Description
This contribution presents an inquiry into contemporary British Arctic culture. The paper is founded on the premise that policies do not appear out of thin air but are rather discursively constructed through layers of knowledge which contribute to social legitimacy. With a view to reconstructing what these layers comprise and what kind of policies are ultimately plausible as a result, the paper analyses a cross-section of contemporary Arctic discourses represented in different media, such as newspapers, TV programmes, and popular fiction that have addressed different British age groups over the last decade. By turning towards representations of the Arctic and its manifold issues in everyday culture, the paper adds a corrective dimension to the analyses of policy-making that focus on the role of government representations or think tanks, which prevail in Arctic policy commentary.
