CFP: Flows of Food, Folk, and Thought: Environmental Histories of the Nordic Countries

Situated at the Northern edge of the world, the environment has posed unique challenges to the Nordic countries throughout history. The session takes  environmental historian William Cronon’s hinterland concept as its starting point. He used the concept to demonstrate how a metropolis like Chicago included ever larger areas in its influence, gathering resources and exerting change on the environment of these areas. The Nordic countries do not possess the same gravity, yet they are also intimately connected to areas and environments across the globe. Rather than a model with the Nordic countries either in the center or in the hinterland, we understand these countries to be nodes in an ever-changing network.

We are interested in how the movement of food, people, and ideas into, out of, and within the Nordic countries has affected the local and global environment. Potential subtopics within this session include:

• The transfer of environmental knowledge (both specific “how-to” knowledge and ideological belief systems) over space and time
• The effect of material flows on cultural and/or biological diversity
• The effect of food networks on the environments of the Nordic countries and throughout the commodity chain
• The environmental consequences of the movement of people into, out of, and within Nordic countries

If you are interested in participating in this session, please send an abstract of 250-300 words outlining your topic, argument, and sources, before September 1, 2010. We aim to publish all or parts of the session as a collected volume after the conference. All abstracts should be submitted to tromso2011@nehn-nordic.org.

Each paper will be allocated 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion; those papers that are selected for publication will need to be submitted to the organizers as full-length articles after the conference.

The session is sponsored by the Nordforsk-funded Nordic Environmental History Network (NEHN), a network of more than 60 scholars from all the Nordic countries. See the network’s webpage at http://norden.miljohistorie.net/ for more information.

Organizers: