Introduction
This article views the intergovernmental Arctic Council (AC) as a key producer of knowledge-based discourses and representations relating to the Arctic. Various scientific reports and assessments produced under the auspices of the council, including the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR 2004), can be understood as assemblages of knowledge through which power operates. The paper probes the question of whether this knowledge exerts a definition-making power beyond the political ambit proper of the AC (see also Tennberg Reference Tennberg, Shadian and Tennberg2009). The specific focus of the analysis is human and social development, which are new areas being addressed in debates on Arctic politics (Hønneland and Stoke 2007; Nilsson Reference Nilsson, Shadian and Tennberg2009).
Current studies on Arctic politics have extensively discussed the role and use of knowledge(s), both western and indigenous. This line of research has addressed the production of knowledge (Nilsson Reference Nilsson, Shadian and Tennberg2009; Kankaanpää Reference Kankaanpää, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012), its implementation and political significance (Shadian Reference Shadian, Shadian and Tennberg2009; Heininen Reference Heininen2011), as well as the aspects of power and representations (Tennberg Reference Tennberg, Shadian and Tennberg2009; Martello Reference Martello2008) entailed in it. What these studies share is an understanding of the AC as an important political agent and a platform in which knowledge of the Arctic, its development and changing environment is constituted. The council has even been described as a ‘cognitive forerunner’ (Nilsson Reference Nilsson, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012: 193) in its attempts to address the concerns and challenges affecting the region.
In this paper, I examine the role of Arctic knowledge in defining human development and its agents. The particular focus is on gender as an aspect of human development. Foucauldian approaches have argued that power should not only be seen as hierarchical and working in a straightforward manner, but more so as embedded in social structures and operating in multiple ways. Drawing on critical Foucault-inspired and feminist discussions of power and knowledge, I argue that power is exercised through the scientific reports of the AC and related bodies. Human development of the Arctic is one of the issues mapped and measured ‘into being’ so that it may be governed (Rutherford Reference Rutherford2007: 297; also Bäckstrand Reference Bäckstrand2004; Dillon Reference Dillon1995; Foucault Reference Foucault1978). The art of conducting conduct – governmentality – operates through what Dean (Reference Dean1999) calls ‘vocabularies of rule’. It is in this vein that I ask here, ‘What are the vocabularies of rule through which understandings of human development of the Arctic are constructed, and what are the agency positions inscribed in those vocabularies?’
The analysis focuses on the AHDR (2004). The report is one of the first attempts to document the welfare of Arctic residents and to address social and cultural aspects of Arctic life. It has also laid the foundation for future reports and knowledge endeavours on human development in the Arctic (for example, Nordic Council of Ministers 2010).
The research draws on interlinkages of feminist and Foucauldian approaches. Both approaches are interested in the conditions and power of ‘particular systems of knowledge’ (McNeil Reference McNeil and Ramazanoglu1993: 158). Through feminist perspectives I highlight the power of knowledge in producing subjects and operating to order social life, including gendered structures of societies (Allen Reference Allen2008; McNeil Reference McNeil and Ramazanoglu1993; Harding Reference Harding, Narayan and Harding2000). Gender is an aspect of human development and, as the paper claims, it reveals the ways in which power operates through knowledge.
The article identifies three recurrent vocabularies, perceived as vocabularies of rule: strength of the community, vulnerability and the need for adaptation. I use the critical Foucauldian governmentality framework as a tool for dissecting these vocabularies (see, for example, Bröckling and others 2011; Death Reference Death2010). The study probes the assumptions and familiar lines of thought on development which the AHDR has incorporated (Fairclough Reference Fairclough2003; Dean Reference Dean1999; McNeil Reference McNeil and Ramazanoglu1993). The focus is on the processes of governing, specifically, the ways in which certain action-orientations and will-formations are made appropriate and normal (Sending and Neumann Reference Sending and Neumann2006: 657). The method used to this end is critical text analysis.
This paper can be situated among a range of studies on Arctic politics and governance (Young Reference Young1998; Tennberg Reference Tennberg1998, Reference Tennberg, Espiritu, Riabova, Reid and Tennberg2012; Koivurova and others 2008), particularly those in the area of knowledge and power (Tennberg Reference Tennberg, Shadian and Tennberg2009; Shadian Reference Shadian, Shadian and Tennberg2009; Martello Reference Martello2008; Nilsson Reference Nilsson2007). The research contributes to existing studies on governmentality in the Arctic through its critical view on the politics of knowledge and its focus on human development. In particular, the paper fills a gap in the literature by engaging with feminist perspectives to elucidate questions of gender in Arctic development.
