227 research outputs found
Yhdessä tekemisen herkkyys ja voima
No full textEditorial (in Finnish), Marjo Lindroth and Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen, Kide -magazine of the arts and sciences at the Univeristy of Lapland, 3/2017<br/
Socio-Legal Studies
No full textSocio-legal studies analyze the complex relationship between law and politics. This chapter utilizes a socio-legal lens to interrogate the role of rights in indigenous-state relations. Increasing the rights of indigenous peoples has been perceived as a sign of the reorganization of their relations with states. The chapter introduces three critical strands of research on rights: the state-centrism of rights, colonial rights and rights as governmentality. The discussion delves into the political power entailed in rights beyond the legal realm. Such analyses of the political role of legal developments have yet to be applied in studies of the Arctic. Indeed, to date, legal and political studies have largely focused on the role of legal instruments and institutions in the governance of the region. The chapter offers insights into how rights and perceptions of legality can maintain the dispossession of indigenous peoples—a condition that legal recognition initially sought to redress. Through this critical inquiry, the discussion demonstrates how selective recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights is in fact a tool by which states evade the threat of indigenous sovereignty and secure their own political and economic interests. Illustrating this process on the ground, the chapter discusses some recent developments in Canada
Introduction: Alternative Lenses on the Arctic
No full textThis introduction discusses the historical and current blindness of social scientific research in and on the Arctic and underscores the potential of critical research to open up new perspectives. The way in which the Arctic social world becomes “known” is partial and in many ways still influenced by its legacy of expeditions. Despite the increasing volume of Arctic social sciences, many gaps remain. Through discussing critical research—forays into problematization and critique—the chapter elaborates on the relevance of critical approaches for bringing to light Arctic issues and questions that we are currently blind to. To this end, the chapter groups the contributions of the book into three thematic strands: novel angles on questions of order, explorations of heretofore unacknowledged sites of power, and perspectives on studying Arctic pluralities. The introduction, and the volume as a whole, invites the reader to problematize that which appears self-evident in the Arctic and to explore alternative approaches
Governing Indigeneity Globally : Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations
No full textVäitöskirjani tarkastelee alkuperäiskansoja kansainvälisessä politiikassa, erityisesti Yhdistyneissä kansakunnissa (YK). Alkuperäiskansa-asioiden pysyvän foorumin perustaminen ja alkuperäiskansaoikeuksien kansainvälinen tunnustaminen ovat vahvistaneet alkuperäiskansojen asemaa kansainvälisellä tasolla. Näkyvin esimerkki tästä kehityksestä on YK:n Alkuperäiskansojen oikeuksien julistus. Nämä edistysaskeleet on otettu valtioihin pohjautuvassa järjestelmässä. Valtiot, joista monet ovat kolonisoineet alkuperäiskansoja ja aikaisemmin torjuneet heidän vaatimuksensa, ovat nyt tunnustamassa alkuperäiskansojen oikeuksia. Tutkimuksen taustalla on kiinnostukseni tätä paradoksaalista tilannetta ja muutokseen johtaneita syitä kohtaan.
Tutkimuksessani väitän, että alkuperäiskansojen lisääntyneet oikeudet ja poliittinen osallistuminen eivät merkitse, että alkuperäiskansoja kohtaan käytettäisiin vähemmän valtaa. Tarkastelen alkuperäiskansojen toimijuutta kahdesta näkökulmasta. Ensimmäisessä näen alkuperäiskansat uusien normien edistäjinä (norm socialisation). Identifioin erilaisia tapoja, joilla alkuperäiskansat nostavat esiin heitä koskettavia kysymyksiä, ehdottavat ratkaisuja ja pyrkivät edistämään uusien normien syntymistä. Toinen lähestymistapa, joka pohjautuu kriittiseen foucault’laiseen vallan ja hallinnan tutkimukseen (governmentality) on työssäni keskeisessä osassa. Lähestymistavan avulla keskustelen vallan kysymyksistä kolmessa eri temaattisessa yhteydessä. Ensimmäisessä tutkin alkuperäiskansojen subjektiviteettia ja vastarintaa pysyvän foorumin mikrotason valtasuhteissa. Toisessa tarkastelen alkuperäiskansaisuuden (indigeneity) ja ympäristön tiivistä yhteenkietoutumista ja sen merkityksiä kansainvälisessä politikassa. Kolmannessa tutkin tapaa jolla vallitseva ja yleisesti hyväksytty alkuperäiskansaoikeuspuhe, sen voimauttavista pyrkimyksistään huolimatta, pitää sisällään uusliberaaleja valtavaikutuksia.
