In the Future North project one of our core challenges is how to convey the immiment and more distant character of climate change. Today, Janike, Peter and I are attending the annual SAMKUL Programme conference hosted by the Research Council of Norway. The opening session is entitled Cultural Perspectives on Climate Change. What can we expect from one of the most cited and renowned speakers on climate change, Mike Hulme?
I’ve kept quiet for a long time now. Centuries of lips sealed and horn retracted. Learned that one from the invention of the telescope. They have found me neverthless, explorers, mariners and hunters of the north. But its’s time to show up and shout out. Time that someone shaped these stories of the far far north. Alas. As if anyone can here me in this Arctic blizzard as the autumnal shifts seize the ice and toss it about in the shallower water.
At the recent SAMKUL conference, funded by the Research Council of Norway, Prof Kjersti Fløttum addressed unpacking discourses of climate change by analysing two Norwegian white papers as part of recent research in the project LINGCLIM. This took the form of a) narrative analysis and b) polyphonic discursive analysis. I’ve hoped for years now to hear her speak, as my own interest and readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and more latterly multimodal discourse led earlier me to her publications here in Norway.
A mini-seminar on challenges and current issues for sub-arctic landscapes and territories organized by the Future North project. October 30, 2013, 14.00-17.00, AHO, Big Auditorium
Geographic lines are representations of difference and distribution of phenomena in space. Lines are also tools for reading and conceptualizing landscapes: they may be concrete—perceptual—but also abstract figures of a more analytically based models that describe underlying structures of the landscapes we visit, walk, document and discuss.