The power of vocabularies – defining human development
The history and future of international Arctic politics are embodied in the AC, a leading Arctic institution. The Arctic itself has been described as ‘an international scientific laboratory’, an area ‘framed by science’ (Tennberg Reference Tennberg, Shadian and Tennberg2009: 191), and science and knowledge figure prominently in the work of the AC. It has made scientific aspirations distinctive elements of Arctic politics, one ambition being environmental protection. The Council has ‘carved out a cognitive niche’ (Stokke Reference Stokke, Stokke and Hønneland2007: 18) in generating knowledge on the Arctic that is not provided elsewhere and in taking action in the areas deemed important. In the process, it has extended the relevant issue areas in the Arctic to include the social, cultural and economic challenges that northern communities face (Shadian and Tennberg Reference Shadian and Tennberg2009; Nilsson Reference Nilsson, Shadian and Tennberg2009; Hønneland and Stokke Reference Hønneland, Stokke, Stokke and Hønneland2007; Keskitalo Reference Keskitalo2002).
The AHDR is an extensive effort to grasp the complexity of human development and social sustainability in the Arctic. The report has been accorded an important role in the sustainable development aims of the council (AHDR 2004: 15; see also Keskitalo Reference Keskitalo2002 and Nilsson Reference Nilsson, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012 on history and current discussions on sustainable development). Since publication of the AHDR, attempts to map and monitor human development in the Arctic have continued through a number of reports and projects, such as Arctic Social Indicators (Nordic Council of Ministers 2010) and the Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic (Poppel and others 2007). Characteristic of these reports is an aim to create indicators and obtain quantitative data to measure social sustainability, despite the recognised challenges of capturing the multiplicity of social life through quantitative models (Bruyninckx Reference Bruyninckx, Betsill, Hochstetler and Stevis2006; Lehtonen Reference Lehtonen2004; Redclift Reference Redclift, Becker and Jahn1999). Indeed, until recently, sustainability research has remained unfamiliar ground for the social sciences. This is partly due to the natural science bias in work on sustainable development and the challenges in articulating its social dimension (Becker and others 1999; see, for example, Redclift Reference Redclift1987 on the dimensions of sustainable development).
Shadian (Reference Shadian, Shadian and Tennberg2009: 47) has described the role of knowledge and science in defining contemporary global and Arctic phenomena as a significant shift in power. In her view, science and knowledge have grown to play a decisive role in defining phenomena such as climate change and sustainable development and the ways in which they are discussed. By contrast, in Foucauldian perspective the power of technical expertise and assessments produced by the scientific community should not be seen as power shifting from one place to another (see also Neumann and Sending 2006), but more as different modalities of power. Bäckstrand (Reference Bäckstrand2004: 703) according to Rutherford (Reference Rutherford2007: 294) remarks with insight how, instead of existing in some pure form, societal and environmental phenomena come into existence and become constructed as objects of regulation and knowledge through a variety of techniques and practices. The power of knowledge operates through both discursive conditions and formal bodies of knowledge (see Foucault Reference Foucault1972 on savoir and connaissance). A salient facet of the power of knowledge in the Arctic is that it is intertwined with the formal use of knowledge and practices in constructing understandings of human development.
Through the AHDR, the AC has set the pace for human development in the region. Even though the report states that it does not reflect ‘the joint position of the Arctic Council’ (AHDR 20014: 3), the council provided a platform for compiling the report. Global scientific assessments are social processes in which knowledge is debated, discussed and learned from (Kankanpää 2012). Ultimately, scientific assessments and reports are (politically) negotiated discourses and representations of a certain phenomenon. In producing and circulating certain representations, the council ‘spatially order[s] the Arctic region’ (Dodds Reference Dodds, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012: 12).
