Here is the whole issue of Arctic & Antarctic International Journal of Circumpolar Socio-Cultural Volume 14 – 2020
The Arctic & Antarctic International Journal of Circumpolar Socio-Cultural Issues
After the gold rush in Iceland: Causes and consequences of the banking collapse in 2008
John F. Galliher (University of Missouri, USA) & Helgi Gunnlaugsson (University of Iceland)
In 2010, University of Iceland organized a conference in Reykjavík on the banking collapse in Iceland in 2008. This event was a joint effort of Sociology, Anthropology and Ethnology, gathering dozens of scholars including international ones. The collapse was still fresh in the minds of all participants. The title of the conference was After the Gold Rush, and the topic centered on how the social sciences can help us understanding these historic events, unfolding around us at the time. This paper was presented at the conference in May of 2010, by the late professor from the United States, John Galliher, and Helgi Gunnlaugsson, professor of sociology at the University of Iceland, but was never published. The content, slightly revised in 2012, offers a valuable insight to some of the main themes believed to be paramount in explaining the crash, followed by the immediate social consequences for Iceland in the aftermath. How the Icelandic case of bust was seen in the foreign media is in turn reviewed followed by perceptions of local crime developments. The main findings show neo-liberal ideologies, hyper-consumptionism, and globalized market, playing leading roles in both the rise and fall of the local banking system. A few concluding remarks show that Iceland recovered remarkably fast, or in only a few years, fueled by explosion in tourism.
The ‘Extreme’: Philosophical and Socio-anthropological disquisitions
Enrique del Acebo Ibáñez (CONICET-UBA, Universidad del Salvador, Argentina) (University of Iceland)
The “extreme” is a hyper-connoted but not well-defined word. A reductionist conception of the environment as a mere “ecological system” (environmentalism) influences the answer given to the question about what the “extreme” is. It is a phenomenon containing negative conditions that are difficult to survive for most known life forms; these conditions, mainly obstacles, may be: extremely high or low temperature or pressure; high levels of radiation, acidity, or alkalinity; absence of water or water with high concentration of salt or sugar; presence of toxic substances, and so. Consequently, examples of extreme environments are the following: geographical poles, very arid deserts, volcanoes, deep ocean trenches, high mountains, outer space. But “extreme” is also the result of the dialectic between the homo viator and the stabilitas loci, in terms of internalization of the extreme environment -natural or constructed- in the everyday life, and the exteriorization of the landscape of the soul of such a subject and local community. In sum, it emerges the interdependence and dialectics between the Subject’s and the Socio-cultural worlds.
Lapland under French eyes: the second La Recherche expedition (1838-1839) narrated by Xavier Marmier
Jan Borm, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France)
This article is dedicated to the second French La Recherche expedition to Lapland and Spitzbergen in the years 1838-1839, sponsored by French King Louis Philippe who had himself travelled through the Northern parts of Fennoscandia incognito in the late 18th century. Focusing on the expedition’s official account written by prolific French writer Xavier Marmier and unpublished source material from the French diplomatic archives as well as writings by Lars Lévi Laestadius, the Swedish Lutheran minister of partly Sami origin who was the expedition’s guide in Lapland, the article discusses Marmier’s representation of the European Far North in his official narrative in relation to his own notes and Laestadius’ observations. Marmiers’ remarks are also studied in a wider political context of French rivalry with British ambition in the Arctic and diplomatic perception of La Recherche.
An excursion to the Mapuche people’s resistance within the Argentinean punk scene
Hasan Karakilinc (University of Iceland / University of Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès, France)
By the end of the Argentinean dictatorship in 1983, the local punk scene enters in a new phase characterized by a discursive paradigm shift. The scene slowly adopts an intersectional form of radical criticism of the power relations based on categories such as class, gender, sexuality or ethnicity. From this perspective, a growing interest in the resistance of indigenous groups, such as the Mapuche communities, start to emerge in fanzines, lyrics and at musical events in the Buenos Aires scene, to later become appropriated by the punk scenes across the Patagonian urban areas in the nineties. The influence and adoption of the punk political discourse among the “mapurbes” and “mapunkies” activists implies new meanings of resistance. This article offers an overview of how these discourses are promoted and expressed throughout the post-dictatorship Argentinean scene. Then, it focuses the use and adaptation of punk as a syncretic tool of resistance and identity valorization by the Mapuche resistance and activism.