Reproducing the Norwegian Myth: Egalitarianism and the Normal

De Gruyter eBooks, 2022

Before the Norwegian History Days in 2008, the historian Knut Kjeldstadli from the University of Oslo was challenged by his colleagues in the Norwegian Historian Association, 1 who asked him to hold the lecture "How do we celebrate the nation state in a globalized world?" The reason for this challenge had different motivations. Firstly, many intellectuals and academics had recently criticized the concepts of the nation and nationalism due to an unhealthy form of nationalism that could trigger conflicts and hate throughout the world. Many of these conflicts had been legitimized by historians. Secondly, the time was right for historians to strengthen the emphasis on global topics in connection with the development of globalism in general. Beneath the surface, there was an implicit judgment directed toward historians for concerning themselves with internal affairs within national borders instead of focusing on international relations between nation states or their cultural, economic, and political interconnectedness. 2 The perspective of Kjeldstadli highlights another aspect about which Norwegian historians seem to be ambivalent, namely populism. This article will show how populism and nationalism have previously been linked. This link has materialized largely because of the methodological nationalism used among Norwegian historians, where the emphasis has been placed on ideals from the Norwegian Constitution of 1814, itself based on the US Declaration of Independence. Among the main principles, one of the most important is the paragraph stating that "all men are created equal." 3 In the new Norwegian Constitution, the "people" of Norway are given a heightened position in society. One can rightly speak about a new, more modern perspective on the bearer of the nation, with its connection to the first seeds of democracy, based on the relationship between the people and the nation. This article will try to illustrate the role of historians in the creation of the narrative concerning this relationship. It will also discuss how an ideological alliance between Norwegian

Ethnicities

This article engages critically with the idea of state-centred nationhood, including its promises and limitations, as a foundation for state strategies of forging unity in (migration-related) diversity within nations. As states across Europe grapple with the management of migration-related diversity, in contexts of increasing polarization of public debate on nationhood, which conceptions of nationhood do they draw on? We build on data from Norway, including policy documents and parliamentary debates, and draw on ten interviews with eleven bureaucrats in senior positions. Our interviewees were tasked with different aspects of the state’s nation building work, such as immigration control, national minorities (including Sami populations), religious and life-stance communities, and the 200-year anniversary of the Constitution. When asking which conceptions of nationhood bureaucrats draw on, we acknowledge that someone is doing the state’s nation building work. We find that the bureaucra...

Nordic Welfare Research, 2024

Every instantiation of decommodifying welfare capitalism relies on a global hinterland, an exterior space for which commodification still remains the rule and whose function is to service the national interior of a social democratic polity. Taking Norway as its case study, this article deploys the notion of a protective "cupola," following Žižek and Wacquant's concept of the "centaur state," as productive ways of thinking about how late-modern social democracy relies upon dualization and structural bifurcation. While extracting resources, low-cost labor, cheap goods, and financial profits from the global hinterland, the welfare-capitalist state privileges its national citizenry. Despite significant neoliberal transformation, it continues to protect the populace from the vagaries of the market, but at the expense of the world beyond its bounds. Social democracy, then, hinges on the preservation of difference, failing to offer a truly globe-encompassing, universal response to the commodifying effects of market capitalism. Welfare capitalism tends to mean welfare for insiders, (liberal) capitalism for the rest.

2013

Feminist scholars have pointed out that constructions of gender and gender equality are embedded in national narratives and politics of belonging (Yuval-Davis 2011; Siim & Mokre 2013). This paper aims to explore gendered approaches to nationalism and to discuss how nationalism in Scandinavia 2 is associated with 'social democratic' perceptions of welfare and gender equality. Brochmann and Hagelund (2010) have pointed towards a specific form of Scandinavian welfare nationalism which is challenged by globalization and increased migration. We add that gender equality is a key aspect of the Scandinavian politics of belonging and that this has implications for our understanding of the challenges which can be recognised in the contemporary politics of gender and welfare in Scandinavia. This point is illustrated by exploring the problematic ways in which contemporary nationalist parties in Sweden, Denmark and Norway have linked national belongings with support for the welfare state and gender equality politics. These observations in turn raise theoretical, normative and analytical questions about understandings and conceptualizations of the nationalism, welfare and gender. The article aims to explore what the particular Nordic contexts can contribute to our analytical understandings of nationalism, welfare and gender equality and how this context can contribute to the evolvement of the theoretical approaches to gender and nationalism. The first part gives a brief overview of two influential theoretical approaches to nationalism and gender:

The Palgrave Handbook of Race and Ethnic Inequalities in Education, 2019

2013

The Making and Circulation of Nordic Models, Ideas and Images, 2021

2005

Social Inclusion

Controlling mobility and borders has become a central, defining feature of the state today. Using the Norwegian welfare state as a case study, I argue that the differentiation of rights depending on status categories is an important way in which the state deals with irregular migration. It is also an integral element of border construction and how mobility is managed. How is the Norwegian welfare state differentiating the rights to work, health care, and economic welfare benefits and through which argumentations does the state legitimate these differentiations? This article argues that the practice of differentiation contributes to establishing hierarchies of belonging and enforces the nexus of welfare rights–migration management. Further, the exclusion of certain categories of people from accessing basic welfare services and, consequently, creating precarious lives, is legitimized by the discourse of humanitarian exceptionalism, through which migrants gain some support outside the ...