Conceptions of Power: Energy, Environment, and the North 7.5 credits

About the course

The course Conceptions of Power: Energy, Environment, and the North introduces students to the history of energy as an idea, shaped by changing conceptions of nature, progress, and the nation, with a particular focus on the twentieth century. Using the Nordic region, and Sweden in particular, as its point of departure, the course examines how oil became a decisive energy source in processes of modernization and how forests and rivers came to be understood as the foundation of an independent energy system. Against this background, the course explores how different energy systems, including fossil fuels, hydropower, nuclear power, and renewable energy, have been associated with distinct visions of the future and specific ideas about whom or what energy is intended to serve. Students learn to analyze representations of northern energy landscapes as expressions of these ideas and to understand how the Nordic region has been imagined as an empty frontier and a “land of the future” during its transformation into an industrial society. The course highlights a range of social, political, and intellectual perspectives on energy systems and emphasizes that conservation, resistance, protest, and competing understandings of nature have always been integral parts of energy debates rather than obstacles to development. Students are also introduced to historical perspectives on the ongoing energy transition. Through these perspectives, they learn to recognize in contemporary promises and conflicts the same enduring tensions between ideas of progress and their social and environmental costs that have historically shaped relationships between power, nature, and society in the Nordic region.