Mar 27, 2024: Article by Alexandra Meyer and Zdenka Sokolíčková in “Ethnos”
The latest issue of Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology has published the article ‘Melting Worlds’ and ‘Climate Myths’: Diverging Stories of Climate Change in Longyearbyen, an Arctic ‘Frontline Community’ by Alexandra Meyer and Zdenka Sokolíčková.
Climate change is a powerful story in Longyearbyen, the largest settlement on Svalbard in the high Arctic. While most natural science agrees on accelerating climate change with profound environmental impacts, this article unpacks the multidimensionality of the topic locally.
Meyer and Sokolíčková examine climate change as a discourse, analyzing how the local community receives and reproduces the dominant climate change discourse, and comparing it to other narratives about climate change and adaptation. The authors aim to contribute to the growing field of reception studies in anthropology. They conducted ethnographic fieldwork to gather their data, which includes interviews, informal conversations, and importantly, counter-stories that provide nuances and contest the dominant climate change discourse. The authors point to the over-simplification, sensationalism, and (mis)use of the climate discourse for other purposes. They suggest it is essential to listen to such counter-stories to promote fair, inclusive, and transparent climate change politics.
The article is open-access and can be read online here.
Event
Apr 16, 2025: Presentation by Philipp Budka at the Manitoba Museum
InfraNorth team member Philipp Budka will deliver a public presentation of his research titled “Infrastructural Sovereignty and the Social Life of Transport: Ethnographic Insights from Northern Manitoba, Canada” on Wednesday, April 16, from 12:00 to 1:00 PM (GMT-5) at the Manitoba Museum Auditorium in Winnipeg, Canada. Churchill, Manitoba—a remote Subarctic town of approximately 870 residents—offers […]
News
Call for Papers “Beyond Infrastructure? (Un-)built Environments in the Anthropocene”
International Conference, September 22 – 24, 2025, at the University of Vienna. Extended deadline for submissions: April 21, 2025. Infrastructure is often seen as solid, fixed, and inevitable while shaping the way we move, live, and connect. But what about the infrastructures that remain unfinished, abandoned, or merely imagined? How do built, un-built, or non-built […]
Event
Apr 9, 2025: Community Talk by Philipp Budka in Churchill, Manitoba
On April 9, 2025, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM CDT (GMT-5), Philipp Budka will present a talk titled “Navigating Change: How Transport Infrastructure Shapes Life in Churchill” at the Theatre of the Town Centre Complex in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. As part of this community event, the InfraNorth researcher will explore how transport infrastructures both shape […]
News
Mar 2025: Chapter by Olga Povoroznyuk in “A Fractured North – Maintaining Connections”
The third volume of the Fractured North book series, edited by Erich Kasten, Igor Krupnik, and Gail Fondahl, has recently been released by SEC Publications, the publishing house of Kulturstiftung Sibirien. The volume includes a chapter by Olga Povoroznyuk, titled “Reconceptualizing Siberia: a personal account of a changing field.” In it, she reflects on her […]
News
Mar 20–28, 2025: InfraNorth at the Arctic Science Summit Week 2025
InfraNorth researchers Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, Alexandra Meyer, Ria-Maria Adams, and Susanna Gartler will participate in the Arctic Science Summit Week 2025 (ASSW) from 20 to 28 March 2025 at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. This year’s summit, themed “Arctic Research Planning for the Next Decade,” will include the 4th International Conference on Arctic […]
