NORWEGIAN LIFE AND SOCIETY
NORINT 0500
ASPECTS OF CULTURE AND IDENTITY
17.03.2014
MARIT MELHUUS
No such thing as a ”culture” or an “identity”
Cultures are continually evolving
Look for underlying values
Anthropologists use case studies.
“Small facts speak to large issues”
Look at everyday, practices, events, phenomena
My examples:
Food
Nature
Kinship
Gender
Focus:
Resonance in Norwegian society
Specific connotations
The Cases
Food: the Norwegian matpakke or packaged lunch
Nature: the Norwegian Trekking Association: Den
norske turistforening (DNT)
Kinship: Transnational adoptive families
Gender: Biotechnology Act and Assisted Conception
Matpakka: tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you
are.
Food tied to identity.
Runar Døving. 1999. “Matpakken. Den store norske
fortellingen om familien og nasjonen” in
Relgionsvitenskapelig tidsskrift.
(Matpakken: The big Norwegian Narrative about the Family
and the Nation.)
Matpakka consists of a couple of slices of whole grain
bread
It is made at home
It is packed in thin, wax paper
Matpakken is the result of a public policy.
Started with introduction of a school breakfast in 1920s
Issue: health and nutrition
Value of raw food, over cooked food
Raw food is “real” food: natural, clean, healthy
Produced the “natural” person
Matpakken typical of ethnic Norwegians
Matpakken tied to nautre: belongs to outdoors
Matpakken tied to major state institutions: kindergartens
and schools
Part of everyday life
Food practices are structured by ideas of work and
leisure time
Story of matpakke is about effort and reward
Encapsulates the relationship between the family and
the state.
Design
matpakke
Hungry
children
eat their
matpakke
Aftenposten
11.03.2014
Traditional
matpakke
Nature and outdoor activities
Domesticating the “wild”
The Norwegian Trekking Association
Den Norske Turistforeningen – DNT
Ween, Gro and Simone Abram. 2012. “The
Norwegian Trekking Association: Trekking as
Constituting the Nation” in Landscape
Research. 37:2.
DNT – largest environmental organization in Norway.
Established in 1868
200.000 members
50 branch offices
430 lodges
20 000 km of marked trails
6500 km of way-marked skiing tracks
Expression: “gå på tur aldri sur” epitomizes Norwegian attitudes
to being outdoors (Go for a walk, never glum)
Main claim: embodied mobility of trekkers implies an ongoing ordering that
weds individual bodies to prescribed ideals of nation, nature and
environmentalism
DNT makes the mountains and wilderness available
DNT arranges and encourages a way of moving in nature
DNT standardizes certain nature practices
DNT affirms experiences of what Norwegian nature is
Technologies of ordering:
Way marking
Path-making
Guiding
Standardize Norwegian nature
Control movement/walking in nature
Create a sense of Norwegian Nature
THE BUNAD
Institutional developments also wed trekking
and the wild to the nation
Mountain Law 1920
Outdoor Recreation Act – 1957
National Parks – wilderness protection
1960s and 70s
Creation of commons - everyone has access to
nature
Highlands transformed to roaming lands
Nature redefined as national and not local
Making Nature Available
Mapping – the T trails
Creating networks of paths
Build cabins
Much work based on “dugnad”:
Volunteer work
The whole country becomes inscribed
The wild is “tamed”
Fjellvettssregler – Rules of Mountain Wisdom
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Be prepared
Leave word of your route
Be weatherwise
Be equipped
Learn from the locals
Use map and compass
don’t’ go solo
Turn back in time: there’s no shame in turning back
Conserve energy and build a snow shelter if necessary
Fjellvetts regler and the idea of outdoor recreation converge
around an idea of equality
Nature is there for “all”
You meet as equals regardless of background
Nature practices are important to a sense of norwegianess
Nature is perceived in a way that may be specific to Norwegians
Transnational adoption
Howell, Signe. 2003. “Kinning: The Creation of Life Trajectories
In Transnational Adoptive Families”, JRAI, 9.
Major points in Howell’s argument:
Difference between biological and social kinship
Kinship is universal – but the way kinship is understood and practiced
will vary and is culturally specific
In Norway, kinship is based on shared substance
That shared substance is often expressed through a notion of shared
blood: Blood is thicker than water
Family values are highly emphasized in Norway.
Transnational adoption highlight
ambiguities with regard to kinned
relatedness
Tied to: blood, place, land and people
Kinning: process by which a newborn
child is brought into significant
relationship with a group of people
expressed in a kin idiom
17. Of May
Christmas
Motherland tour: Korea
Bioctechnology and Assisted Conception
Norwegian Biotechnology Act
Example of state policy regulating how people may
procreate and form a family
Assisted conception – method in vitro fertilization
Permits conception outside the womb
Robert Edwards won Nobel Prize in medicine in 2010
Challenges our ideas of natural conception
Destablizes notions of motherhood and fatherhood
Norwegian Biotechnology Act
Prohibits egg donation
Permits sperm donation – but with known
sperm donor
Does not permit surrogacy
Sperm and egg are treated differently
People who need treatments not
permitted in Norway travel abroad
Law prompts “reproductive tourism” or
cross-border reproduction
Intention of the law is to maintain
certainty –
about who the mother is and who the
“real” father is
Mother is “one” – and not to be
fragmented: birth mother, genetic
mother
In law: mother is the one who gives
birth
Fatherhood is uncertain – in “nature”
Fatherhood established through pater est, by
recognition or claim or by proof (DNA)
Anonymous sperm donation conceals the
“true” father
Child has the right to know its origins
Origin is defined as biological
Differential treatment of sperm and egg have
been grounded in natural differences between
mother and father
Today these arguments are losing ground.
Gender discrimination and equal access to
treatment for men and women winning ground.