Tutkimusmateriaali koostuu tekemistäni havainnoista neljässä pysyvän foorumin vuosittaisessa kokouksessa, alkuperäiskansojen, valtioiden ja YK:n järjestöjen edustajien lausunnoista, pysyvän foorumin perustamiseen liittyvistä raporteista sekä alkuperäiskansaoikeuksien erityisraportoijan raporteista. Tutkimuksen metodologinen lähtökohta on problematisointi. Se hyödyntää tekstianalyysia tutkimusmateriaalissa toistuvien ja tavanomaisina esitettyjen alkuperäiskansaisuutta koskevien käsitysten tarkastelussa. Näiden toistuvien käsitysten analyysissa olen käyttänyt kriittistä vallan ja hallinnan näkökulmaa. Analyysini paljastaa, miten usein epäpoliittisina, vakiintuneina ja hyväksyttyinä näyttäytyvät alkuperäiskansakysymykset ovat kansainvälisesti poliittisia.
Tutkimukseni eroaa alkuperäiskansoja ja politiikkaa tarkastelevista lähestymistavoista, jotka perinteisesti pitävät institutionaalisia, poliittisia ja oikeudellisia kehityksiä itsestään selvästi tavoiteltavan arvoisina ja ”hyvinä”. Nämä lähestymistavat eivät kuitenkaan kykene tunnistamaan sitä, miten valta ja hallinta ovat osa hyväntahtoisilta vaikuttavia kehityksiä ja miten monin tavoin hierarkkiset valtasuhteet jatkavat olemassaoloaan. Samalla kun alkuperäiskansojen oikeuksia, osallistumista ja alkuperäiskansaisuuden oletettuja piirteitä vaalitaan YK:n piirissä, valta ja hallinta ovat ottaneet hienovaraisempia muotoja. Alkuperäiskansojen oikeuksien lisääntynyt tunnustaminen ja poliittinen osallistuminen YK:ssa ovat osa uusliberaalia hallintaa.This dissertation studies indigenous peoples in international politics, particularly in the United Nations (UN). Indigenous peoples gained access to the organisation on a permanent basis with the establishment of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PF). In addition, their rights are increasingly recognised by the UN member states, the most notable advance in this regard being the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This progress has taken place in a state-based system, many of whose members have colonised indigenous peoples and at least previously been hostile to their demands. Indeed, it is this paradox, and my interest in how the change has come about that provided the impetus for the research project.
Despite these advances in indigenous participation and rights, I argue that there is no less power exercised over the peoples than previously. I approach the agency of indigenous peoples from two perspectives, that of norm socialisation and that of Foucault-inspired approaches to power and governmentality. The first perspective views indigenous peoples as norm entrepreneurs. It identifies frames through which the peoples draw attention to their concerns and suggest solutions; that is, the peoples promote the acceptance of new norms by states. The latter perspective informed three analyses. In the first, I investigated the ways in which the subjectification and resistance of indigenous peoples takes place in the small-scale power relations of the PF. The second consisted of a critical examination of the constant entanglement of indigeneity and the environment in international politics and its consequences for indigenous agency. The third examined the ways in which the prevailing and accepted discourse on indigenous rights has neoliberal power effects that go beyond the proclaimed emancipatory aims of the rights.
