This chapter aims to set the theoretical framework for this collection by challenging the established, liberal understanding of property. Second, it presents a theoretical overview of piracy. The chapter addresses how a better understanding of the commons allows to problematise the concept of property, which, as this collection highlights, is continuously destabilised through acts of 'piracy'. It discusses the process of enclosure not as an isolated act, but as part of an ideology that prioritises private ownership over the common good. The concept of the commons can be traced back to ancient Rome with discussions of the Res Communes. The immaterial conceptualisation spreads into the 'information commons' that has had a particular political impact in the copyright debates that emerged since the late 1990s. In response to the invisible and 'natural' processes of enclosure, the chpater debates that both the existence and reciprocated exchange of the commons is fundamental in the functioning of authentic and vibrant communities.

n/a

This chapter evolves through critical reviews of two strategic examples of museums that have reformed their collection databases with the aim of providing new modes of audience engagement. The goal of this discussion is to point out some implications that the two cases studies have for critical studies of online databases. The Swedish museum agency LSH and Rijksmuseum represent two main takes on how to navigate online databases: Text-based search and discovery-based navigation. Their databases mirror the challenges museums’ face on how to balance educational values with pressures to adapt to the effects of consumer markets. The chapter points to the need to locate curatorial agency in how algorithms and protocols interact with human curatorial agency, as well as copyright issues, and institutional histories.

This article brings together theories on copyright, information commons and political economy to discuss the implications of memory institutions’ convergence with informational capitalism. The imperatives of sharing and participating prompt memory institutions to deal with their holdings in terms of property, and they invest time and resources in rights clearances, licensing procedures and in marking up works and artefacts as belonging to the public domain. This situation also compels them to allocate working hours to interaction on platforms owned and controlled by global media companies. Viewed through the lens of political economy, sharing and participation become gifts, not only to the public, but also to social media businesses when data traces are turned into private goods of value in informational capitalism. In return for their gifts, memory institutions fulfil democratic missions and gain reputation. However, data mining and the strategic placement of information which this allows for, run the risk of supporting populist misappropriation of heritage.

This chapter analyses the manifestations and operations of curatorial agency on the content-sharing platform Pinterest. While the manifestations of curatorial agency are explored through an analysis of the recontextualisations of museum digitisations of jewellery associated with the Viking Age in user-made collections, its operations are investigated through a long-term engagement with the platform’s employment of machine learning models to select and display images in line with its business model. On Pinterest, museum digitisations take on a transnational and dispersed life as inspiration for historical imagination and craft, as well as for contemporary fashion. Due to the complexity of machine learning models, the politics of curatorial agency becomes a delicate issue to locate as it morphs between human and machinic forms of intelligence.

This open access book explores the multiple forms of curatorial agencies that develop when museum collection digitisations, narratives and new research findings circulate online. Focusing on Viking Age objects, it tracks the effects of antagonistic debates on discussion forums and the consequences of search engines, personalisation, and machine learning on American-based online platforms. Furthermore, it considers eco-systemic processes comprising computation, rare-earth minerals, electrical currents and data centres and cables as novel forms of curatorial actions. Thus, it explores curatorial agency as social constructivist, semiotic, algorithmic, and material. This book is of interest to scholars and students in the fields of museum studies, cultural heritage and media studies. It also appeals to museum practitioners concerned with curatorial innovation at the intersection of humanist interpretations and new materialist and more-than-human frameworks.

In a SweClarin cooperation project we apply topic modelling to the texts found with pins in Pin-terest boards. The data in focus are digitisations of Viking Age finds from the Swedish History Museum and the underlying research question is how they are given new contextual meanings in boards. We illustrate how topic modelling can support interpretation of polysemy and culturally situated meanings. It expands on the employment of topic modelling by accentuating the necessity of interpretation in every step of the process from capturing and cleaning the data, to modelling and visualisation. The paper concludes that the national context of digitisations of Viking Age jewellery in the Swedish History Museum’s collection management system is re-placed by several transnational contexts in which Viking Age jewellery is appreciated for its symbolical meanings and decorative functions in contemporary genres for re-imagining, relivingand performing European pasts and mythologies. The emerging contexts on Pinterest also high-light the business opportunities involved in genres such as reenactment, neo-paganism, lajv and fantasy. The boards are clues to how digitisations serve as prototypes for replicas.

