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We examine how the settlement of Europeans in the Americas was shaped by colonial processes. We specifically discuss the role of Swedish migrants in relation to processes of settlement in the border regions between Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia during the beginning of the twentieth century. We focus on migrants who settled in different parts of northern Argentina, becoming small-scale farmers or cattle ranchers. Based on an analysis of migration narratives and archival work, we compare settler strategies and socioeconomic positions and discuss how the migrants were affected by structural factors, such as state policies on immigration and land tenure, as well as contrasting models for agriculture and livestock production. We find that although conditioned by these factors, their settlement differed in terms of premigration networks, community building, type of mobility, and settlement depictions. We argue that in our cases, migrants became settlers, however the complicity with colonizing agents is dissimilar.

This article examines the narrated memory of a Swedish settler colony in northeast Argentina. Recently, scholarly attention has turned to how migrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed to colonizing processes in the Americas as they established themselves on lands already inhabited by Indigenous Peoples. The settlement of Swedish migrants in Misiones is here regarded as part of a strategy of settler colonialism advocated by the Argentine state in order to extend the agrarian frontier further and thereby ‘civilise’ and secure the nation’s rural landscape through the presence of white settlers. From this perspective, the aim of the article is to understand how the historical macropolitical framework of settler colonialism in Argentina is interwoven in the collective and individual narratives of Swedish descendants in present-day Misiones. The article draws on ethnographic interviews and observations made in Misiones between 2017 and 2019. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 individuals along with walk-along observations at seven Swedish community sites. The article argues that a central narrative of memory among the descendants of Swedish settlers relies upon certain elements crucial to settler colonial societies. However, while this narrative structure is intrinsic to settler colonialism, it must also be analysed as part of a migration narrative. This article brings forth new empirical material from a site in Latin America where Swedish migration history has not previously been studied ethnographically. Further, it brings the study of migration, colonial settlement, and indigenous dispossession together through its analysis of a settler narrative in the particular context of settler colonial history of Misiones.

Den här rapporten är ett resultat från forskningsprojektet ”Mobiliserade byar:hur lokalsamhällen agerade under skogsbränderna 2018 och omorienterar sig motframtiden”, finansierat av FORMAS 2020–2022, förlagt till Umeå universitet. Vi hargjort intervjuer med boende och verksamma som deltog i räddningsinsatsernaeller var aktiva på andra sätt i skogsbränderna på tre orter i regionerna Gävleborg,Dalarna och Jämtland. Förutom det har vi arrangerat offentliga berättarkvällarmed fritt deltagande, på alla orter vi undersökt, vilket har gett värdefull feedbackpå våra preliminära resultat. Projektet avslutades med en samverkanskonferensi Järvsö hösten 2022, där nya nyckelpersoner och funktioner deltog och därstudiens resultat processades ytterligare. Samtliga deltagare i dessa aktiviteterhar bidragit frikostigt med sina erfarenheter och många har också haft materialsom de ställt till vårt förfogande. Vi vill tacka alla dessa personer för derasengagemang och tid.

The article explores 'off the grid' representations in social media, with a focus on how these representations reproduce imaginaries of nature, place and gender. The analysis material consists of content produced by three influencers who left urban life for a simpler lifestyle in northern Sweden. We find that the social media content draws on numerous ideals: neoliberal ideals on digital entrepreneurship, anti-capitalist ideals on ‘escaping’ modern consumerist society and romantic (sometimes colonial) envisioning of northern Sweden as wild and empty land. We conclude that the ‘off grid’ social media representations and the various ideals they incorporate should be understood as expressions of a contemporary era of neoliberal romanticism: a trend that exists both online and offline.

This paper describes the history of the rural labor movement in Sweden and its specific popular adult education through life stories. The project centers on the author’s father’s narrated memories of his childhood and the farmhand Erik Eriksson, called Ecke (1903-1996). Ecke was a rural worker with just a few years of schooling who was organized in the Swedish popular education movement for workers at his time. Through his dedication he changed the social aspirations for rural workers’ children in the area, amongst them the author’s own father. The paper draws on a walk along interviews with the author’s father, in order to examine how memory, place and social mobility are interlaced when visiting the interviewee´s childhood homes and remembering Ecke and his deed. 

In this article, we analyse how the relationship between humans and other species is portrayed in contemporary films and series that have the rise and fall of civilization as their theme: Into the Wild (2007), The Revenant (2015), Into the Forest (2015) and The Walking Dead (2010-). The purpose is to understand how relationships between humans, animals and non-humans are portrayed. The films/series have been chosen on the basis of their portrayal of social downfall or social dissatisfaction and on the grounds that they are also widely recognised and popular portrayals. The analysis focuses on two male characters (The Revenant, Into the Wild) and two female characters (Into the Forest and The Walking Dead) to investigate relationships between humans and other species (animals and zombies) when it comes to survival, and how these relationships are possibly conditioned by gender. Methodologically, we approach these popular cultural depictions as ethnographers, with human meaning-making as the primary point of departure. Theoretically, we use concepts developed in the field of human-animal studies.   The analysis shows that there are differences between the representations of different species and that these representations are also conditioned by gender in the human characters. Where men are alone in their struggle against nature, women are part of social relationships where they, together with others (human and non-human), struggle to survive. The analysis further shows how animals and other species constantly condition and enable human existence. However, lacking human language, the animals – who are absolutely vital for the actions and survival of the human characters – are rendered unimportant.