The terminology and concepts used in the policy reports are acts of power. These ‘vocabularies of rule’, are not neutral, self-evident or uncontested (Dean Reference Dean1999: 64; Kiersey and others 2010). According to Dean (Reference Dean1999: 64), the mentality of governing is inscribed in vocabularies of rule that are ‘integral components. . . of our organized systems of acting upon and directing human conduct’. More generally, development studies have also taken a critical view of the power that vocabularies have in defining development (Parpart and others 2002; Shani Reference Shani2012).
Probing the vocabularies of human development in the Arctic is a matter of subjecting the current discourses and representations of that development to critical analysis (see also Tennberg and others Reference Tennberg, Espiritu, Riabova, Reid and Tennberg2012). Hence, ‘an analytics of government attempts to grasp what [scientific] language makes possible and what it does’ (Dean Reference Dean1999: 63). In the context of Arctic politics, it is pertinent to study how knowledge steers conduct, what it allows us to see and what it obscures.
Feminist interventions
Feminist research claims that gender has been an overlooked question on the development agenda, in Arctic politics as elsewhere. Gender scholarship, as Griffin (Reference Griffin2010: 88) argues, has revealed the extent to which conventional ‘development’ issues are ‘informed by assumptions around gender’. The approaches known as ‘women, the environment and sustainable development’, ‘women in development’ and ‘gender and development’ have all criticised traditional conceptions of development and its agents (Braidotti and others 1994; Staudt Reference Staudt, Goertz and Mazur2008).
While gender issues have been raised in Arctic politics, gender has remained a ‘feature’ relevant to certain issues only and an attribute of certain people (women) only. ‘Taking Wing’, a conference organised by the AC in 2002, was the first political initiative to address the issues of gender in the Arctic. Since the project's launch, the interlinkages of gender and development in the region have been recognised in the contexts of human development (AHDR 2004), participation (Sloan and others 2004) and well-being (Finland 2002). However, in the areas of natural resources (AC 2009), the economy (Glomsrød and Aslaksen 2008) and later reports on human development (Nordic Council of Ministers 2010), questions of gender have faded away. Gender is everywhere and nowhere at the same time; it is addressed as something concrete and physical on the basis of which (individual) women and men act, or are entitled to or deprived of certain rights, opportunities and/or positions, but the relevance of socially embedded gender hierarchies and practices (for example in the economy) is ignored (Sinevaara-Niskanen Reference Sinevaara-Niskanen and Tennberg2012).
What analyses of gender, the environment and sustainable development have contributed to the critical study of gender and development is a comprehensive and complex understanding of gender as a relationship. Gender is conceptualised ‘not primarily as a property of individuals, but as an analytic category like race and class, through which one could understand the structure of societies and their symbolic systems’ (Harding Reference Harding, Narayan and Harding2000: 243). Feminist research urges us to look at the relationships through which meanings and assumptions of human development and societal actors are constructed. It also recognises science as one producer of these hard-to-detect assumptions.
Despite aiming to look at gender in broad perspective as a relationship, feminist development studies have focused on the role of women in development (Staudt Reference Staudt, Goertz and Mazur2008). This has been the case in the Arctic, where the inclusion of gender in politics has meant ‘adding’ women (Finland 2002, Sloan and others 2004), although concerns have also been raised over masculinity and the changing roles of men (AHDR 2004: 190–191; Eikjok Reference Eikjok and Green2007: 112 on indigenous masculinity). The initial grounds for emphasising women's roles and participation in development still very much apply in the Arctic, however. The inscribed understanding of the agents of development continues to be masculine and while women are both affected by development and relied on for progress, they lack places of influence.
Questions of participation and representation have gained importance in the debates about sustainable development (for example, Bruyninckx Reference Bruyninckx, Betsill, Hochstetler and Stevis2006). Women, among other societal actors, have been identified as stakeholders and important participants in securing sustainability. Arctic knowledge as embodied in the AHDR speaks to these aspirations and women have been included in political processes. Women's participation is important, but questions of participation are more complex than can be solved by mere inclusion (see, for example, Celis and others 2008 on relations of women's descriptive and substantive representation). From a critical point of view, the ‘participatory governance paradigm’ (Bäckstrand Reference Bäckstrand2006: 470) is to be seen as a neoliberal model of ordering the social world. According to Fraser (Reference Fraser2003: 164), the social world is precisely governed by ‘effectively conscripting individuals as agents of social control while at the same time promoting their autonomy’. By emphasising women's participation, for example, they are made into subjects that are governed (Burchell Reference Burchell, Barry, Osborne and Rose1996, Dean Reference Dean1999; Neumann and Sending Reference Neumann and Sending2010); in other words, by granting positions of agency to women, power is exercised and subjectivities constructed. These questions of power and subjectification have interested feminist and Foucauldian researchers alike (Allen Reference Allen2008; McNeil Reference McNeil and Ramazanoglu1993).