Much of the peculiarity of recent historical research in intellectual property (IP) lies in the distinct use of the archive as a medium through which to explore its different pasts. The chapter briefly explores several projects that materialized through specific uses of archives, showing their creative possibilities, constraints, and limitations. It considers document-driven projects on primary and secondary sources, the materiality of many aspects of IP, and the use of oral histories to capture (or record) the ephemerality of those histories by converting them into new resources or applications. In doing so, the chapter reflects on the archive not only as a historical medium but also as a theoretical operation which shapes the ways in which we look at IP law and its histories.

I artikeln urskiljs, utifrån en estetisk synvinkel, hur den svenska kulturpolitiken när den förnyades under övergången från 1960- till 70-talet övergav det bildningsestetiska synsätt som tidigare låg till grund för den, under vad som här betecknas som dess förexplicitgjorda fas. Rötterna till och utvecklingen av detta bildningsestetiska synsätt härleds till tiden för estetikbegreppets introduktion i filosofin under 1700-talet, och framför allt till Kants och Schillers analyser av det estetiska omdömet respektive estetisk fostran, och hur dessa efterhand kombinerades med 1800-talets bildningstänkande. Denna bildningsestetik låg under 1900-talet till grund för den bildningspolitik som framträder tydligt i statliga utredningar, betänkanden och propositioner ända fram till dess att den nya kulturpolitiken sjösätts under övergången från 1960- till 70-talet. Denna förnyelse lämnade inte bara bildningsestetiken bakom sig, utan tonade överhuvudtaget ner och fasade ut estetiska synsätt som grund för kulturpolitiken. Den nya kulturpolitiken har dock ställts inför samma problem och svårigheter som den som vilade på ett bildningsestetiskt synsätt i fråga om att hantera estetiska kvalitetsbedömningar och -skillnader, inklusive de estetiska omdömen som dessa i någon form alltid faller tillbaka på. I artikeln urskiljs tre sådana former av estetiska omdömen, subjektiva, intersubjektiva och institutionaliserade, och som förstås som en triangulering av det estetiska omdöme vars bestämningsgrund enligt Kant inte kan vara annat än subjektiv. 

Robotisering och utvecklingen av artificiell intelligens, AI, upptar en central plats i debatten om framtidens samhälle. Den tekniska förändringen kommer att påverka våra vardagsliv – alltifrån hur fabriksgolvet organiseras till hur vi interagerar på internet. Prognoserna om framtiden lyfts ständigt fram i media, men är de egentligen rimliga? I AI, robotar och föreställningar om morgondagens arbetsliv studerar en grupp forskare idéer och föreställningar kring automationen, såväl historiskt som i ljuset av dagens diskussioner om artificiell intelligens. Hur tänker vi och pratar om den tekniska utvecklingen? Den kommer att ingripa i våra liv på olika nivåer, men har vi möjlighet att välja en framtid utan AI? I framtiden kan antalet arbetstillfällen komma att minska vilket möjligen innebär en utveckling mot större ekonomiska och sociala klyftor. Men kanske ger skiftet istället möjligheter att arbeta mindre och dela på jobben? Författarna kommer från olika human- vetenskapliga discipliner och belyser diskussionen om AI i alla dess skepnader. De utforskar hur samtalet förs i dagspress och på arbetsplatser, men också hur det uttrycks i konst och språk.

This article examines a historical work which depicts the history of women and the women’s movement in Sweden, written in 1933 by Swedish historian Lydia Wahlström. Through the theoretical concept of the modern time regime, this article reveals how modern time-structures were integral to Wahlström’s conception of women’s history and the manner in which she constructed the historical development of women’s collective identity. In Wahlström’s work, women as a category for historical analysis harboured facets which shifted during the course of time at multiple durations. However, the category itself acquired a fixed or eternal status, by which it was placed beyond or outside historical time and modern development. In this sense, the time-structure of Wahlström’s category exhibits similarities with the sex/gender distinction that emerges within feminist historiography in 1970. Through the exposition of this finding, the article seeks to demonstrate how theories of temporality can serve to enforce a critical analysis of feminist historiography. In the specific case of Wahlström’s text, this particular finding also subscribes to the historisation of the sex/gender distinction within feminist historiography.

