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Introduction to Nordic Cultures is an innovative, interdisciplinary introduction to Nordic history, cultures and societies from medieval times to today. The textbook spans the whole Nordic region, covering historical periods from the Viking Age to modern society, and engages with a range of subjects: from runic inscriptions on iron rings and stone monuments, via eighteenth-century scientists, Ibsen’s dramas and turn-of-the-century travel, to twentieth-century health films and the welfare state, nature ideology, Greenlandic literature, Nordic Noir, migration, ‘new’ Scandinavians, and stereotypes of the Nordic. The chapters provide fundamental knowledge and insights into the history and ...
What makes a magazine in South Africa promote Scandinavian unity among its immigrant readers and why does a Swedish king endorse attempts to influence pan-Scandinavian opinion through a transnational media event in Sweden, Norway and Denmark? Can portraits of exotic Lapplanders in the British press, enthusiastic accounts of the welfare state in post-war travel literature and descriptions of the liberal Nordic woman as a metaphor for a freer society in Franco Spain really be bundled together under a joint label of 'Nordicness'? How is it that despite the variety of images of the Nordic region that are circulating, we still find this recurring idea of a shared Nordic identity? These are some o...
Academic exchange is one of the cornerstones of public diplomacy. Receiving foreign academics is one way of influencing foreign elites in an attempt to build goodwill and stable international networks. The result is that academic mobility and the internationalization of higher education and research have always been directly affected by foreign policy decisions and diplomatic considerations — and still are. In Public Diplomacy and Academic Mobility in Sweden, Andreas Åkerlund analyses Sweden’s scholarship programs for foreign academics in a long-term perspective. Here a quantitative analysis of scholarship holders is related to Swedish exchange policy and grant practices by looking at the Swedish Institute in particular. The result is an account of how public diplomacy, foreign policy, development assistance, and the ideas of a knowledge-based economy and international competition affected academic exchanges with Sweden in the twentieth century.
This book sheds new light on the foreign policies, roles, and positions of neutral states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the global Cold War. The volume places the neutral states and the NAM in the context of the Cold War and demonstrates the links between the East, the West, and the so-called Third World. In doing so, this collection provides readers an alternative way of exploring the evolution and impact of the Cold War on North-South connections that challenges traditional notions of the post-1945 history of international relations. The various contributions are framed against the backdrop of the evolution of the Cold War international system and the decolonization process in the ...
What makes a magazine in South Africa promote Scandinavian unity among its immigrant readers and why does a Swedish king endorse attempts to influence pan-Scandinavian opinion through a transnational media event in Sweden, Norway and Denmark? Can portraits of exotic Lapplanders in the British press, enthusiastic accounts of the welfare state in post-war travel literature and descriptions of the liberal Nordic woman as a metaphor for a freer society in Franco Spain really be bundled together under a joint label of 'Nordicness'? How is it that despite the variety of images of the Nordic region that are circulating, we still find this recurring idea of a shared Nordic identity? These are some o...
The terms ‘Nordic’ and ‘Scandinavian’ are widely used to refer to the politics, society and culture of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. But why have people felt the need to frame things as Nordic and why has the adjective Nordic become so prominent? This book adopts a rhetorical approach, analysing the speech acts which have shaped the meanings of the term. What do the different terms Nordic and Scandinavian have in common, and how have the uses of these terms changed in different historical periods? What accounts for the apparent upsurge in uses of the rhetoric of Nordicness in the 2010s? Drawing on eight case studies of the uses of Nordic and Scandinavian from the nine...
The performance of heritage takes place in prestigious institutions such as museums and archives, in officially sanctioned spaces such as jubilees and public monuments, but also in more mundane, ephemeral and banal cultural practices, such as naming of phenomena, viewing exhibitions or walking in the countryside. This volume examines the performance of Nordic heritage and the shaping of the very idea of Norden in diverse contexts in North America, the Baltic and the Nordic countries and examines the importance of these places as sites for creating and preserving cultural heritage. Offering rich perspectives on a part of Europe which has not been the centre of discussion in the Anglophone world, this volume will be of value to a wide readership, including cultural historians, museum practitioners, policy-makers and scholars of heritage, ethnology and folkloristics.
In Switzerland and Sub-Saharan Africa in the Cold War, 1967-1979, Sabina Widmer analyses Swiss foreign policy in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Somalia in the late 1960s and 1970s, at the crossroads of the global East-West confrontation and decolonisation. Focusing on the independence wars in Angola and Mozambique, the Angolan War and the Ogaden War as well as regime changes that brought Soviet-allied governments to power, this book sheds new light on Switzerland’s role in the Third World during the Cold War. Based on extensive multi-archival research, it exposes the limits of neutrality in North-South relations, reveals the growing marge de manoeuvre of small states during Détente, and highlights the role of non-state actors in the making of foreign policy.
This book critically investigates Nordic criminal justice as a global role model. Not taking this role for granted, the chapters of the book analyze how Nordic approaches to criminal justice were folded into global contexts, and how patterns of promotion were built around perceptions that these approaches also had a particular value for other criminal justice systems. Specific actors, both internal and external to the region itself, have branded Nordic criminal justice as a form of ‘penal exceptionalism’ associated with human rights, universalistic welfare, and social cohesion. The book shows how building and using the brand of Nordic criminal justice allowed stakeholders to champion specific forms of crime control across a variety of criminal justice areas in both domestic and international settings. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of criminal justice, international law and justice, Nordic and Scandinavian studies, and more widely to the social sciences and humanities.
This open access book explores the organization and evolution of Finlands Cold War cultural diplomacy (1945-1975) as the basis for a reflection on the countrys foreign relations, the link between culture and politics, small states autonomy during the Cold War, and the porosity of the East-West divide. The book offers a historical survey of the development of Finlands cultural diplomacy as part of the Finnish states foreign activities. In its empirical parts, it focuses on archives drawn from the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education in order to explain Finlands cultural diplomacy as the result of the countrys foreign policy orientations, interactions between domes...