Power in a Foucauldian sense should not be seen only as a negative force, however; it is a precondition for agency and thus productive in that sense. While individuals are subjected to the power relations within which they are embedded, they are at the same time able to act as subjects in and through those same relations (Allen Reference Allen2002; Oksala Reference Oksala2002; Dillon Reference Dillon1995; Sawicki, Reference Sawicki, Shanley and Pateman1991).
I argue that the vocabularies of human development in the Arctic entail certain understandings of the agents of that development. What is more, one sees inscribed in the vocabularies gendered assumptions and expectations, as well as the means by which these subjects are expected to engage in that development. Critical analysis is needed, on the one hand, to reveal the underlying understandings of human development in the Arctic and, on the other, to address the understandings and agency positions that they offer.
Tackling the complexity of sustainability
The AHDR is an effort to manage the complexity of human development. The report draws attention to what is salient in human development in the region; at the same time, however, it downplays other features and characteristics (see also Martello Reference Martello2008). The analysis of the report provides an example from the Arctic of how human development is represented, and thus governed.
In analysing the AHDR, the Foucauldian and feminist perspectives have drawn my attention to recurrent, self-evident and normalising representations of human development and its agents. A critical text analysis of the report has meant systematic reading of it, discerning recurring themes and asking what is left out or missing from the accounts of human development. The particular focus has been on whether gender intersects the representations of human development and, if it does, in what ways (Hesse-Biber Reference Hesse-Biber and Hesse-Biber2012; Fairclough Reference Fairclough2003).
My analysis reveals that community, vulnerability and adaptation are among the persistent themes and concepts in the report. Their frequent occurrence and seemingly uncontested and self-evident nature prompted me to investigate them further and ultimately to term them ‘vocabularies of rule’. The following sections identify these intertwined vocabularies that construct understandings of human development in the Arctic: strength of the community, vulnerability and the need for adaptation. Excerpts from the AHDR are used to exemplify these themes and critically discuss the findings with reference to the Foucault-inspired and feminist literatures.
The strength of the community
A recurrent emphasis on the community, with underlying ideals of empowerment and responsibility, is one strong vocabulary through which understandings of human development are constructed. The appeal to communities is clearly visible in the AHDR, the conclusion of which notes:
More generally, our study has directed attention to a distinction between two fundamentally different perspectives on human development. One approach – we may call it the western approach – starts with the individual and asks how individuals are faring in terms of any number of criteria like life expectancy, education, material well-being, and so forth. An alternative approach – reflected in many indigenous cultures – starts with the community or the social group and views human development through the lens of community viability. Successful individuals are those who make major contributions to the well-being of their communities. (AHDR 2004: 241)
What is described here, and in several other places in the report, is the intrinsic role of the community in the human development of the Arctic and in providing sustainability. The social sphere of the Arctic is represented as being organised around communities. They are depicted as influencing and also as being responsible for promoting development, ensuring sustainability and addressing future challenges. For example, the chapter ‘Community viability’ focuses squarely on processes that ‘allow communities to survive and even to prosper’ (AHDR 2004: 139). The key conclusions of the chapter note that Arctic communities have succeeded in influencing, rather than just adapting to, given agendas and flows (AHDR 2004: 152). The strong engagement with communities reaches also into the future. As the chapter ‘Human Health and Well-being’ asserts, the youths of the Arctic have the responsibility for constructing future communities:
Different ways of thinking about the applications of new technologies can open amazing new ways of perceiving the world. These examples of fostering local cultural strengths in order to diversify health care services and alter perceptions of the quality of health offer a positive link for moving forward. Students should be encouraged to use their cultural framework for creating new solutions and look at new ways of thriving. These skills are building a foundation from which new endeavors can be created. These cross-culturally-wise students will construct the successful and sustainable communities of tomorrow's Arctic (AHDR 2004: 165).
