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Professor Sari Pietikainen
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Professor Sari Pietikainen
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Ingrid Piller
Welcome to the Language on the Move podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Ingrid Piller and I'm a Humboldt professor for Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation across the Lifespan at the University of Hamburg in Germany, as well as Distinguished professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. My guest today is Professor Sari Pietikainen. Sari is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the nexus of discourse studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, and environmental humanities. She is a professor of Discourse Studies at the University of Uvaskula in Finland and also a senior research advisor for the Multilingualism in Transitions project at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromso. Welcome to the show, Sari.
Professor Sari Pietikainen
Thank you so much, Ingrid. It's so great to be here.
Ingrid Piller
Well, Sari, we want to talk about your new book Cold Rush, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2024. The book has the subtitle Critical Assemblage Analysis of a Heating Arctic. Before we unpack what this means, let's hear a bit about yourself. You tell your readers early in the Book that for a couple of weeks each year you turn into a salmon widow. Can you tell us what this means and how it became a starting point for your research?
Professor Sari Pietikainen
Right, so a salmon widow is a local term in Tornio River Valley for a person in a relationship that loses the other partner to salmon fever. That means that all encompassing activity to either fishing or dreaming to have a fish. And it usually lasts couple of weeks. And during that time nothing else happens. Either we talk about fish, we fish, or we eat the fish, if the fisherman has been lucky.
Ingrid Piller
Okay, and so how does the tell us a bit more about where this salmon fishing happened? You mentioned the Torneo river and that's obviously in the Arctic. So how does this relate to the cold rush in the book?
Professor Sari Pietikainen
Right, So I have been going as a visitor and part time local resident in Tornio River Valley in the Finnish Arctic, in Finnish Lapland for over 30 years now, brought there by my husband who is a local from Lappea village from there and that fisher person also in the book. And along the time I have done a couple of other research projects also in the Arctic concerning commodification of indigenous culture, questions of authenticity, political economy of indigenous and minority languages related to tourism, for instance. But also during the recent times it was also obvious that different kinds of accommodations is happening. So the dark nights become northern lights hunting experiences, and the ordinary blueberries turn into the superberries and these kind of natural resources that have not had that kind of economic value, that kind of a cool distinction started to emerge more and more. And that was something that I together with my colleagues wanted to study in Cold Rush. So commodification or revaluing natural resources in the Finnish Arctic.
Ingrid Piller
Yeah, and cold rush obviously plays on Gold rush. So can you maybe tell us a bit about this in like economic terms? What's going on and why is this such a heated commodity? And what's the commodity at the moment?
Professor Sari Pietikainen
Right, so also Finnish Lapland has been destination of gold rush some hundred years ago, but now the gold is more or less gone. It's still decked out a little bit. But the main rush is on the mining materials, iron ore in particular, but also what we call cold rush commodities nowadays. So snow, darkness, northern lights, pristine nature, a silence, the opportunity to ski during the day, go to a nice dinner during the night, and then go into the northern lights hunt even later that night. Laughland is a major tourist destination that seems to be growing. The fieldwork that we did was prior to Covid, and at some point they were kind of Thinking that maybe it doesn't recover after Covid, but actually the tourism business is growing bigger and bigger. And one reason that people are saying that this is because the Southern Europe is getting hotter and hotter. So these more cooler places are now attracting new incomers and new tourists as well. And this was something that we wanted to trace in Cold Rush, this revaluation of resources that haven't had that kind of a commodity value before.
Ingrid Piller
Okay, so let's talk a bit about the research in the book. You've got four main chapters, one theoretical and three empirical ones. Before we get into the empirical ones, you sort of encourage rhizomatic reading of the book. And I have to say, it's delightful to read. And I just wanted to tell our listeners what does it mean to engage in rhizomatic reading.
Professor Sari Pietikainen
So this is of course, a humble pre territorialization from Deleuze and Kutari, who write that they write rhizomatically. And I try to adapt that logic in writing this book. And reading and writing rhizomatically can mean or one take up on it, is that you have multiple entry points. So of course the text is linear in one sense, but you can think about the different chapters as alternative entry points so that if you are interested in reading the theoretical chapter, you dive in that. But maybe then you go to the almost the second last chapter, which is about the northern lights. Maybe that is something that you want to read more before you maybe go to berries or the mining businesses, so that you don't have to read that kind of linearly through and through. And I think that maybe also echoes how we read in reality, that we kind of dive into the aspects that interests us more. And I try to echo that in my writing so that you don't necessarily need to know what happened in other chapters in order to make sense. What is happening in this particular chapter that you choose to read?
