Mid Sweden University

This paper aims to estimate the recreational value of a forest area using contingent valuation and individual travel cost methods. Questionnaires were used for collecting the required data. The logit model was used to investigate the effect of explanatory variables on individuals’ willingness to pay in the contingent valuation method. Furthermore, the values of the parameters in the contingent valuation method were estimated based on the maximum likelihood method. The linear regression model was applied to study the effects of explanatory variables on the number of trips in the individual travel cost method. In addition, the parameters' values in the individual travel cost method were estimated based on the ordinary least squares method. Results of contingent valuation method indicated that the mean value of willingness to pay for recreational value in the study area was 19,983 IRR per visit and the annual recreational value was 1,807,415 IRR/ha. Furthermore, the results of individual travel cost method showed that the consumer surplus was 322,004 IRR per visit and the annual recreational value of 43,200 people who annually visit the area was 104,912,695 IRR/ha. The results of this study can help policymakers to enhance the quality of recreational sites according to the willingness to pay for ecosystem services.

Denna antologi har sin grund i arbetet med projektet MIUN Research Exhibition: Upplevelsebara forskningsutställningar i det fysiska och digitala biblioteksrummet, som under åren 2020-2022 pågick vid Mittuniversitetet. I antologin skriver samtliga medlemmar i projektgruppen ett eller flera kapitel med utgångspunkt i den roll som var och en har haft inom projektet. Syftet med antologin är att samla och dokumentera erfarenheter från arbetet med projektet. Därigenom är antologin ett forum för en avslutande reflektionsprocess för oss som nu under flera år har arbetat med att utarbeta och prova de modeller för forskningskommunicerande utställningar i det fysiska och digitala biblioteksrummet som utgör projektets kärna. Med antologin vill vi också bidra till den kunskapsbank som är på väg att växa fram om hur universitetsbibliotek kan initiera och skapa utställningar med utgångspunkt i forskning som bedrivs vid det egna lärosätet, och därmed bli aktörer på ämnesfältet forskningskommunikation. Antologin har mot denna bakgrund flera målgrupper. Med en förhoppning om att våra erfarenheter kan komma andra till nytta vänder vi oss till kollegor vid andra lärosäten som vill, eller redan är i gång med att, utforma sina egna forskningskommunicerande utställningar. Vi ser gärna att antologin blir ett inlägg i ett kontinuerligt samtal om hur forskningskommunikation kan bedrivas i utställningsformat och i samverkan mellan universitetsbibliotek och andra enheter vid våra lärosäten. På så sätt kan antologin också ses som ett inlägg i diskussionen om forskningskommunikationens olika format och vilka inom universitetsvärlden som är, kan vara eller borde vara aktörer i forskningskommunicerande processer.

After the Second World War an intense period of modern housing construction started in Sweden, which suddenly changed the circumstances of everyday life for a great number of the Swedish population. The tenants were offered apartments equipped with central heating, kitchen with fridge and electric cooker, and bathroom with bathtub. These dwellings gave rise to new experiences for everyone who moved in. By ordering their things and establishing new everyday routines and habits, people appropriated this new and unfamiliar space and made it one with their ongoing life. In this process of spatial organisation and routinisation new borderlines were drawn and new meanings were given to categories such as private-public, indoor-outdoor, home-outer world, us and them. Applying a theoretical approach from phenomenology, based on life story interviews with people who experienced these modern apartments in their capacity as the first tenants, the article elucidates how people through their daily habitual actions, in interaction with things and consociates both delimited and positioned themselves in connection with a wider world. Namely, how theyestablished a relationship between private and public realms, home and not-home, inside and outside, “us” and “them”, and, furthermore, how they transformed an unfamiliar space into a familiar place, a place they could call their own.

In this chapter, we discuss curation as a concept and practices of curating in relation to libraries, archives, and museums. The concept of curating collections may seem primarily connected to museums and exhibitions, especially as it invokes the practice of selecting and presenting objects to the public. However, traditional notions of curation also involve what happens with collection items before they reach the public (if anything). Thus, we distinguish between two senses of curation here, referring to the caretaker curator and the exhibition curator as broad typologies that help us to see what professionals in libraries, archives, and museums actually do with collections. The chapter presents discussions on the development of curating practices across the three sectors, connecting historical strands with current developments. Not least, we discuss how digitalization and the so-called “participatory turn” have changed and challenged practices of curation.