The reliance on communities is a vocabulary of rule. Communities are portrayed as the entities through which development takes place and is secured. Individuals (youth, community leaders, women and men) are expected to contribute to their viability. Typically, the story of Arctic communities, and sense of community, is told through dualisms, such as western/indigenous, modern/tradition (see also Schofield Reference Schofield2002: 664).
In the Foucauldian view, the vocabulary of community can be viewed as a means to define, fix and control the human development of the Arctic and its agents. The community has become ‘an object for the exercise of the political power’ (Larner Reference Larner2005: 13) and using discourses that invoke the community is a way to govern and use that power in the Arctic (Rose Reference Rose1999; Summerville and others 2008; Schofield Reference Schofield2002). According to Rose (Reference Rose1999: 142), governing through communities fosters and activates the existing bonds and strengths in a community and uses the two to engender desired actions. In the AHDR, communities are relied on and made responsible for development and (its) sustainability (see also Sinevaara-Niskanen and Tennberg Reference Sinevaara-Niskanen, Tennberg and Tennberg2012).
The vocabulary of community also takes part in constructing agency positions. To allow the residents of the Arctic to become conscious of their resources and potential (the Arctic ‘success stories’, AHDR 2004: 15) is to evoke subjectivities and construct active citizenship (Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen Reference Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen2013; Cruikshank Reference Cruikshank1999; Dean Reference Dean1999). As Schofield (Reference Schofield2002: 677) notes, discourses of community are ‘embedded in the subjectivity of local residents’. By the same token, individuals are expected to empower themselves and to assume greater responsibility in their commitment to ‘stronger’ and ‘sustainable’ communities. As the AHDR points out, this commitment is not only a matter of committing oneself to community activities but also of internalising the idea(l) of community by fostering ‘the emergence of a feeling of community’ (AHDR 2004: 51, emphasis added).
From a gender perspective, the vocabulary of community through which human development is described is paradoxical. Even as the essentiality of communities is emphasised, the report describes their being eroded. The report points out certain gender-bound challenges facing Arctic communities, for example, the out-migration of women from northern communities (AHDR 2004: 191) and declining fertility rates (AHDR 2004: 32). Communities are by no means gender neutral or devoid of gender in the Arctic or elsewhere. The sustainability of communities is already threatened: women, especially young and educated women, are leaving and communities are being left with a predominantly male population. Who then are the subjects of human development that are being enticed to join the self-sustaining communities of the north? What is certain is that the vocabulary of community leans on a simplistic notion of northern community and communities. The aim of empowering and constructing active Arctic citizens results in a one-sided representation of communities: they are depicted through their (allegedly) shared features of being ‘united’ and ‘traditional’. I argue that a gender perspective challenges the idea of harmony that these images create and reinforce, and that this perspective is accorded less attention as a result (see also Martello Reference Martello2008).
Vulnerabilities at hand – risks to human development
The vocabulary of vulnerability is a second act of power through which the understanding of human development of the Arctic is constructed. Terminologies of risks, threats and exposure are used to describe the vulnerabilities which social development faces. The vocabulary of vulnerability is mostly entangled with issues of economics and community viability. Economic threats, in the shape of interests and actors from outside the region, are portrayed as causes of vulnerability. The changing economy produces vulnerabilities that manifest themselves in the lives of local communities and residents. As the report notes:
What is true is that Arctic economic systems are often narrowly based and therefore highly vulnerable to both market fluctuations and political interventions. In the wake of the emergence of cash economies, many Arctic systems have taken on the character of monocultures, depending on one or a few products, such as lead, zinc, natural gas, oil, shrimp, or marine mammal products. (. . .) The affected communities are miniscule in terms of their economic and political power. Outside actors, including NGOs, multinational corporations, and governments, can and often do act with little awareness of or even concern for the impacts of their actions on Arctic communities. (AHDR 2004: 231–232)
The power of community, and thus the sustainability of human development, is described as threatened; vulnerability defines the understanding of human development. For example, the report notes the lack of economic alternatives ‘that can enable local communities to survive’ (AHDR 2004: 72), the increase of social stratification (both within and between communities) (AHDR 2004: 81) and the lack of political power to influence the economic processes at work in the region. In the vocabulary of vulnerability, Arctic communities and residents are seen as having very little power or very few capabilities to address these threats. The report observes:
In regions lacking independent political power, local vulnerable populations will feel the effects of competition more keenly. Examples of such situations may be the Saami reindeer breeders, faced with severe competition from the forest industry in Finland, and the mining industry in Murmansk (AHDR 2004: 81, emphasis added).