Planerna på en järnmalmsgruva i Kallak utanför Jokkmokk i Norrbottens län har mött stortmotstånd, men har också ivriga förespråkare. Denna artikel analyserar de kontroversiellaplanerna genom att studera handläggningen av ansökan om bearbetningskoncession.Ärendet har handlagts i flera omgångar och två gånger hänskjutits till regeringen för beslut. Iskrivande stund, åtta år efter att ansökan gjordes, saknas ännu beslut i ärendet. Genom endiskussion av fallet Kallak vill jag belysa hur djupt politiska grundantaganden kommer in iförvaltningsprocessen och påverkar hur olika instanser agerar i ärendet. Artikeln bygger påen analys av material som har producerats och inkommit i processen i form av skrivelser ochyttranden. Handläggningsprocessen visar att frågan om att bevilja en bearbetningskoncessionär svåravgränsad och knuten till ett antal andra överlappande problemområden.Med den här artikeln vill jag bidra med förståelse för hur handläggningen i det här fallet intealls är konsensusdriven, teknisk fråga, utan hur konflikter mellan olika preferenser, värdenoch världsbilder kommer till uttryck i beslutsprocessen.

Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn made famous the image of the Soviet prison system Gulag as an archipelago. In this paper, Solzhenitsyn’s idea of the Gulag archipelago is juxtaposed with French Caribbean writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant’s notion of archipelagic thinking. The focus is on the mining city Norilsk in Northern Siberia, one of the “islands” in this penal geography, a city that was largely built using forced labour. It is a long way from the Caribbean to Siberia, but both archipelagos (real and conceptual) share a history that can be termed colonial. While the system that created this penal archipelago of the Gulag was, in Glissant’s terms, a manifestation of thoroughly continental thinking, complete with grand, universalizing tendencies, it may also be possible to sense the diversity and interconnectedness that he attributed to the archipelago. The case of Norilsk is examined through the 2017 documentary A Moon of Nickel and Ice by Canadian film-maker Françoise Jacob. Glissant’s ideas are used to open up and pose questions, rather than to provide definitive answers. 

This paper investigates how non-industrial agrarian traditions and practices are reworked and recontextualized in a contemporary context. Explorative in its nature, the paper uses in depth interviews with practitioners in eastern Sweden, several of whom are engaged in work to keep practices of the past alive, to discuss how the concept of revitalization can bear on sustainability. Traditional practices are revived as an alternative to industrialized agriculture, and as having a bearing on resilient cultivation systems as well as social relations. They are seen as means of increasing food security and reversing the negative biodiversity development caused by increased monoculture. We understand tradition as a process of negotiation and adaptation to the present, where revivals to some extent necessarily change the traditions that they attempt to revive. Tradition is thus a dynamic concept, always made in the present, never fixed but constantly evolving. In the challenges created by climate change and environmental degradation, it is increasingly voiced that true sustainability requires a transformation of the cultural system. In many cases, people are turning to tradition for sustainable alternatives to industrialized ways of life and to protect a diversity threatened by a dominant and unsustainable lifestyle.

Indigenous peoples have for the past decades increasingly argued that not only is their traditional knowledge to be recognized in the management of their traditional territories, but that Indigenous control and self-governance over territories and natural resources are crucial for long-term sustainability of the land and cultural revitalisation of its people. In recent years, the Saami in Sweden have also presented themselves as pathfinders, offering advice and solutions for a more sustainable future not only for the Saami society, but for all of Sweden. This paper investigates how Saami claims for rights and stewardship in environmental management are related to Saami cultural revitalisation, within a Swedish colonial framework. It is based on an investigation of the Saami policy positions expressed in policy documents and opinion pieces produced by organisations representing the Saami, linking claims for rights and environmental stewardship with cultural revitalisation and a more sustainable development for all.

