New book: Norske hytter i endring

I have a new book coming out this month with Tapir Academic Press, edited together with Helen Jøsok Gansmo and Thomas Berker, two good colleagues from my former university. The book is titled “Norske hytter i endring – om bærekraft og behag” and is a collection of articles about the Norwegian leisure cabin. We wished to explore the many facets of contemporary cabin lifestyles and their historical roots by looking at the interplay between nature, society, leisure, and technology. While the editors all have a background in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), the book has contributors from a range of fields, including history, sociology, architecture, and literature studies.

Swarm Scholarship

The idea for the book came out of a workshop that I arranged in 2009, where a group of researchers visited a big leisure cabin trade fair in Trondheim to observe, interview, and gather data. When organizing the workshop I was heavily influenced by Josh Greenberg’s idea of “swarm scholarship” from 2007. I see now that Social Identity published a theme issue on swarm scholarship and methodology in 2009, just a few months after our workshop – it looks very interesting, but since the articles are behind a paywall and none of the universities I’m affiliated with subscribe to this journal, it’s hard for me to actually look at them. The method worked quite well for us, where we met for discussion both before and after going to the trade show, as well as live blogging about our observations (in Norwegian and Danish only, sorry). I did also write up a blog post on swarm scholarship that I posted to forskning.no,  the Nordic countries’ largest online news service covering Norwegian and international research (I think the blog had approximately 180,000 unique visitors every month at the time).

I think the most interesting result of the workshop was the feeling of working together on exploring something in an academic context. We spend far too much time alone with our own ideas (or lack thereof), so I greatly enjoy working with others.

Table of contents

Hyttedrømmen mellom hjem, fritid og natur
Thomas Berker, Helen Jøsok Gansmo og Finn Arne Jørgensen

«Det egentlige Norge» – hytter i norsk litteratur, ca. 1814–2005
Ellen Rees

Den første hyttekrisa. Samfunnsplanlegging, naturbilder og
Allmenningens tragedie
Finn Arne Jørgensen

Drømmen om det enkle liv – et grunnlag for mer bærekraftig hyttekultur? 
Eli Støa, Bendik Manum og Margrethe Aune

Med barn på hytta – energikrevende rekreasjon
Tove Krogstad Johnsen

Hyttemobilitet som kulturfenomen 
Knut Hidle og Winfried Ellingsen

Hyttebruk og miljø: en arena for nøysomhet eller overforbruk?
Carlo Aall

Frihet i ei lita hytte? Energiforbrukets sosiotekniske aktører 
Helen Jøsok Gansmo og Thomas Berker

Hytter og vernet fjellnatur. Status, problemer og mulige løsninger 
Einar Stamnes

Bærekraftig urbanisering? Endringer i den norske hyttekulturen 
Thomas Berker og Helen Jøsok Gansmo