Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rvst20 ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rvst20
Descendants of the modernist museum: tracing
the musealisation of Swedish national parks
Emelie Fälton
To cite this article: Emelie Fälton (2021): Descendants of the modernist museum: tracing the musealisation of Swedish national parks, Visual Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2021.1884501 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2021.1884501
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Published online: 25 Mar 2021.
Submit your article to this journal
View related articles
ARTICLE
Descendants of the modernist museum: tracing the
musealisation of Swedish national parks
EMELIE FA¨ LTON
Swedish national parks face a shift, transforming them from spaces where tourism is a sub-interest into spaces where tourism is a primary focus. Through the establishment of new instructive installations, the intention is to make these parks Europe’s most popular nature-based tourism destinations. Such installations construct the non-human world, often depicted as nature, and contribute to shaping human understandings of nature. In this article, I seek to trace, make visible, and problematize how knowledge of nature is put to work and how power operates through these installations, but also how the non-human world is produced visually, and how all of this produces specific ways of seeing it. This is enabled by a discourse analysis with visual ethnographic influences, in which I focus on representations with an emphasis on design, content, and posed rationality. The analysis is designed in a reflexive- explorative manner, where the empirical context leads the analytical direction while the research process and its steps are presented systematically. Through this analysis, I argue that the national parks are transformed into museological organisations similar to the modernist museum, centred around educating visitors by displaying ‘real nature,’ and that this has implications for how the non-human world is understood. The most prominent of these is that a distance is promoted between the tourists and the non-human world.
INTRODUCTION
In 1915, six years after the first Swedish national parks were established, the nature conservation enthusiast Karl Starbäck anticipated that their establishment would lead to the creation of national outdoor museums, with the potential to attract visitors
(Conwentz and Starbäck 1915). Despite his predictions and the growing tourism movement’s efforts to enable travel to the parks, they did not achieve such a status due to the growing nature conservation movement and
its understanding of tourism as a threat to nature (Lundgren 2009, 2011). This kept tourism at bay for decades (Zachrisson et al. 2006).
Today, the parks face substantial regulatory changes (Mels 2020), but also a displacement1 in their approach to tourism, whereby it is being transformed from a sub-concern into a main interest (Fälton and Hedrén 2020). In this article, I argue that they are about to reach the culmination of what Starbäck predicted over a hundred years ago – a musealisation process. The agency responsible for nature conservation, The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (hereafter SEPA), has invested heavily in transforming the national parks into tourism destinations. Among other projects, strategies for creating a collective identity (SEPA 2011a), a brand (SEPA 2011b), and a visual design platform (SEPA 2012) have been developed to create a united trademark. Related to these, SEPA has revealed its hope of making the parks popular nature-based tourism destinations that let tourists take part in ‘enriching experiences in Sweden’s most notable nature’ [my transl.] (SEPA 2011a, 13).
Like national parks worldwide, those in Sweden are positioned as environmental protectors of the non- human world, often depicted as nature (Mels 1999, 2020). To encourage people to cherish nature, SEPA concludes that increasing the number of visitors and a strong focus on displaying nature visually are the keys to success. Hence, the agency has made extensive efforts to upgrade the instructive installations in the parks (SEPA 2011a), which today number 30 (SEPA 2020a). In other words, the emphasis on the visual, and displaying the non-human world to visitors in order to educate them are central components in the ongoing tourist displacement, which corresponds to an increased role for visual experiences in contemporary societies in general (e.g., Evans and Hall 1999; Mirzoeff 2009, 2013; Mitchell 1994; Rose 2016; Sandywell and Heywood 2017).
Emelie Fälton is a Doctoral Candidate at the Unit of Environmental Change, Linköping University. Her research inhabits the intersections among visual
culture, environmental humanities, critical tourism studies, cultural geography, and media studies, where problematisations of how the non-human world comes into being through human ways of making sense of it constitute the core.
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Despite an increasing number of studies on national parks as visual, discursive, and/or meaning-making spaces (e.g., Cronin 2011; Grusin 1995, 2004; Mels 2002; Patin 1999, 2012b; Rutherford 2011), studies approaching their installations with visual
methodologies are sparse. Grusin (2004) and Mels (1999) have briefly touched upon visitor centres as display facilities, and Cronin (2011) has focused on a museum exhibition about national parks. Besides these examples, there exist two studies that focus specifically on displays in national parks. Patin (1999) has conducted a visual rhetorical analysis of how techniques of display borrowed from paintings and museums in US parks have turned them into
museological institutions. A similar study was carried out by Bednar (2012), who analysed display
technologies in US parks and problematised their naturalisation as ‘obvious’ representatives of nature, while proposing an approach to them as (re-) producers of nature and the gaze of the visitor. However, both of these studies focus less on installations and their constructions of nature, and more on built environments in the parks and how their material infrastructures produce landscapes. This, together with the fact that almost a decade has passed since the last of the above-mentioned studies were conducted,
emphasises the need for contemporary studies on national parks’ installations and their construction of the non-human world. Besides, this small research field contains an overrepresentation of North American studies, which need to be broadened.
The Swedish context, with its ongoing tourist displacement, the massive attempts to use instructive installations as a means to create competition, and the emphasising of the role of the visual underlines the relevance of focusing research attention in that direction. In this article, I seek to trace, make visible, and problematise2 how knowledge of nature is put to work through the new installations in Swedish parks, how power operates through them, how they produce the non-human world visually, and how all of this creates specific ways of seeing the non-human world. Thus, a national context other than the Northern American one is problematised, and focus is directed towards the kinds of installations that we need to know more about – those with the intention of instructing visitors.
With the intent of broadening existing research and providing a contemporary study on the subject, I focus on how the non-human world is constructed through these installations, rather than focusing on the creation of landscape. This provides a problematisation of how the world used to attract tourists to the national parks is constructed and commodified. By scrutinising how it comes
into being and how its relationship to the human world is posited, a reflection upon the installations’ potential implications for how humans understand and relate to the non-human world will be enabled. This can provide new insights into the national parks and their instructive installations as products of systems of discourses, rather than uncomplicated acts of nature conservation (e.g., Cronin 2011; Grusin 1995; Patin 1999, 2012a; Rutherford 2011). In other words, a primary focus of this article concerns how the non-human world comes into being through the
installations and what the productive effects of their representations are.
