Political geographies of the ‘changing’ Arctic: perspectives on the interface between politics and the region as a process

• Main Author: Vesa Väätänen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Finnish
• Published: The Geographical Society of Northern Finland 2020
• Subjects: geo; scipo; Arctic; Alaska
• Online Access: https://doaj.org/article/9c0de22ec0744f23b47c359ab44330c1

This thesis discusses the political geographies of the ‘changing’ Arctic from the perspective of regional theory. Concurrently it explores the contributions that empirical research on these geographies can provide for regional theory and political geographical research. The starting point of this thesis is the often heated discussion that has revolved around the Arctic region during the past few decades. This discussion has been exacerbated by the increasingly taken-for-granted image of the Arctic as a ‘changing’ region, which has arguably acted as the key propeller in driving an increasing number of actors to articulate their interests regarding the region. Building on regional theory, it is argued that rather than taking this understanding of the Arctic as a ‘changing’ region as a representation of a region that is ‘out there’, we should instead focus on how knowledge production and the associated political discussion themselves serve to produce and perform the region as ‘changing’. This enables a perspective on the process of the Arctic region as effected through the production of regional knowledge, and how this knowledge itself acts as a key driver for the plethora of policies and strategies that various actors have recently developed in relation to the region. Examining these policies and strategies together makes it possible to explore how the Arctic region is performed through them, and why this is politically relevant. The research articles incorporated into this thesis approach the political geographies of the ‘changing’ Arctic through case studies of the Arctic policies and strategies of the selected states of Finland, France, Japan, and the sub-national state of Alaska. The selection was made on the basis that the policies and strategies of these states have not received sufficient attention in political geographic research on the Arctic. At the same time the case of Finland provides a perspective on the strategy of an ‘Arctic state’ beyond the prevailing emphasis on the territorial politics of the ...