- Folklorist, Professor of Cultural Studiesedit
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This article examines the rhetorical figuration of "our children" in climate change discourse. Based on an analysis of James Hansen's book, Storms of my Grandchildren (2009), Barack Obama's speech at the COP21 meeting in Paris in 2015,... more
This article examines the rhetorical figuration of "our children" in climate change discourse. Based on an analysis of James Hansen's book, Storms of my Grandchildren (2009), Barack Obama's speech at the COP21 meeting in Paris in 2015, and a newspaper article about the Norwegian environmental organization, The Grandparents' Climate Campaign, it argues that the uses of "our children" reflect a notion of a family-timed future. The trope implies a "we" working as the active subject in the texts, while "our children" simply represents a future to be saved. This structure also authorizes "the parent" as a position of enunciation in climate change discourse. The article argues that the authority of this position is based on a heteronormative reproductive futurism.
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This article explores how hurricanes are used in news media to exemplify the consequences of climate change. This is done by a close reading of Norwegian newspaper articles on the hurricanes Katrina (2005), Sandy (2012), Harvey and Irma... more
This article explores how hurricanes are used in news media to exemplify the consequences of climate change. This is done by a close reading of Norwegian newspaper articles on the hurricanes Katrina (2005), Sandy (2012), Harvey and Irma (both 2017). The geographical distance between the disaster areas and the media audience enables an exploration of how these weather events are made meaningful across long distances, as global concerns. The article shows how these hurricanes are textualized and turned into signs in nature that are pointing towards a climate-changed future, and how they work as modelling examples for imagining the possible disastrous state of such a future. It further argues that reasoning with hurricane examples is a certain kind of risk perception involving a temporal and spatial entwining of the future and the present, that represents a notion of cultural catastrophization by calling upon a fear of an uncontrollable disastrous future. The uses of the hurricane example in news media imply an epistemological shift from probability to exemplarity. This shift provides an argumentative space for climate change skeptics to perform counterarguments that juggle between probability and exemplarity. The article explores how this is done, and how statistics and mentioning of other hurricanes are used to argue that hurricanes Sandy, Harvey and Irma were not extraordinary events in terms of intensity, and thus that they cannot possibly be fueled by climate change. The climate change skeptics' attempts to claim these hurricanes to be local and normal phenomena, independent of human action, may be regarded as attempts to de-catastrophize contemporary society.
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During the past decades, notions of Earth dynamics and climate change have changed drastically, as anthropogenic CO 2-emissions are linked to measurable Earth system changes. At the same time, Earth scientists have discovered deep time... more
During the past decades, notions of Earth dynamics and climate change have changed drastically, as anthropogenic CO 2-emissions are linked to measurable Earth system changes. At the same time, Earth scientists have discovered deep time climate changes triggered by large scale and natural release of CO 2. As the understanding of past climatic changes improved, they were used to envision what might happen in the near future. This article explores the use of deep time climate examples by analyzing publications on a 56-million-year-old greenhouse gas-driven rapid global warming event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). We explore how the PETM is framed and used as an example of "extre-me climatic warming" in four cases across different scientific genres. The scientific knowledge about the PETM is considered too uncertain to draw conclusions from, but our analysis shows that, by being presented as an example, the PETM may still contribute to the scientific understanding of ongoing climate change. Although the PETM is regarded as too uncertain to guide present day climate change modeling, it is still considered morally significant, and is allowed to influence public opinion and policy making. We argue that the PETM is used as an example in ways that have formal similarities with the early modern historia ma-gistra vitae topos. The PETM example highlights the ambivalence that characterizes the Anthropocene as a temporal conception. The Anthropocene is "completely different", but at the same time pointing to the similarity between the present and the deep past, thereby allowing for comparison to past geological events. Thus, the Anthropocene is not so "completely different" after all. Just a little bigger, a lot faster, and a lot scarier to humans.
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Culture unbound vol 7 theme 3, se also http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/beta/contents.asp?doi=10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1573
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Climate change is dramatically shifting the way cities interpret and live with their local climate. This paper analyses how climate change is emerging as a matter of concern in the public spheres of Bergen, and interprets how this concern... more
Climate change is dramatically shifting the way cities interpret and live with their local climate. This paper analyses how climate change is emerging as a matter of concern in the public spheres of Bergen, and interprets how this concern is affecting Bergen’s identity, with implications for the city’s climate risk governance. Historically, Bergen has a strong identity as Europe’s rainiest city, manifested in its cultural and social life. In the past 15 years, Bergen’s identity has been shifting from a ‘weather city’ to a ‘climate city’. This paper draws on ethnographic research, interviews and document analysis to map this shift as co-produced by certain social and natural events and processes; told as narratives of change. This identity shift is creating surprising hybrid representations of climate that are locally meaningful, shaped as much by Bergen’s cultural weatherworld as by incoming ideas of climate change. These representations influence Bergen’s attitudes towards climate risk governance, and may extend influence to global scales via climate city networks. This identity shift also moves the timeframe of risk governance. As a weather city, risks were implicit to the city’s heritage and peoples’ lived experience. But as a climate city, risks are predicted, to foresee and prevent impacts. Critically employing co-production as an analytical lens can help us understand the multiple facets to cities’ climate risk governance, including the role of culture and identity.