Questions of vulnerability are also discussed in the context of education, gender, society and cultures. Here, vulnerability is something that emerges from a community itself but is influenced by ongoing broader development. Suicide rates, changing gender roles in society and a bias towards western values in education (AHDR 2004: 51, 183, 201) are examples of the risks faced by local communities. Gender plays a prominent role in the discussion of vulnerability. Migration, life expectancy and participation in political decision-making are all gendered phenomena, as the report points out.
How then may one critically disentangle the connections between development, vulnerability and gender? From a governmentality perspective, the introduction of the concept of vulnerability is an act of power (of knowledge). The concept, originating with the study of natural hazards and poverty (Adger Reference Adger2006; Winograd Reference Winograd2007), has been adopted widely in Arctic research and politics (Ford and Furgal Reference Ford and Furgal2009; Njastad and others 2009; Keskitalo Reference Keskitalo2008). Its use is a way of naming, organising and foretelling (Evans and Reid 2014) human development. The social dimension of sustainable development is rendered amenable to scientific observation in the name of ‘social vulnerability’ and a focus on stress, disruption to livelihoods and loss of security (Adger Reference Adger2000: 348; Adger and Kelly Reference Adger and Kelly1999; Handmer and others 1999). Instead of empowering local communities and peoples, the language of vulnerability, seized by science, portrays them as objects of something that is already taking place or about to happen. In the vocabulary of vulnerability, the inscribed understanding of communities and local residents does not view them as agents who will change present or future phenomena, but as subjects who will react and accommodate themselves, yet again, to existing or forthcoming events.
A unique feature of social vulnerability, as studies claim, is that it allows one to see the disparity of vulnerabilities at the local, household and even individual level (Keskitalo Reference Keskitalo2008). The vocabulary of vulnerability thus urges one to look into the smaller components of the social world, whereas the vocabulary of community emphasises the power and responsibility of communities as entities. In the case of gender relations, however, the focus on household and individual vulnerabilities can be misleading.
Gender is a social structure that is constructed, upheld, reinforced and also renegotiated in the multiple practices of social life, such as law, politics, education, culture and science. To mask gender relations behind individual or household ‘stress’ or ‘loss of security’ is to hide the gendered power embedded in social structures. The issues of violence against women and female out-migration described by the AHDR can be viewed as examples of phenomena that are at once individual and structural. Violence against women is not merely ‘vulnerability’ for those women who face it, but a broader manifestation of social and historical structures that assign the genders different power positions. The report notes how ‘community and social censorship of discussions’ (AHDR 2004: 195) obstructs efforts to address gendered violence. In this vein, one can ask what the social structures are that result in gendered out-migration from northern communities. According to the report (AHDR 2004: 192–193), the segregation of work, the breakdown of traditional lifestyles and limited sources of income are influential factors. Hence, what appears as a risk or threat to a household or an individual originates in a broader social development and inequality. Here again, the vocabulary of knowledge provides only a partial understanding of the human development for us to see.
Blissful adaptation and the call for resilience
The third recurrent vocabulary in the report is that of adaptation. The vocabulary of adaptation continues the themes of vulnerability by focusing on questions of managing change. The abilities of Arctic communities and residents to change and cope are discussed in various contexts. The report states:
Arctic societies and cultures – especially those of indigenous peoples – have a long history of resilience based on their ability to adapt quickly to changes in the ecosystems on which they depend and even to profit from changing biophysical and social conditions to improve their circumstances (AHDR 2004: 230).
The understanding of human development in the Arctic is constructed through references to resilience and capabilities to change, that is, adaptation. According to the report, many aspects of Arctic worldviews, social reproduction and kinships have persisted despite rapid changes, colonisation and, for example, a decline in cultural knowledge. These trends are seen as reflecting the adaptability and resilience of Arctic cultures and societies. The report notes how ‘the resistance and resilience of Arctic cultures and societies are as impressive as the changes they have so far managed to successfully negotiate’ (AHDR 2004: 45). The key conclusions of the chapter ‘Societies and cultures: change and persistence’ point out that northern societies and cultures are highly adaptable and well-equipped for integrating change. As one sign of the region's adaptability, the Arctic is characterised in terms of combinations such as ‘indigenous and western’, ‘innovation and loss’, ‘old and new’ (AHDR 2004: 65).
