Foto: NMS Archives

Sub-projects:

INGER MARIE OKKENHAUG:
Gender, Welfare and Mission as safety net

KATARINA HESTAD SKEIE:
Gender-issues in women's education:
The Norwegian Missionary Society, the
Malagasy Lutheran Church and the
Awakening Movement in Madagascar

HILDE NIELSEN:
Norwegian missionaries’ representation
of religion and beliefs, and the influence on
Norwegian perceptions of ‘self’ and ‘other’

TEEMU RYYMIN:
Sami mission and social work in
Northern Norway 1880-1940

BJØRNSON: Mission, networks and
gender in Haugesund, 1870-1940

SIGURD SANDMO:
Norwegian leprosy missions in
Madagascar 1880-1920

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The aim of this project is to explore cultural and social transformations following the encounter between Norwegian protestant missions and the local communities where they worked. Much research done in the field of colonialism and post-colonialism mainly focus on the consequences of the European presence for the indigenous societies. In contrast, this project aims to broaden the perspective by taking into account the way the encounter between missionaries and local people also had a deep impact on the Norwegian society. As such, the project situates itself theoretically in line with recent developments in the field of colonial and postcolonial studies arguing for the need to pay more attention to the way the construction of the European ‘Other’ also was vital to the construction of the European ‘Self’. These processes need to be treated as highly interrelated processes. New social categories and cultural boundaries were constructed with implications for the formation of the nation, the national welfare and the modern state society, as well as for the relations to ethnic minorities and immigrants, and the further development of international relations in a post-colonial world (Cooper & Stoler 1997, Stoler 2002).

The European expansion was never an abstract process but involved active agents with an immense culture-defining capacity (Stoler 2002). This project will focus on the active role taken by the Norwegian missionaries in this process, through bringing together a series of different but interrelated case studies. Aiming to explore the formation of social categories and cultural boundaries and their implications in a larger context, the individual projects will centre on what we consider to be the most important issues, namely: race, gender and sexuality in the making of identity and difference, discourses and practices of medicine (health, hygiene, disease) and social work, practice and representation of religion and beliefs.