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This paper discusses the performativity and spreadability of digital slogans and visual expressions after the terrorist attacks in Oslo and Utøya in Norway in 2011 and Paris in November 2015. The analysis is based on online fieldwork and... more
This paper discusses the performativity and spreadability of digital slogans and visual expressions after the terrorist attacks in Oslo and Utøya in Norway in 2011 and Paris in November 2015. The analysis is based on online fieldwork and is first and foremost focusing upon the uses of Facebook from the point of view of a Norwegian social media user.
While there has been a tendency in folkloristic work on digital visual forms to emphasize humorous expressions, this paper discusses expressions that are far from funny. After both these terrorist attacks photoshopped images and slogans such as «Oslove» and «Je suis Paris» circulated widely in social media. Drawing on media scholar Henry Jenkins’ work, the paper examines the spreadability of such expressive forms and discusses some cultural implications of the intertwining of digital networks and everyday life. It argues that the transnational spreadablility of such digital forms brings the terrorist attacks closer to the everyday lives of media audiences far away. Drawing on disaster scholar Adi Ophir’s term catastrophization, it concludes that that rapid and wide circulation of such digital forms contributes to a process of cultural catastrophization, adding a sense of a seemingly constant state of emergency to the everyday life of a transnational media audience.
While there has been a tendency in folkloristic work on digital visual forms to emphasize humorous expressions, this paper discusses expressions that are far from funny. After both these terrorist attacks photoshopped images and slogans such as «Oslove» and «Je suis Paris» circulated widely in social media. Drawing on media scholar Henry Jenkins’ work, the paper examines the spreadability of such expressive forms and discusses some cultural implications of the intertwining of digital networks and everyday life. It argues that the transnational spreadablility of such digital forms brings the terrorist attacks closer to the everyday lives of media audiences far away. Drawing on disaster scholar Adi Ophir’s term catastrophization, it concludes that that rapid and wide circulation of such digital forms contributes to a process of cultural catastrophization, adding a sense of a seemingly constant state of emergency to the everyday life of a transnational media audience.
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Denne artikkelen handler om minne og sted - om hvordan minne gestaltes som monumenter, og om hvordan monumenter impregnerer rommet med bestemte fortidsfortolkninger. Artikkelen handler nærmere bestemt om hvordan Akershus festning fremstår... more
Denne artikkelen handler om minne og sted - om hvordan minne gestaltes som monumenter, og om hvordan monumenter impregnerer rommet med bestemte fortidsfortolkninger. Artikkelen handler nærmere bestemt om hvordan Akershus festning fremstår som krigsminnelandskap. Gjennom en analyse av i alt åtte monumenter på eller rett utenfor festningen diskuterer artikkelen hvordan ulike sider ved den offisielle minnekulturen om annen verdenskrig materialiserer seg i landskapet. Det eldste av monumentene ble innviet i 1949, det nyeste i 2000. Artikkelen spør hvordan krigserindringens historiske utvikling kommer til syne gjennom monumentene på Akershus festning.
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Moltke Moe, Norway’s first professor of folklore, was an accomplished collector and he worked systematically with developing his collection techniques. Still, in-depth studies of Moe’s fieldwork methodology have not been done. While... more
Moltke Moe, Norway’s first professor of folklore, was an accomplished collector and he worked systematically with developing his collection techniques. Still, in-depth studies of Moe’s fieldwork methodology have not been done. While previous studies of his collecting journeys have focused on the narrators and narratives, this article will shift the focus to the practical and ethical aspects of fieldwork. Our approach is to discuss Moe’s efforts in light of one of the classic books of fieldwork methodology, Kenneth Goldstein’s A Guide for field workers in folklore (1964). The article springs from an ongoing project about Moltke Moe’s journeys for collecting medieval ballads in Western-Telemark in 1889–1891. The materials preserved from these journeys lie mainly in the Norwegian Folklore Archives. In addition to notebooks and journals,
there are also letters and photographs. The aim here is primarily to use Goldstein’s description of fieldwork methodology to structure and interpret the various archival remains from Moltke Moe’s collection activities
there are also letters and photographs. The aim here is primarily to use Goldstein’s description of fieldwork methodology to structure and interpret the various archival remains from Moltke Moe’s collection activities
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Nord Nytt 92/93:2005.