Social media and mobile-based applications act as an increasingly critical source of experience value creation in tourism and nature-based tourism, as confirmed by the most recent trends in the industry. Although being one of the most popular mobile-based social media, Instagram is still underrepresented in value creation research, and no study has been conducted specifically in nature-based tourism. Moreover, current research on value lack of interpretive methodologies able to grasp the complexity of experience value creation from a phenomenological point of view. This research aims at tackling these gaps by conducting an in-depth investigation on experience value creation on Instagram in nature-based tourism. A combination of different types of qualitative data, obtained through a participatory netnography, will be collected on Instagram, and consequently triangulated and analyzed by means of grounded theory. While assessing the depth of value creation emerging from personal, elicited tourist narratives, in a way not seen yet in similar studies, the results are argued to expand the theoretical understanding of experience value creation in nature-based tourism and service research.

Vi översköljs dagligen av föreställningar om hur män och kvinnor "är". Vi möter en mängd schablonbilder i massmedia och populärkultur. Dessa konstruerade föreställningar om skillnader mellan könen gäller också vårt språkbruk.

Författarna diskuterar och problematiserar våra kulturella föreställningar om språkskillnader mellan könen med utgångspunkt i den massmediala verkligheten och våra vardagliga erfarenheter. De visar att många av förställningarna om språkskillnader mellan könen är konstruerade och saknar grund. I stället tydliggörs de många - och svårfångade - sambanden mellan språk och kön.

Språk och kön är landets första vetenskapligt uppbyggda lärobok i ämnet. Den vänder sig både till studenter och till yrkesverksamma. Boken kan användas på utbildningar i bland annat språkvetenskap, nordiska språk, genusvetenskap och lärarutbildningar.

Antologin ”Människor som skriver”är ett resultat av den tvärvetenskapliga och nordiska samverkan som ägt rum inom nätverket ”Vardagligt skriftbruk. Diakrona perspektiv på literacy i Sverige och övriga Norden” som åren 2009–2012 finansierats av Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

I antologin problematiseras samband mellan vardagligt skriftbruk och identitet – framför allt ur ett historiskt perspektiv, men även ur ett samtida didaktiskt perspektiv. De flesta artiklarna diskuterar vardagligt skrivande i en svenskspråkig kontext. Två av de skrifthistoriska studierna behandlar dessutom en isländsk respektive en finsk språkkontext. Författarna kommer från skilda ämnen: språkvetenskap, litteraturvetenskap, historia, musiketnologi och didaktik.

In this book, ideas and practices on appraisal in Swedish state archives c. 1970–2010 are analysed. What records has been kept, why, and for whom? How has the archival sphere been influenced by overall societal ideas on heritage and memory? The relative importance of legal and institutional frameworks is also analysed, since laws heavily regulate archives in the Swedish public sector. The Swedish Archives Act of 1990 emphasises that the “research interest” has to be accounted for when deciding what to preserve, and it adds that the state archives are part of the “national heritage”. How is this implemented in actual appraisal practises? It is shown that appraisal in Sweden is generally pragmatic and – in a Schellenbergian tradition – rests on a presumption (most often not articulated) that it is possible to foresee the desires of future users.

The chapter explores the politics of archival appraisal in Sweden in the digital age, providing an overview of the legal, technological, political, organisational, and economic factors that intersect with archival practice, as archives seek to preserve the digital present for the near and distant future.

Archival legislation in Sweden has long been tightly connected to freedom of information legislation: the very definition of records in Swedish archives derives from Swedish legal discourse, and thus differs from definitions in standard archival theory. The chapter examines the consequences of this, in relation to digitisation and its new understandings of what a record is or might be, especially in relation to appraisal.

Regarding the effects of digitisation, both continuity and change are highlighted. As in the Nordic region more generally, there is general continuity in how non-digital and digital archiving, including appraisal, has been effected. What has changed, however, is the relative number of born-digital records. Digital preservation and appraisal are no longer fringe phenomena but the new normal, bringing unresolved challenges concerning funding, organisation, and perhaps the very concepts of archives and records.