Ingrid Piller
Yeah, for sure. Look, my favorite chapter was probably the one about the berries. So maybe we can dive in there and can you tell us about berries and the superfood and how these contribute to this recommodification of arctic nature?
Professor Sari Pietikainen
Right. So Lapland is full of berries. So cloudberry is the golden berry. So the most rare and maybe most precious in many ways, also economic terms. But there's plenty of blueberries as well, and cranberries and some other berries as well. And most of those berries are left unpicked in the vast forests of Lapland. And there have been different kinds of attempts to commodify them. Either for tourism business like experienced berry picking, or to make them as a part of the superfood trend that is still going on strong. However, the problem is there that there are not enough bodies who do the picking. And there is then ethical problems to bring people from different places or from the world, most recently from Thailand, to do the picking in the forest so that there would be enough berries for the industrialized used for it. And in this chapter I follow one project where they tried to do this ethically. So they did try to find first local people who might want to do commercial picking, and that didn't work. The local did want to keep their own berries for themselves. Then they tried to bring out international cosmopolitan people who want to maybe experience the arctic forest and berry picking, but do also the berry picking on the site. But this didn't work either. People, there wasn't enough people who came. So this kind of idea of doing it a sustainable way didn't really work. However, on the other side of this story of turning or trying to create berry picking as a sustainable work, I also kind of dived in the social relationships that ties the berry picking not only to the nature, but also the community practices. The local families do have their own berry patches that you as a newcomer need to learn so that you don't go and pick berries from other families berry fields, but you stay on your own. So this chapter also began kind of a small investigation of my relationship to my mother in law who tried to teach me the local berry patches to me. But at the time I was too young and busy with my small kids to really pay attention to that. And I now regret that, that I didn't learn them. And I tried to learn them from now gradually, but it is a slow process.
Ingrid Piller
Yeah, yeah, you talk about. I mean, so in the berry chapter we have not enough bodies like worker bodies. But then in the Northern Lights chapter or in the tourism chapter, in a sense, we have too many bodies. So can you maybe speak a bit about this assemblage of bodies and practices? You've already spoken about the berry patches and language and discourse.
Professor Sari Pietikainen
So you touch upon the soil point or the hot potato in the economic development in Arctic areas in northern Scandinavia. So these are vast areas that do not have big local population. And even though most of the local residents are then more senior, the only exceptions are these tourism hotspots that attract a lot of tourists and seasonal workers as well. But this is, as we know, with all kinds of seasonal work that then there is this always this tension that do we get enough workers for this particular season with the skills, linguistic skills and other skills like skiing skills or orienting skills or skills to make fire or being able to drive in the dark icy roads in the arctic night. So how do we get to match these skills? The bodies and usually the working conditions that are not that great. The greatest kind of attraction is the arctic nature that you have the chance to live there and see how it is. But in terms of working conditions, contracts, salaries, this is not like the top notch working conditions in that sense, the.
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Ingrid Piller
And you get different workers for different jobs too. Like you've spoken about the berry pickers coming from Thailand. And then who are those people who do like the orienteering and helping tourists to catch the northern lights and those kinds of things.
Professor Sari Pietikainen
It's actually rather segmented. It depends on who is the service provider and who are their customers. So we have like special branch for French speaking tourists or German speaking tourists. Or then we have people who specialize Australian tourists who come there especially for the northern lights. And then there are services when English is sufficient, of course, Finnish can be for the national tourists. Or then you are within this kind of a branch where you combine language skills with the specific activities that people from those languages with those countries with those languages want to come to Lapland. So you pair them up.
Ingrid Piller
So who's organizing, if you will, these assemblages of workers, of tourists, of catches where you can pick berries, of hunting grounds for the lights?
Professor Sari Pietikainen
So that is a really interesting question and a complicated one because on the one hand, this is the entrepreneurs who can kind of try to think how they profile their services and to what kind of resources in terms of land, access to the land they have. Yet on the other hand, it is regulated by the municipality and by the state, and these can be at odds. Maybe the municipality is really pushing for the economic development and sometimes the state can do the same, but at the same time, the state can might be protecting the timber industry or national parks, et cetera, et cetera. So it is maybe best described as a navigating a complex terrain when you try to find your niche as an entrepreneur and then navigate the different possibilities and hindrances towards the access to the land and the sky and et cetera.
Ingrid Piller
Okay, so the thinking about how this is put together by entrepreneurs, by state actors, by tourists, by workers, by people with their individual interests, that is also for you, an entry point into theorizing. So you speak about these commercializations of natural resources in the Arctic, but you also give us a new theoretical approach, if you will, with your assemblage theory. And maybe can you talk about assemblage more from a conceptual point of view and what you try to do in the book there?