The Non-Human World
When using the term non-human, I refer to the world that most Western societies talk about as ‘nature.’ In modern times, it has come to be understood as a world that is disentangled from the human one and is considered to represent everything that is not a product of humanity (Bird 1987; Bird Rose 2015; Castree 2014; Hedrén 1994; Lövbrand et al. 2015; Soper 1995; Wilson 2019). Within this
understanding, nature is wild, authentic, and original. It exists beyond the borders of human societies, is where wild animals roam, and can only be properly understood via natural science premises (Castree 2014; Cronon 1995; Demeritt 2001; Grusin 2004). With its wide usage, the concept has become one of our time’s keywords and is used without any reflection upon its implications for how we relate ourselves to the non-human world (Descola 2013; Jameson 1994; Williams 1976).
The problem with such an uncritical approach is that it ignores nature’s social dimensions (Wilson 2019). As a counter-reaction, scholars have questioned it by emphasising potential consequences. They have also proposed the importance of understanding nature as a socially constructed phenomenon created by human meaning-making practices and discourses. Within this argument, the use of the word ‘non-human world’ becomes a way of highlighting what the word ‘nature’ has come to represent while simultaneously creating a distance from that usage (e.g., Bird Rose 2015; Castree 2003; Cronon 1995; Gordon-Walker 2019; Macnaghten and Urry 1998; Soper 1995; Wilson 2019).
Some of these scholars argue that to tackle
environmental challenges and build a more inclusive world, we need to overcome the idea that the non- human world lacks meaning, value, and ethics, but also challenge the belief that the human worldview is freed from it. An important step towards such work is to illuminate and problematise human ways of making sense of the non-human world and our relation to it
(which this article does). Because only then can the implications and consequences be brought to light, to promote discussions and hopefully self-reflexive actions towards non-human-friendly and conscious ontologies (Bird Rose 2015; Haraway 2016; Wilson 2019).
Inspired by this, I offer a problematising perspective, whereby I approach nature as something socially constructed that comes into being through human ways of making sense of it. This implies that our
understanding of nature says as much about the non- human as it does about ourselves (Castree 2014; Chaloupka and Cawley 1993; Cronon 1995; Rutherford 2011). Thus, my focus is on epistemological and ontological rather than ecological matters (see Grusin 2004; Patin 2012a), and even though I see the non- human and the human as part of the same world, I use the terms as divided since their establishment as such is so profoundly grounded in contemporary Western societies and, not least, ‘institutions of nature’, such as national parks (Cronon 1996; Descola 2013; Gordon- Walker 2019; Grusin 2004; Patin 1999). To tear these down, we need to question them and their productive effects, but before doing so, we need to trace their existence and constructions.
Contextualisation of Aim through the Three Concepts of Institutional Apparatuses, Technologies of Display, and The Tourist Gaze
This article’s character is mainly inspired by Michel Foucault (e.g., Foucault 1982, 1991a, 2001) and his interest in the production of knowledge and operation of power. Instead of replicating his work, I have been inspired by his critical ethos (see Ashenden and Owen 1999) and problematisations. Such an approach means not only paying interest in how ideas journey through different spaces and times, or focusing on what is taken for granted, but also elaborating on the productive effects of such and reflecting upon what their
implications could be for different contexts and beings (Foucault 1986, 1991c). To make a conceptual
contextualisation of this article’s aim, three explanatory concepts with inspiration from foremost Foucault will be used: technologies of display, the tourist gaze, and institutional apparatuses.
Through the new installations in Swedish parks, the non-human world becomes an object on display. To understand how this display takes place, I use the term of technologies of display. My approach to this term is one the one hand, inspired by Foucault’s use of ‘technologies,’ which he used to understand how ‘modern social and political systems control, supervise, and manipulate populations as well as individuals’
(Behrent 2013, 55). On the other hand, I am inspired by previous research on national parks and questions of displays, which mirrors how the term has been used in studies of museums (e.g., Bennett 1995; Macdonald 1998). In their studies of national parks in North America, Patin (1999), Bednar (2012), and Cronin (2011) have used the term when referring to the actual tools and techniques used to display the non-human world. According to Behrent (2013), Foucault’s use of the term referred ‘not to tools, machines, or the application of science to industrial production, but rather to methods and procedures for governing human beings’ (Behrent 2013, 55). Thus, these perspectives of using the term seem to collide, but I argue that they could be combined in fruitful ways to complement each other.
Foucault’s use of the term enables scrutinising those procedures and methods that inform how the non- human world is displayed in the installations and therethrough govern not only the non-human world but also how tourists see, understand, and relate to it. But Patin’s, Bednar’s, and Cronin’s use enable a close focus on the actual installations in themselves, as tools through which those procedures and methods get embodied. To understand the methods and procedures, I think it is important to also pay attention to the actual tools since they are part of the governing process. Thus, I approach technologies of display both as those methods and procedures, but also tools used to display the non-human world in the parks. Such an approach means paying interest in the politics of display
(Macdonald 1998) and how power operates through the act of displaying (Bennett 1995), which is mobilised to tell stories based upon certain kinds of knowledge (Macdonald 1998). This indicates that the installations in themselves could be seen as technologies of display, just as the methods and procedures that inform those. By encouraging tourists to search for specific experiences, the display of the non-human world in the national parks support certain ways of seeing (see Hooper-Greenhill 2000), which can be
understood as a tourist gaze. This concept has been formulated by Urry and Larsen (2011), who in turn have been inspired by Foucault’s (1994) medical gaze, which he described as the medical act of seeing. In his work, he traced how the medic’s gaze migrated through space and time while illuminating how present discourses on health, illness, and death have been formed during centuries. With inspiration from him, Urry and Larsen (2011) focused on tourists’ gaze, which is connected to the visual dimensions of consumption-oriented experiences.
This gaze can be understood as a cultural product that is socially organised and affects tourists through a specific lens of ideas, skills, expectations, desires, and mediated material, such as installations in the Swedish national parks. Urry and Larsen describe, in line with Foucault, that the act of gazing can be understood as socially constructed ways of seeing, which are discursively determined. To understand such ways of seeing, they ‘elaborate on processes by which the gaze is constructed and reinforced, and consider who or what authorises it, what its consequences are for the “places” which are its object and how it interrelates with other social practices’ (p.2). Thus, this gaze is by no means isolated from other contexts than the touristic one. Instead, it is always in an interchangeable
relationship to other parts of societies and could be understood as processes through which tourists are taught ‘proper’ ways of seeing. In this article, I am interested in the tourist gaze that the new
installations in the Swedish national parks construct. The technologies of display and the tourist gaze are both informed by institutional apparatuses – those forms of power and knowledge that constitute their organisation (e.g., statements, morals, and regulations), but also the discourses that become articulated through them (Bennett 1995; Foucault 1980, 1998; Hall 2013; Macdonald 1998; Rose 2016). According to Foucault (1980), these are the apparatuses’ elements, while ‘The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements’ (p.194). He describes how apparatuses have dominant strategic functions and could be seen as emerging from the intersections of power relations and knowledge existing at a particular time. In accordance with this, the new installations in the Swedish national parks are saturated with the normalising effects of institutional
apparatuses, which mediate and manifest
understandings based upon their dominant values (Bennett 1995; Foucault 1980, 1998; Hall 2013; Macdonald 1998; Rose 2016). Accordingly, the parks can be interpreted as productive sites of power that produce knowledge about the non-human world (Cronin 2011).
