Imagining Independence - Greenland's Postcolonial Politics of Comparison

This project shows how application, rejection and forgetting of categories for comparison closes off some futures, making others self-evident. Understanding more fully the paradoxes of comparing oneself variously to, i.a., indigenous peoples, to Nordic welfare states, and to small island development states will be a great chance for Greenland to rethink basic assumptions about where its society is heading.

For other stakeholders - NGOs, companies, and governments from Copenhagen via Reykjavik and Washington to Beijing - getting a better picture of what is important in Greenlandic politics will be valuable, when we all try to manouever the new Arctic that emerges from under the melting ice. If we get it right, and show how the politics of comparison work in the extreme Greenlandic case, chances are that we will open a new research agenda across disciplines on how the politics of comparison shape nation building in decolonization and similar periods of fundamental rethinking of identities.

Read more about the rationale of this project in Danish here.

The project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and will run from 2021 to 2024.

Ulrik Pram Gad, PhD, Senior Researcher, DIIS

Jeppe Strandsbjerg, PhD, Senior Researcher, DIIS

Klaus Georg Hansen, PhD, Senior Analyst, DIIS

Mette Simonsen Abilgaard, PhD, Associate Professor, AAU

Lill Rastad Bjørst, PhD, Associate Professor, AAU

Carina Ren, PhD, Associate Professor, AAU

Rikke Becker Jacobsen, PhD, Associate Professor, AAU

Astrid Nonbo Andersen, Senior Researcher, DIIS

Sophie Rud, Research Assistant, DIIS

Klaus Georg Hansen, "Typologi for visioner for Grønlands fremtid. Analyse af legitimitet og sammenligninger", Grønlandsk kultur- og samfundsforskning 2022-23: Ilisimatusarfik University of Greenland, 2023

Carina Ren, "To be or not to be like Iceland? (Ontological) Politics of comparison in Greenlandic tourism development", Polar Record, 2022

Lill Rastad Bjørst, "To Live Up to Our Name “Greenland”: Politics of Comparison in Greenland’s Green Transition"  (pdf), Artic Yearbook, 2022

Marc Jacobsen & Ulrik Pram Gad, Temaredaktørenes introduktion - Arktiske Relationer, i Økonomi & Politik, 2021.

Ulrik Pram Gad, Kan Grønland være andet end arktisk? Postkolonial sammenligningspolitik som forskningsdagsorden, i Økonomi og Politik 2021 (Arktiske relationer) 

Jeppe Strandsbjerg, Kortlægning og Suverænitet i Grønland, DIIS Report 2022 

Jaime DeSimone, Christopher Clarke, Andrea Kraj, Canada Kraj , Lill Rastad Bjørst, Sigríður Kristjánsdóttir, Anna Cecilia Krook Riekkola. A Green Transition in and for the Arctic (pdf), Fulbright Arctic Initiative III Policy Brief, 2023 

Lill Rastad Bjørst, Minen i Ivittuut, militærbasen i Kangilinnguit og livet i Arsuk - Sorg, minder, kulturmøder og (magt)relationer i Magt og autoritet i Grønland, 2023

Mette Simonsen Abildgaard & Carina Ren, The Arctic airport: Infrastructural pasts, presents and futures, 2023

Mette Simonsen Abildgaard, The Question of Icebergs: A Cryo-history of Arctic Submarine Cables (pdf), 2022

Mette Simonsen Abildgaard, Infrastructural conservatism and the development of Greenland’s tele- infrastructures, 2021

Mette Simonsen Abildgaard, Renegotiating cables: The development of Greenland’s tele-infrastructures, 2021

Mette Simonsen Abildgaard, The Northern Route: Arctic Infrastructural Promise and its Temporality, 2021.

• Project presentation at the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters (video in Danish) 
  9 December 2019
   
• Lecture events in cooperation with Folkeuniversitetet, AU, Campus Emdrup
  21 October 2020
   
• Lecture events in cooperation with Folkeuniversitetet, DOKK 1, Aarhus
  29 October 2020
   
• Podcast: “På nogle områder minder Grønland om et uland” - made in cooperation with Videnskab.dk
  23 October 2020
   
• Dedicated panel at ICASS X
  5-20 June 2021
   
• Project midway seminar at Greenland Science Week
  6-12 November 2021
   
• Foredrag: Grønland på vej mod selvstændighed?
  24 November 2021
   
• Presentation on Greenland's green transition and how the politics of comparison inform arctic futures at Dartmouth
  27 July 2022
   
• Lecture: Greenland in the green transition: A shift in the political discourse regarding Greenland’s development 
  20 September 2022
   
• Presentation on Greenland’s unique role in the green transition at Nordatlantens Brygge
  5 November 2022