Åmund Norum Resløkken

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2025). Waiting for the Noösphere: The cultural history in Crutzen’s and Stoermer’s ‘The “Anthropocene”’. In Bjærke, Marit Ruge; Brenna, Brita; Ekström, Anders & Ødemark, John (Ed.), Cultural History and the Anthropocene: Old turns, new encounters. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781350532632. p. 289–303. doi: 10.5040/9781350532632.ch-017. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter is a narrative analysis of Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer’s ‘The “Anthropocene”’ (2000). This text is often considered the text which coined the Anthropocene epoch. In the chapter, ‘The “Anthropocene”’ is read as a script for cultural action, drawing attention to the ideas of culture and history present in it. Of greatest concern in the chapter is Crutzen and Stoermer’s utilization of the concept ‘the noösphere’. The chapter argues that the noösphere is a crucial turning point in the narrative in ‘The “Antropocene”’, with important consequences for how cultural history can be perceived in relation to Crutzen and Stoermer’s epoch. The Anthropocene is the proposed name of a geological epoch. Epochs, in the same way as historical periods, function as discrete packages of time that also provide meaning to the actors and events within them. The Anthropocene, in the same way as other periods, has its origin, its driving forces and some end-point. Cultural historians can study the formation of periods in much the same way as narratives are studied. In fact, every epoch, every historical period, contains what the narratologist Mieke Bal has called a fabula, a series of chronologically ordered events that can be worked into stories (Bal 2009: 5–9). Historical periods contain a fabula because there is already a structure present when time and place are cut out and packaged into a discrete unit. In every event, moreover, for them to be part of a series that develops over time, something must happen. And for something to happen there must be agents of change, someone or something that does something and thus changes something. In terms of narrative theory, these agents are often referred to as actors (ibid.: 189). Events also need to happen somewhere, in a place, large or small, but every action must take place somewhere (ibid.: 219). We can map these four, events, actors, time and place, onto every epoch and historical period. They have events marking a beginning, events marking an end, there are significant actors, as opposed to all those entities and things that only make up the background of the story. For the cultural historian, the significance of such stories lies not so much in what these stories frame, as in how they have come to be. What I want to emphasize in this chapter, then, is an origin. I want to discuss how ‘the Anthropocene’ entered the stage of debate, as well as some of the elements of the story of the Anthropocene contained at that point.

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2025). Om grønlendernes immaterielle sjel: Overtro som kulturoversettelse og vitenskapskritikk på 1700-tallet. Tidsskrift for kulturforskning. ISSN 1502-7473. 24(2), p. 67–82. doi: https:/ojs.novus.no/index.php/TFK/article/view/2488. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article presents a close reading of the concept of the soul as shown in the Greenland Missionary Poul Egede’s 1741 book Continuation af Relationerne Betreffende den Grønlandske Missions Tilstand Og Beskaffenhed and how the concept is utilized in contemporary ethnographic works on the greenlanders and their ‘superstition’ and ‘religion’. The article argues that Poul Egede’s translation of key kalaallisut words and their utilization as showing superstitious practices can be understood considering the natural philosophical debates of its time, where the notions of ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ were concepts of paramount concern. Further, the article presents an argument that ‘superstitio’ – as it was understood in the 16th century – draws on these debates, which in turn informed Poul Egede’s translations and the subsequent image of an Inuit conception of the soul.

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2024). Nature Spirits and Non-humans. Symmetry and Translations of Genre in New Animism, The Sociology of Translation and the Politics of Sustainability Explorations Across Cultures and Natures. Routledge. ISSN 9781032257914. p. 86–111. doi: 10.4324/9781003285038-7. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter explores the consequences of an insistence on the symmetrical relation between human and non-human actors, as it occurs in the discussions on ‘New Animism’. ‘New Animism’ is a cluster of theories in anthropology and related fields that seeks to reframe the old notion of animism as a relationship to non-humans in the environment of humans, and find a language with which to speak about these relations within academic and public debate. The chapter argues that the translations occurring in the reframing of animism hide an important asymmetry between narrative genres, which is where the entities denoted as non-humans in texts of New Animism occur as actors. Furthermore, the chapter argues that in hiding genres from the translations of practices and interpretations understood as Animism, New Animism lacks a theoretical framework for translating the ‘animist’ relationship to the environment fully into contemporary discourses on sustainability and sustainable action. Although the concepts of human and non-human actors foster respect for other types of relationships to the environment, the translations made in texts of New Animism do not provide examples with which to imagine new kinds of sustainable relationships needed to foster political action.