Are representations of pandemics in fiction always bleak dystopian tales understood as natures revenge on the modern Faustian man, or could they also express hope and expand our imagination in a time of environmental crisis? In this article, we analyse the young adult novel Pandemic (Swedish title: Pandemi, 2018) by Swedish author Maths Claesson. Pandemic is the third novel in a trilogy (2013-2018) with 15-year-old astronaut-trainee Linux as the main protagonist. During his astronaut program on a space station, a pandemic breaks out on Earth. While scientists on Earth struggle to isolate the virus and find a vaccine, Linux and his fellow astronaut-trainees are asked by the WHO to try out a simulation, a computer game aimed at isolating a pandemic outbreak and finding a vaccine. Their simulation is successful and eventually becomes decisive for the solution of the current pandemic crisis on Earth. Departing from Critical Future Studies (Goode and Godhe, Cult Unbound J Curr Cul Res 9(1):108-129, 2017), we focus on the figures of hope (cf. Moylan, Demand the impossible: Science fiction and the utopian imagination, Methuen, pp. 1-2, 1986) for a sustainable future and analyse how the novel is widening the scopes of possible futures. We show how the computer simulation and the successful solution of the crisis serves as a vehicle for a broader discussion about what kind of future we want, a future where the conquest of space offers new opportunities, e.g. for solving the environmental crisis. While normally in Y/A speculative fiction, technology is almost exclusively depicted as ostensibly serving human needs, in Pandemic it is thanks to technology, and the younger generations particular skills, that the disease is conquered. In this sense, the novel is hopeful since it depicts the younger generation as being capable of developing different thinking patterns from those of the adult society.

I Den okunnige läraren. Fem lektioner i intellektuell frigörelse beskriver Jacques Rancière (2011 [1987]) hur en lärare vid 1800-talets början kunde resonera om sin undervisning. Det viktigaste, tycks denne lärare mena, är att förmedla sin egen kunskap till sina elever. Det gäller för dem att gradvis uppnå samma nivå som läraren: ”… lärarens väsentliga handling var att förklara: att frilägga kunskapens enklaste element och få deras principiella enkelhet att stämma överens med den faktiska enkelhet som kännetecknar unga och okunniga människors medvetanden” (9). Denna imaginäre lärares pedagogiska grundsyn har ekon in i vår egen tid och det som denne säger framstår troligen som rimligt även för många idag. Enligt denna grundsyn handlar undervisningen om att förmedla kunskap och att forma medvetanden, att successivt leda eleverna från det till synes enkla till det mer sammansatta genom en process som kännetecknas av kunskapsprogression. Rancière kallar detta för ”förklararens ordning” eftersom det anses vara nödvändigt att just förklara. Det räcker inte med undervisningsmaterialet vilket vanligen är boken, utan det anses även krävas en muntlig intervention. Förklararens egenartade konst, skriver Rancière, är samtidigt avståndets konst: ”Lärarens hemlighet är att han vet hur man identifierar avståndet mellan det undervisade materialet och det subjekt som instrueras, samt avståndet mellan att lära sig och att förstå. Förklararen är den som upprättar och upphäver avstånd, som mäter upp det och sedan låter det sugas upp i sina egna ord.” (11–12)...

This article applies a cultural perspective on § 51of the Swedish Copyright Act, which prohibits therendering of works in the public domain ‘in a waythat offends the interests of spiritual cultivation’(SFS 1960:729). This so called ‘protection of clas-sics’ was formulated in the 1950s to protect classicalworks against derogatory interpretations, such aspopular cultural adaptions. § 51 has rarely beenapplied, but in 2021 it was for the first time triedin court as the nationalist website Nordfront wasaccused of violating §51 by publishing works bythree prominent romanticist poets in a contextbordering on hate speech. The court ruled that thepublication was not a violation of § 51, which callsthe future of the protection of classics into question.Even though §51 might soon be obsolete, it raises anumber of questions regarding the relation betweenlaw and culture. This article discusses what theprotection of classics and the Nordfront case cantell us about cultural change in postwar Sweden if itis approached as a cultural rather than a legal textand studied not primarily as a legislative processbut as a process of meaning making. The articlemakes no attempts to conduct such an analysis butrather aims to introduce the perspective and presentpreliminary reflections on how the formulation anduse of protection of classics reflects changing con-ceptions of cultural norms and values.

