Ulrikke Bryn Wethal

• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2020). Practices, provision and protest: Power outages in rural Norwegian households. Energy Research & Social Science.  ISSN 2214-6296.  62 . doi: 10.1016/j.erss.2019.101388 Show summary

  Electricity plays a vital role in everyday life. However, electricity-dependent practices are often taken for granted, and the complex underlying infrastructure tends to be invisible – until power supply is disrupted. Drawing on qualitative interviews with rural Norwegian households, this article takes practices as the starting point for examining how daily life changes during power outages and how households experience the consequences of such outages. The aim is to use households’ perspectives to understand the consequences of power outages, and show how disruption influences relations between infrastructures, practices, customers and providers. Using the three elements of practice – materials, competences, meanings – I demonstrate how power failures temporarily break the linkages between elements in electricity-dependent practices, and how households forge linkages between other items and technologies, embodied knowledge and competences, and new meanings, in order to continue daily life. This re-assembling of elements in practices demonstrates the complexity of power-outage consequences, and explains how rural Norwegian households can cope relatively well with lengthy power outages. The analysis also sheds light on the difficulties of trying to reduce consequences to monetary terms. Rather than worrying about the economic costs of power outages, households focus on maintaining their daily routines. The ability to adapt during outages demonstrates a relatively high level of flexibility, but this does not mean that households do not value having secure power supplies.

• Efstathiou, Sophia; Korsnes, Marius; Gabrielsen, Ane Møller; Finstad, Terje; Giæver, Fay; Driessen, Clemens; Hansen, Arve & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2019). lnvestigating the elasticity of meat consumption for climate mitigation: 4Rs for responsible meat use, In Eija Vinnari & Markus Vinnari (ed.),  Sustainable governance and management of food systems.  Wageningen Academic Publishers.  ISBN 978-90-8686-341-9.  Kapittel 1.  s 19 - 25 Show summary

  What Tony Weis (2007) describes as the process of ‘meatification’ of global diets implies that meat has moved from the ‘periphery to the centre of human food consumption patterns’. ‘Demeatification’, putting meat consumption back to the periphery, is desirable both for reducing agricultural emissions implicated in the energy-grain-livestock system, and for responding to ethical commitments to human and animal welfare and to global justice. But what does it take to ‘demeatify’ food consumption? This paper investigates the cognitive, psychological and moral dimensions of meat consumption. We design a suite of interventions aimed to test the social and moral ‘elasticity’ of Norwegian meat consumption, scaled from less to more intrusive, as follows: (1) diffusion of information on: (a) climate and ethical impacts of large-scale meat production; (b) physical and mental health effects of meat consumption and production for consumers and for farm and abattoir workers; (2) experience-based interventions: (a) commercial propaganda spots for meat consumption reduction or climate-friendly meat alternatives; (b) creating ‘live’ situations facilitating facing animals, farm workers and production systems as moral agents, e.g. via experiencing low-scale organic farming vs large-scale industrial farming, and; (3) instituting a personal meat allowance for selected groups of consumers. Response variations will be analysed using control experimentation and qualitative methods, attending to demographic characteristics including gender. Demeatification policies responding to the ‘elasticity’ of meat consumption in Norway have a higher chance of being socially robust.

• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2019). Building Africa’s Infrastructure: Reinstating History in Infrastructure Debates. Forum for Development Studies.  ISSN 0803-9410.  46(3), s 473- 499 . doi: 10.1080/08039410.2019.1616609 Show summary

  Infrastructure has gone from being yesterday's news to a focal point of development cooperation, particularly in Africa. While the list of development challenges that infrastructure is assumed to improve keeps expanding, projects are simultaneously criticised for not yielding the expected broader development effects. What is it about infrastructure that holds such high promises of development? Has this changed between the post-independence period of large infrastructure investments in Africa and the investment boom currently underway – and if so, how? In this article, I examine the differences between how infrastructure investments are understood and implemented in this most recent turn, as compared to some decades ago. I find a similar development focus between the two periods, with a strong concentration around economic growth. Moreover, little has changed in project focus, despite a more diverse set of actors on board with the ‘infrastructure-induced development’ narrative. I use inter-boom processes to explain why the challenges related to weak capacities in domestic construction sectors have continued. The analysis further shows how infrastructure investment has taken centre stage because it manages to satisfy the interests of a range of different actors.

• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2018). Beyond the China factor: challenges to backward linkages in the Mozambican construction sector. The Journal of Modern African Studies.  ISSN 0022-278X.  56(2), s 325- 351 . doi: 10.1017/S0022278X18000150 Full text in Research Archive.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2017). Passive Hosts or Demanding Stakeholders? Understanding Mozambique’s Negotiating Power in the Face of China. Forum for Development Studies.  ISSN 0803-9410.  44(3), s 493- 516 . doi: 10.1080/08039410.2017.1317660 Full text in Research Archive.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2017). Workplace regimes in Sino-Mozambican construction projects: resentment and tension in a divided workplace. Journal of Contemporary African Studies.  ISSN 0258-9001.  35(3), s 383- 403 . doi: 10.1080/02589001.2017.1323379 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  Based on a qualitative study of Chinese-led construction projects in Mozambique, this article explores how Chinese engagement in the construction sector affects workplace regimes. The study addresses the following set of questions: What characterises these workplace regimes, and why do the workplace regimes give rise to resentment and tension amongst Mozambican workers? Furthermore, how is labour agency constrained or enabled within these workplace regimes? The data reveals that Chinese companies in Mozambique are granted great freedom to develop workplace regimes as they see fit, characterised by functional flexibility, low pay and few benefits. Furthermore, the creation of a divided workplace, with separate workplace regimes for Chinese and Mozambican workers, exacerbates resentment amongst Mozambican workers. The Mozambican workers employ multiple strategies to express their discontent, but labour agency is constrained by weak national institutional support, and lack of alternative employment opportunities in the local labour market.

• Hansen, Arve & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2015). Emerging economies and challenges to sustainability, In Arve Hansen & Ulrikke Bryn Wethal (ed.),  Emerging Economies and Challenges to Sustainability: Theories, strategies, local realities.  Routledge.  ISBN 978-0-415-74732-5.  1.
• Hansen, Arve & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2015). Global sustainability and the rise of the south: development patterns and emerging challenges, In Arve Hansen & Ulrikke Bryn Wethal (ed.),  Emerging Economies and Challenges to Sustainability: Theories, strategies, local realities.  Routledge.  ISBN 978-0-415-74732-5.  19.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2015). Searching for sustainability in Mozambique's development strategy, In Arve Hansen & Ulrikke Bryn Wethal (ed.),  Emerging Economies and Challenges to Sustainability: Theories, strategies, local realities.  Routledge.  ISBN 978-0-415-74732-5.  16.

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• Hansen, Arve & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (ed.) (2015). Emerging Economies and Challenges to Sustainability: Theories, strategies, local realities. Routledge.  ISBN 978-0-415-74732-5.  304 s.

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• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2018, 04. oktober). The Belt and Road Podcast: Chinese Infrastructure Building and Its Effects On Economic Development - A Case Study In Mozambique. [Internett].  Podcast.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2018, 09. oktober). Utviklingspoddensialet: Statsbudsjett, Kina i Afrika og superheltene Nadia og Denis.. [Internett].  Podcast.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2018). When China Builds Africa. Linking construction projects and economic development in Mozambique.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Jakobsen, Jostein; Hansen, Arve & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2017). Flau formidling om kolonialisme og sensur. Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.).  ISSN 0804-3116.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Jakobsen, Jostein; Hansen, Arve & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2017). Kvalitetssikring, ikke begrensning av debatt. Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.).  ISSN 0804-3116.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Jakobsen, Jostein; Hansen, Arve & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2017). Redelighet, ikke sensur. Morgenbladet.  ISSN 0805-3847.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2016, 07. januar). Zimbabwe - Kinas første koloni i Afrika?. [Radio].  Ekko Hovedsending, NRK Radio.
• Hansen, Arve & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2015). Framveksande forvirring?. Bistandsaktuelt.  ISSN 1501-0201.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn & Hansen, Arve (2015). Can aid green the South?. Development Today.  ISSN 0803-6209.  19-20
• Hansen, Arve & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2014). Emerging Economies and the Oxymoron of Sustainble Development. Routledge Sustainability Blog.
• Hansen, Arve & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2014). Fremvoksende undergang. Aftenposten Vitenskap.  ISSN 2464-3033.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2014). Perspektiv Afrika: Tar Kina over?.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2013). (Old patterns and) New trends in the global aid architecture – the scope and the challenges.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2012). 'Discourses on Permanent Work and Casualization: The Norwegian Model and Temp Agencies'.
• Aase, Maren; Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2011). Collaborative and Comparative Research on China: Ideas for Discussion.

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