Revisiting Nordic Colonialism: Local Amnesia – Global Impact

The Reykjavik Academy, Reykjavik
March 25, 26 & 28, 2006

This three-day workshop sought to place the Nordic region in a global context and to look into its colonial past and the fact that this past is widely repressed. It aspired to determine what questions are important and necessary for a progressive, postcolonial debate in the region. The workshop was originally scheduled to last four days. However, Vandana Shiva was unable to attend and turned in an essay for the documentation DVD and website instead, which is available here. As a result, we had to cancel the fourth day of the workshop.

Click here for audio slide shows of the workshop presentations

Participants

Ívar Jónsson (Iceland)
Mikela Lundahl (Sweden)
Steve Ouditt (Trinidad, The West Indies)
Humphrey Polepole (Tanzania)
Vandana Shiva (India)

Moderators

Jón Ólafsson (Iceland)
Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdóttir (Iceland)

Workshop Program

Day 1: March 25

Day 2: March 26

Day 3: March 28

Ívar Jónsson is Professor at the Bifröst School of Business in Iceland. He is a former Docent/Senior Lecturer at the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden and former Lecturer and Pro-Rector at the University of Greenland. He has written books and articles on West-Nordic Countries, independence struggle, institutionalized racism, and socio-economic development. In addition, his research focuses on innovation and the cooperative movement. Jónsson received his D.Phil. in Social Implication of Technical Change from the Department of Political Thought at the University of Sussex in 1992. He has a MA degree in History and Philosophy of Social and Political Science from the University of Essex and a BA in Social Sciences from the University of Iceland. [Ívar Jónsson]

Ívar Jónsson participated in Act 1’s workshop with the paper “From Colonialism to Institutional Dependency.” He summarizes the paper in the following words: “Many former colonies have become independent since the 1950s. Since the 1970s many nations within former colonies and colonial countries have struggled for sovereignty and received autonomy. Home rule has been organised in autonomous areas, but this form of government does not necessarily lead to successful development towards increasing independence. The problem of institutional dependency explains partly why autonomous people may remain economically, culturally and politically dependent on their former colonial powers. In this paper, the problem of institutional dependency will be discussed. The cases of the West-Nordic Countries will be observed in order to illustrate different paths and forms of institutional dependency. Finally, the impact of globalisation and growth of transnational classes on the postcolonial situation will be discussed.” [Ívar Jónsson] To download the paper, click here.

Mikela Lundahl is a Ph.D. in History of Ideas. Her thesis Vad är en neger? Negritude, essentialism, strategi (What is a Negro? Negritude, Essentialism, Strategy) from 2005 is a study of the negritude movement and the main figures in it: Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire. The main objective of the study is, through a close reading of their writings, to understand the paradox of an anti-racist work that is said to be essentialist. The result is that maybe the white anti-racist readers were too occupied with the construction of themselves as anti-racist so that they were not able to see and understand the historical circumstances and the possible and necessary strategies that were required. The study, as well as other works, is a part of Lundahl’s interest in identity politics – the impossibilities and the necessities for them. She uses feminist theory, queer theory, and of course postcolonial theory in her analysis of different contemporary problems. A special interest has been the representation of Africa and African history in Sweden and Europe. She is also engaged in a project at Gothenburg University, Sweden, where she tries to work out new models of teaching that contest and challenge the canon. She is a member of the board of the review Glänta, which is going to cooperate with the next Documenta exhibition, and an Associated Professor in Cultural Studies at the University West in Sweden. [Mikela Lundahl]

Mikela Lundahl participated in Act 1’s workshop with the paper “Nordic Complicity? Some Aspects on Nordic Identity as ‘Non-Colonial’ and Non-Participatory in the European Colonial Event.” Her paper takes its starting point in a replica of the 18th century sailing ship, East Indiaman Götheborg, which recently left the harbor of Gothenburg to redo the historical trip between Scandinavia and China. Lundahl analyzes the manner in which this event is represented to the public and argues that the colonial era and the colonial circumstances surrounding the original ship have been written out of history. Instead, the replica is used to confirm the conception of today’s Sweden as a nation built on long traditions of equality and to celebrate Sweden’s alleged non-colonial history. In Lundahl’s words, Götheborg is a prime example of Haitian historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s term “silencing the past.” [Tone Olaf Nielsen] To download the paper, click here.

Steve Ouditt is an artist and lecturer at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad. He has worked as a Curator of Education and Research at the Institute of International Visual Arts [inIVA], London, and as a Lecturer at The Caribbean School of Architecture, Kingston, Jamaica. He has also been a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, The Netherlands, and a visiting lecturer at the School of Architecture at Universidad Nacional Pedro Henrique Urena [UNPHU] in Santo Domingo, The Dominican Republic. His book creole in-site was published in London in 1998 by inIVA. Steve is presently researching how political communication engages design culture to create meanings of the nation, citizenship, law, culture, and human rights. [Steve Ouditt]

Steve Ouditt participated in Act 1’s workshop with the paper “Plantation Economy and Trademark Capital.” The paper “…uses contemporary custom-designed pictograms to reflect and speculate on social, cultural, political, and business exchanges and the colonial imagination from the past, through the present, and to the future. The aim is to propose a long-term education project – in the everyday world of social and cultural interaction and trade – in rethinking Nordic Colonialism by enlisting the support of citizens of all strata to display, reproduce, and distribute copies of the pictograms. In this way, a community of re-thinkers across professions and disciplines will be able to identify and support each other, in learning and teaching more about critical issues in colonialism, thus enlarging the community of critical thinkers in space and over time. These pictograms can function like a storyboard, identifying key scenes and sites in the continuum.” [Steve Ouditt] To download the paper, click here.

