NORWEGIAN LIFE AND SOCIETYNORINT 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:FoodNatureKinship Gender
Focus:Resonance in Norwegian societySpecific 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 breadIt is made at homeIt 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.
Hungry children eat their matpakke
Design matpakke
Traditionalmatpakke
Aftenposten11.03.2014
Nature and outdoor activitiesDomesticating 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 markingPath-makingGuiding
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 1920Outdoor Recreation Act – 1957National Parks – wilderness protection 1960s and 70s
Creation of commons - everyone has access to natureHighlands 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 inscribedThe wild is “tamed”
Fjellvettssregler – Rules of Mountain Wisdom
1. Be prepared2. Leave word of your route3. Be weatherwise4. Be equipped5. Learn from the locals6. Use map and compass7. don’t’ go solo8. Turn back in time: there’s no shame in turning back9. 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 norwegianessNature is perceived in a way that may be specific to Norwegians
Transnational adoption
Howell, Signe. 2003. “Kinning: The Creation of Life TrajectoriesIn 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 fertilizationPermits conception outside the wombRobert Edwards won Nobel Prize in medicine in 2010
Challenges our ideas of natural conceptionDestablizes 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.