Category Archives: Volume 17, no. 1 (2022)

Arab Muslim Immigrant Women in Iceland: Immigration experiences and future expectations

The present study explores the perceptions and the experiences of Arab Muslim immigrant women who immigrated from Arab countries to live in Iceland. This study focuses on the main challenges and obstacles faced by Arab Muslim immigrant women and how these factors continue to affect their adaptation into Icelandic society. I explore how Arab women identified themselves and how the new environment and the socio-cultural values impacted their integration in Iceland. Interviews were conducted with nine women living outside the capital area. The findings indicate that Islam plays an important role in their immigration experience and the adaptation process. The findings suggest that the women’s experiences are affected by other factors such as the cultural differences and the support of the local community, which impacts the development and maintenance of the women’s identity. Children’s schooling and education also influence the women’s lives in Iceland. The analysis suggests that there is a lack of knowledge about the women’s culture and religion, which causes misunderstanding or confusion.

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Studying Small States: The role of security and strategy as concepts

This paper examines small-state studies. It analyses the binary oppositions in small-state theory, power relation, the inherent vulnerability in small-state studies and how security and strategy influence foreign relations of a small state. It examines the asymmetrical relationship small states have with powerful states using Iceland as an example.

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Four Perspectives on Dilemmas in Management Analysis in Greenland

In this paper we discuss how dilemmas are related to the study of management in Greenland. Different perspectives on the research situation are discussed, and we identify methodologies used by analysts, when they must deal with possible problems of legitimacy while doing analysis of organizing and management in an international academic perspective. Difference between perspectives implies different ways to identify dilemmas during the research process, due to the perspectives of managers and citizens in a small community like the Greenlandic. Four perspectives on the task and construction of analysis are presented – one we name traditional that is the common background for colonial and centralized modern studies, two realist interpretive methodologies and one temporal idiographic methodology. They organize in different ways the task to know about conflictual situations and the legitimacy of the academic activity and therefor they address different dilemmas in the study of management. We point to the perspectives general attention to internal and external situations of ethical conflicts and what is particular to the Greenlandic situation.

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Pierre Schill, Réveiller l’archive d’une guerre coloniale (Grâne: Creaphis, 2018)

While conducting research on coal miners in the archives of Herault in Southern France, historian Pierre Schill came across a box which contained the papers of Deputy Paul Vigne d’Oton. Inside were old photographs which were both nameless and undated. It was clear that they had been taken not in the South of France, but … Continue reading Pierre Schill, Réveiller l’archive d’une guerre coloniale (Grâne: Creaphis, 2018)

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Huw Lewis-Jones, Imagining the Arctic: Heroism, Spectacle and Polar Exploration (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017)

Tales of exploration are necessarily shrouded in doubt. Whilst exploration trades in discovery, its truth claims are often ambiguous and reliant on a handful of first-hand accounts. Even when achievement seems clear-cut, its value is often questioned, even before we get to the complex entanglements of exploration and colonialism. Huw Lewis-Jones has written a book … Continue reading Huw Lewis-Jones, Imagining the Arctic: Heroism, Spectacle and Polar Exploration (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017)

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Geir Hønneland, International Politics in the Arctic: Contested Borders, Natural Resources, and Russian Foreign Policy (London/New York: IB Tauris, 2017)

Geir Hønneland’s International Politics in the Arctic: Contested Borders, Natural Resources, and Russian Foreign Policy acts not only as a primer for political scientists interested in how politics emerge and change in Russia’s Arctic, but also makes an important argument that Russia’s foreign policy has a Janus face. The book brings together a selected collection … Continue reading Geir Hønneland, International Politics in the Arctic: Contested Borders, Natural Resources, and Russian Foreign Policy (London/New York: IB Tauris, 2017)

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Frédéric Lassere, Anne Choquet, and Camille Escudé-Joffres, Géopolitique des Pôles. Vers une appropriation des espaces polaires ? (Paris: Le Cavalier Bleu, 2021)