Humphrey Polepole is the current Secretariat Director of the Tanzania Youth Coalition (TYC), the biggest youth movement in Tanzania. He is also the Steering Committee Member of the Sustainability Watch Network under Tanzania Coalition on Sustainable Development (TCSD). He has recently been elected to join the Steering Committee of the Social Watch preparation at the East African sub-region and is a member of Policy Advisory Board of MS Tanzania. Polepole has held several positions at local, national, and international levels in the civil society and in the United Nations as a United Nations Environment Programme Associate Youth Advisor for Africa. Several times, he has been part of the United Republic of Tanzania (URT) government delegation, attending high-level meetings at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). He has also served the World Youth Organization on Climate Change as a Southern region youth representative. In addition, Polepole has taken an active role in the Rio+10 NGO process in the South and is a Chair of the East African Youth Coalition (EAYC) on Sustainable Development. He has taken a lead role in several reviews of policies, including the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (NSGRP) and the post review and evaluation process for the Johannesburg Summit, focusing on the Tanzania Rio+10 partners and the East African Rio+10 NGO Coalition participation. He was selected to join a six people taskforce to anticipate the future of the sustainable development NGO process in East Africa, being the youngest member of the team. He has worked on policy issues as an analyst at local, national, and international levels. Furthermore, he is a trainer on research methodologies and has conducted trainings on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), and Participatory Learning and Action for Community Development (PLA-CD). [Humphrey Polepole]

Humphrey Polepole participated in Act 1’s workshop with the paper “Third World Underdevelopment, Foreign Aid and AIDS Policies as a Legacy of Colonialism: Challenges and Opportunities.” He summarizes his paper in the following words: “The social, economic, and political problems in the Third World countries are said to have been developed, or fueled, by the developed nations. Some scholars have argued that Third World underdevelopment, economic crisis, foreign aid, and AIDS policies are all legacies of colonialism. Nowhere in Africa were positive contributions made by colonialism to any substantial extent. Countries like Nigeria and Ghana, which were among the better endowed colonies, were left with only a few rail lines, rudimentary infrastructure, and a few thousand graduates. Other countries were left with far less. Historians have argued that the main goal of colonialism was the search for raw materials, cheap labor, and markets for their produce and that religion was the brainwashing method employed to penetrate the strong bonds of the African societies. Also, the devastating impact of slave trade resulted in Africa loosing almost fifteen million workers, who would have driven the continent to a very promising future. Lastly, when the colonizers handed over the administration of the colonies to the colonies themselves, the independent national governments were never meant to prosper but remain dependent. The former colonies were all left with poor infrastructures as well as social, economic, and political dilemmas. When the map of Africa was redrawn, diverse peoples were thrown together and ethnic conflicts arose, which continue to destabilize the continent. We still have so many challenges ahead of us, but also opportunities. If addressed properly, Third World countries can still make a U-turn to prosperity.” [Humphrey Polepole] To download the paper, click here.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist and received her Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She later shifted to interdisciplinary research in science, technology, and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India. In 1982, she founded an independent institute, The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, in Dehra Dun, dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times, in close partnership with local communities and social movements. In 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming, and fair trade. In 2004, she started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley in collaboration with Schumacher College, United Kingdom. Dr. Shiva’s books The Violence of Green Revolution and Monocultures of the Mind have become basic challenges to the dominant paradigm of non-sustainable, reductionist Green Revolution Agriculture. Through her books Biopiracy, Stolen Harvest, and Water Wars, Dr. Shiva has made visible the social, economic, and ecological costs of corporate led globalization. [Vandana Shiva]

In addition, Dr. Shiva’s contributions to gender issues are nationally and internationally recognized. Her book Staying Alive dramatically shifted the perception of Third World women. In 1990, she wrote a report for the FAO on women and agriculture entitled “Most Farmers in India are Women.” She founded the gender unit at the International Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu and was a founding Board Member of the Women Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO). She has initiated an international movement of women working of food, agriculture, patents, and biotechnology called Diverse Women for Diversity. Dr. Shiva is the recipient of a number of international awards and has lectured across the US, Canada, and Europe. She chairs the Commission on the Future of Food, is a Board Member of the International Forum on Globalization, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Indian People’s Campaign against WTO. [Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology]

Vandana Shiva was supposed to have delivered a paper during the third day of Act 1's workshop. However, she was unable to attend and turned in an essay for the documentation DVD and website instead. To download the essay, click here.