This book examines the influence of imperialism and colonialism on the formation of national identities in the Nordic countries, exploring the manner in which contemporary discourses in Nordic society are rendered meaningful or obscured by references to past events and tropes related to the practices and ideologies of colonialism. Against the background of Nordic 'exceptionalism', it explores the manner in which the interwoven racial, gendered and nationalistic ideologies associated with the colonial project form part of contemporary Nordic identities. An important challenge to national identities that can become increasingly inward looking, Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region sheds light on the ways in which certain notions and structural inequalities, understood as residue from the colonial period, become recreated or projected onto different groups. Presenting a variety of case studies drawn from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Greenland, Denmark and Iceland, this book will be of interest to scholars across the social sciences and humanities conducting research in the fields of race and ethnicity, identity and belonging, media representations of 'the other' and colonialism and postcolonialism.
Autorentext
Kristín Loftsdóttir is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Iceland. She is co-editor of Topographies of Globalization: Politics, Culture and Language and author of The Bush is Sweet: Identity, Power and Development among WoDaaBe Fulani in Niger.
Lars Jensen is Associate Professor of Cultural Encounters at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is author of Unsettling Australia: Readings in Australian Cultural History and co-editor of A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and its Empires.
Zusammenfassung
This volume describes how the conceptual and technical sophistication of contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific fields has enhanced the neurocognitive understanding of dreaming sleep. Because it is the only naturally-occurring state in which the active brain produces elaborate cognitive processes in the absence of sensory input, the study of dreaming offers a unique cognitive and neurophysiological view of the production of higher cognitive processes. The theory and research included is driven by the search for the most direct relationships linking the neurophysiological characteristics of sleepers to their concurrent cognitive experiences. The search is organized around three sets of theoretical models and the three classes of neurocognitive relationships upon which they are based. The contributions to this volume demonstrate that the field has begun to move in new directions opened up by the rapid advances in contemporary cognitive science, neuropsychology, and neurophysiology.
Inhalt
Contents: Introduction: Nordic exceptionalism and Nordic 'others', Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen; Colonial discourse and ambivalence: Norwegian participants on the colonial arena in South Africa, Erlend Eidsvik; Colonialism, racism and exceptionalism, Christina Petterson; 'Words that wound': Swedish Whiteness and its inability to accommodate minority experiences, Tobias Hÿbinette; Belonging and the Icelandic others: situating Icelandic identity in a postcolobial context, Kristín Loftsdóttir; Transnational influences, gender equality and violence in Muslim families, Suvi Keskinen; Reading history through Finnish exceptionalism, Anna Rastas; Danishness as Whiteness in crisis: emerging post-imperial and development aid anxieties, Lars Jensen; Bodies and boundaries, Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen and Serena Maurer; Intimacy with the Danish nation-state: my partner, the Danish state and I - a case study of family reunification policy in Denmark, Linda Lund Pedersen; Aesthetics and ethnicity: the role of boundaries in contemporary Sámi and Tornedalian art, Anne Heith; Index.