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Arctic Yearbook 2013
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concerned with science and environment, those concerned with military and security issues and
those concerned with the North as a cultural context or even public culture context (books, films,
documentaries, museum exhibitions and other cultural positioning of Arctic materials).
Date
1970-79
1989
1999
2009
2013
Economic
Development
66
19
6
8
12
Science and
Environment
7
19
22
26
14
Military,
Sovereignty
and Security
5
12
-
14
9
Culture
5
7
10
6
4
History and
Exploration
2
4
10
5
4
Land Claims
and Inuit
Communities
2.2
5
15
5
3
Disaster and
Rescue
3.2
5
1
4
31
International
North
3
11
2
1
1
Travel
1.1
9
10
15
4
Other
5
9
24
18
18
99.5
100
100
100
100
Table 1: Categories of ways in which the „Arctic‟ appeared in news stories 1970-79, 1989, 1999, 2009:
number of articles and percent per category per temporal period (Source, Canadian Newsstand,
1970-79; 1989; 1999; 2009)
As Figure 1 indicates, however, while these geopolitical discourses which represent the broader
tropes of science, security, economy and culture are consistently present, they are also represented in
different percentages and combinations over time: entangled, recombinant and recycled over the
forty year period. For example, economic development was almost the exclusive lens for framing the
North in the 1970s. It is also important today, but the percentages of such stories have declined as
other frames for representation, or tropes, have become more important. This does not mean that
the North has ceased to be an important source of economic speculation - anything but. Rather it
means that other narratives have become entailed in this understanding of the North as a resource
place.
In other words, economic reportage has been supplemented and become entangled with other
frames of reference, including assessments of territory, environment and security. The evidence of