Loftsdóttir, Kristín, and Lars Jensen, editors. Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities. (2012)

Loftsdóttir, Kristín, and Lars Jensen, editors. Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities. 1st edition, F arnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT: Routledge, 2012. This book examines the influence of imperialism and colonialism on the formation of national identities in the Nordic countries, exploring the manner in which contemporary discourses in Nordic society are rendered meaningful or obscured by references to past events and tropes related to the practices and ideologies of colonialism. Against the background of Nordic ‘exceptionalism’, it explores the manner in which the interwoven racial, gendered and nationalistic ideologies associated with the colonial project form part of contemporary Nordic identities. An important challenge to national identities that can become increasingly inward looking, Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region sheds light on the ways in which certain notions and structural inequalities, understood as residue from the colonial period, become recreated or projected onto different groups. Presenting a variety of case studies drawn from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Greenland, Denmark and Iceland, this book will be of interest to scholars across the social sciences and humanities conducting research in the fields of race and ethnicity, identity and belonging, media representations of ‘the other’ and colonialism and postcolonialism.

Contents: Introduction: Nordic exceptionalism and Nordic ’others’, Kristi­n Loftsdottir and Lars Jensen; Colonial discourse and ambivalence: Norwegian participants on the colonial arena in South Africa, Erlend Eidsvik; Colonialism, racism and exceptionalism, Christina Petterson; ’Words that wound’: Swedish Whiteness and its inability to accommodate minority experiences, Tobias Hubinette; Belonging and the Icelandic others: situating Icelandic identity in a postcolobial context, KristÃin Loftsdottir; Transnational influences, gender equality and violence in Muslim families, Suvi Keskinen; Reading history through Finnish exceptionalism, Anna Rastas; Danishness as Whiteness in crisis: emerging post-imperial and development aid anxieties, Lars Jensen; Bodies and boundaries, Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen and Serena Maurer; Intimacy with the Danish nation-state: my partner, the Danish state and I – a case study of family reunification policy in Denmark, Linda Lund Pedersen; Aesthetics and ethnicity: the role of boundaries in contemporary Sami and Tornedalian art, Anne Heith; Index.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/whiteness-postcolonialism-nordic-region-krist%C3%ADn-loftsd%C3%B3ttir-lars-jensen/e/10.4324/9781315547275