The research material comprises observations made in four PF annual sessions; statements by representatives of indigenous peoples, states and UN agencies; reports on the establishment of the PF; and reports of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The study embraces the methodological guideline of problematisation: text analysis was applied to first identify recurrent and familiar perceptions of indigenous peoples and their agency; this then provided the basis for a critical examination of the power effects associated with the perceptions. The ultimate aim of the analysis was to recover the political in what often seems de-politicised, established and accepted in the context of indigenous peoples and international politics.
This research breaks from the more conventional approaches to indigenous peoples and politics that conceive of the international institutional, political and legal advances in indigenous issues as self-evidently desirable and ‘good’. Such approaches fail to recognise the ‘darker’ side of the seemingly benign processes involved: they overlook the many ways in which more hierarchical power relations persist. There is no denying that the ways in which indigenous peoples and indigeneity are dealt with in the UN foster indigeneity and its alleged qualities and recognise the freedoms and rights of the peoples. However, as my critical study illustrates, the growing recognition of indigenous rights and the enhanced participation of indigenous peoples signals a change in the ways in which indigenous peoples are best managed internationally, a development geared to ensuring the efficient functioning of neoliberal governance. Indeed, rather than the peoples being governed any less in international politics today, governance at work has taken on more subtle forms.This dissertation studies indigenous peoples in international politics, particularly in the United Nations (UN). Indigenous peoples gained access to the organisation on a permanent basis with the establishment of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PF). In addition, their rights are increasingly recognised by the UN member states, the most notable advance in this regard being the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This progress has taken place in a state-based system, many of whose members have colonised indigenous peoples and at least previously been hostile to their demands. Indeed, it is this paradox, and my interest in how the change has come about that provided the impetus for the research project.
Despite these advances in indigenous participation and rights, I argue that there is no less power exercised over the peoples than previously. I approach the agency of indigenous peoples from two perspectives, that of norm socialisation and that of Foucault-inspired approaches to power and governmentality. The first perspective views indigenous peoples as norm entrepreneurs. It identifies frames through which the peoples draw attention to their concerns and suggest solutions; that is, the peoples promote the acceptance of new norms by states. The latter perspective informed three analyses. In the first, I investigated the ways in which the subjectification and resistance of indigenous peoples takes place in the small-scale power relations of the PF. The second consisted of a critical examination of the constant entanglement of indigeneity and the environment in international politics and its consequences for indigenous agency. The third examined the ways in which the prevailing and accepted discourse on
indigenous rights has neoliberal power effects that go beyond the proclaimed emancipatory aims of the rights.
The research material comprises observations made in four PF annual sessions; statements by representatives of indigenous peoples, states and UN agencies; reports on the establishment of the PF; and reports of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The study embraces the methodological guideline of problematisation: text analysis was applied to first identify recurrent and familiar perceptions of indigenous peoples and their agency; this then provided the basis for a critical examination of the power effects associated with the perceptions. The ultimate aim of the analysis was to recover the political in what often seems de-politicised, established and accepted in the context of indigenous peoples and international politics.