Thus, these three concepts mirror this article’s interests – how knowledge is put to work through the new installations in Swedish national parks, how power operates through them, how they produce the non- human world visually, and how all of this creates specific ways of seeing the non-human world. In other words, it is possible to say that the interest of this article is a tracing of the institutional apparatuses, technologies
of display, and the tourist gaze that inform the installations.
ANALYTICAL APPROACH AND DESIGN While the analytical ethos of the article is inspired by Foucault, the design of the actual analysis is inspired elsewhere. Foucault has been criticised for his lack of consistency and stringency when conducting analyses (Simons 1995). This critique has made me aware of the importance of reflecting upon my role as a researcher and being both structured and transparent when explaining how the analytical process has been designed. Based on this, I am also inspired by Sarah Pink (2012, 2013) and Gillian Rose (2016, 2017), who both work with developing visual methodologies where the voice and the gaze of the researcher are visible and part of the presented research. Pink focuses on ethnographic studies, where visual dimensions are central but also sensory ones. In her work, she emphasises the importance of researchers reflecting upon their own ontological and epistemological perspectives and how they influence the research result (Pink 2008, 2013, 2015). With inspiration from Foucault, Rose (2016, 2017) has developed two kinds of discourse analyses focusing on pictures in themselves and
institutions but has also written about the importance of reflexivity when conducting visual studies.
Following their research ethos, I strive for a transparent presentation of the research process and its included choices. My analysis is designed in a reflexive-explorative manner, which implies that I allow my empirical context to lead me in analytical directions, rather than diving into it based on pre-existing directives (see Foucault 2001) while simultaneously being reflexive. Initially, I only formulated the article’s overall aim, while I wanted to specify the research questions based on deepened knowledge of the empirical context later on. Such an approach enabled a close situating in the actual empirical context and made it the centre of attention. By reflecting upon my worldview and how it influences how I conduct research, simultaneously as I work without predetermined themes to look for, I want to illustrate the possibility of working in an explorative way while being as aware as possible of my own ways of seeing. An essential part of this is to describe my research process, which is divided into six steps and retrospectively presented below. Step 1: Choosing Analytical Approach and a First Set of Analytical Concepts
The initial step of the analysis concerned choosing an analytical approach and a first set of analytical concepts that enable tracing institutional apparatuses,
technologies of display, and the tourist gaze that inform the installations. Like Foucault, who saw his analytical contributions as part of a toolbox that anyone could use in any research field, and however they wish (Scott Hamilton 2020), I see myself as a carrier of a toolbox from which I can choose tools depending on the analytical context. The concepts are grounded in my ontological and epistemological stances of the world as socially constructed, but also my interest of
approaching it through a discursive lens, and
understanding how the visual is part of the social and vice versa. These are used to understand how different ‘phenomena’ come into being and which concepts I employ depend upon each empirical context, which means that I allow myself to exploratively ‘pick up’ concepts during all stages of the analytical process. Due to the social constructionist and discursive orientation of my stances, but also inspiration of Foucault, and grounding in the explanatory concepts of institutional apparatuses, technologies of display, and tourist gaze, there are a few analytical concepts that I have chosen to work with as the foundation for the analysis: discourse, power, knowledge, and truth. To enable a reflexive understanding of these, it becomes crucial to reflect upon how I approach them. Starting with discourses, which I see as meaning-making ensembles of representations that assign meaning to both social and physical realities, thereby shaping human understandings (Castree 2014; Foucault 1982). This definition is mainly inspired by Foucault (1982), who approached discourses as groups of statements ‘posing the problems of its own limits, its divisions, its transformations, the specific modes of its temporality’ (p.117).
My use of the term ‘representation’ instead of ‘statement’ lies in my understanding of statements as only oral or textual. Representations open a broader approach to discourses and invite other forms of expression, such as visual ones (Castree 2014). When investigating the operation of discourse, meaning-making practices are central, but also the
production of knowledge, the establishment of truth, and the productive effects of power (Hall 2013). Through their divisions, limits, modes of temporality, and transformations, discourses define norms and deviations in societies (Foucault 1982, 1991a), but they also outline ‘rules’ by contouring what is considered true or false, acceptable or unacceptable, thinkable or unthinkable, sayable or
unsayable, seeable or unseeable (and so forth) (Castree 2014; Foucault 1991d, 2001). This indicates that discourses are dependent upon the claim that a particular corpus of knowledge is true and worth knowing (Rose 2016) and that their power relations constitute and enable corpuses of
knowledge by defining what is considered to be the truth and worth knowing, while the corpuses of knowledge enable the power relations (Foucault 1991a). What counts as knowing is a result of cultural, social, and scientific processes that shape what knowledge is produced and what is considered to be defined as rationality (Foucault 1982). Accordingly, power, knowledge, and truth imply each other and cannot function without others’ existence. Behind every recognisable discourse, and its anchored knowledge and truths, there are constituted power relations that give rise to it, and behind all power relations there are always correlative relations of knowledge and truth that encompass the effects of that particular body of knowledge through discourses (Foucault 1980, 1991d, 1998). This has implications for how social practices are shaped, which means that discourses and their power relations subjectify subjects into specific ways of behaving (Foucault 1982).
With the concepts of discourse, power, knowledge, and truth set, I decided to design an analytical approach that could embody their focus – a discourse analysis. I found such an approach suitable since it deals with how practices make meaning and construct different phenomena (Foucault 1980; Rose 2016). I also decided that my analysis will be based upon fieldwork in the parks, and because of that, I choose to combine this approach with influences from visual ethnography. By combining such analytical approaches, an interpretation of representations, knowledge production, and ways of seeing produced in the parks’ installations would be enabled, alongside a problematisation of my own representations, knowledge production, and ways of seeing as a researcher (see Pink 2013).
Step 2: Fieldwork in the National Parks With this orientation set, I travelled to the national parks during the years 2018–2019. A traditional understanding of fieldwork rests on the notion that the researcher ‘collects’ the material before ‘going home’ to conduct the analysis. In contrast, I build on approaches in which the analytical process is seen as something that starts as soon as the context is set (Fetterman 1998; Pink 2013). This denotes my understanding of fieldwork as tangled together with the analytical process, rather than a preparatory step.
