Norwegian debates on immigration, developmental aid and international relations are generally characterized by an image of Norway as being outside the history of colonialism and racism. I have examined some of these ideas in my most recent project on the Norwegian immigration debates. The aim of this new project is to examine closely some of the historical beginnings of categories, ideas and images that are currently regarded as natural and self-evident, in order to assess to what extent and in what ways present cultural changes and transformations are grounded in historical continuity. This research interest also includes attempting to make explicit in what ways present-day preoccupations are shaping the representations of the past.
I make a qualitative interpretation of a collection of photographs taken by Norwegian missionaries in Northern Cameroon from 1925-1998. In the project I contextualize the photographs by other photographs from the same period, by written material, as well as by informal interviews with missionaries and local people. The Norwegian evangelical missionary project in Northern Cameroon relates to local people in a multiethnic region where Islam as the dominant religion coexists with local religious practices (referred to as ‘magic’ and ‘sorcery’ in the anthropological literature).
Over time missionaries and local people have produced a transcultural knowledge regime with wide-ranging consequences for Norwegian ideas about Africans, as well as about what it is to be Norwegian. In particular I examine representations of gender, family life and childhood in the photographs, and the complex interactions among the producers of the photographs, the photographic technologies, the subjects of the images, and past and present viewers. Theoretically the project draws together a wide set of ideas and perspectives – anthropological culture theory, cultural studies, visual anthropology, photographic picture theory, post-colonial studies and feminism.