This research breaks from the more conventional approaches to indigenous peoples and politics that conceive of the international institutional, political and legal advances in indigenous issues as self-evidently desirable and ‘good’. Such approaches fail to recognise the ‘darker’ side of the seemingly benign processes involved: they overlook the many ways in which more hierarchical power relations persist. There is no denying that the ways in which indigenous peoples and indigeneity are dealt with in the UN foster indigeneity and its alleged qualities and recognise the freedoms and rights of the peoples. However, as my critical study illustrates, the growing recognition of indigenous rights and the enhanced participation of indigenous peoples signals a change in the ways in which indigenous peoples are best managed internationally, a development geared to ensuring the efficient functioning of neoliberal governance. Indeed, rather than the peoples being governed any less in international politics today,
governance at work has taken on more subtle forms.acceptedVersionei tietoa saavutettavuudest
Stepping in the footsteps of Hajar to bring home the hajj:dialogical positioning in Asra Nomani's memoir 'Standing Alone'
Get PDFThis paper discusses the hajj memoir Standing Alone (2006) by the journalist Asra Nomani to demonstrate how before, during and after her hajj performance, the author moves back and forth between various moral discourses that inform her daily life in order to make sense of her multiple senses of belonging and to claim more space for women participation and in today’s global and local Umma (community of Muslims). Using ‘Dialogical Self theory’ (DST) (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka) to analyze ‘dialogues’ between the various temporally and spatially situated ‘voices’ that populate Nomani’s hajj memoir, it is argued that what the author experiences as literally ‘stepping in the footsteps of Hajar’, like herself a single mother whose faith in and rescue by God is played out during the Hajj, Nomani finds a strong female Muslim role model to identify with. Thus appropriating Islam as an empowering moral discourse, Nomani takes the extraordinary experience of the hajj back home to her everyday life to become an activist in order to claim Muslim women’s rights as equal citizens in the various communities that she belongs
Paradoxes of power:Indigenous peoples in the Permanent Forum
No full text In the United Nations (UN) Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PF), indigenous political subjectivities take shape in the power relations that not only make indigenous peoples subjects but also subjugate them. This article discusses the process and the possibilities of resistance that open up for indigenous peoples within it. The approach taken acknowledges the limiting political environment of the UN for indigenous peoples, because it is a non-indigenous political system based on state sovereignty. Yet, it does not view the situation of those peoples in the PF as totally determined by the states and their dominant discourse. The theoretical framework of the article draws on the work of Michel Foucault and his conceptions on power, resistance, subjectification, technologies of domination and of the self. The power struggles in the PF, described through the complex of sovereignty, discipline and government, and the resistances within them engender paradoxical indigenous subjectivities: colonized/decolonized, victim/actor, traditional/modern, global/local. Indigenous peoples are able to engage both in resistance that is a reaction to states’ exercise of power or the creative use of its tools and in indirect resistance that ‘stretches’ the UN system and constitutes action on its own terms. </jats:p
Indigenous rights as tactics of neoliberal governance:practices of expertise in the United Nations
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Intersectionality
No full textIntersectionality has been one of the key orientations in feminist research in recent decades. The concept and term were introduced by feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw as a framework to understand the ways in which gender and race intersect and jointly produce and sustain structures of inequality. Intersectionality has come to refer to an approach focused on the socio-cultural multiplicity of experiences and identifications that define individuals’ positions within societies. The concept has been linked to antiracist and postcolonial struggles in particular. There is, however, lingering ambiguity and a variety of conceptions of how to understand intersectional analysis. This chapter gives a brief account of the idea of intersectionality, its history and contemporary debates. In addition, it discusses the methodological contributions to be had, and potential challenges faced, in conducting such an analysis. In order to reflect on the role and potential of intersectional analysis—as a critical approach—in Arctic research, this chapter briefly discusses the question of violence against indigenous women. To date, intersectionality has played a limited role in social scientific research in and on the Arctic. Could a feminist intersectional analysis offer more pertinent tools for understanding and tackling complex junctures of inequality in the Arctic
Affects
No full textIn the social and cultural sciences, what is known the “affective turn” has proved extremely productive, often in combination with narrative analysis or discourse analysis. Rather than regarding emotions as individual psychological states, the social sciences view emotions as cultural practices: that is, as something located in the interaction between people, underscoring the sociality of emotion. The affective turn has proven useful as a method for analyzing the political effects of emotional practices in asymmetric power relations. The chapter demonstrates how Sara Ahmed’s concept of “affective economies” opens up a deeper understanding of the emotional relations between Denmark and Greenland, established during the colonial era. The desire to secede from Denmark and create an independent Greenlandic nation-state has led the country to a transition into a nation-as-investment destination (Kaur in Brand new nation. Capitalist dreams and nationalist designs in twenty-first-century India. Standfort University Press, 2020). Various pride strategies are used to encourage the Greenlanders to identify themselves as modern and competent people, ready to enter the global competition. While the political system is trying to decolonize Greenland by promoting its economic and political independence, Greenlandic artists process the social, epistemological and affective consequences of colonialism. Using art as an affective methodology, they open up a space for feeling—and thus thinking, acting and knowing—differently
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