By moving along the visual milieus that the installations3 created along the trails4 (Bal 1996; Lund 2013),
I immersed myself in my empirical context and conducted an embodied analysis in order to trace technologies of display, institutional apparatuses, and
a tourist gaze. While knowing that discourse, power, knowledge, and truth were central concepts for this, no predetermined themes in relation to those concepts had been formulated. Instead, I let the empirical context guide me in different discursive directions and interpretations. Initially, a visit to Tyresta National Park in Stockholm was conducted, mostly because the visitor centre ‘The House of the National Parks’ [SWE: Nationalparkernas hus], representing all Swedish national parks, is located there (SEPA 2020b). This allowed me to deepen my
understanding of the national parks’ communication and test ways to develop my analysis during the fieldwork. Practically, this meant that I systematically visited the entrances, looked at what installations the maps pointed to, followed the paths to reach those installations, watched and read what they displayed, and documented everything by taking photographs from various angles. This way of taking visual notes enabled tracing my analytical gaze (Grasseni 2004; Orobitg Canal 2004) and was inspired by the reflexive action of Bal (1996) and Johns and Pontes (2020). I continued this analysis in other parks and, due to the differences in characteristics among their installations, soon realised that it was difficult to know beforehand which parks were incorporating the new installations (most were hybrids, with both ‘old’ and ‘new’). Soon, I learned how to recognise the new installations, which corresponded to the photographs I had seen in SEPA's (2012) design platform. Figure 1a and Figure 1b provide examples of old and new installations to illustrate how they differed. The main differences were their use of colours, the fonts, the layout, and use or non-use of photographs. Another difference was their sizes and shapes. The installations in these figures are approximately the same size but have different shapes. However, as will be visible in the result, the new installations took way
more shapes than this one while most older ones were formed as in Figure 1a.
Because of the difficulties of knowing beforehand which parks had newer installations, I ended up visiting 265 out of 30 parks and covered all the parks that had new installations up until the end of 2019. Depending on their size and number of installations, I spent between one and three days in each park. After a few ones, I realised that I needed a narrower concept than discourse and more installation-directed concepts than power, knowledge, and truth in order to trace all the bits and pieces of the technologies of display, institutional apparatuses, and forms of tourist gaze that these render. Because of this, but also due to the representative character of the installations, their rich details, and my approach to discourses as ensembles of representations, I decided to dig into my toolbox and work with the concept of representation. By this, I am referring to the process of representing something, and making sense of it, but also of the products it creates (Castree 2014; Hall 2013). To me, representations constitute fragments of discourses, which means that they could be seen as the cornerstones of such and that discourses in themselves could be seen as systems of representation (Hall 2013). Furthermore, I approach discourses as massive systems that could be difficult to grasp without tracing their fragments, which is why an analysis of representations is suitable. Through such a focus, I was able to pay attention to how the installations created meaning, but also to pinpoint the ‘what’ of that meaning-making. For example, when encountering an installation about moose, I focused on the representative characteristics assigned to moose and how they were portrayed, but also reflected upon the implications of such representations for how moose are understood.
FIGURE 1. a. This is an example of how the ‘old’ installations were designed, here in Ängsö National Park. b. This is an example of how the ‘new’ installations were designed, here in Tiveden National Park.
Step 3: Processing Previous Analytical Steps After the fieldwork, I used my visual notes to sketch out what I had paid attention to, what kinds of questions I had addressed, and how I had worked with tracing representations. These reflections enabled me to notice the structures that informed my ways of taking photos, my ways of seeing, my relation to the installations I had photographed, but also why I made certain
interpretations (see Pink 2013). While doing this, I noticed that I had unconsciously paid attention to three components of the installations: their design, content, and rationalities.
I had focused on what kinds of installations I encountered in the parks and what their visual expressions were, but also how these components were related to their content. I had also asked what kind of knowledge was communicated through the installations, who was presented as the producer of knowledge, how the suggested pre-knowledge and needs of tourists to learn more were imagined and justified, and how tourists were expected to experience certain characteristics of the parks. Based on this,
I recognised the importance of using the three concepts of design, content, and rationality to understand the
installations’ complexities. Furthermore, I also realised that I had paid attention to the visualities and invisibilities produced through the design, content, and rationality. Based on this, I choose to include yet another concept from my toolbox – visuality. This term concerns what is made visible or invisible, which is interesting because
representation functions just as much through the unseen as it does through the seen (Foucault 2001; Mirzoeff 2011). This concept enabled me to get a sense of normalising and naturalising effects, but also of power relations (Bednar 2012; Foucault 2001), since its determination of the relation of the visible and invisible dwells within the productive effects between power, knowledge, and truth (Bal 2003; Foucault 1994; Mirzoeff 2013; Rutherford 2011). The seen and the unseen of the installations in the Swedish national parks assures the holds of power that are posed on them through institutional apparatuses (see Foucault 1991a) and can in themselves be seen as part of the technologies of display.
Step 4: Developing Analytical Questions After adding these concepts, I formulated three sets of analytical questions to deepen the analysis in my quest to understand how knowledge is put to work through the new installations in Swedish national parks, how power operates through them, how they produce the non-human world visually, and how all of this creates specific ways of seeing the non-human world. The
questions function as the research questions for this article and share the structure of the components identified during my visits to the parks (design, content, and rationality). They also build on the concepts of representation, discourse, power, knowledge, truth, and visuality.
Design: What characteristics do the
installations display in terms of design? What aesthetic structures do they have? How are tourists supposed to interact with the installations? Through which senses are the visitors supposed to interact with them? What hierarchies are produced through the spatial placements of the installations?
Content: What characteristics do the installations have in terms of content? What kinds of orientation does the content pose? Do they present a joint storyline or individual stories? What objects and beings become visible or invisible? What knowledge is emphasised and communicated? What is considered to be relevant knowledge? How is this knowledge communicated to tourists? Who is the knowing subject, and who is the receiver? Which instructive values become prominent through the content?
Rationality: What thoughts and standpoints are the installations imposing on visitors? What is considered to be rational or irrational? What are considered to be norms and deviations? Which relations between humans and non-humans are imagined and justified? Are there any normalising or naturalising processes present – if so, what kinds of norms or unquestioned truths do they contain? Are tourists encouraged into certain behaviours – if so, what and how?