Professor Sari Pietikainen
Yeah, this is something that I'm really passionate about and really try to get my head around every day, every year. And I'll continue to working with this. But as you could already hear from this short description of the fieldwork, there was a lot of things going on and they all seemed to be interrelated and impacting on each other. And I was trying to find a way how to make sense of it so that I don't lose from sight any of those aspects, but I could kind of try to look them together. And I felt that the frameworks that I have worked so far did rather good work on the one hand, but not totally. And I kept on reading and thinking what might help me to get a grasp of all these entanglements that was happening. And I have been reading Deleuze for the longest time. And actually Cole Brush is also designed as a. As a kind of rhizomatic research design. And then I tried to make sense what I was seeing and what was in my data with the help of assemblage concepts. And gradually it started to make sense that it makes sense to think about what is happening, let's say, in this northern lights chase, driving around in the middle of the Arctic night, trying to see the northern lights and if you see them, take a picture of them and while trying to find them, listening to stories about local food traditions and local nature and paying a pretty penny for it. To try to think about this as a combination entanglement of material conditions, the night, the darkness at the northern lights, and then the discursive part of it. So the instructions and the narratives around it, and then the affect, the feeling that you are part of the nature, experiencing something that you have never experienced before and that this is worth it, this is worth of the effort and the money combined together. That was something that opened up for me a way to conceptualize and analyze what was happening in the data.
Ingrid Piller
I found that so interesting, this combination of, as you say, material perspectives and discursive perspectives and the effective side of things. And that's of course something that all of us experience. Climate change at the moment, big topic for everyone from these different perspectives as a material reality, as a discursive reality, and of course, as an effective reality. And I'm wondering whether you could tell us what the key takeaway of your book for how we should act in this crisis is, because obviously the Arctic is like a prism for climate change, right?
Professor Sari Pietikainen
Well, that's a million dollar question, and I hope that I would have a, have a clear answer to that, but maybe I have just rhizomatic fractures to think through. I guess one is that what I have been able to see here in arctic context, that during the different kinds of discussion, often the material and the affective side is emphasized, but maybe the discursive powers are often forgotten. And then in a more planning, more sustainable policies and practices, again the materiality is emphasized and then there is an emphasis on discursive aspect, but often the affective side is forgotten. So I guess my very preliminary idea would be that let's say that we would like to protect better the salman. It needs to count in all of these aspects so that the new governance practices or protection governance would actually work because they need to work on a local level, on an individual level, on a community level, and then on a legal level, policy level of the municipality and the state, and maybe EU as well. So I think to try to acknowledge that these different aspects, all of them are important and all of them needs to be counted in is something that I would be at least curious to try out how it might work.
Ingrid Piller
Yeah, fantastic. So maybe let's say, you say it's a big, big, big question, 100 million dollar question, but maybe let's actually bring it down to something a bit more concrete and that, you know, you have a lot of experience and expertise with salmon, so maybe you can tell us what you've just told us, but really specifically about the salmon experience.
Professor Sari Pietikainen
Right. So this is actually my ongoing project now. So I have moved, or I am both salmon widow during the summer, but now I have becoming a salmon ethnographer as well. So I am focusing on impact of climate change, on relationships between rivers, salmon and communities, and interested in trying to see how climate change reconfigurates those relationships. So, for instance, the transition of salmon being this economic resource to endangered species that needs taking care of, and maybe the fisherman moving from being a fisherman or fisher more to a protector or guardian of the salmon population as well. And being these all at the same time. And again, assemblage approach, I think helps here to shed light on the material, discursive and affective side of these three configurations that are going on and kind of accelerating summer by summer. This summer was the hottest summer in the Finnish Lapland. We had 26 days of heat that has never happened before. And people and animals and nature are struggling. We are not adapted to this this fast. And this then means that things needs to be developed quickly. We can't just keep on waiting. We need to try to think through. And so this summer I have been spending tens of hours sitting by the river and on the riverboats trying to just to observe and understand what are the fish and the river and the fishing people doing, how do they are adapting, what kind of changes they are noticing and how they are responding to these changes. So this is a very early on, but let's see how it unravels. The hope is that I can work also here in Norway. I have done with my colleague Hilde Solid already a a preliminary visit to one of the Sahlin rivers here and with Marie Mackart from Copenhagen University and Nuuk University. We hope to find a place also in Greenland so that we could kind of see the different Arctic salmon rivers, what is happening there and how the relationships are reconfigurated and what can we learn from them.
Ingrid Piller
And so will that be your next book? Is the next book about salmon or how are you going to kind how do you conceptualize sharing this research?
Professor Sari Pietikainen
I think book will be there, but like Colerush book, it took me a long time to write so we'll see when it happens. I hope to work with my colleagues with different kinds of ways. We hope to also work with the local communities, maybe also with arts videos, photographies to try to capture what is happening. A bit faster than the book might take, but we'll see. It's still all in cooking.
Ingrid Piller
That's lovely. Well, in the meantime, readers can enjoy or our audience can enjoy the Cold Rush, which is a really engaging book to read and speaks to all kinds of dimensions. I enjoyed reading it immensely. I recommend it to everyone. Thank you so much Sari. Thank you everyone for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a five star review on your podcast app of choice and recommend the language on the Move podcast. And now partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues and friends. Till next time.
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Date: September 9, 2025
Host: Ingrid Piller
Guest: Professor Sari Pietikäinen
Topic: Critical Assemblage Analysis of a Heating Arctic
This episode dives into Professor Sari Pietikäinen’s 2024 book, Cold Rush: Critical Assemblage Analysis of a Heating Arctic. The conversation explores how formerly overlooked aspects of the Finnish Arctic—like berries, darkness, snow, and even silence—are being transformed into valuable commodities in the wake of climate change. Pietikäinen discusses her unique theoretical approach (“assemblage”), the ethical and practical challenges of commodification, and the impact of global warming on local communities, environment, and economies. The episode also investigates the role of language, affect, and discourse in shaping our perception of Arctic change.
[02:17-03:22]
Quote:
“A salmon widow is a local term in Tornio River Valley for a person in a relationship that loses the other partner to salmon fever... during that time nothing else happens. Either we talk about fish, we fish, or we eat the fish.”
— Sari Pietikäinen (02:49)
[03:38-06:48]
Quote:
“The main rush is on the mining materials... but also what we call cold rush commodities nowadays: snow, darkness, northern lights, pristine nature, silence, the opportunity to ski during the day, go to a nice dinner during the night... Lapland is a major tourist destination that seems to be growing.”
— Sari Pietikäinen (05:18)
[06:48-08:33]
Quote:
“Reading and writing rhizomatically... you have multiple entry points... you don’t have to read that kind of linearly through and through... I try to echo that in my writing.”
— Sari Pietikäinen (07:18)
[08:33-11:39]
Quote:
“There are not enough bodies who do the picking... there is then ethical problems to bring people from different places or from the world, most recently from Thailand, to do the picking... I follow one project where they tried to do this ethically... the locals didn't want to keep their own berries for themselves.”
— Sari Pietikäinen (08:55)
[11:39-13:33]
Quote:
“These are vast areas that do not have big local population... there is always this tension that do we get enough workers for this particular season with the skills, linguistic skills and other skills…”
— Sari Pietikäinen (12:07)
[15:31-16:45]
Quote:
“It’s actually rather segmented... special branch for French speaking tourists or German speaking tourists... you are within this kind of a branch where you combine language skills with the specific activities that people from those countries want to come to Lapland.”
— Sari Pietikäinen (15:53)
[16:45–18:01]
Quote:
“Maybe the municipality is really pushing for the economic development... but at the same time, the state can might be protecting the timber industry or national parks... navigating a complex terrain...”
— Sari Pietikäinen (17:02)
[18:01–21:14]
Quote:
“I was trying to find a way how to make sense of it so that I don’t lose from sight any of those aspects... and gradually it started to make sense... to think about this as a combination entanglement of material conditions... the discursive part of it... and then the affect.”
— Sari Pietikäinen (18:48)
[21:14–23:34]
Quote:
“What I have been able to see here in arctic context, that during the different kinds of discussion, often the material and the affective side is emphasized, but maybe the discursive powers are often forgotten... all of them needs to be counted in is something that I would be at least curious to try out...”
— Sari Pietikäinen (22:04)
[23:34–26:40]
Quote:
“For instance, the transition of salmon being this economic resource to endangered species that needs taking care of, and maybe the fisherman moving from being a fisherman or fisher more to a protector... this summer was the hottest summer in the Finnish Lapland... people and animals and nature are struggling.”
— Sari Pietikäinen (23:59)
Through stories of fish, berries, and the mesmerizing Arctic night, Sari Pietikäinen’s “Cold Rush” and this podcast episode reveal the tangled web of ecology, economy, language, and emotion shaping the modern Arctic. Her assemblage approach urges us to look beyond easy answers, embracing complexity in efforts to balance development and sustainability in a world transformed by climate change.
Host:
“Thank you so much Sari. Thank you everyone for listening... I enjoyed reading it immensely. I recommend it to everyone.”
— Ingrid Piller (27:21)