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Models of transition and experiences of the comfortable life in the Nordics: a case for studying the cultural histories of ordinary unsustainability

Abstract:

The Nordic countries are often taken as models of transition for the rest of the wealthy world to emulate. Yet parallel to routine calls for sustainability transition or transformation, here as elsewhere,  resistance to ecological and climate imperatives is growing. Whether viewed in terms of authoritarian populism, educational deficits or ‘left behind’ places, this anti-environmentalism puzzles (parts of) the media and academics and it challenges policy. In this presentation I argue that ethnographic and historical scholarship offers resources for nuanced and critical analysis, which in turn can provide novel insight and inform practical responses to the problem. My case study juxtaposes an apparent lack of interest in climate politics in a rural area (Kainuu) with state discourses of crisis. The analysis builds on relatively late experiences of modernization and its benefits – particularly of electricity and modern transports. The paper complicates the celebratory story but also helps reduce environmentalists’ perplexity. It is not that the dominant narrative of a welfarist and ‘naturally’ green tradition of pursuing sustainability is unfounded. However, culturally and historically informed analysis, drawing on academic resources, demonstrates how salient diverging experiences of modernization and its comforts remain, as the wealthy world struggles with actual unsustainability and conflicting views on transition.

Bio:

Eeva Berglund is Visiting Researcher with the Anthropology Department at Sussex University this term. She is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Policy at the Aalto School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Finland where she teaches part-time in the multidisciplinary Creative Sustainability programme. Academically supported by a doctorate in social anthropology and an MSc in urban planning, both from the UK, she has long explored issues around environmental politics and transformations in notions of knowledge and expertise. 

She works on the histories and cultures of design as they relate to environmental thought and policy. Her interest in these began with research in Germany in the 1990s, and continued with engagements with urban activism in London and Helsinki. More recently she has been doing fieldwork in Kainuu, north-eastern Finland, which she is currently working up into a book manuscript.

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Last updated: Wednesday, 12 February 2025