Step 5: Identifying Representations and Choosing Empirical Examples
With the analytical questions in mind, I went through my photographs again to trace and problematise the
installations’ institutional apparatuses, technologies of display, and constructed tourist gaze. To enable this, I used the questions to contextualise and deepen the tracing of representations that I had developed in the parks. This process was inspired by Foucault’s (e.g., 1980, 1982, 2001) work on discursive formations, which could be understood as the systems of representations that constitute discourses. They create order within the discourses and relate themselves to each other, thus constructing discursive meanings. When describing his analysis of discourses, Foucault wrote:
It remains for me now to invert the analysis and, after referring discursive formations to the statements they describe, to seek in another direction, this time toward the exterior [. . .] what can be discovered through them, how they can take their place among other methods of description, to what extent they can modify and redistribute the domain of the history of ideas. (Foucault 1982, 117)
This article’s result is the product of such a process, where I have identified representations but also related them to each other and reflected upon what they ‘require and exclude’ (Foucault 1982, 117). Thus, my identified representations could be seen as discursive formations and, in this step, I merged my
interpretations from steps 1–4 to identify three sets of representations. These are named as follows: 1) Branding Representations; 2) Exploring
Representations; 3) Enlightening Representations. I also pinpointed the rationality that these rendered and selected empirical examples to present my results (and therethrough my analytical gaze).
Step 6: Tracing and Problematising Institutional Apparatuses, Technologies of Display, a Tourist Gaze, and Their Productive Effects
Lastly, I identified the characteristics of the institutional apparatuses, technologies of display, and tourist gaze that became visible through the identified representations and their forms of rationality, but I also problematised their productive effects by reflecting upon what their implications might be for how we as humans relate ourselves to the non-human world. Such reflection is important when studying how the non-human world comes into being through cultural practices (Grusin 2004; Patin 2012a; Rutherford 2011) since it can shed light on the discourses of which they are part and illuminate those relations of power, knowledge, and truth that constitute them (Rose 2016). My reflection can be found in the concluding remarks of this article.
RESULTS: TRACING REPRESENTATIONS Design and Content
The installations have different orientations; some are educational-oriented, some highlight the parks’ unique characteristics, and others direct tourists to notice details in the landscape. Thus, not all of them have a ‘traditional’ focus on communicating information, with some making other messages visible. Nevertheless, there are some things that all of them have in common. One such feature concerns their distribution.
Apart from the installations at the entrances, which often have a joint storyline, most installations are not reliant upon being consumed in a particular order to make sense. This is probably because it is impossible to make sure that all tourists encounter them in the same order (Ryan, Foote, and Azaryahu 2016). The majority of installations are placed along the trails, which could be seen as a strategic attempt to keep tourists on the trails, where they can look but not touch (see Mills 2003). Reinforcing this is the overall design of the installations as two-dimensional signs, which
encourages tourists to let vision be the main narrator by assigning it a dominant role over the other senses (Foucault 1994; Rutherford 2011) and neglect other sensory interactions. Within these common denominators, I have identified three significant representational structures: elitist branding representations, exploring representations, and enlightening representations.
Experiencing Quality through Elitist Branding Representations
With a diameter of almost two metres, a height of about one metre, and a golden colour that shimmers in the sun, the massive crown placed in the landscape is practically impossible to pass without noticing (Figure 2a – 2c). The name of the national park is carved into the top of the crown, and its positioning in front of one of the park’s main attractions indicates that it functions as some kind of
extraordinary marker (see Bednar 2012). As described initially, SEPA (2011a; b) works intensively to establish a collective identity and brand for the parks, which becomes visible through these crowns. They are three-dimensional versions (or extensions) of the Swedish national park symbol: a golden star.
Traditionally, crowns have been used to mark power, sovereignty, and quality (Balmer, Greyser, and Urde 2006), and the national park version is no exception. SEPA has declared its intention to place a crown in each park, since it ‘contributes to the feeling and knowledge that the national parks are the finest nature we have’ [my transl.] (SEPA 2018). Thus, the crowns’ instructive value lies in symbolising quality, whereby tourists are promised experiences of the finest nature available in Sweden. Together with the two-
dimensional symbol, which is primarily visible on signs, the crowns are used as ‘difference machines’ that highlight the parks as unique vistas standing in contrast to the tourists’ everyday spaces (see Bednar 2012). Such divisions and assignment of status create
a hierarchisation (Foucault 1991a) and assign the national parks an elitist status.
Before visiting the parks, I had read about the crowns. Because of this, I immediately knew what I was approaching when I saw something glittering further down the trail. However, that is not the case for all visitors. Even though the crown is one of our time’s most widely recognised visual symbols (Balmer, Greyser, and Urde 2006), it is not obvious why such a thing should be placed in the parks. Out of the parks I visited, only one had a sign explaining the crown I had encountered. This was surprising because many of the other installations (which I will illustrate) worked intensely to explain details of the natural world, whereas the crowns were placed in the landscape without any attached instructions or explanations. Rather, their aesthetic structures, with their traditional crown shape, massive size, and golden colour, are expected to speak for themselves. Besides functioning as markers of quality, these crowns become representatives of the parks’ brand, which is also
articulated through more informative installations. These are always placed next to the entrances and communicate information about the parks and their bonds, but also create an instructive frame. One such installation of sign character in Sonfjället National Park (Figure 3a)
exemplifies this. On the left, the two-dimensional version of the symbol is accompanied by the heading ‘Discover Sweden’s National Parks,’ and the text:
National parks represent the very finest areas of countryside. Together the national parks create a magnificent assemblage of different types of landscape [. . .] They represent our most precious countryside, our natural heritage, for us and for future generations to appreciate and enjoy. Welcome!
Below, there is a world map illustrating all the national parks on earth. It explains that two percent of all the world’s land has national park status and that ‘these not only offer breath-taking experiences of nature, but also FIGURE 2. a. The crown in Store Mosse National Park, placed in front of the park’s main attraction – its vast bog. b. The crown in Stenshuvud National Park, placed next to its Naturum (visitor centre), with the path leading down to its famous beach in the background. c. The crown in Björnlandet National Park, placed in the middle of its pine forest.
a myriad of life and a gene bank invaluable to our survival [my transl.].’ At the bottom, there are photos from eight parks, which are numbered on the right, together with the other 22 parks. Their locations are marked with the golden symbol on a map of Sweden, while descriptions further down explain the specific characters of the parks and what tourists can experience there. This exact installation is present in all national parks with new installations but could take some different variations, exemplified in Figure 3b and Figure 3c.
These kinds of installations not only tell a story about what the Swedish national parks’ brand stands for – great experiences of nature – but also that it is our responsibility to preserve, protect, and nourish them. This intense proliferation of branding deems a visit to any of the national parks as essential and desirable, rendering the parks into iconic places of ‘must-see’ character centred around responsible tourism
(Rutherford 2011). In other words, the intention of this
kind of installation focuses on simultaneously marking the high quality of the national parks, establishing their brand, and, not least, commodifying this kind of nature by turning it into a desirable tourist product (see Castree 2003).
