Paper short abstract:

Analyzing two of the numerous parking lots along the main roads in the vast but densely populated, county of Finnmark, Northern Norway, this paper demonstrates the co-dwelling and relation to landscape as task-scapes, by different forms of mobilities in the area.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I analyze the interaction between landscape and different categories of people and how co-dwelling is created in the sub-arctic county of Finnmark, Northern Norway. As a vast but densely populated area, mobility is important for how the landscape is formed and how the landscape form practices and co-dwelling. Based on Ingold and Kurtilla's emphasis on "people's practical engagement with the environment" (2000: 192) and Bissel's stress on an ontology where "mobility itself gives rise to different kinds of proximity" (2013: 352), I analyze how the mobilities and practices of different groups like anglers, hunters, gatherers, reindeer herders and tourists interact with each other and the landscape, the latter also shaping this interaction. Thereby, the analysis is also a critique of what Malkki (1992: 31) has labelled a Sedentarist Metaphysics that forefront a concern for and emphasis on existing close relationships and bounded units, and what Hannerz (1980: 201) has claimed as a tendency in social sciences to 'disregard near non-relationships'.

Bissell, David (2013) Pointless Mobilities: Rethinking Proximities Through the Loops of Neighbourhood. Mobilities 8(3), 349-367.

Hannerz, Ulf (1980) Exploring the City. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ingold, T. and Kurttila, T. (2000) Perceiving the environment in Finnish Lapland. Body & Society 6(3-4), 183-196.

Malkki, Liisa, 1992. National geographic: the rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7 (1), 24-44.