ABSTRACT
Svalbard has become a site of prolific scientific interest and draws increasing numbers of scientists and students to its high Arctic research stations every year. They join the proliferation of tourists visiting the archipelago. Meanwhile, Norway aims for Svalbard to be one of the best-managed wilderness areas in the world and works to achieve this through a series of regulations and visitor guidelines.
I argue that wilderness management in Svalbard can be understood as part of a wider framework of value circulations and constructions. Throughout this chapter, I demonstrate that tracing value processes – concentrating on what value does, the “work” it performs, how it is practised and what relations are caught up in productions and circulations of value – can be an illuminating analytical tactic capable of tracing links between “everyday” micro-value practices and wider geopolitical and international environmental concerns. Svalbard can be seen then as a place that acts as a hub in an expanding network of value through the practice of knowledge production. Svalbard as a central point where many actors meet also exerts its own force on those people producing knowledge of it and with it. I examine the case of the East Svalbard Management Plan as an example of tensions between different ways of enacting value and values. Here, knowledge about Svalbard is used to support opposing strategies of wilderness management, and how knowledge is enrolled in ecological management becomes a key point of tension.