FIGURE 4. Installation in Åsnen National Park that informs the tourist about what they can do and experience in the park.
FIGURE 3. a. An installation in Sonfjället National Park, providing information about all Sweden’s national parks but also national parks as a global phenomenon. b. The exact same installation presented in Djurö National Park, but here with the two signs placed closer together. c. Yet another version of the same installation in Gotska Sandön National Park, but here presented as a larger sign with a quite different layout and more photos from the different parks. Otherwise, the content is the same.
Experiencing Nature through Exploring Representations
The more parks I visit, the more aware I become of the focus on exploring nature. The installations embodying this make tourists aware of what they can experience, and there are almost always installations at the entrances that set this orientation. These are designed as two-dimensional signs arranged in groups and explain what is unique about the park, what tourists can do, what they should explore, and where to find services.
One of the entrance signs in Åsnen National Park (Figure 4) exemplifies this. Reading from left to right, it starts with the text ‘Welcome to Åsnen National Park,’ followed by an explanation of the characteristics of the area. At the bottom middle of the sign, ‘the voice of Åsnen’ is explained – also known as the black- throated loon’s singing. Readers are told when the bird can be spotted during the year and about its living conditions and way of life. Below, there is
a photograph of several black-throated loons, and although they are depicted at the bottom of the sign, the photo extends across the whole sign and
constitutes its background. In its design platform, SEPA (2012) stresses that it should be easy to absorb the information presented in the installations and that more images than text should be used. It is striking how great an influence this orientation has. From a distance, the loons catch the eye of the beholder, who has to step really close to read the small text. Thus, this design’s primary orientation is not that of didactic telling but rather to create visual and aesthetic experiences (Bedford 2014; Braden, Rosenthal, and Spock 2005). This way of displaying nature echoes how art galleries provide display spaces (Alberti 2008; Patin 1999) and become a way of mirroring the
surroundings based on a visual grammar focusing on natural beauty (Rutherford 2011).
At the bottom left, there is a speech bubble encouraging children to see how tall they are compared to different birds. From the speech bubble to the other side of the sign, a dashed line with pointed measurements is visible. Above the last measurement marker, two small boxes present the parks’ regulations ‘in brief’ and explain the map symbols placed to their left. This marks out traditional map characteristics, such as borders and typography, but also services such as visitor centres, trails, toilets, and entrances. By highlighting things that can support tourists, the map emphasises the parks’ orientation as tourist destinations but, rather than only presenting practical information, it also focuses on what tourists should experience. Besides
pointing to different sites worth visiting, it visualises places where the loon can be spotted through illustrations picturing the bird’s silhouette.
Another thing that characterises such maps is their firm marking of the park’s boundaries, through which they give the impression that it is only within these borders that everything worth experiencing is available. The areas on ‘the other side’ are rendered invisible by being erased or blurred, which is a way of underlining the parks’ special character. This presentation of the observable and the unobservable (Hooper-Greenhill 2000) makes them appear as isolated islands located outside of the realm of everyday spaces (Bednar 2012). This separates different narrative spaces (Ryan, Foote, and Azaryahu 2016) and constructs the parks as spaces characterised by their ‘otherness’ (see Said 2003). Once tourists have passed through the entrances and been informed about what is worth experiencing during a visit to the national parks, they are constantly reminded to stay on this track. This is achieved primarily through signs with aesthetic values, where pictures and illustrations are used to attract visitors. These kinds of installation govern their progress through the parks and serve as mechanisms of control (Lekies and Whitworth 2011), as they make certain parts of the parks visible and others invisible. Thus, these installations work actively to steer tourists’ experiences in specific directions by telling them where to go and what to experience.
Experiencing Knowledge through Enlightening Representations
On an installation of sign character in Dalby Söderskog National Park, it is stated that: ‘Everyone benefits from spending time in nature. To gain insight into how nature looks and works, people need opportunities to explore it [my transl.].’ By making details visible and offering thorough explanations of how the non-human world
FIGURE 5. An installation in Hamra National Park on ‘the poor mire’ presents natural scientific knowledge to the tourists.
functions, such installations seek to educate visitors rather than encouraging them to explore nature or recognise the parks’ brand. Instead, these installations provide detailed information that classifies, orders, and makes nature knowable according to scientific discourses. Animals’ appearances are depicted, with descriptions of their lifestyle, distribution, typical behaviour, and eating habits. Plants are portrayed in their finest attires, with descriptions of what family of plants they belong to and how they have been used by humans over time. Natural phenomena are portrayed as wonders of nature that can be studied by humans, and geological processes are described as providing clues to how a landscape has evolved over time.
Instead of simply observing aspects of nature, tourists are encouraged to get to know their characteristics. In this way, the non-human world becomes classified and ordered according to the premises of a kind of encyclopaedia (see Ekström 1994), exemplified by the installation in Figure 5. Designed as a sign, it informs tourists about ‘the poor mire’ in Hamra National Park. Two moose roaming across the mire form the background and are accompanied by an introductory text at the top left, which describes the biological processes taking place in a mire. Tourists are taught why the mire is poor in nutrients, and below, there are three photos with text focusing on the characteristics of mires. In the top middle, there is a text about ‘the king of the wetland’ explaining how moose have adapted to the conditions of the mire. Below, there are three illustrations of antlers, demonstrating the differences between the antlers of moose, roe deer, and reindeer. In the middle of the sign, there are
illustrations of different mosquitos with their Swedish and Latin names, accompanied by an informal text about the types of mosquitos in Sweden and some of their characteristics.
Tourists are also provided with a novelty component that tells them which smells attract mosquitos and which repel them. Closest to the ground, there is a life- size illustration of a moose hoof and, at the top right- hand side, there is an illustration of plants living on the mire and the pH-values of different parts of the mire, followed by an explanation of the biological differences between mires, mosses, and swamps. Lastly, it is explained and illustrated that a mire offers difficult living conditions for plants, which need to have any of three features (pipette, snorkel, or lungs) to survive.
The installation’s focus on visualising natural correlations within the mire forms its identity and presents the things and beings that compose it (Bednar 2012). Through this
display of knowledge, nature is arranged and presented in a way that seeks to reveal its plan or true self, but also to prescribe a kind of authenticity. It is classified, measured, documented, and assessed based on the premises of natural science in order to create truthful stories for visitors. This could be an attempt to lend coherence and authority to the parks, through which a regime of truth is produced (see Foucault 1986; Rutherford 2011). This positions knowledgeable natural scientists as naturalised specialists possessing the ability to interpret and know the non-human, which becomes a spectacle for tourists to experience (Rutherford 2011).
