polar Research Institute Bookshop
http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk
NARRATING THE ARCTIC
A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices
Michael Bravo and Sverker Sörlin, editors 2002 384 pp., illustrated,
cloth bound and jacketed, ISBN 0-88135-385-X, LC 2002021211, USD $39.95,
UK £25.00.
Overview
Arctic exploration has long been treated as a history of heroes, left by
and large to writers of popular non-fiction. A new interest in the
Arctic as an arena for questions concerning the interplay of science,
national aspiration, and aboriginal rights, has recently emerged.
Narrating the Arctic reflects this shift within modern history writing.
With its coverage of themes such as travel, geopolitics, nationalism,
and colonial field practice the book also intersects with growing or
emerging topics within cultural, ethnic, and political history. This
book demonstrates how two Nordic nations have to a large extent shaped
their identities, and legitimated their interests, through narratives of
northern exploration and colonization. Inuit and Saami have been
prominent in these narratives. At the same time native populations and
postcolonial fiction have articulated counter-narratives and alternative
routes to the past and to the future. This is also an attempt to
approach the politics of science from a cultural perspective. The
authors historians of science, anthropologists, postcolonial
geographers, and literary scholars examine the role of scientists,
missionaries, and other Arctic field workers in shaping narratives
through their practices of telling stories of places and peoples.
Reviews
"An outstanding collection of seminal essays by erudite authors
concerning the history of arctic exploration. From Inuit exploratory
ventures, to conflicting claims of history, to the Danish arctic
research of eighty years ago, to Swedish arctic travels of a hundred and
fifty years ago, Narrating The Arctic is a vivid, intense examination
and scholarly analysis of the historical quest to venture onto, and
discover more about, the very top of the world."
Midwest Book Review
From the jacket cover:
"This is a wonderfully readable book and one of the most thoroughly
satisfying I have read in a long time. The book sheds new light upon the
interdependence of regionality, ideology and scholarship. Through
mission, naming, mapping, measuring, writing and travelling itself, the
Arctic and its inhabitants were narratively incorporated into the
Northern world as defined mainly from the metropolises of Denmark and
Sweden. What is more, the histories of the Arctic are still partly
shaped by these narratives. The book deserves a wide readership in all
fields of knowledge."
Kirsten Hastrup, Professor of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
"In a work of imagination and vision, Bravo, Sörlin and their colleagues
challenge anthropologists, geographers and historians to reflect on the
uses of travel as a tool of science, and of narrative as a form of
practice. In so doing, they foreshadow a completely new approach to the
field sciences, as agents of influence in the assertion of heritage,
ethnicity and identity throughout the world."
Roy MacLeod, Professor of Modern History, University of Sydney
To order this book see:
http://www.amazon.com
or
Science History Publications
http://www.shpusa.com/books/arctic.html
or
Scott Polar Research Institute Bookshop
http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk