Sverker Sörlin

KTH Royal Institute of Technology | KTH · Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

Brännstedt, Salö & Silow Kallenberg (eds.)

A common sense: The Anthropocene was originally understood by Crutzen as not only representing humanity’s influence on Earth’s geological record (he was well aware of earlier anthropogenic impacts), but also reflecting a system with physical characteristics that had, since widespread industrialization, departed from the prolonged, relatively stable...

It is well known that research quality notions vary across research fields. Despite this, humanities quality notions are often portrayed as deviant or particularly hard to grasp. To some extent, this has a historical explanation, as notions from within the humanities have not been the standards used in the development of research evaluation tools....

Despite its proven societal value, humanities knowledge tends to be marginalized in research policy; this has been a topic of debate for some time. In this chapter, we focus on the valorization of humanities knowledge, with the aim of comprehending the way this process engenders societal impact. We argue that historical impact stories offer an effe...

Better knowledge of the emergence and growth of the environmental humanities is important for the future direction and vitality of the field. In this article I argue, against a backdrop of a so far not so coherent historiography of the field, that it is possible to discern two complementary perspectives, one emphasizing internal factors within the...

The growth of sports and the increasing levels of participation, performance, and international competition are undeniable. This development has undoubtedly contributed to the tremendous growth of the sports economy during the last 100 years, as well as an impressive increase in results and performance levels in most sports. It is in turn linked to...

This book examines the logic of ‘faster, higher, and stronger’ and the techno-scientific revolution that has driven tremendous growth in the sports economy and in sport performance over the last 100 years. It asks whether this logic needs revisiting in the light of the climate crisis and sport’s environmental responsibilities.Drawing on multi-disci...

For decades, a post-Cold War narrative heralded a 'new Arctic', with melting ice and snow and accessible resources that would build sustainable communities. Today, large parts of the Arctic are still trapped in the path dependencies of past resource extraction. At the same time, the impetus for green transitions and a 'new industrialism' spell oppo...

For decades, a post-Cold War narrative heralded a 'new Arctic', with melting ice and snow and accessible resources that would build sustainable communities. Today, large parts of the Arctic are still trapped in the path dependencies of past resource extraction. At the same time, the impetus for green transitions and a 'new industrialism' spell oppo...

For decades, a post-Cold War narrative heralded a 'new Arctic', with melting ice and snow and accessible resources that would build sustainable communities. Today, large parts of the Arctic are still trapped in the path dependencies of past resource extraction. At the same time, the impetus for green transitions and a 'new industrialism' spell oppo...

For decades, a post-Cold War narrative heralded a 'new Arctic', with melting ice and snow and accessible resources that would build sustainable communities. Today, large parts of the Arctic are still trapped in the path dependencies of past resource extraction. At the same time, the impetus for green transitions and a 'new industrialism' spell oppo...

For decades, a post-Cold War narrative heralded a 'new Arctic', with melting ice and snow and accessible resources that would build sustainable communities. Today, large parts of the Arctic are still trapped in the path dependencies of past resource extraction. At the same time, the impetus for green transitions and a 'new industrialism' spell oppo...

For decades, a post-Cold War narrative heralded a 'new Arctic', with melting ice and snow and accessible resources that would build sustainable communities. Today, large parts of the Arctic are still trapped in the path dependencies of past resource extraction. At the same time, the impetus for green transitions and a 'new industrialism' spell oppo...

For decades, a post-Cold War narrative heralded a 'new Arctic', with melting ice and snow and accessible resources that would build sustainable communities. Today, large parts of the Arctic are still trapped in the path dependencies of past resource extraction. At the same time, the impetus for green transitions and a 'new industrialism' spell oppo...

Ice humanities is a pioneering collection of essays that tackles the existential crisis posed by the planet's diminishing ice reserves. By the end of this century, we will likely be facing a world where sea ice no longer reliably forms in large areas of the Arctic Ocean, where glaciers have not just retreated but disappeared, where ice sheets colla...

This article discusses David Lowenthal's last book, Quest for the Unity of Knowledge, which was published posthumously by Routledge in 2019 (available in print from November 2018). The book is based on a series of lectures that he gave while a visiting fellow with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology’s Environmental Humanities Laboratory in Stockh...

Rapporten utgör Klimatpolitiska rådets fjärde årliga utvärdering av regeringens samlade politik i förhållande till klimatmålen.

Can walking trails be understood not only as routes to history and heritage, but also as heritage in and of themselves? The paper explores the articulation of trails as a distinct landscape and mobility heritage, bridging the nature-culture divide and building on physical and intellectual movements over time. The authors aim to contribute to a bett...

The “Arctic Uchronotopias” special issue of Polar Record is an important contribution to scholarly reflection on resource extraction. The ideas, perspectives, and empirical cases that we encounter have significance for extractivism wherever it takes place, both inside and outside of the Arctic region. To see extractivism through an Arctic lens is p...

Fredman, Peter; Sandell, Klas; Stenseke, Marie & Sörlin, Sverker 2021. Pandemin har visat att vi behöver stärka friluftslivet. -Dagens Nyheter, Debatt, 21-06-27

This is the Swedish Climate Policy Council 3rd annual evaluation of the Swedish government's overall design of policies to achieve Sweden’s climate goals. The report is in Swedish, but will be translated into English shortly. This is a summary of the content: Greenhouse gas emissions decreased somewhat more in 2019 than in preceding years, but sti...

Introduction and list of content, this book: https://www.dialogosforlag.se/bocker/samhallsfragor/humanvetenskapernas-verkningar.html

Universitetsläraren 1: 36-37

Emerging after World War II “the environment” as a modern concept turned in the years around 1970 into a phase of institutionalization in science, civic society, and politics. Part of this was the foundation of journals. The majority became “environmental specialist journals”, typically based in established disciplines. Some became “environmental g...

The Anthropocene concept frames an emerging new understanding of the human–Earth relationship. It represents a profound temporal integration that brings historical periodization on a par with geological time and creates entanglements between timescales that were previously seen as detached. Because the Anthropocene gets this role of a unifying plan...

Resource extraction is an old tradition in the Arctic region and shows a variable historical pattern although with a long-term upward trend that has accelerated in recent decades. This development stands in a complicated relationship to local Arctic communities. They are rarely the prime drivers of the growth in extraction industries. Nonetheless,...

Torsten Hägerstrand explored innovation and diffusion as chorological processes but also as chronological processes. His strong interest in time brought him closer to the field of history which he saw as a key dimension of geography. His early work was founded on detailed studies of regional migration and innovation in the nineteenth and twentieth...

This report is the Climate Policy Council’s annual assessment of the Government’s overall work to achieve Sweden’s climate targets. It includes an update of developments in Sweden over the past year and an assessment of the Government’s Climate policy action plan, as required of the Council under our terms of reference. The report is the third annu...

Denna rapport är Klimatpolitiska rådets årliga utvärdering av regeringens samlade politik i förhållande till Sveriges klimatmål. Den innehåller en uppdatering av utvecklingen i Sverige under det senaste året och den bedömning av regeringens klimatpolitiska handlingsplan som rådet ska lämna enligt vår instruktion. This report is the Swedish Climate...

Notions of research quality are contextual in many respects: they vary between fields of research, between review contexts and between policy contexts. Yet, the role of these co-existing notions in research, and in research policy, is poorly understood. In this paper we offer a novel framework to study and understand research quality across three k...

In Western culture, oceans have traditionally been perceived as timeless, separate from society and practically boundless in resources and absorptive capacity. As a result, the entangled histories of people and marine environments have largely been neglected in historical research. This is changing with the development of marine environmental histo...

This article provides the first international overview and detailed discussion of teaching in the environmental humanities (EH). It is divided into three parts. The first offers a series of regional overviews: where, when, and how EH teaching is taking place. This part highlights some key regional variability in the uptake of teaching in this area,...

Before the mid-twentieth century, there was no comprehensive narrative about empirical conditions in Swedish seas. Around 1970, this view changed profoundly. In line with growing research and the emergence of ‘the environment’ as a defining concept, conditions in Swedish seas were framed as a ‘narrative of decline’. Marine scientists have since rec...

Before the mid-twentieth century, there was no comprehensive narrative about empirical conditions in Swedish seas. Around 1970, this view changed profoundly. In line with growing research and the emergence of ‘the environment’ as a defining concept, conditions in Swedish seas were framed as a ‘narrative of decline’. Marine scientists have since rec...

The Swedish Climate Policy Council was formed on 1 January 2018 as part of Sweden’s climate policy framework, which had been adopted the previous year by an overwhelming majority in the Riksdag (the Swedish Parliament). The council was tasked with evaluating how well the Government’s comprehensive policy is aligned with the climate goals establishe...

Case studies from cities on five continents demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The global discourse around urban ecology tends to homogenize and universalize, relying on such terms as “smart cities,” “eco-cities,” and “resilience,” and proposing a “science of cities” based largely on information from the...

Case studies from cities on five continents demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The global discourse around urban ecology tends to homogenize and universalize, relying on such terms as “smart cities,” “eco-cities,” and “resilience,” and proposing a “science of cities” based largely on information from the...

Case studies from cities on five continents demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The global discourse around urban ecology tends to homogenize and universalize, relying on such terms as “smart cities,” “eco-cities,” and “resilience,” and proposing a “science of cities” based largely on information from the...

Case studies from cities on five continents demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The global discourse around urban ecology tends to homogenize and universalize, relying on such terms as “smart cities,” “eco-cities,” and “resilience,” and proposing a “science of cities” based largely on information from the...

Sverker Sörlin lauds an integrative history of remote Beringia, revealing the cost of overexploitation in fragile ecologies. Sverker Sörlin lauds an integrative history of remote Beringia, revealing the cost of overexploitation in fragile ecologies. Partial ice coverage over the Bering Strait.