The book “Géopolitique des Pôles.” subtitled “Vers une appropriation des espaces polaires?” (“Polar geopolitics. Towards an appropriation of polar spaces?”, author’s translation) written by Frédéric Lasserre, Anne Choquet and Camille Escudé-Joffres is a general public book describing geopolitical polar dynamics, responding notably to the “Arctic Scramble” narratives and similar discourses of a war on resources … Continue reading Frédéric Lassere, Anne Choquet, and Camille Escudé-Joffres, Géopolitique des Pôles. Vers une appropriation des espaces polaires ? (Paris: Le Cavalier Bleu, 2021)

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Edward H. Huijbens, Developing Earthly Attachments in the Anthropocene (London: Routledge, 2021)

Letting the proverbial genie out of the bottle is bad. Killing the genie after it has leaped out of the bottle is even worse. Now, and perhaps forever, the bottle is going to be empty. Our culture, to a significant extent, is a thoroughly disenchanted one. Apart from a passé and largely passing minority, notions … Continue reading Edward H. Huijbens, Developing Earthly Attachments in the Anthropocene (London: Routledge, 2021)

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Felia Allum, Isabella Clough Marinaro and Rocco Sciarrone (eds.), Italian Mafias Today. Territory, Business and Politics (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2019)

As an Italian academic who has lived and worked in North America and Northern Europe, I am frequently saddened, but by no means surprised, by the cavalier references that my non-Italians colleagues frequently make to the mafia. On the one hand, they somehow assume it to be a rather prosaic and obvious aspect of daily … Continue reading Felia Allum, Isabella Clough Marinaro and Rocco Sciarrone (eds.), Italian Mafias Today. Territory, Business and Politics (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2019)

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Giampiero Giacomello, Francesco Niccolò Moro, Marco Valigi (eds.), Technology and International Relations: The New Frontier in Global Power (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2021)

The human beings have an ambivalent attitude towards technology, whereas nowadays technology represents not only a presence, but also a significant transformative force of human life, of human realities and, to a certain extent, of human nature itself. The collective volume entitled Technology and International Relations. The New Frontier in Global Power reunites a group … Continue reading Giampiero Giacomello, Francesco Niccolò Moro, Marco Valigi (eds.), Technology and International Relations: The New Frontier in Global Power (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2021)

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Walter Baier, Cornelia Hildebrandt, Franz Kronreif, Luisa Sello (eds.), Europe as a Common: Exploring Transversal Social Ethics, Volume I (Zürich: LIT Verlag, 2020)

The ongoing dialogue between Christianity and socialism, albeit soft and sometimes rather marginal is still going on and bears a genuine significance in the face of the newer problems of our changing world – the refugees ripples, the climate issues and the Corona virus crisis that menaces even more within a context of “globalization of … Continue reading Walter Baier, Cornelia Hildebrandt, Franz Kronreif, Luisa Sello (eds.), Europe as a Common: Exploring Transversal Social Ethics, Volume I (Zürich: LIT Verlag, 2020)

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Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen (eds.), The Relational Nordic Welfare State: Between Utopia and Ideology (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2019)

Neoliberalism is a peculiar phenomenon: Nobody, to my knowledge, identifies as being a neoliberal, yet several publications have recently demonstrated how four decades of neoliberal reforms have transformed Western democracies in surprisingly uniform ways. In this sense, neoliberalism is an ideology without proponents, or, to use vocabulary from The Relational Welfare State: Between Utopia and … Continue reading Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen (eds.), The Relational Nordic Welfare State: Between Utopia and Ideology (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2019)

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Mikkel Mailand, Corporatism Since the Great Recession (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2020)

I should begin by acknowledging that I am reviewing this book, not as an expert in this field but rather as someone with casual interest in the book‘s subject matter and a passing familiarity with the relevant literature. This ambitious book reports the findings of a research project on how corporatism fared in the wake … Continue reading Mikkel Mailand, Corporatism Since the Great Recession (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2020)

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Emma Carmel, Katharina Lenner, Regine Paul (eds.), Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Migration (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2021)

