Ethnicity of Scandinavian populations from 1050-1500 A.D.

Iregren, Elisabeth; Isberg, Per‐Erik

doi:10.1127/anthranz/51/1993/193

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Swedish state discourse still hewed to the policy that a “Lapp shall remain a Lapp,” but international anthropological texts were increasingly influenced by Sámi self-definitions. Anthropologists, and especially archaeologists, provided support for Sámi claims for land rights and political autonomy beyond Sweden's narrow state definitions (e.g., Broadbent 2010; Iregren and Isberg 1993).…”

Section: Lappology: Nation-state Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Nation-State Science: Lappology and Sweden's Ethnoracial Purity

Mattson

2014

Comp Stud Soc Hist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper introduces the concept of “nation-state science” to describe the scientific work of ethnoracial classification that made possible the ideal of the homogenous nation-state. Swedish scientists implicitly defined their nation for Continental Europeans when they explicitly created knowledge about the “Lapps” (today's Sámi/Saami). Nation was coupled to state through such ethnoracial categories, the content of which were redefined as Sweden's geopolitical power rose and fell. These shifts sparked methodological innovations to redefine the Lapp, making it a durable category whose content was plastic enough to survive paradigm shifts in political and scientific thought. Idiosyncratic Swedish concerns thus became universalized through the scientific diffusion of empirical knowledge about Lapps and generalizable anthropometric techniques to distinguish among populations. What Sweden lost during the nineteenth century in terms of geopolitical power, it gained in terms of biopower: the knowledge and control of internal populations made possible by its widely adopted anthropometric innovations. Nation-state science helps unpack the interrelationships between state-building, nation-making, and scientific labor.

show abstract

Section: Lappology: Nation-state Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%