In the vocabulary of adaptation, communities again have a vital role. Communities and local residents are called upon to cope, endure and change in step with the challenges faced. The report discusses the importance of community engagement and ‘cohesion’ (AHDR 2004: 166) in fostering resilience:
The role that one plays in the community appears to be both an important personal factor as well as an external indicator of social health. How individuals perceive their level of contribution to their communities, with solid and reliable relationships, may thus be a key factor in determining resilience (AHDR 2004: 159).
It notes that development of the skills that enable resilience and self-reliance in communities should be promoted (AHDR 2004: 166). The community and culture are seen as providing protection and persistence, and thus an ability to adapt. As agents, Arctic residents are portrayed as flexible subjects who can, and must, accommodate themselves to a variety of circumstances in the region.
This inscribed commitment to, and hope for, adaptation and resilience reflect the approaches of current Arctic research and politics. Adaptation, adaptive capacity, resilience and social resilience are all concepts used in the literature (Ford and Furgal Reference Ford and Furgal2009; Tennberg Reference Tennberg, Shadian and Tennberg2009; Gallopín 2006; Smit and Wandel Reference Smit and Wandel2006). Adaptation is perceived as the adjustment of socio-ecological systems to environmental, social and political changes and their impacts (Folke Reference Folke2006). The terminology of adaptation is intertwined with the concept of vulnerability (Hovelsrud and Smit Reference Hovelsrud and Smit2010). In Arctic politics, these concepts have been adopted and applied in assessments of resilience and adaptation carried out under the auspices of the AC (AC 2013).
From the governmentality perspective, both adaptation and resilience can be viewed critically as means of managing risks and relying on active citizens to bear the responsibility for doing so (Higgins Reference Higgins2001; Reid Reference Reid2012). For Arctic communities and residents, this means having to adapt to the changing environmental conditions: conditions that they have not brought about themselves but which are nevertheless very much present in the communities. Indeed, Reid (Reference Reid2012: 74) argues that by invoking a need for resilience, subjects are created, subjects who ‘must struggle’ to accommodate themselves to the world.
The vocabulary of adaptation and resilience in the report suggests the same: the social sphere of the Arctic has the means to adapt to, not to change, the direction of development. The corner-stone of human development in the Arctic is to accept changes and adapt. In Fraser's words (2003: 169), it is the governmentality of ‘flexibilization’ that manifests itself in the vocabulary of adaptation. Subjects and social entities are expected to relocate themselves and internalise ‘the horizon of no long term’ (see also Sinevaara-Niskanen and Tennberg Reference Sinevaara-Niskanen, Tennberg and Tennberg2012). The AHDR concludes with the need for flexibility:
Nor is climate change the only threat to Arctic societies and cultures. On the contrary, there is also a growing need to respond effectively to fast changes in economic, legal, and political systems as well as to changes in other biophysical systems. To meet this challenge, Arctic societies will have to balance the retention of longstanding social practices with the introduction of new forms of knowledge and innovative technologies or, in other words, find the right mix of continuity and change (AHDR 2004: 230–231).
In the light of the present analysis of gender, one might ask how successful northern communities and individuals have been in adapting, and who ultimately has the responsibility to adapt. What the report describes mostly as vulnerabilities are also vivid examples of peoples and communities not managing to adjust to the changing world and current development. Alcoholism, suicide rates, out-migration and violence (physical, cultural and linguistic) are gendered. All of these ‘maladaptations’ are deteriorating the human well-being and development of the Arctic. In each situation, there is also a different gender dynamic at work: do men have a responsibility to abandon their traditional roles in reindeer herding in the face of a new economics and how much is it women's responsibility to adapt to the fear of violence? Again, what the report fails to address is the complexity of social structures, gender and the rationale underlying the demand for adaptation.
Conclusions
The AC has been accorded the status of knowledge holder and knowledge provider in international politics. Viewed from the governmentality perspective, this status entails no less influence than traditional notions of power in politics would impute to the AC. In fact, it has considerable power, which it exerts largely through allegedly value-neutral knowledge. In this paper, I have argued that power is embedded in the ways in which development in the Arctic is defined and conceptualised in the reports published under the auspices of the AC. The specific focus of the paper has been on the descriptions of human development in the region in the AHDR.