The study of migration governance requires a global and interdisciplinary framework of analysis. The editors of the “Handbook of the Governance and Politics of Migration” bring together multifaceted perspectives to further understanding on how migration is governed and politicized today. This anthology is edited by Emma Carmel, an Associate Professors in the Department of Social … Continue reading Emma Carmel, Katharina Lenner, Regine Paul (eds.), Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Migration (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2021)

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Kirsten Thisted and Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud (eds.), Denmark and The New North Atlantic: Narratives and Memories in a Former Empire (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2020)

Denmark and The New North Atlantic – Narratives and Memories in a Former Empire presents a critical interdisciplinary study of a region marked by Danish imperialism and today affected by a renewed interest in the Arctic: the North Atlantic (i.e., coastal Norway, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands). Edited by Kirsten Thisted and Ann-Sofie Gremaud, … Continue reading Kirsten Thisted and Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud (eds.), Denmark and The New North Atlantic: Narratives and Memories in a Former Empire (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2020)

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Günther Handl and Kristoffer Svendsen (eds.), Managing the Risk of Offshore Oil and Gas Accidents: The International Legal Dimension (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2020)

Managing the Risk of Offshore Oil and Gas Accidents: The International Legal Dimension is a book from the Edward Elgar’s New Horizons in Environmental and Energy Law Series. It is structured around the assessment of domestic and regional legal concepts regarding safety, liability and compensation for harm, and is divided in three Parts containing topics … Continue reading Günther Handl and Kristoffer Svendsen (eds.), Managing the Risk of Offshore Oil and Gas Accidents: The International Legal Dimension (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2020)

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Tina Soliman Hunter, Jørnn Øyrehagen Sunde and Ernst Nordtveit (eds.), The Character of Petroleum Licences – A Legal Culture Analysis (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2020)

The Character of Petroleum Licences – A Legal Culture Analysis is the sixth book in the Edward Elgar’s “New Horizons in Environmental and Energy Law” series. It revisits the original study into the legal character of petroleum licenses in the relation between the licensor and licensee as of Daintith’s 1981 monograph The Legal Character of … Continue reading Tina Soliman Hunter, Jørnn Øyrehagen Sunde and Ernst Nordtveit (eds.), The Character of Petroleum Licences – A Legal Culture Analysis (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2020)

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Ken S. Coates and Carin Holroyd (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Arctic Policy and Politics (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

The Palgrave Handbook of Arctic Policy and Politics is one of an increasing number of anthologies addressing Arctic governance from a variety of academic perspectives. The collection is organised into seven parts, each representing a different discipline although by the nature of the topic, these often overlap. These are: I Indigenous Peoples and Arctic Social … Continue reading Ken S. Coates and Carin Holroyd (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Arctic Policy and Politics (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

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Karen N. Scott and David L. VanderZwaag (eds.) Research Handbook on Polar Law (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2020)

The Research Handbook on Polar Law by Edward Elgar Publishing is part of the series of Research Handbooks that the British publishing house offers as a research focus in different disciplines and properly indexed in particular themes. In the case of the Research Handbook in Polar Law, the collection of 22 articles attempts to offer … Continue reading Karen N. Scott and David L. VanderZwaag (eds.) Research Handbook on Polar Law (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2020)

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GLOSSARIUM IURIS ROMANI (Latneskt-íslenskt orðasafn Rómaréttar Jústiníanusar) – New edition

Roman law has always been part of the curriculum in the department of law at the University of Akureyri since the founding of the faculty of law in 2003. The impetus for this glossary emanated from my first year of teaching there (autumn 2019), because most of the students have not studied Latin at all during their high school years. This second edition would not have been finished without the amiable help of dr. Gunnar Kristjánsson, provost emeritus, and Þorkell Örn Ólason who reviewed the text thoroughly. I owe them a great debt and gratefully acknowledge their generosity. Many terms have been added at the end of a seminar in Roman law held for the first time at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík (autumn 2021). I would like to thank, in particular, my students at this seminar who contributed to the second edition.

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