Toward a Comparative Ethnography of Arctic Seaports Projects: Local Impacts of Expanding Maritime Infrastructure in Alaska, Norway, and Russia

My comparative ethnography focuses on suspended seaport expansion projects in three Arctic coastal communities: Nome (USA), Kirkenes (Norway), and Tiksi (Russia). All three projects are driven by similar development promises and geopolitcal threats, enacting divergent national interests and producing diverse local impacts. While Nome and Kirkenes pursue commercial and tourism-oriented futures, Tiksi remains shaped by military and state-centric imperatives. Across cases, Indigenous and local perspectives reveal tensions between global infrastructure promises, national interests, and lived experiences of marginalization, cultural disruption, and environmental risk. The study conceptualizes infrastructure as a political and social process, arguing that suspended projects continue to generate emotional engagement and social mobilization. On a methodological level, it underscores the value of comparative ethnography and infrastructuring across scales for critical inquiry into local disengagement and disempowerment produced by the globalizing maritime infrastructure.