(Re)producing a periphery Popular representations of the Swedish North Madeleine Eriksson Kungliga Skytteanska Samfundet Department of Social and Economic Geography 901 87 Umeå Umeå 2010 Department of Social and Economic Geography Umeå University SE – 901 87 Umeå, Sweden Tel: +46 90 786 7152 Fax: +46 90 786 6359 GERUM – Kulturgeografi 2010:2 ISBN: 978-91-978344-3-8 ISSN: 1402-5205 http://www.geo.umu.se Elektronisk version tillgänglig på http://umu.diva-portal.org/ Kungliga Skytteanska Samfundet Kungliga Skytteanska Samfundets handlingar, nr. 66 * 2010 ISBN: 978-91-86438-40-1 ISSN: 0560-2416 Copyright©Madeleine Eriksson [email protected] Tryck/Printed by: Original Umeå, Sweden, 2010 Acknowledgements The best thing about writing a thesis is that you have the chance to thank people who you appreciate and who have supported and helped you over the years. First, I appreciate that without competent heads of department, I wouldn‘t have learnt a new birthday song, I wouldn‘t have been able to travel as much, or buy as many books, and would never, ever, have been able to make a film. Thank you, Kerstin, Dieter, Einar, and Ulf, for so brilliantly and joyfully or- ganizing the department during my time as a doctoral student. And thank you Lotta, Margit and Erik for your admirable patience, competence and efficiency. Urban Lindgren, my advisor, thank you for all the fun, the eccentric out- bursts, the long discussions and the way you always make me argue for my cause. We rarely agree on ideological stuff – nevertheless, you have helped me sharpen my arguments. You have stared at me, listened to my arguments and, yes, you have often bought them! And, well, I have bought some of your arguments as well. You haven‘t had an easy job with me. Thank you for al- ways having time to read and discuss. Thank you for being so brave. And sorry for talking about classical music as background music – you‘ve proba- bly forgotten about it, but I remember your wounded facial expression. Thanks also to my professor, Gunnar Malmberg – you have made life easier for me from the first day we met at the department. I appreciate the way you always take me seriously no matter what. I appreciate your open mind and your playfulness. You helped me to initially pose the research question that is the base of this thesis. Our grant from Vetenskapsrådet made it possible for me to slightly (okay, considerably) change direction from mainly doing quantitative migration studies to this…and, you have always encouraged that. We have even written an article together, a very radical and polemic piece, soon to be published in France for all to read. I am for ever thankful to you, Aina Tollefsen, who became one of my advisors a couple of years down the road. You recharge my spirit with your idealism and radicalism. You have read my texts more thoroughly than I have myself, and you impress me with your knowledge in so many different fields. You talk and discuss unpretentiously as you drink your pretentious coffee. Thank you for seeing the potential in this thesis, and thank you for taking the time to read and discuss despite everything else. You are my hero. i During the course of my doctoral studies, I have had the pleasure to get to know an expert on internal orientalism, which is foundational to my work. Thanks David Jansson for your interesting research, and for your careful comments. I am indebted to Allan Pred who met with me every week for a whole year while I was in Berkeley; if there is an original thought in this book, I owe it to him. Allan will always keep teaching me as I read notes from his lectures and his books. Also thanks to Hjördis for being so generous – for sharing your grief and joy. Many people have read, discussed, and commented on my texts over the years, and I appreciate this very much. Many thanks to: Christer Nordlund, Mekonnen Tesfahuney, Carina Keskitalo, Jonathan Friedman, Linda Lundmark, Linda Sandberg and Charles Hirschkind. Special thanks to Kjell Hansen, for the supportive comments at my pre-dissertation seminar. Also, many thanks to my excellent editor, Judith Rinker-Öhman. I also owe thanks to my interviewees, thanks for your time and effort, I really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you to all my fellow graduate students, particularly to Erika Sandow, Jenny Olofsson, and Linda Sandberg. You are true friends, always there to support, to rage, and to laugh. I don‘t think I would have managed without you, honestly. Also, thanks to Linda Lundmark, Anne Ouma and Cecilia Gus- tafsson for your humor and kindness. I also