Lake Duortnus, Royal Science, and Nomadic Practices

• Main Author: Schough, Katarina
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för samhälls- och livsvetenskaper 2007
• Subjects: Human geography; Kulturgeografi; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-1337

What happens when a dominant mode of knowledge colonises a life world, i.e. when Royal Science encounters Nomadic Practices? Science and colonisation have always been resisted and contested, not least by its supposed “objects”. Questions of geography, space and orlding have been at the centre of such resistances and contestations. This book details one such encounter. It is a register of the interplays of power, knowledge, and space as manifested in the multiple constructions of Lake Duortnos in northern Sweden. In the last two decades, the values of “local” and “traditional” knowledges have been re-cognised by, among others, the Treaties and Conventions of the United Nations, as well as by regional, national and transnational policy and planning documents. Yet, for each passing year the number of languages in the world continues to dwindle and the prospect of sustaining alternative livelihoods is waning. Humanity is successively creating a uni-verse under the sway of what Vandana Shiva called the “monocultures of the mind” – an impoverished and fragile world at the mercy of practices and philosophies that are fundamentally antiterra. This book is a modest recognition of the relevance and value of alternative modes of knowing and worlding. The issue of maintaining liveable worlds through alternative forms of knowledge has, perhaps, never been as acute as it is now.