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Postcolonial Perspectives on the European High North pp 1–29Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction: Unscrambling the Arctic

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Abstract

While “scramble” is a useful term to describe the ravaging effects of contemporary neoliberal, political, and economic agendas on a rapidly changing Arctic, it is also reductive, overlooking the fact that the Arctic region—one of the most geographically and culturally diverse on the planet––is the uneven product of multiple, often highly disparate, colonial pasts. This chapter situates the contemporary European Arctic in the context of various scrambles for resources across the circumpolar High North and their reworking of colonial relations. However, it also argues the need for an “unscrambling” of the region and an appropriately critical re-reading of the discourses of alarmism and opportunism that underlie popular, often media-driven configurations of the “New North.”

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Graham Huggan

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  1. Graham Huggan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leeds , Leeds, United Kingdom

    Graham Huggan

  2. Roskilde University , Roskilde, Denmark

    Lars Jensen

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Huggan, G. (2016). Introduction: Unscrambling the Arctic. In: Huggan, G., Jensen, L. (eds) Postcolonial Perspectives on the European High North. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58817-3_1

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