The ‘mire installation’ presents information about nature and the typical features of Hamra National Park in broad terms. Instead of highlighting particular details in the surroundings, it is the details of the signs themselves that are in focus, which is a way of assuring that the visualised details are always available to tourists. The depicted plants can be challenging to see if one is not actually crossing a mire, and some of them are only visible in their physical form for a few months of the year, while the chances of encountering a moose at the exact placement of the sign are slim. By focusing tourists’ attention on the sign rather than its environment, the visible and the invisible can be visualised simultaneously, which makes the signs less anchored in their placement. Accordingly, these installations teach tourists what they should look for but do not point to it in the surroundings.
In contrast, other installations do point to details rather than visualising correlations in nature. These have a narrower focus and are more ‘object-oriented’ as they are placed next to, or in close relation to, the object they seek to visualise. In Abisko National Park, there are ‘explorer points’ (Figure 6a – 6c), designed as stations with three peer-pipes and associated signs. The signs explain what tourists will see while gazing through the peer-pipes, which are fixed in position and require them to look in a specific direction. Instead of encouraging them to look for certain things on their own, these installations work intensely to direct the tourists’ gaze by ‘forcing’ perspectives on them. This can be understood as an effort to help tourists recognise the objects presented on the signs, but it also deprives them of the opportunity to explore this on their own and the thrill that a more exploratory approach offers. Thus, these installations oblige tourists to look in a specific direction, rather than only encouraging them to do so.
Some installations focus more on aesthetic values rather than providing detailed information. In Gotska Sandön National Park, I came across an installation (Figure 7a) in
which the silhouettes of birds were used as both decorative ‘eye-catchers’ and informative portrayals of their size differences. Through small photos at the bottom left of the sign, visitors are provided with general information about the number of birds living in the park, their Latin names, and a few words about their characteristics. The general text ends with the line: ‘Here you can see some of the island’s most common birds life-size [sic], ranging from the vast sea eagle to the minute goldcrest. Compare your own size to the birds’.’ Thus, this sign functions as an invitation to visitors to step close and compare themselves with the birds’ size. Even though the primary function of these installations seems to be decorative, knowledge about nature is claimed through their aesthetic convention (Patin 1999). Instead of providing detailed information, they offer visitors a perspective and an opportunity to compare. The framing of silhouettes was present in other installations, too, as visible in Figure 7b – 7c. These kinds of illustrations are common, with primarily animals and plants being illustrated as monochromatic
‘shadows.’ Thus, the focus is on their silhouettes, while other characteristics, such as colour, are rendered invisible. This simplifying of appearances collides with the natural scientific orientation that seeks to reveal nature in a detailed and instructive manner. The installations displaying birds’ silhouettes will not make it easier for a tourist to tell a white-tailed eagle from a golden eagle, and thus it seems as though these installations are privileging aesthetic values above educational ones.
Despite their different focuses, the installations adhering to this representational structure allude to ‘the truth’ by telling stories about how nature ‘actually’ works and nudge tourists into the roles of unaware observers in need of firm direction about what to look for, what to know, but also what to see. This serving up of ‘ready-made’ interpretations encourages tourists to become consumers of branded and commodified nature who need explanations from FIGURE 6. An explorer point in Abisko National Park, which makes details in the landscape visible to tourists by using peer-pipes. One part of the explorer point consists of signs, which describe what the peer-pipes are directed towards. The red peer-pipe in this explorer point emphasise the hole in the rock that the sign describes.
experts. This naturalises nature into an object to be observed, and tourists into visitors who want to interact with nature as a ‘given’ landscape on the premises of self-evident and two-dimensional
interactions. In this way, tourists lose the opportunity to interact with their surroundings in a bodily, independent, and spontaneous way (Bednar 2012; Lekies and Whitworth 2011; Lund 2013; Rutherford 2011; Senda-Cook 2013).
Besides the natural scientific orientation, there are surprisingly few perspectives presented to tourists. Some knowledge about people who have interacted with the areas are presented, but almost always from a historical perspective. Contemporary knowledge produced by local inhabitants who interact with the areas daily is sparse. In parks situated in Sápmi,6 some personal stories and knowledge are shared by Sámi reindeer herders, but in parks outside of Sápmi, the perspectives of local inhabitants are almost invisible.
Rationality
Despite their different focuses, the installations are all trying to cultivate an interest in the non-human world and nature conservation. In this way, the national parks FIGURE 8. Through the enlightening installations such as this one in Abisko National Park, tourists are invited to the world of natural scientists. FIGURE 7. a. An installation in Gotska Sandön National Park, visualising birds’ silhouettes. b. An installation in Hamra National Park, where silhouettes of both threes and animals are combined with text, a background photograph, and illustrations of cones. c. An installation in Björnlandet National Park, where silhouettes of plants and animals are combined with text and a background photograph.
become visual spaces for tourism and environmental education. Even though it is not stated directly within the installations, there is an implicit hope that opinion will germinate in society and turn people into
environmentalists who cherish nature and nature conservation. By making nature visible, knowable, and sensible, but also by underlining the importance of national parks, the message is that tourists should care for those places and nourish them.
Via the elitist branding installations and their emphasis on the value of the national parks, tourists meet a storyline of the unique and ‘fragile earth’ (see Macnaghten 2003), threatened by human exploitation and in desperate need of protection. On a sign in Dalby Söderskog National Park, a text underlines this: ‘Dalby Söderskog is an oasis in an otherwise intensively cultivated landscape. [. . .] Since Dalby Söderskog became a national park in 1918, the aim has been to let the forest develop naturally without the influence of man.’ Thus, the national parks are situated as
environmental organisations that are attempting to save nature. This effort is often approached as an innocent endeavour, but what it really does is impose the effects of power by regulating and governing both the non- human and human understandings of it (Grusin 2004; Patin 2012a; Rutherford 2011). Through the explorative installations, tourists are taught that they should visit these kinds of spaces to explore nature and experience it primarily as a visual world filled with exciting animals and phenomena to look at. This is emphasised through statements such as this one from Kosterhavet National Park, which is by the sea: ‘Snorkel with a cyclopean and experience nature under the surface. In exposed places [. . .], there is the opportunity to see seabirds such as European shag, black-legged kittiwake, and northern gannet [my transl.].’ These kinds of texts, together with the strong emphasis on helping tourists ‘get to know’ nature through the enlightening installations, make the parksdestinations of edutainment rather than
entertainment (Rader and Cain 2014; Rutherford 2011). Nature is turned into an arena of knowledge in which natural science is the norm, and interpretations are made according to the classifications and orientations of that kind of science (Figure 8).