This report (in Swedish) is the Swedish Climate Council's first evaluation in 2019 of the extent to which the Swedish Government's policy is in line with the adopted Climate Law by Parliament. The report scrutinizes both general policymaking, and transport policy in particular. Here is a summary in English: Sweden’s overarching climate target is to...

The central proposal of this article is that environing technologies shape and structure the way in which nature becomes environment, and as such used, perceived and understood. The argument builds on the understanding that environment is the result of human intervention. Technology is here understood broadly as a terraforming practise, materially...

This introduction to a special issue of Climatic Change argues that it is timely and welcome to intensify historical research into climate change and climate as factors of history. This is also already an ongoing trend in many disciplines. The article identifies two main strands in historical work on climate change, both multi-disciplinary: one tha...

After online publication of the Editorial, it was deemed that two clarifications would be beneficial to the scholarly utility of the Introduction.

This concluding chapter argues that in recent times Arctic historiography has turned to the writing of “future histories” of the Arctic. Arctic historiography has undergone a naturalizing turn and tipped heavily towards observations of contemporary trends in climate change and the ambition to develop minerals and fossil fuel resources. This has not...

This report presents results and conclusions from the research project “Negotiating pathways to multifunctional landscapes - a pilot model in the Jämtland Mountains”, funded by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the research initiative "Storslagen fjällsmiljö" (www.storslagnafjall.se). As the title of the project suggests, of central i...

Global urbanization promises better services, stronger economies, and more connections; it also carries risks and unforeseeable consequences. To deepen our understanding of this complex process and its importance for global sustainability, we need to build interdisciplinary knowledge around a systems approach. Urban Planet takes an integrative look...

Global urbanization promises better services, stronger economies, and more connections; it also carries risks and unforeseeable consequences. To deepen our understanding of this complex process and its importance for global sustainability, we need to build interdisciplinary knowledge around a systems approach. Urban Planet takes an integrative look...

This is the first report by the Swedish Climate Expert Council, which describes the Swedish Climate Policy Framework in effect from 1 January 2018 and the tasks ahead for the Climate Expert Council.

In The Pasteurization of France, Bruno Latour argued that the rise of hygiene was dependent on collaboration between Pasteur, the hygiene movement, scientists and others. He also pointed at the importance of obligatory passage points such as the Pasteurian laboratory, to ensure the scientization and rationalization of hygiene. This article argues t...

This article examines the short history of scientific decision-making and expertise in deliberations about the validity of the term ‘Anthropocene’ by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Contrary to fears that the Anthropocene debates constitute a politicisation of proper scientific practice, it argues that periodisation and categorisation...

This article examines the short history of scientific decision-making and expertise in deliberations about the validity of the term ‘Anthropocene’ by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Contrary to fears that the Anthropocene debates constitute a politicisation of proper scientific practice, it argues that periodisation and categorisation...

The future is a common theme in discussions of the Arctic, whether in media, policy, or scientific communications. The future is not a given, and there are several possible futures that different actors strive to enable at any given time. At present considerable attention is given to monolithic “drivers” of change in this region, including melting...

A collection of articles on working life and research policy in Sweden. There is a separate document in Swedish with chapter abstracts in english

On Hometaking This article analyzes a topic within the field of historical study of scientific travel: hometaking, i.e. the taking home (by collecting, purchase, qonquest, theft or otherwise) of objects (artifacts, specimens, goods or other items) to, typically, the centers of learning and power located in the home countries of scientists, explorer...

In the end, landscape turned out to be a concept almost entirely devoid of content. At worst a bad painting, at best a settled area, a stretch of native soil, in which the co-operative farmers’ movement could mobilise support, or which it could protect, using arguments drawn from the cultural history of land cultivation. And then, gradually, but al...

Developing a systematic 'science of the past' to create our future”, Global Environmental Change 20(2010):3, pp. 423-425.

The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system. Here, we revise and update the planetary boundary framework, with a focus on the underpinning biophysical science, based on targeted input from expert research communities and o...

We have reached a ‘cryo-historical’ moment - cryo signifying ice and snow, directing our attention to the historical powers of human forcing in the Anthropocene. This is a moment that demonstrates humanity’s hegemony over Earth as manifested in a retreat of one of its elements as a result of human action. This paper presents a brief history of know...

Calls for more broad-based, integrated, useful knowledge now abound in the world of global environmental change science. They evidence many scientists' desire to help humanity confront the momentous biophysical implications of its own actions. But they also reveal a limited conception of social science and virtually ignore the humanities. They ther...

Argument The Scandinavian countries share a solid reputation as longstanding contributors to top level Arctic research. This received view, however, veils some deep-seated contrasts in the ways that Sweden, Norway, and Denmark have conducted research in the Arctic and the North Atlantic. In this paper it is argued that instead of focusing on the ge...