Arctic Silk Roads

As climate change accelerates, melting sea ice is fueling the global imagination and geopolitical anticipation of the Arctic region's accessible transport routes and possibilities for resource extraction. "Silk Roads" are being conjured across the circumpolar North, both as official Arctic and infrastructural policy, and as broader visions of global connectivity with other markets. Following the myriad ways that local economies and agencies are proliferating around the anticipation of large-scale infrastructural corridors and their often-unrealized arteries, Arctic Silk Roads examines the different conditions under which top-down infrastructural dreams facilitate or constrain individual agencies.

Natalia Magnani is Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. She leads the Norwegian Research Council project "Arctic Silk Road" at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.