Jukka Nyyssönen

Towards a Multiangled Study of Reindeer Agency, Overlapping Environments, and Human–Animal Relationships

This paper discusses the applicability of theories about animal agency to studies of human–animal relationships in the academic disciplines of environmental history and archaeology. Both disciplines have a traditional epistemological stance that neglects the perceptual worlds of the animal. One example is presented of efforts to write from the other side of the epistemological chasm, on the environment of the animal, as well as Morten Tønnessen’s (2010) concepts of semiotic and ontological niches. There is also a critical discussion as to whether these concepts are applicable to the relationship between reindeer and humans. The second part of the text is devoted to an effort to recover the human presence in the scheme, with examples from sacrificial animals. It is argued that the human presence illuminates certain aspects of the animal agency, which theorizing on the animal Umwelt (environment) tends to neglect. In addition, these theories provide a heuristic foundation where species-specific environments, in all of which the reindeer dwells, provide a multiangled view of the limits of animal agency and the ways in which species, humans included, affect each other’s behavior in animal-to-animal and human–animal settings.

Sami Counter-Narratives of Colonial Finland. Articulation, Reception and the Boundaries of the Politically Possible

Abstract The Sami have articulated two kinds of counter-narratives of their treatment by the state of Finland: the state failing to provide welfare services and as a colonizer of the Sami. The Sami counter-narratives are discussed in light of their evolution and their perception in the interactional context of the Finnish state. The colonization narrative, which replaced the welfare narrative, has proven to be hard to legitimize in a Finnish context. Even though it lacks both external and full internal legitimacy, it is still used because of the international conventions building on the self-imagery of a colonized people. In addition, the most radical post-colonial researchers have chosen to use it, partly for ethno-political reasons. Numerous elements in the master narrative of Finland delegitimize the idea of Finnish colonialism: amongst other things, the idea of natural borders, the idea of being colonized by neighbouring empires, the long history of industrial nationalism and the economic growth and myth-building of the state of Finland as an anti-imperialist “good state”. A critique is advanced concerning the least nuanced academic practices and narratives.