The analysis of the report has revealed that there are three recurrent vocabularies of rule that construct understandings of, and for, human development in the Arctic: strength of the community, vulnerability and the need for adaptation. These vocabularies are practices of power that suggest particular understandings of development and of its agents. The vocabulary of community emphasises the intrinsic role of communities in providing sustainability and securing development. Communities are depicted as key actors in human development in the Arctic. In the vocabulary of vulnerability, the sustainability of human development is under threat, however. The people of the Arctic are described as having to readjust and relocate themselves in the face of various economic and social developments, if they are to survive. The need for adaptation extends these two previous vocabularies by suggesting resilience as the answer to managing the ongoing changes. Once again, communities and active citizens are called upon to bear the responsibility for development. Reliance is placed on communities and local residents to continuously adapt, as they have historically, to be flexible and to accommodate themselves to new circumstances.
The vocabularies of rule identified in this research are coexistent and interdependent. What they share is an emphasis on active and self-reliant communities. The analysis of the AHDR reveals how the concept of community is truly a ‘new technology of government’ (Summerville and others 2008: 697) in the Arctic, as elsewhere. The power of knowledge operates by appealing to communities to realise their potential and to harness their resourcefulness despite the acknowledged fact that it is not the communities which can ultimately alter the direction of future development.
The study has pointed out that questions of gender seldom figure in these vocabularies. Where gendered structures of communities and societies are discussed, gender is mostly depicted as a vulnerability factor, a cause of risks and a threat to social development. Out-migration, demographic changes and changing gender roles in communities, all taken up in the report, are examples of gendered Arctic developments. Yet, even though gender is everywhere, it becomes produced as an exception, a problem to be solved and a ‘necessary evil’ that needs to be addressed, even as it is ignored. In most cases, the problematic issues of gender are issues related to women (see also Martello Reference Martello2008: 371 on male bias in Arctic representations). Questions of gender seem to threaten the cohesion and unity that the vocabularies impose, the result being that those questions are ignored.
Gender breaks a putative harmony: it does not fit into the embraced idea(l)s of empowered and self-sufficient communities. Butler (Reference Butler2004: 24–25) notes how, in order for the power of politics to operate, there needs to be a ‘we’, a distinct and recognisable group for whom certain rights are established and/or on whom responsibilities are imposed. This requirement of a cohesive ‘we’, as feminist researchers (for example Moller Okin Reference Moller Okin, Eisenberg and Spinner-Halev2005; St. Denis Reference St. Denis and Green2007) have pointed out in their criticism, leads to the exclusion of gender. Preserving both cohesion and the distinctiveness of a group, especially in the context of minority cultures, requires ignoring diversities, of which gender is one. For the vocabularies of human development in the Arctic, gender is a similarly complex question.
This paper has highlighted the power of knowledge by examining gender. As Longino (Reference Longino, Alcoff and Potter1993: 116) notes with insight, ‘knowledge is not contemplative but active’. Knowledge is always partial and fragmented and as such it reveals and reinforces only certain ideas at a time. The understandings for the human development of the Arctic, inscribed in the AHDR, are thus not all-encompassing descriptions of the existing developments, but selected views and partial representations of the ongoing phenomena. The power of knowledge operates by revealing some facets of an issue and casting others aside, gender being no exception.
In the Arctic, where change and development have become the determinants of the future, it is not insignificant who holds the knowledge or gets to define its course. The knowledge produced by and through the AC should, however, be subjected to critical scrutiny. Instead of taking knowledge as given and assuming a constant need to observe, calculate and measure development in order to set the Arctic and its inhabitants ‘free’ (see also Duffield Reference Duffield2007), attention should be paid to the various ways in which power operates in and through knowledge. Previous studies have discussed the political structures, processes and histories underpinning the knowledge of the Arctic, but they have not dissected the power of knowledge, which has been the focus in this study. Indeed, one challenge for future research is to continue to ask who or what else has been left out of the accounts of Arctic knowledge.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Monica Tennberg and Marjo Lindroth for their encouragement and invaluable comments on earlier drafts of the article. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. Financial support for this research was provided by the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation.