A common feature of libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) is that they maintain and develop collections. However, the content of the respective collections has changed and broadened over time. Public libraries increasingly deal with other media than books. Pictures and sound recordings have been incorporated more and more into archival collections. Museums have increasingly prioritized intangible cultural heritage. Furthermore, while LAMs have historically been associated with their collections, they have also come to encompass more than just their collections – for example, the use of dioramas and reconstructions in museums and the increased use of workshops, makerspaces, public debates, and other kinds of events in libraries. Key questions to be addressed are: In what ways and to what degree are modern-day LAMs constituted by their collections, and to what degree by other activities and media?

This chapter describes Scandinavian archival history as a history of adding new functions and groups of users to the archival practice. Up to the nineteenth century, the main purpose of the archives was to store records of legal and administrative value. Subsequently, the archive has been an important source of cultural heritage for historians. Genealogists have increased their use of archives, and community archiving has flourished. At the same time, the digital age with the further increase of information flows has led to increased challenges for the archival sector in its task of storing records for both longer and more limited time frames. The chapter discusses the archival legislation in the Scandinavian countries and sheds light on major discussions throughout the history of modern archives: How do archivists handle the inherent contradictions between the heritage and research-oriented aspects of archives, and the task of safeguarding records for contemporary purposes in order to keep evidence for the sake of transparency, legal purposes, and the proper management of organizations? Are archives in the former sense primarily a resource for academic research or for the growing number of user groups?

Jämtland in Northern Sweden is one of the most tourism and eventintense regions in the country. The rise in volume of events in alpine and subarctic nature environments, and the subsequent increase in participants, requires closer scrutiny of the environmental impacts.The region is characterised by mountains, forests and a sensitive ecological environment, and shared by several land users. With this study, we aim to gain in-depth knowledge of how environmental impacts are understood and valued in the regional assessment process for nature-based events and organised outdoor recreation.We analyse permit documents from the County Administrative Board of Jämtland from 2011 to 2020. The results show that most events were approved, and none were rejected solely due to environmental concerns. Assessments were instead balanced against other considerations, such as local development and economic gains. We argue that these priorities make nature a commercial arena for events, visitors and recreationists. This paper sheds light on human use and the associated environmental effects that further increase the pressure on nature. We end with managerial implications and propose that the permit process can be improved and integrated into spatial planning.

Case-studies of whether and how heritage can be used to bring about reconciliation. This volume explores one of the most critical issues of our time: whether heritage can contribute to a more peaceful society and future. It reflects a core belief that heritage can provide solutions to reconciling peoples and demonstrates the amount of significant work being carried out internationally. Based round the core themes of new and emerging ideas around heritage and peace, heritage and peace-building in practice, and heritage, peace-building and sites, the twenty contributions seek to raise perceptions and understanding of heritage-based peace-building practices. Responding to the emphasis placed on conflict, war and memorialization, they reflect exploratory yet significant steps towards reclaiming the history, theory, and practice of peacebuilding as serious issues for heritage in contemporary society. The geographical scope of the book includes contributions from Europe, notably the Balkans and Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Kenya. Diana Walters is an International Heritage Consultant and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter; Daniel Laven is Associate Professor of Human Geography, Department of Tourism Studies and Geography/European Tourism Research Institute (ETOUR), Mid Sweden University; Peter Davis is Emeritus Professor of Museology, Newcastle University. Contributors: Tatjana Cvjeticanin, Peter Davis, Jonathan Eaton, David Fleming, Seth Frankel, Timothy Gachanga, Alon Gelbman, Felicity Gibling, Will Glendinning, Elaine Heumann Gurian, Lejla Hadzic, Feras Hammami, Lotte Hughes, Bosse Lagerqvist, Daniel Laven, Bernadette Lynch, Elena Monicelli, Yongtanit Pimonsathean, Saleem H. Ali, Sultan Somjee, Peter Stone, Michèle Taylor, Peter van den Dungen, Alda Vezic, Jasper Visser, Diana Walters.

