Women, the Knowledge Society and ICT Access in the Reindeer Grazing Areas

This paper is about inclusion in the prosperous “winner” networks and practices, caught by the term “knowledge society”. It tells about some people and a location in the Arctic rims of the European Union. The process presented can be described as enacted ambitions for knowledge society inclusion. Among the people involved there have been researchers and professionals of several different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. But, the Sámi, as represented by the local community engaged in the process, are central. The case study started with affirmative action for Sámi women in Jokkmokk, northwest Sweden, and ended up in future Internet research on a European arena. The Sámi is an indigenous people of northern Scandinavia and northwest Russia. As several of the Sámi groups, the Sámi in this Jokkmokk case study are semi-nomadic reindeer herders. Living and travelling in remote areas, where reliable telecom or broadband are not at hand, their situation as business owners and as citizens is strained. This happens at the same time as a public discourse says that we now have access anywhere and at any time. A basic assumption in this paper is that increased scale and quality of inclusion in the knowledge society is a sensible goal for promoting the general economic development of a society as well as for those who are, at start, marginal.