• Steuernagel, Carolina Borges Rau; Resløkken, Åmund Norum & Lillehagen, Ida (2024). On Becoming Microbes and People with Texts. Moving Academic Writing Toward Responsible Agency, The Sociology of Translation and the Politics of Sustainability, Explorations Across Cultures and Natures. Routledge. ISSN 9781003285038. p. 112–138. doi: 10.4324/9781003285038-8. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter explores how academic textual production may be understood as a practice of responsible agency, through a dialogue between two scholarly texts about microbes. The first emphasizes the discovery of bacteria, suggesting an asymmetry between humans and nature. The second emphasizes the production of bacterial resistance to drugs, inscribing a symmetric interdependence between humans and nature. By exploring these two texts, the chapter outlines two contrasting ways in which microbes and authors are inscribed as actors in the texts. Ironically, these explorations also work to multiply, complement, attenuate, and fuse inscribed agency, outlining modalities of response through the practice of crafting texts as artefacts. The chapter argues that agency, both as textual device and as responses inscribed through reinterpretation, must be treated as a kind of chimerism, which, as a consequence, means that agency is emergent, and that the ability to respond through the demands elicited by scientific text production has the prime responsibility for translating worlds to words.

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum & Ødemark, John (2024). Narrating Non-Human Agency The ‘ANT Account’ and the Literary Prehistory of the Actant, The Sociology of Translation and the Politics of Sustainability Explorations Across Cultures and Natures. Routledge. ISSN 9781032257914. p. 65–86. doi: 10.4324/9781003285038. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter examines the construction of agency in the Sociology of Translation. The chapter examines how a place for non-human agency was forged by a turn to semiotics, narratology, and literary poetics. It is argued that the symmetric notion of agency is dependent on a specific genre, which we call the ‘ANT account’, a narrative genre devised to capture the agency of non-human actors—the trademark of the Sociology of Translation. To account for the formation of a specific notion of agency operating within the Sociology of Translation, a close reading of one of the seminal texts within the genre, Michel Callon's Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay (1986) is performed. Moreover, the chapter examines the intertextual links behind Callon's development of a generalized symmetry of ‘actors’, and the specific construal of agency it works with—as well as Latour's later reconfiguration of the actant.

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2022). Objects, traditions, and the hermeneutics of Viking heritage. Nordisk Museologi. ISSN 1103-8152. 34(2), p. 56–72. doi: 10.5617/nm.10071. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article discusses the work that Vestfold and Telemark County in Norway has performed to consolidate its heritage actors and institutions under the umbrella of “Viking Age heritage” and the role digital tools have played in this effort. The article’s focus revolves around an analysis of an introductory digital installation at the Midgard Viking Centre at Borre in Horten municipality and how that installation communicates ideas about the Vikings and the Viking Age in terms of Viking heritage. The article argues that at the Borre site, Viking Age heritage is explained using interpretive registers assumed by the visitors, which in turn the visitors use to renegotiate the value of Vikings and the Viking Age through a hermeneutical process. This, in turn, frames the Viking and the Viking Age as heritage. The article further argues that this process hinges on registers of both material archaeological artifacts and immaterial “tradition,” two relations to the past that activate different registers of historical knowledge and that are sought to be conflated in the Viking Age effort.