The structure and agendas of European research are undergoing a sea change. One example of this shift is the next multi-annual framework for research and innovation in Europe, Horizon 2020, which has proposed structuring research funding into interdisciplinary blocks defined in terms of “societal challenges.” A new role for the Social Sciences and Humanities is being envisaged within this forthcoming (eighth) framework, emphasizing greater prominence and integration of work from these areas in the overall organization of European research. Directly preceding the VIII NIES symposium in Pori, the Lithuanian Presidency of the EU has dedicated an entire conference, “Horizons for Social Sciences and Humanities,” to the goals of eliciting consultations from stakeholders within the European research community and advising the responsible European agencies on the shaping of Social Sciences and Humanities agendas in “Horizon 2020.” The main outcome of the meeting will be the “Vilnius Declaration on Horizons for Social Sciences and Humanities,” to presented by the EU Lithuanian Presidency to the European Commission before the framework undergoes final refinements leading up the program’s launch in 2014. A number of research interests and focuses are likely to be woven into the fabric of this declaration, and among these the emerging interdisciplinary area of the Environmental Humanities can and should be a significant component. To this end an alliance of strong European research centers and networks has been formed to identify and articulate the strategic challenges, goals and wider relevance of an emerging Environmental Humanities research community in Europe. Nordic researchers from a wide range of disciplines and study areas within the Humanities are playing a key role in the realization of this agenda, just as they have helped to lay the groundwork for this emerging research area. This talk traces the trajectory of Nordic research initiatives in the environmental humanities in recent years, highlighting in particular how an intensification of scholarly activity in the Nordic countries has contributed to the wider development of this field internationally. The state of the field is also addressed, both globally and within the European context.

The increasing visibility of an emergent Environmental Humanities research field offers evidence of a sea change in the very structure and agendas of international research, while also holding the promise of reintegrating the humanities in the scientific production of knowledge. Such a development could have some significant implications within the policy sphere, as well as for the struggling humanities domain more generally. Yet in many ways the Environmental Humanities remains far from a settled field. Drawing upon examples from European and wider global contexts, this talk traces a number of initiatives over the past several years that have served in some measure to clarify this developing field of study. The talk also offers a critique of some of the productive, and at times unproductive, tensions among competing visions of this emergent field that need to be resolved before the Environmental Humanities can realize the impacts many scholars now hope the field may achieve.

Research clusters within the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES), the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) and the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance (GHEA), in cooperation with partner networks in the USA, the UK and the Nordic countries, have undertaken a major interdisciplinary research initiative that aims to examine environmental memory in the medieval Icelandic sagas, with a prominent focus on historical processes of environmental change and adaptation. The medieval Sagas of Icelanders constitute one key corpus, among other literary and documentary corpora, to be investigated in this initiative. Anchored in traditional fields of study (e.g. saga studies and various medieval-studies fields) as well as newer and emerging fields (e.g. integrated history and historical ecology, ecocriticism, digital and environmental humanities, etc.), the initiative brings together literary scholars, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, geographers, digital humanities specialists and environmental and life scientists in a coordinated set of sub-projects. The initiative seeks to foreground evidence of changing environmental conditions in Iceland, Greenland and Scandinavia from the late Iron Age through the pre-Industrial period, with a guiding focus on long-term human ecodynamics and the relations among ecological change and adaptation, on the one hand, and resource management, social organization/conflict and resilience on the other. Numerous IEM workshops organized by NIES, NABO, GHEA and various university networks are taking place in 2013 in Sweden, Scotland and Iceland. This talk briefly sketches how this initiative began and how it has developed over the past year. More importantly, it looks ahead to where we expect IEM to be heading in the next year and beyond.

Keynote presentation on the Role of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Global Environmental Change (GEC) research delivered at the 2013 GHEA Open Workshop, University of Maryland, 4 Novmeber 2013.

Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas (IEM) is a major interdisciplinary research initiative examining environmental memory in the medieval Icelandic sagas. The initiative brings together teams of historians, literary scholars, archaeologists and geographers, as well as specialists in environmental sciences and medieval studies, to investigate long-term human ecodynamics and environmental change from the period of Iceland’s settlement in the Viking Age (AD 874-930) through the so-called Saga Age of the early and late medieval periods, and well into the long period of steady cooling in the Northern hemisphere popularly known as the Little Ice Age (AD 1350-1850). In her 1994 volume inaugurating the field of historical ecology Carole Crumley argued in favor of a “longitudinal” approach to the study of longue durée human ecodynamics. This approach takes a region as the focus for study and examines changing human-landscape-climate interactions through time in that particular place. IEM involves multiple frames of inquiry that are distinct yet cross-referential. Environmental change in Iceland during the late Iron Age and medieval period is investigated by physical environmental sciences. Just how known processes of environmental change and adaptation may have shaped medieval Icelandic sagas and their socio-environmental preoccupations is of great interest, yet just as interesting are other questions concerning how these sagas may in turn have shaped understandings of the past, cultural foundation narratives, environmental lore, local ecological knowledge etc. Enlisting environmental sciences and humanities scholarship in the common aim of framing and thereby better understanding nature, the IEM initiative excludes nothing as “post- interesting” or “pre-interesting.” Understanding Viking Age first settlement processes informs understanding of 18th century responses to climate change, and 19th century resource use informs understanding of archaeological patterns visible at first settlement a millennium earlier. There is much to gain from looking at pathways (and their divergences) from both ends, and a long millennial scale perspective is one of the key contributions that the study of past “completed experiments in human ecodynamics” can make to attempts to achieve future sustainability. IEM is a case study of the Integrated History and future of People on Earth initiative (IHOPE) led by the international project AIMES (Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System), a core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme; the initiative is co-sponsored by PAGES (Past Global Changes) and IHDP (The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change). This talk brings together two of the main coordinators from IEM’s sponsoring organizations, NIES and NABO, to reflect on the particular challenges, innovations and advances anticipated in this unprecedented undertaking of integrated science and scholarship, a new model for the scientific framing of nature.

This article explores how 'funeral' was articulated in Swedish newspapers during the Covid-19 pandemic and how such articulations relate to power and ideology. Articles from the six most prominent Swedish newspapers, published over 2 years, have been analyzed using critical discourse analysis and intersectionality. The study reveals three funeral discourses dominating during different periods of the pandemic: 'Funeral as a risk,' 'Funeral as an essential ritual,' and 'Funeral as a profession.' Altogether, the three discourses expose an ideal of 'the responsible mourner.' This rational woman follows the funeral restrictions and arranges a church funeral shortly after the death of a relative. The 'good funeral' is portrayed as a church funeral with physically present mourners, performed according to the deceased's will and in honor of the dead. The 'bad funeral,' described as the opposite of the 'good funeral,' dominates the understanding of the pandemic funeral situation.

This article aims to show how critical -feminist studies can improve research on funerals by contributing to a more complex understanding of ritualization and how it can be explored. The article discusses central issues within critical-feminist theory in relation to previous studies of funerals in Sweden and presents theoretical approaches that may improve the field of funeral studies.Intersectionality, queer phenomenology and ritual practice theory are introduced as ex amples of approaches that might help the researcher deal with questions of representation in research, rejection of othering and application of non-essentialism - central issues in critical -feminist theory. Critical-feminist studies may, for example, uncover intersections of power relations in the ritual field, reveal experiences of inclusion/exclusion and contribute to a relational and dynamic understanding of ritual practice. Thereby, they provide complex knowledge of funerals, essential for understanding their functions for individuals and societies in times of ritual change.

This article explores how Samuel Beckett’s use of music in his 1957 radio play Embers is linked to our understanding of the experience of memory and storytelling. It reconsiders how Beckett’s use of the radio medium both informs and is informed by his lifelong interest in music. Beckett’s well-known attitudes towards storytelling – his struggle to express, interest in ambiguity, and resistance to neat conclusions – are revisited with close attention paid to his attempt to express the ineffable. The article argues that Beckett’s simultaneous need for and resistance to storytelling finds its voice in the impossibility of describing music. It suggests that this implicit tension is essential not only in terms of listening to Embers, but also becomes an increasingly central and knotty element of Beckett’s creative process. Hence, the article claims that Beckett can be read alongside twentieth-century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Paul Hindemith. In its use of Theodor Adorno and Vladimir Jankélévitch, the analysis employs musicological readings of Beckett’s radio play to demonstrate how Beckett’s use of music complicates, rather than facilitates, our experience of memory and storytelling.