In this episode we talk to Dr. Tone Huse about her article “Temporal displacement: colonial architecture and its contestation” where she explores and analyses the Danish state’s attempt to ‘modernize’ Kalaallit Nunaat (a.k.a. Greenland). She focuses on the technologies of urban planning and development as they merged with the colonial state. She explores how they attempted to assimilate the Indigenous population into a form of Danish welfare modernity through forced relocation into designated populations centres and the development of new forms of housing, but also how these attempts became subject to resistance and contestation. The article develops the concept of temporal displacement as a form of ‘a material politics of time’. We also had the chance to hear more about the wider project Urban Transformation in a Warming Arctic – The continued effects of Nordic colonialism in urban planning and development (UrbTrans) of which the article is a product of and the broader debate about the particularities of Nordic colonialism and their linkages to the welfare state.
Tone Huse is an Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She currently leads the UrbTrans research project, bringing together artists, practitioners and academics to explore the geographies and materialities of Nordic colonialism. Much of her research looks to place-making politics, economizations, and planning in Nuuk, Kalaallit Nunaat (a.k.a. Greenland). Her work spans historical as well as contemporary research, is radically interdisciplinary, and committed to experimenting with new means for interacting with broad publics. Huse is the author of three books, including Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City: Displacement, Ethnic Privileging and the Right to Stay Put (Ashgate 2014), and the most recent co-authored Nature Made Economy, co-authored with economic historian and professor in science and technology studies, Kristin Asdal.