want to thank my friends for making me see things I otherwise never would have seen. Thanks especially to Anneli Aronsson (who is the only one I am really sure will read this thesis) and Andrea Mannberg who is always there, with a song, an argument or a Budweiser, and to my dear hilarious friends, Anna-Karin and Ida. I want to give many hugs of thanks to my Berkeley friends Andrea, Julie, Sonja, and Lorraine for filling time spent there with coffee breaks, wine, bad music, and books. I also want to thank Fredrik Oskarsson and Oskar Östergren for travelling with me to the inland of Västerbotten to make a film. The way you let people be heard makes me happy, and I appreciate what you did to make that happen. Thanks to my four sisters Sofia, Sara, and Rebecca, and especially to my twin sister Liselotte, my biggest fan. Thanks, beloved twin, for helping me with my texts and for your ironic and twisted comments. And thanks to my nieces and nephews – André, Pontus, Jesper, Saga, and Elisabeth for making me all warm and happy. ii Tack också till mina kära föräldrar, Anita och Björn, för att ni tycker att allt jag gör är så bra och för att ni slutat bry er om vad jag gör. Ett stort tack till Judiths farfar och farmor, Torgny och Margareta, för att ni älskar Judith så, och för alla middagar ni lagat när jag kommit hem sent. Finally, to Rikard, my soulmate and discussion partner, you have been a rock – always smiling even though I know you have gotten tired of reading my texts and answering my demanding questions. The work with this thesis has made me pale and weak, but when sitting in my oxygen-poor and insanitary office, the thought of you has given me the strength and joy to carry on. My dearest little Judith, you have never really liked the fact that your parents have things to do besides playing with you. These past months have been torture for me with not being able to play with you and kiss you as much as I normally do. Rikard and Judith, I love you so. Madeleine Eriksson Umeå, September 2010 iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Table of Contents iv 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Outline 5 2. Starting points 7 2.1 Material and method 7 2.2 Theory 9 2.2.1 Discourse and representations 10 2.2.2 Intersectionality 12 2.2.3 Place in the North 12 2.2.4 Internal other 17 2.2.5 Swedish modern 21 2.3 Periphery 23 3. Enduring representations 26 3.1 A category 26 3.2 Colonialism within the nation 31 3.2.1 A Swedish Klondike 33 3.3 The political shift 34 3.3.1 All of Sweden? 42 4. Norrland in news media 49 4.1 Analyzing news discourse on Norrland 50 4.2 Norrland in the news: sparsely populated areas, subsidies and depopulation 52 4.3 Labeling: simply Norrland 56 4.4 Processes and participants in DN 59 4.5 Meanings of news representations 62 5. Norrland in film 65 5.1 The film: The Hunters 67 5.2 Blurred Scenography 69 5.3 Hollywood narratives 72 5.4 Fictionalized Facts and Factualized Fiction 74 5.5 Film and geographies of differences 80 6. Selling Norrland 82 6.1 Place marketing 83 6.1.1 Commodification of Norrland and the Sámi 90 6.1.2 Capital of culture in the North 93 6.2 Reworking place by selling 98 6.2.1 Norrlands guld 99 6.2.2 Norrmejerier 101 6.2.3 I Love Norrland 104 iv 6.3 Conclusions 105 7. Talking about and imagining places 107 7.1 Regional resistance 110 7.2 The move to the city 116 7.3 To move or stay 122 7.4 In a neoliberal context 129 7.5 Place and values 135 7.6 Conclusions 138 8. Concluding analysis 141 9. Sammanfattning 147 10. References 151 Appendix 174 v vi 1. Introduction ―If the social is inextricably spatial and the spatial impossible to di- vorce from its social construction and content, it follows not only that social processes should be analysed as taking place spatially but also that what have been thought of as spatial patterns can be conceptual- ised in terms of social processes.‖ (Massey, 1995:65) The point of view adopted in this thesis is one of essential geographical im- portance: The focus is on representational practices through which identities and difference are constituted and perpetuated, and result in material ef- fects. Certain places and people are viewed as prosperous, with a bright future ahead, while others are depicted as weak and marginal and in need of sup- port from stronger regions or the state. Places are involved in the wider ‗power geometries‘ of the processes of globalization, and regions that are less favored in global processes of restructuring typically suffer from unemploy- ment and out-migration (Massey, 2004; Eriksson, 2009).