By inviting tourists to the parks and helping them to get to know nature, the hope is to create a form of self- surveillance among them, such that they function simultaneously as both objects and subjects of knowledge (Bennett 2018). Instead of making it an obligation to exercise the tactics of SEPA, tourists are provided with knowledge encouraging them to do so. Throughout these normalising and disciplining
operations, governing structures become embodied through the construction of certain truths (e.g., that nature should be approached scientifically) (Foucault 1991b, 1998). In this way, visitors are being tutored into behaviours and actions that correspond to the rationalities projected by SEPA (Bennett 1995; Foucault 1980, 1986, 1991d). This is not to suggest that the agency exercises repressive power over them, but rather that they become vehicles of power as they adapt to SEPA’s truths and rationalities (Foucault 1980). Even though I cannot make any statements about the reception, it is evident that SEPA has such intentions:
By focusing on displaying protected nature, we can increase knowledge among the public and create a positive attitude towards protecting nature [. . .] More visits will lead to more knowledge about nature. And more knowledge will lead to an increased [sic] public opinion. Everything is connected. [my transl.] (SEPA 2011b, 5)
These statements reveal a search for transformation. In an attempt to win over the hearts and minds of tourists and discipline them into nature-lovers and
environmentalists, the installations enact a kind of green governmentality (see Bednar 2012; Bennett 2018; Rutherford 2011). In this case, it is considered rational to visit the parks and support them as environmentalist organisations. Instead of encouraging tourists to leave these spaces ‘untouched,’ they are invited to go there as consumers of nature threatened by destruction. This encouragement promotes a kind of environmental activism, whereby the non-human is commodified into a touristic space driven by consumerism (see Castree 2003; Fletcher 2014; Fälton and Hedrén 2020; Rutherford 2011).
CONCLUDING REMARKS: DESCENDANTS OF THE MODERNIST MUSEUM
Via a focus on the representations of the non-human world that become visible through the design, content, and rationality of the new installations in Swedish national parks, I have traced, made visible, and problematised the bits and pieces of institutional apparatuses, technologies of display, and a tourist gaze. When putting these bits and pieces together, I contend that the new installations emerge from a discursive process involving institutional apparatuses of nature conservation, science, and museology.
At the core of the installations’ discursive expressions, there is an emphasis on nature conservation,
environmentalist thinking, and the importance of getting to know the non-human world. These are classical components of national parks’ ethos, in both Sweden and the USA (Mels 1999; Patin 2012a) and have become part of the promises of what they have to offer. In SEPA's (2011b) branding strategy, a vision of three elements that the parks should offer tourists are listed: experiences of nature, quality, and knowledge. As my analysis has shown, the representations I have identified correspond to these, with the elitist branding
representations characterising experiences of quality, the exploring representations experiences of nature, and the enlightening representations experiences of
knowledge. Through these experiences, the conservation status becomes a quality indicator, through which tourists are promised unique experiences as part of an environmental stance. An essential part of this is the possibility of exploring nature through a natural scientific lens and becoming educated. In this way, the non-human world is constructed into a distanced world that is available for humans to study and observe via the natural sciences’ premises, where nature is challenged to ‘reveal its secrets to the positive gaze of scientists’ (Escobar 1996, 328).
Scientific discourses are often tied to educational
institutions (Foucault 1980), which the national parks and their focus on enlightening tourists are examples of. Via the installations’ intense focus on exhibiting the non- human world, these conservationist and scientific processes become visible. Their interplay with the museological institutional apparatus incarnates what Karl Starbäck predicted when the first Swedish national parks were established over one hundred years ago – that they would become large outdoor museums (Conwentz and Starbäck 1915). Many of the parks’ installations have ‘museum characteristics,’ such as their focus on ‘show and tell’ (see Bal 1996), and educating visitors by positioning them within an exhibited space (see Hooper-Greenhill 2000; Macdonald 1998). In fact, through their new installations, I argue that the parks are becoming museological organisations informed by the process of musealisation, defined as:
[. . .] the operation of trying to extract, physically or conceptually, something from its natural or cultural environment and giving it a museal status, transforming it into
a musealium or ‘museum object’, that is to say, bringing it into the museal field.
(Desvallées and Mairesse 2010, 50)
This argument is reinforced by the character of the technologies of display, which centre around the act of
exhibiting. Instead of collecting and transferring ‘things’ to an exhibition site, as is usually done in museums, the parks’ installations transform whole areas into
preserved archives filled with displayed artefacts and phenomena. As illustrated, the installations’ profile in the parks is mostly of classic ‘sign design,’ which transforms nature in the parks into exhibited areas where institutionalised stories about nature are presented (see Gupta and Ferguson 1997). This could be seen as a way of bringing the museum into nature and thereby enclosing it within the museum’s logic through conventional exhibition techniques. This is something that Patin (1999) has pointed out in relation to US parks too. Through the new instructive
installations and their representations, a museological tourist gaze is imposed upon tourists, through which they are taught to look upon national parks as a kind of museum (see Patin 1999). More specifically, they are governed into seeing national parks as museological organisations within which the non-human becomes the object on display and the knowledge offered is based on the rationale of natural science (see Bennett 1995, 2018; Hooper-Greenhill 2000; Macdonald 1998; Rutherford 2011). This makes the national parks akin to science museums, which build an emphasis ‘on public education to present themselves as experts in the mediation between the esoteric world of science and that of the public’ (Macdonald 1998, 13). As Bednar (2012) has discussed in relation to US parks, such a scientific orientation makes it appear as though tourists are unable to see and explore nature without being guided, while there is a notion that the park authorities know what visitors want (or need) to know more about. In this case, they are considered to be in urgent need of more knowledge about the ‘actual’ workings of nature – because otherwise they will not be able to recognise its values. Thus, tourists are taught ‘appropriate’ ways to see nature, which they are encouraged to reproduce (Rutherford 2011).
Besides being akin to the science museum, I contend that Swedish national parks are primarily descendants of the modernist museum, which evolved during the nineteenth century and reached its culmination at the beginning of the twentieth century. These were said to depict ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ by visualising ‘how things are’ and approached their visitors as passive subjects in need of instruction (Hooper-Greenhill 2000; Reeve and Woollard 2020). Massive drives to invite the working class were conducted to provide education and cultural experiences for ‘workers.’ These invitations were considered significant enlightening projects of idea dissemination and opinion formation. The idea was that, through such visits, workers would become more
