Heritage with cows. Conserving Nordic human and nonhuman animals
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: This paper takes a critical heritage approach to understanding the ways that the conservation of Nordic Mountain cows gets animated as a form of Nordic heritage. Today, Nordic Mountain cows are found in the Northern regions of Norway, Finland, and Sweden. Based on an archive of mediated material (websites, YouTube videos, and social media activism), policy documents as well as interviews with Nordic farm animal genetic resources directors, the paper analyzes how conservation becomes imagined. Viewing the conservation of Nordic Mountain cows as entangled with imaginaries of traditional ways of life, a Northern Nordic (endangered) landscape, and the potential for high quality, ethically sound Nordic heritage products; conservation gets imagined as a rescue technology preserving ‘native’ and ‘endangered’ breeds in the making of sustainable consumer goods and Nordic cultural heritage. The conservation of Nordic Mountain cows goes beyond the potentially endangered species, however, to the reiteration of Nordic exceptionalism and the promise of a pure (and white) Nordic biocultural refuge of human-nonhuman animal relations.
Author: Charlotte Kroløkke
Institution: University of Southern Denmark
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4285084609