NA - Citizenship and Local Development in the North

This project aims at re-establishing and expanding the close links that developed between Canadian and Norwegian social scientists operating in a multi-disciplinary mode, but with a clear focus on local level development processes in the Northern areas. T he works by Robert Paine, Ottar Brox and Cato Wadel from the 1960s and 1970s depicted the Northern areas as underway to an integration into the modern welfare state and to the age of industry. Today, the local scene has undergone dramatic changes. The pre dicted exodus from smaller municipalities in the wake of modernity has not occurred, even though most places in the periphery are suffering population decline. Places persist more or less as viable environments, some even prosper, but now by combining new elements to provide viable living conditions. The linking of marginal places to the overall welfare state arrangements is part of the picture, but new identities and indigenous people?s self-assertion also play a role. In the recent Arctic Human Developm ent Report (Arctic Council 2004) however, the role of local democratic government in the marginal areas is underlined. To stimulate comparative study of the local level governance in the North, the plan is to establish links between researchers in Northe rn Norway, and Universities in Canada. Contacts have so far been established with Prof. R. Apostle at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Prof. Chris. Southcott of Lakeside University, Thunder Bay, and Professors Barbara Neiss and. Peter Sinclair, Memorial Un iversity, St. Johns. An informal planning meeting has been scheduled to take place in late March 2006 in Halifax. Here, plan for two workshops, one on each side of the Atlantic, will be planned. These workshops will be linked up to relevant ongoing resear ch projects in Canada and in the Nordic countries, with the aim of stimulating further project development involving trans-Atlantic participation.