This article analyses how local, national and international interests are reflected in India’s attempts to protect traditional knowledge through the formation of a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). It compares how the digital library is contextualised within India’s domestic policy with how it is presented to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The article argues that WIPO has endorsed the Indian initiative and embraced the promotion of protective databases as an uncontroversial tool that diverts attention from more contested forms of traditional knowledge protection. Consequently, India has been able to use WIPO as a platform to promote itself and the TKDL to the global community. Domestically, however, the library serves other purposes. Since it systematically documents a vast body of traditional medical knowledge, Indian authorities can use the library to claim that knowedge as part of a national cultural heritage, and as a source of scientific innovations to the economic and social benefit of the country. In that regard, the TKDL reflects an interplay among local, national and international interests, where the goal of protecting the traditional knowledge of indigenous and local communities against misappropriation risks being co-opted to serve national purposes.

For most of the 19th century Swedish copyright law was primarily regulated by the Freedom of the Press Ordinance of 1812, which merely stated that ‘Any writing is the property of the author or its legal proprietor’. It was not until 1877 that Sweden passed a separate, comprehensive copyright law. This was initially motivated by the fact that copyright was becoming much too extensive and complicated an issue to be regulated in a constitutional law. Apart from addressing many of the practicalities surrounding the exchange and sale of literary rights, the 1877 Copyright Act also introduced two important novelties in Swedish copyright law. First, it imposed a fixed time limitation on the protection of copyright; while the previous law had, in practice, allowed for an eternal extension of copyright protection, the new act limited this to 50 years after the death of the author. Secondly, the 1877 Copyright Act provided a certain, although very limited, copyright protection for translated works stating that original authors retained their copyright for works translated from Swedish into Norwegian or Danish. This was the most controversial part of the new law as many publishers saw this as a limitation of what they thought of as their ‘freedom to translate’ which, they argued, could limit public access to literature.

Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Ordinance of 1810 was not only a return to the liberal ideals that shaped the famous Freedom of the Press Ordinance of 1766 (sometimes referred to as the world’s first freedom of the press act), but it was also, arguably, Sweden’s first copyright regulation. This was indeed the first time that authors’ rights to the works they produced were acknowledged in Swedish law, although it was only mentioned in one paragraph, stating that ‘Any writing is the property of the author or its legal proprietor.’ The inclusion of authors’ rights in the Freedom of the Press Ordinance was largely uncontroversial and uncontested, and this commentary argues that it was most likely included because many of those involved in drafting the legislation were not only politicians but also authors and intellectuals. As such, they were familiar with the debates on authors’ rights in England and on the continent at the time. However, unlike in other European countries, the legislators did not elaborate on the nature and limitations of literary ownership, but merely assumed that the ownership of texts was to be equated with any other form of material property. Consequently, early Swedish copyright came to be entirely unlimited in time.

In the mid-19th century Swedish copyright law was regulated in the Freedom of the Press Ordinance of 1812, which merely stated that ‘Any writing is the property of the author or its legal proprietor’. This implied that copyright was to be seen as any other property right and that the ownership of texts was unlimited in time. This changed in 1841 when Sweden passed an addition to the copyright paragraph stating that copyright protection expired if the copyright holder or its heirs did not publish or reissue the works within 20 years. Since the copyright holders were still allowed to republish the work as many times as they wished, the law in practice still allowed for an infinite extension of the copyright protection. This revision was nevertheless principally important since it was the first time that Swedish law acknowledged that literary property needed to be addressed differently from material property. The discussion preceding the revision also introduced the interests of the public in Swedish copyright law for the first time, as it referred to the need to make literature publicly available as an argument for imposing potential limitations on the terms of protection.