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I anledning utdelingen av Fritt ord-prisen til klimaaktivisten Greta Thunberg og Natur og Ungdom kan man spørre seg hvilken rolle barnet som retorisk figur spiller i klimadebatten.
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Kronikk publisert på Facebook 8. april 2020.
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Dette er satskorreturen. Et par av underoverskriftene er endret i den trykte utgaven. I tillegg er to av billedtekstene byttet om.
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Climate Change Temporalities explores how various timescales, timespans, intervals, rhythms, cycles, and changes in acceleration are at play in climate change discourses. It argues that nuanced, detailed, and specific understandings and... more
Climate Change Temporalities explores how various timescales, timespans, intervals, rhythms, cycles, and changes in acceleration are at play in climate change discourses. It argues that nuanced, detailed, and specific understandings and concepts are required to handle the challenges of a climatically changed world, politically and socially as well as scientifically. Rather than reflecting abstractly on theories of temporality, this edited collection explores a variety of timescales and temporalities from narratives, experience, popular culture, and everyday life in addition to science and history – and the entanglements between them. The chapters are clustered into three main sections, exploring a range of genres, such as questionnaires, interviews, magazines, news media, television series, aquariums, and popular science books to critically examine how and where climate change understandings are formed. The book also includes chapters historising notions of climate and temporality by exploring scientific debates and practices.
Climate Change Temporalities will be of great interest to students and scholars of humanistic climate change research, environmental humanities, studies of temporality and historicity, cultural studies, cultural history, and popular culture.
Climate Change Temporalities will be of great interest to students and scholars of humanistic climate change research, environmental humanities, studies of temporality and historicity, cultural studies, cultural history, and popular culture.
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Klimaendringer handler om utslipp og tørke, om smeltende is og voldsomme stormer. Men når utslippene øker, er det mer enn bare klimaet som endres. Det gjør også vår forståelse av tid. Når klimaforskere bruker kunnskap fra geologisk fortid... more
Klimaendringer handler om utslipp og tørke, om smeltende is og voldsomme stormer. Men når utslippene øker, er det mer enn bare klimaet som endres. Det gjør også vår forståelse av tid. Når klimaforskere bruker kunnskap fra geologisk fortid til å modellere fremtidens klima, politikere vedtar utslippsreduksjoner for å trygge våre barn og barnebarns fremtid og klimaaksjonister roper på øyeblikkelig handling, blir det tydelig at det inngår ulike tidsforståelser i hvordan vi snakker om, forholder oss til og forsøker å håndtere klimaendringene.
Fremtiden er nå undersøker noen av klimaendringenes rytmer, tempoer, tidsrammer og tidsskalaer. Boken tar også opp hvordan forestillinger om en klimaendret fremtid endrer forholdet vårt til nåtid og fortid, og hvordan ulike tidsforståelser kan påvirke hvordan vi forholder oss til klimaendringene.
Fremtiden er nå undersøker noen av klimaendringenes rytmer, tempoer, tidsrammer og tidsskalaer. Boken tar også opp hvordan forestillinger om en klimaendret fremtid endrer forholdet vårt til nåtid og fortid, og hvordan ulike tidsforståelser kan påvirke hvordan vi forholder oss til klimaendringene.
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Dr.avhandling
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Monografi. Les mer om boka her: http://www.spartacus.no/index.php?ID=Bok&ID2=861
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Hovedoppgave i folkloristikk, 2000.
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«Hva har fått høre med i historikernes fortellinger om krigen? Hvem sin historie har vært fortalt, og hvordan? Hvordan har disse fortellingene endret seg gjennom etterkrigstiden?» Disse spørsmålene danner utgangspunktet for historikeren... more
«Hva har fått høre med i historikernes fortellinger om krigen? Hvem sin historie har vært fortalt, og hvordan? Hvordan har disse fortellingene endret seg gjennom etterkrigstiden?» Disse spørsmålene danner utgangspunktet for historikeren Synne Corells doktoravhandling Krigens ettertid. Okkupasjonshistorien i norske historiebøker, som nå foreligger som bok. Det er når Corell klarer å vise hvordan historieskrivingen spiller sammen med en større norsk krigsminnekultur at Krigens ettertid er best. Derfor er det synd at dette samspillet ikke er blitt gjort til en mer gjennomgående tematikk i bokens drøftelser.
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Prøveforelesning ved AHKR, Universitetet i Bergen holdt mai 2014.