Erik Nordnes Einum

• Einum, Erik Nordnes (2024). The Body is Not Entirely Our Own: Exploring Boundaries of the Human Body Through Food Consumption. Tvergastein. ISSN 1893-5605. doi: https:/static1.squarespace.com/static/5f0f22180db4af1e7b139cf0/t/67161bd15573fd3959b8bce5/1729502185469/Tvergastein+Issue+18+Digital.pdf. Full text in Research Archive

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• Bratrud, Tom; Hugøy, Isabelle Hammerstad & Einum, Erik Nordnes (2026). Landbruk og antropologi i Norge: Isabelle Hugøy og Erik Nordnes Einum i samtale med Tom Bratrud. doi: https:/rss.com/podcasts/antro-podden/2599736/. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  I denne episoden av Antro-podden har vi besøk av to sosialantropologer som begge har gjort omfattende feltarbeid i landbruksmiljøer: Isabelle Hugøy (Ruralis) og Erik Nordnes Einum (UiO). I episoden går vi dypere inn i det norske landbruket og prater om de komplekse sosiale og politiske prosessene som foregår bak maten man finner i butikkhyllene. Samtalen ledes av Tom Bratrud ved Universitetet i Bergen.

• Einum, Erik Nordnes (2025). Kjøttets politiske økonomi: Hvordan kjøttproduksjon og -forbruk påvirker norske fjellbygder. doi: https:/www.sv.uio.no/sai/forskning/aktuelt/arrangementer/konferanser/arbeidsgrupper-naf-2025.html. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  I tiden etter andre verdenskrig har antallet bønder og gårdsbruk i Norge gått drastisk ned. Samtidig, har produksjonsnivået ved norske gårder økt enormt, spesielt av kjøtt- og melkeprodukter. Kravet om effektivitet og produksjonskvoter har ført til en kannibalisering av norske gårdsbruk, der størrelse og mengde er viktig. Denne ideen av fremgang, sammen med økt sentralisering av produksjon i det norske landbruket, har gjort det vanskeligere for fjellbygder å holde liv i gårdsbrukene. Basert på antropologisk feltarbeid med bønder i fjellandbruket og den historiske industrialiseringen av kjøtt- og melkeproduksjon i Norge, undersøker jeg hvordan sammenhengen mellom byråkrati, natur, og kultur endrer bygder, dyr og landskap i fjellområdene i Nord-Gudbrandsdalen. Med dette viser jeg blant annet hvordan industrialisert kjøttproduksjon «avnaturaliserer» dyr og deres rolle i fjellandskapet, og hvordan produksjonen av kjøtt og melk endrer fjellbygder gjennom sentralisering av jordbruket, «grønne» diskurser omkring beitedyr og rødt kjøtt, og nyere opplevelsesforestillinger av fjellandskapet. De norske fjellbygdene havner mellom ideer av bruk og vern, fremgang og endring, en økt spenning mellom det rurale og agrare som i større grad er frakoblet, og mellom valgfrihet og tvang i forhold til bosted. Dermed undersøker jeg kjøttets politiske økonomi – sammenhengen mellom økonomi, politikk, makt, og miljø – og hvordan kjøtt er mye mer enn det man ser i frys- og kjøledisker eller på tallerkenen.

• Einum, Erik Nordnes (2025). G(r)azing towards a rural future? Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Hunting for migrating wild reindeer, domestication of ruminant animals, foraging, and sharing of land and resources were key elements to the formation of permanent settlements in the mountain valleys of Northern Gudbrandsdalen. In this talk, I discuss how permanent settlements in these mountain valleys were partially made possible through the practice of common grazing, and thus closely linking agriculture, land use, and the rural. Unlike the contemporary Norwegian animal agriculture which relies much on industrial feed from oil-seeds and grains, common grazing is enabled by the vast variation of grasses, dwarf shrubs, and herbs in commons in the outfields. Common grazing made it possible for people to cultivate the marginal soils mostly for food for human consumption, whilst using the resources in the outfields for feeding their domesticated animals, also through winter. I argue that the practice of common grazing cemented an interconnected relationship between animals, landscapes, and peoples. However, because of an intensified centralization and industrialization of animal agriculture and commodification of animal bodies as a meat, wool, egg, and dairy, this relationship is eroding. Furthermore, alongside new politics of nature and species conservation, outdoor cultures, and suburbanization of the outfields with second home development, the practice of common grazing is becoming contentious, more challenging, and increasingly abandoned. In conclusion, I describe how multispecies relations made human livelihoods possible in rural Norway, as well as possibly leading to rural abandonment as the relations between animals, landscapes, and peoples are changing and dissolving.

• Einum, Erik Nordnes (2024). Soil as Infrastructure: Multispecies Relations of Soils and Sheep in the Norwegian Anthropocene. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this paper, I suggest that a conceptual approach to soils as infrastructures can help us rethink multispecies ethnographies. Soils as infrastructures frame soils as “structures of contact and circulation” (Barua, 2021: 1483), and “matter that enable the movement of other matter” (Larkin, 2013: 329). Soils as infrastructures centres the diverse materiality of soils, the role of both humans and nonhumans, as well as the relationship between the “built” and “natural” world (Rippa, 2023: 16). Soils are dynamic compounds consisting of many other species as well as metabolic and chemical processes, providing key ecosystem functions for biodiversity as well as human survival. In Norwegian outfields, soils have enabled and co-evolved with the movement of sheep, who have fertilised the soil and spread seeds through their faeces, cutting grass with their teeth and promoting photosynthesis by keeping landscapes open (Blix 2018). However, the relationship between soils and sheep has begun to erode. Through an ethnography of grazing, soils as infrastructure places multispecies ethnographies alongside studies of power relations and politics. I begin in the Norwegian outfields, the contact zone between soils and sheep, to explore how industrialised agriculture has caused ruptures in multispecies relations. Changes in agricultural politics demonstrate how multispecies relations are in active engagement with socio-political processes. In this way, I see soils as infrastructures as way of “making things possible”, which opens an analytical space for understanding shifting material processes through both ethnographic, political, and historical attention to specific multispecies relations through the movement of matter.

• Einum, Erik Nordnes (2023). Affective Landscapes: Exploring Human-Landscape Relations through Coffee Farming Practices in Hawai’i. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Island of Hawai’i, this thesis explores human- landscape relations through engagement with coffee farming practices. By exploring relations between the past, present, human and nonhuman, the main argument is that landscapes are affective. This builds on the affective turn in social sciences and humanities. I start by taking an analytical approach to “landscape” as a way of exploring ways of relating and caring for the nonhuman, which speak for alternative perspectives on cultivating land. As an analytical framework, landscape opens up the possibility for a multispecies exploration in farming practices, such as coffee farming practices, which also considers nonhuman agents in the “making” of landscapes. Here, I engage with coffee farming practices as about regulating, shaping and controlling landscapes. I also engage with the farmers’ practices as ways of knowing landscapes. Ultimately, I argue that the landscape is affective, capable of affecting human-landscape relations through farming practices and ways of knowing the landscape, which in turn evokes a form of care for the nonhuman.

• Einum, Erik Nordnes (2019). Challenging Normativity: Emergent Socialities, Hope and Social Freedom. Universitetet i Bergen. Full text in Research Archive

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