This article argues that since genetic resources carry cultural significanceto many Indigenous communities, the protection of genetic resourcesshould be considered in relation to the protection of Indigenous culturalheritage. It compares international regulations of genetic resources andassociated traditional knowledge to those of traditional cultural expressions,focusing particularly on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)and its implementation through the Nagoya Protocol. The article discusseshow attempts to decolonise the regulation of genetic resources areimpeded by two dilemmas that have also affected UNESCO and WIPO’sattempts to safeguard traditional cultural expressions. The first dilemmaconcerns the problems of promoting Indigenous self-recognition withina system of governance based on national agency and sovereignty.The second dilemma concerns how international regulations are basedon a Western ontology that polarises natural and cultural resources, whichhas resulted in a reluctance to address intellectual property rights withinthe CBD. Exploring parallels between the regulation of genetic resourcesand traditional cultural expressions provides new perspectives on thedifficulties facing the decolonisation of the protection of Indigenousresources and the implementation of Indigenous data sovereignty.

This article analyzes India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) as a potential intervention in the administration of patent law. The TKDL is a database including a vast body of traditional medical knowledge from India, aiming to prevent the patenting and misappropriation of that knowledge. This article contextualizes the TKDL in relation to documentation theory as well as to existing research on the uses of databases to protect traditional knowledge. It explores the TKDL’s potential consequences for India’s traditional medical knowledge and the wider implications that traditional knowledge databases can have for the safeguarding of traditional knowledge in general. The article concludes that on the one hand the TKDL bridges the gap between the main branches of Indian traditional medicine and the formal knowledge system of International Patent Classifications. Furthermore, it has also inspired revisions of the International Patent Classification system, which makes it better adapted to incorporate traditional medical knowledge. On the other hand, critical research on traditional knowledge documentation argues that traditional knowledge databases, like the TKDL, can decontextualize the knowledge they catalogue and dispossess its original owners. The TKDL, however, also fits into a national, Indian agenda of documenting and modernizing traditional medicine that predates the formation of the TKDL by several decades and challenges the dichotomy between traditional and scientific knowledge systems that originally motivated the formation of the TKDL.

In the first decade of the 21s century, copyright was high on the political agenda as activists and academics criticised how stricter implementations of copyright laws limited the public access to culture and knowledge and enclosed the information commons. A decade later, streaming media and data mining have changed the information-political agenda, shifting the focus from piracy to privacy, giving concepts such as access to knowledge and information commons new meanings. This article relates the copyfights of the early 2000nds to more recent copyright discussions. It relies on a series of interviews with members of the Pirate Party, conducted between 2011 and 2015 and connects them to more recent debates about the European Union Directive on Copyright for the Digital Single Market (COM/2016/0593) that was passed in march 2019. The article asks if and how the information commons movement and the international political agenda about intellectual property rights and access to information have changed with the rise of a digital economy build around streaming media and data mining.

This article engages with the resistance against the global erosion of seed diversity followingthe modernization and industrialization of agriculture over the 20th century. This resistance spansfrom local farming communities that preserve and safeguard traditional landraces to internationalmovements which oppose proprietary seed regulations and promote free sharing of seeds. The articlefocuses on the latter and presents a study of the open source seed movement: an initiative to applystrategies from the open source software movement to ensure the free circulation of seeds. The erosionof seed diversity can be seen not only as a loss of genetic diversity but also a memory loss wheretraditional, collective knowledge about how to grow certain landraces is forgotten. Consequently, theopen source seed movement is not only about saving seeds but also about preserving and revitalizinglocal and traditional ecological knowledge against privatization and enclosure through intellectualproperty rights. The aim of this article is, thus, to analyze the open source seed movement as an actof revitalization in relation to intellectual property rights and in the context of information politics.

