Arctic Environmental Modernities

"Representing a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, the essays in Arctic Environmental Modernities come together to make a powerful argument for re-thinking common assumptions about the far north. This collection demonstrates how modern Arctic environments have been constructed in multiple ways through overlapping and often contested cultural, political and economic agendas. The book offers valuable new perspectives to anyone interested in the contemporary Arctic, and makes a significant contribution to the field of Arctic studies." (Adrian Howkins, author of The Polar Regions: An Environmental History) "The editors are to be congratulated for putting together a splendid collection of essays tackling Arctic environmental modernities and doing so at a time when global interest in the Arctic is unprecedented. Now, increasingly, indigenous and northern communities in particular have to deal with the messy consequences of humankind becoming a geological agent in its own right. The Arctic is in crisis but this book also offers us some hopeful pointers for its future." (Klaus Dodds, Professor of Geopolitics, Royal Holloway University of London, UK and co-author of "The Scramble for the Poles" (2016))

This book offers a diverse and groundbreaking account of the intersections between modernities and environments in the circumpolar global North, foregrounding the Arctic as a critical space of modernity, where the past, present, and future of the planet’s environmental and political systems are projected and imagined.

This book offers a diverse and groundbreaking account of the intersections between modernities and environments in the circumpolar global North, foregrounding the Arctic as a critical space of modernity, where the past, present, and future of the planet’s environmental and political systems are projected and imagined. Investigating the Arctic region as a privileged site of modernity, this book articulates the globally significant, but often overlooked, junctures between environmentalism and sustainability, indigenous epistemologies and scientific rhetoric, and decolonization strategies and governmentality. With international expertise made easily accessible, readers can observe and understand the rise and conflicted status of Arctic modernities, from the nineteenth century polar explorer era to the present day of anthropogenic climate change.