The Road in the Park : Ideology and State power during the 20th century seen through Maps of the Swedish subarctic Abisko

• Main Author: Bennesved, Peter
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier 2014
• Subjects: Abisko; Abisko National Park; E10; Maps; Cartography; Swedish 20th-century history; Arctic studies; state power; Digital humanities; Neatline; Abisko nationalpark; Kartor; kartografi; 1900-tals historia; statlig makt; Norrlands historia; Lapplands historia; digital humaniora; History; Historia; Abisko Nationalpark; Arctic; Parken; Subarctic
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-86908

The scope of this thesis is to show how the use of maps in political and scientific arguments functions as a mediator between ideological discourse and the physical landscape. This is done by studying three maps displaying the same geographical region but from different times and with different motifs. The maps were studied by operationalizing the French Sociologist Bruno Latour’s concept of immu-table mobiles into a methodological toolset.The thesis shows that the cartographic tradition of the Swedish state throughout the 20th century func-tioned as an immutable mobile that ideological actors could use to form political or scientific argu-ments. An almost trivial point to make. However, the problem is the great distance between state and the place, which in this case is about 1400 kilometers. Thus, the map allows a remote power relation-ship. As the state-owned immutable mobiles were extracted, they were interpreted by the politicians and scientists ideological perspectives. The ideological interpretations were then used in government propositions and reports and thus resulted in actual political decisions that affected the physical land-scape.The creation of Abisko National Park is one example of how this process can look. The park was instigated with a specific set of political goals to be achieved. The political and scientific actors used the immutable mobile that is the map and formed a proposition with it. The act of instigating and upholding the Abisko Valley as a national park is thus a manifestation of both state presence, its supremacy over territory as well as its contemporary ideological context. Moreover, it would be im-possible to instigate a park without the use of maps to define its borders. The planning and ratification of Transnational Road 98 can be seen as another example of the same thing, but with a different contemporary ideology as background.The thesis results in an explanation about what the maps role is in a stately place making process. Additionally the thesis shows what happens over ...