In 2015, the United Nations member states agreed upon a universal agenda for sustainable development with seventeen belonging goals that are to be achieved by 2030. This agenda, which is generally known as Agenda 2030, is said to provide a shared blueprint for prosperity and peace for all human beings and the planet. It stresses that humans should get the opportunity to enjoy economic, social, and technological progress that occurs in harmony with nature (Desa, U.N, 2015). In other words, the human and the non-human world are enclosed in the agenda, but until now, no studies have focused on how they and the relationship between them are represented within Agenda 2030. This needs to be broadened since such a focus would make it possible to provide insightful reflections on the ontological and epistemological standpoints upon which human understandings of the human, the non-human, and their relationship are grounded (see Maraud & Guyot, 2016; Fletcher, 2016; Fälton, 2021). This study contributes to such broadening by focusing on narratives of the non-human world and its relationship to the human world enabled in Agenda 2030. Through a narrative analysis (e.g., Bruner, 2003; Haraway, 2016) of the text in the agenda, we unravel, make visible, and problematize what stories that occur and how those are told. As part of that analysis, we also discuss the possibilities and limitations of using the concepts of "nature", "the other than human world", "the non-human world", and "the more-than-human world" (see Escobar, 1996; Demeritt, 2002; Soper, 2012) when problematizing global sustainability transformations agreements. Our initial analysis shows that Agenda 2030 is permeated by anthropocentric values (see Lövbrand et al., 2015). This become visible in examples such as portrayals of the non-human world as a product that should be consumed by humans, and representations of the planet as a place that needs to be preserved for the need of present as well as future human generations rather than for its own sake. Another example is the agenda stating that all human beings of the world should be included in and supported by its actions, while only the most endangered species are integrated. Consequently, the separation between the human and the non-human world, creates hierarchies, where some species are presented as more valuable than others, who are being made invisible.

Stories about humans visiting the realms of fairies, trolls, and other supernatural creatures have been present in the folklore for millennia. Recently, Nationalmuseum Jamtli in Östersund, Sweden, has put on display 110 works of art representing Nordic mythology in an attempt to create a similar experience for its visitors. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Elsa Beskow, Carl Larsson, John Bauer, and Ivar Arosenius. Created during the 19thand early 20th centuries, before the advent of modern cinema, these works were made with a largely narrative purpose. Their role was to communicate Nordic culture and heritage to the next generations of Swedes. The proposed paper will provide a twofold analysis of the exhibition. First, we will explore how artists in the 19th and 20th centuries engaged in medievalism and represented the imaginative landscapes of Nordic mythology and sagas. We will also address how these works of art create an image of collective imagined realities of the past generations. Second, we will discuss how the exhibition itself, through its displays, becomes a landscape. While the art represents imaginative landscapes, the exhibition is a material milieu. By analysing the exhibition’s ways of display and the visual storytelling created by the museum, we will contribute to the understanding of how material landscapes can help modern individuals interact with the imaginative landscapes of the past.

Denna presentation kommer att bjuda in er till odjurens värld via Netflixs nya barnfilm Havsmonstret. Vi kommer att diskutera hur filmen tar upp viktiga miljöproblem så som tjuvjakt och förlust av biologisk mångfald genom dess porträttering av havsmonster. Dessutom kommer vi att belysa hur relationen mellan det mänskliga och det icke-mänskliga framställs och förkroppsligas genom monstren och deras jägare. 

This is a collaboration between artist Hasti Radpour, an art curator and researchers in the humanities and social sciences.

Theoretically our study has found inspirations from concepts such as everyday life practices, ethical dimensions and moral terrains in the use of hot tap water in homes, and includes an exploration of complex intersections between age, class, ethnicity and gender, and how it is interlaced with practices of washing hands, bathing, taking a shower and washing up the dishes.

An overall aim of the project is to contribute with new understandings of resource use in intimate spheres. We are particularly interested in embodied experiences, emotions, performative habits and memories and how these might influence hot water use.  

Currently we are exploring socio-cultural sensitive and ethical methods to understand how hot tap water comes to matter in everyday life. Our ongoing work includes a qualitative iterative research process with collecting narratives of hot tap water practices, thoughts and emotions that are associated with routines in washing hands, showering, bathing and washing up the dishes.

In our planned future work, when we are able to visit people’s homes again, researchers and artist will collaborate in home visits and ask questions about people’s practices: how they use hot tap water; and their thoughts and feelings; and why they think they have these thoughts and feelings related to their use of hot tap water.

