About the project
This thesis concerns an often-overlooked aspect of expertise and scientific practice as part of Nordic statecraft, namely how it has been connected to colonial pasts and presents. A central argument of the literature on the colonial histories of the Nordic countries is that these histories have not been acknowledged, and if they have been, they have often been understood as marginal or as part of an altruistic or gentle project.
The thesis studies urban planning as part of the development of Kalaallit Nunaat (also known as Greenland) from 1950 to 1990 to investigate how Nordic state machineries of social democracy and welfare provision have been involved in the governing and control over Indigenous peoples and their lands. The period from 1950-1990 is chosen because this was a time of vast economic and societal change in Kalaallit Nunaat and a period of changing relations between Kalaallit Nunaat and its former coloniser Denmark (Kalaallit Nunaat was a colony of Denmark from 1721-1953, a county in Denmark from 1953-1979 and gained Home Rule within the Danish Realm in 1979). More specifically the study concerns the political, administrative and scientific tools, technologies and practices associated with urban planning in this period. How did they function? What were their effects? And what happened when the control over them changed hands?
The thesis is based on a practice-oriented document analysis of various documents produced by and for political and administrative entities in Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark. The thesis shows how central documents such as assessments and related reports from the 1950s, 1960 and 1970s worked on the relations between Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark by distributing political, economic and administrative capacities and potentials for conducting development or for being developed. The thesis suggests that this contributed to make Danish political, economic and administrative steering of the development possible in the 1950s and 1960s. It also contributed to challenge and transform established concepts for ordering the relationship between the two nations, building up under demands for changes in the political and administrative control over the development of Kalaallit Nunaat in the 1970s. Close reading of documents used in the planning of Nuuk in the 1960s show how urban planning and development was carried out by keeping procedures and relationships between actors in the processes open and undefined. The thesis suggest that this made possible an urban development in which procedures and relationships could be worked on to achieve already set objectives for urban development. Documents from urban planning in Nuuk in the 1980s suggest that urban planning was not only about ordering urban space but also reordering relations between new and old political and administrative bodies in Greenland and Denmark.
Thesis supervisors
The thesis is supervised by Tone Huse (Head of Research at Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, OsloMet) and Kristin Asdal (Professor and Centre Director at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo) and is part of the research project URBTRANS - Urban Transformation in a Warming Arctic – The continued effects of Nordic colonialism in urban planning and development.
Commentator
Mette Simonsen Abildgaard (Associate Professor at Department of Culture and Communication, The Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Aalborg University)
About Martin Svingen Refseth
Martin Svingen Refseth is a PhD candidate at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo. Read more about him here. This seminar marks the final evaluation prior to submission of his dissertation.
How to participate
The seminar is open for everyone to join - either at TIK (Meeting room 1040). Welcome!
The manuscript is available upon request. Please send the request to Martin Svingen Refseth, martin.refseth@tik.uio.no .