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum; Henrichsen, Gina Fraas & Ødemark, John (2022). "Once Upon a Time" Fairytales and the Translation of Mindfulness in Whereever you go, There You Are. Ethnologia Scandinavica. A Journal for Nordic Ethnology. ISSN 0348-9698. 52, p. 132–144. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2021). The Soul of the Arctic: David Cranz's Account of the Religion or Superstitions of the Greenlanders and its Impact on Nineteenth-Century Descriptions of Religion in Greenland. In Jensz, Felicity & Petterson, Christina (Ed.), Legacies of David Cranz's 'Historie von Grönland' (1765). Palgrave Macmillan. ISSN 9783030639976. p. 185–205. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-63998_9. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2020). ‘Djevelens finger’ – en forbannelses iscenesettelse på Hamar. Tidsskrift for kulturforskning. ISSN 1502-7473. 19(2), p. 67–86. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article discusses the agency of a museum object, ‘Djevelens finger’ (The Devil’s finger), a model of a finger from the middle ages exhibited in the Domkirkeodden museum, Hamar. The finger has a story of a curse connected to it, a story that to a large degree gives it its agency. In discussing this object through Ervin Goffman’s ‘frame analysis’ and Karen Barad’s ‘intra–active framework’ I show how the notion of agency given to it, as an example of ‘modern superstition’, is framed by an oscillation between different frameworks and is thus given meaning, in the same move, through different notions of cause and effect.

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2020). Crystallized Belief. Objects of Tradition in Folklife Research in the Inter-War Years. Ethnologia Scandinavica. A Journal for Nordic Ethnology. ISSN 0348-9698. 50, p. 5–20. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2018). Troen på folketro. Perspektiver fra ANT i folkloristisk forskning. Tidsskrift for kulturforskning. ISSN 1502-7473. 17(2), p. 27–43. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article is discussing how approaches from Actor-Network theory (ANT) may contribute to the field of folkloristics. I argue that perspectives from ANT can be used in order to better understand the field of folk belief. If the semiotic origin of ANT is not forgotten, it is possible to use the theory as a method to explore how objects are made into signs of belief, and that this can give valuable information on the construction of the objects of folklore studies. Based on Dorothy Noyes notion of a «humble theory» in folkloristics, I argue that perspectives from ANT can analytically unify folkloristic objects «divided» between academia, archives and public practice, by focusing on the relations between them. Further, I discuss Bruno Latour’s notions of «the factish», and «belief in belief» as ways of analytically opening the storied objects of folklore. Finally, I present Anna Tsing’s notion of «worlding» and how it can modify Latours notions and make us see the relational nature of the folkloristic objects, and that this can help us understand folk belief analytically as part of the objects themselves more than a context the objects are present in.

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2018). Capturing the Christmas goat: The collection of folk customs in three questionnaires in the early twentieth century. In Harvilahti, Lauri; Kjus, Audun; O'Carroll, Clíona; Österlund-Pötzsch, Susanne; Skott, Fredrik & Treija, Rita (Ed.), Visions and Traditions. Knowledge Prodution and Tradition Archives. Academia Scientiarum Fennica. ISSN 9789514111266. p. 101–121. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2016). En litteraturoversikt over den tidlige skandinaviske herrnhutismen. In Wachenfeldt, Per von & Ahlberger, Christer (Ed.), Den glömda kyrkan; om Herrnhutismen i Skandinavien. Artos & Norma bokförlag. ISSN 9789175807966. p. 163–181. Full text in Research Archive
• Ødemark, John & Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2015). I korndemonens bilde – antropologisk erkjennelse, materialitet og temporalitet i utstillingen av «gammel folketro» på Norsk folkemuseum (1938). Tidsskrift for kulturforskning. ISSN 1502-7473. 14(2), p. 62–86. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2014). «Svarteboka» – En ældgammel skreven bog fra det 13. aarhundrede. Forhandlinger om opprinnelse og forfatterskap. In Esborg, Line & Johannsen, Dirk (Ed.), "En vild endevending av al virkelighet" - Norsk Folkeminnesamling i hundre år. Novus Forlag. ISSN 9788270997725. p. 197–206. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA

• Ødemark, John; Resløkken, Åmund Norum; Lillehagen, Ida & Engebretsen, Eivind (2024). The Sociology of Translation and the Politics of Sustainability, Explorations Across Cultures and Natures. Routledge. ISBN 9781003285038. 240 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Ødemark, John; Resløkken, Åmund Norum; Lillehagen, Ida & Engebretsen, Eivind (2024). The Sociology of Translation and the Politics of Sustainability Explorations Across Cultures and Natures. Routledge. ISBN 9781032257914. 240 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This book uses sustainability to explore the interfaces between translation studies, the cultural history of knowledge, and Science and Technology studies (STS). The volume examines various material, cultural and epistemic translation practices where sustainability serves as a boundary object between natural and cultural inquiry. By turning to the intellectual traditions that influenced but were left behind by STS and actor-network theory (ANT), we aim to challenge and expand the Sociology of Translation developed in ANT. Concepts such as ‘inscription’ (Derrida), ‘actant’, ‘narrative’ (Greimas), and ‘world/worlding’ (Heidegger, Spivak) were reemployed – translated – in the canonical STS-texts. What networks of meaning were left behind in this reemployment? The book showcases a combination of cultural and knowledge historical perspectives on the construction of the Sociology of Translation and practical experiments across the registers of nature and culture is novel. There have been brilliant individual attempts to realign the Sociology of Translation with narratives and modes of enunciation, but none has related the Sociology of Translation to the networks and traditions which enabled it but to which it erased its relations and debts.

View all works in NVA

• Resløkken, Åmund Norum & Askheim, Clemet (2024). Aktør-Nettverksteori (ANT) som tekst og fortelling – en kritikk. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2023). "New Animism" and translations of non-human actors as model for a sustainable future. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2023). Aktanter, ikke-menneskelige aktører og animisme som relasjonell modell for bærekraft. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2020). Bokmelding: Ane Ohrvik 2018. Medicine, Magic and Art in Early Modern Norway. Conceptualizing Knowledge. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 302s. Tidsskrift for kulturforskning. ISSN 1502-7473. 19(1), p. 138–141. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2019). Djevelens finger, eller å stille ut en forbannelse, Fra kaupang til bygd 2019. Hedmarkens gjenstandskultur. Anno museum, avdeling Domkirkeodden. ISSN 9788291326320. p. 104–119. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2013). "Den gloende jernring og helvides aander"; Johan Brunsmands tolkning av preternaturlige fenomener. Fortid. ISSN 1504-1913. p. 72–77. Full text in Research Archive
• Resløkken, Åmund Norum (2018). "Ein lut av det nære levande livet". Tradisjon, tradisjonselementer og tradisjonsforskere. En studie av spørrelisteserien Ord og sed 1934-1947. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Denne avhandlingen er en analyse av spørrelisteserien Ord og sed, som ble utgitt som årlige tidsskrift fra 1934 til 1947. Spørrelistene hadde som formål å samle informasjon om norsk folketradisjon og de ord, fortellinger, gjenstander og praksiser som ble ansett for å være en del av den. Primus motor for utgivelsene var folkelivsforskeren Nils Lid, som var aktiv i å bygge opp folkelivsgransking som eget universitetsfag og ble fagets første professor ved Universitetet i Oslo i 1940. I denne avhandlingen undersøker jeg hvordan Ord og sed spørrelistenes tekster formidler forståelsen av folketradisjon. Spesielt er jeg opptatt av hvordan tekstene konstruerer objektiviserte elementer av ulike gjenstander, praksiser, ord og fortellinger, slik at de kunne inngå som elementer i en enhetlig folketradisjon. Disse objektiviserte elementene har jeg valgt å kalle «tradisjonsobjekter». I avhandlingen viser jeg hvordan tradisjonsobjektene ble konstruert på basis av gjeldende kulturteorier i samtiden og hvordan dette formet Ord og sed spørrelistene og gjorde at innsamlingen av arkivmateriale om både såkalt materiell og åndelig folkekultur i mellomkrigstidens Norge ble formet av en særlig teoretisk forståelse av «folketro». Jeg viser først hvordan tekstene i Ord og sed figurerer materielle objekter slik at de kunne få rollen som uttrykk for folketradisjon. Dernest viser jeg hvordan tekstene skriver disse objektene inn i et eget tidsforløp, en egen folkelig tidsforståelse, skilt fra den moderne lineære tidsforståelsen. Etter dette viser jeg hvordan figureringen av objektene og innskrivingen i den folkelige tiden gjorde det mulig å plassere tradisjonsobjektene som en kontrast til en moderne rasjonalitet og dermed legge til rette for en egen iscenesettelse av folketradisjonen, som gjorde at den kunne benyttes som premissleverandør for andre vitenskapelige og politiske diskurser. Jeg argumenterer for at Ord 0g sed satte folkekulturen i tale som en tale om folket heller enn fra folket.

View all works in NVA