Att automationen och utvecklingen inom AI i medierna ofta framställs som tvingande återkommer i idéhistorikern Michael Godhes kapitel ”Att lära sig leva med robotar. Om normaliseringen av robotar och AI i 2000-talets medier”. Godhe skönjer en normalisering i den massmediala rapporteringen om robotar och AI. Med exempel från svenska medier under de senaste åren konstruerar han en teoretisk modell över det förlopp genom vilket dominerande föreställningar om framtiden vardagliggörs och blir sanna. Godhe pekar ut en risk med normaliseringen: den skymmer de samhällsutmaningar som robotiken och AI för med sig, men också andra viktiga frågor, som exempelvis utvecklingen av alltmer avancerade globala övervakningssystem, där AI är en viktig komponent.

Essay review of Anna Bark Persson's essay collection Annorstädes [Elsewhere].

Essay review

By using Critical Future Studies combined with a historical contextualization of technology debates, I discuss in this article how a normalization process can be discerned in Swedish popular press reporting on robots and AI in recent years.

From being contested, robots andAI have become part of everyday life. Robots and AI are here for better or worse and we must establish a relation to this technology, handle the risks, and domesticate it. This obscures the societal challenges we face with the developments in robotics and AI, and future developments are conceived as predestined.

I skuggan av vår samtids stora kriser pågår en ny rymdkapplöpning som involverar inte bara en mängd nationella aktörer utan också tech-miljardärer såsom Elon Musk och entreprenörer som Richard Branson. Deras ambitioner att utforska eller vad man många gånger väljer att kalla ”kolonisera” rymden för kommersiella intressen har blivit känt som New Space. Michael Godhe skriver om hur planeten Mars genom tiderna fungerat som en projektionsyta för visionärt tänkande och om hur dagens Marsdokumentärer reproducerar drömmen om kolonisering av andra himlakroppar. 

Om samspelet mellan teknik, kultur och samhälle: AI, robotar, androider och science fiction-genren. 

Inledning till antologi: "Robotisering och utvecklingen av artificiell intelligens, AI, upptar en central plats i debatten om framtidens samhälle. Den tekniska förändringen kommer att påverka våra vardagsliv – alltifrån hur fabriksgolvet organiseras till hur vi interagerar på internet. Prognoserna om framtiden lyfts ständigt fram i media, men är de egentligen rimliga? I AI, robotar och föreställningar om morgondagens arbetsliv studerar en grupp forskare idéer och föreställningar kring automationen, såväl historiskt som i ljuset av dagens diskussioner om artificiell intelligens. Hur tänker vi och pratar om den tekniska utvecklingen? Den kommer att ingripa i våra liv på olika nivåer, men har vi möjlighet att välja en framtid utan AI? I framtiden kan antalet arbetstillfällen komma att minska vilket möjligen innebär en utveckling mot större ekonomiska och sociala klyftor. Men kanske ger skiftet istället möjligheter att arbeta mindre och dela på jobben? Författarna kommer från olika humanvetenskapliga discipliner och belyser diskussionen om AI i alla dess skepnader. De utforskar hur samtalet förs i dagspress och på arbetsplatser, men också hur det uttrycks i konst och språk."

Karl-Heinz Steinmüller once remarked that SF “has become a unique medium for discussing science and technology, their prospects and hazards, and more generally their social and cultural impacts” (339). In this sense, SF as a genre forms a bridge between science/technology and the public, and is a vital aspect of public engagement with issues arising from scientific development. One such technological subject today is the development of artificial intelligence (AI) research.

At the same time, there is a growing concern that representations of AI in recent SF and popular media are misleading (Goode; Graeber). In this article, ethnologist Daniel Bodén and cultural studies researcher Michael Godhe discuss AI in the light of the future of work with Jerry Määttä, one of the foremost SF scholars in Scandinavia.

A theme section in Fafnir based on four contributions from the conference "SpecFic2021: Time and History", Karlstad University December 1-3 2021, edited by Godhe, Oakes & Varis.