Juha Saunavaara

While attempts to conceptualise the future course of societal development often emphasise the high-level integration and blurring of boundaries between physical and digital space, digital transformation has already made current societies highly dependent on the flawless functioning of the digital infrastructures built globally around data centres. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the recent emergence and maturation of the Nordic data centre industry. While paying special attention

The world is becoming ever more digitally connected. The submarine fiber-optic cable network is crucial for maintaining and developing this connectivity. This article first introduces the key characteristics of and required changes in the network. It then clarifies the network's importance in generating and relaying meanings and practices that sustain contemporary, networked societies globally. Next, it focuses on the challenges of slowness or lack of faster connections and of concentration in c

The globalised Arctic has in recent years witnessed an influx of extra-regional actors, many of whom come from East Asia. Although there is an abundance of analysis of the roles of East Asian nation-states—including Japan and China—in Arctic governance and resource development, research on East Asian subnational governments’ (SNGs) increased Arctic engagement has not drawn much attention. Leaning on the concept of paradiplomacy and being particularly inspired by Alexander S. Kuznetsov’s explanat

Some years ago, the Arctic Ocean was still described as one of the last oceans that did not have subsea communications cables across it. This situation is now changing. One of the greatest increases in global data transfer is predicted to be traffic between Asia and Europe, and the Arctic Ocean offers a shortcut, making physical cable connections shorter and decreasing latency. Recent developments regarding two ongoing subsea communications cable projects (Quintillion and Arctic Connect), which

Abstract This article concentrates on the interconnected past, present and future of telecommunications and the environment in the Arctic. It brings together discussions on the natural environment, sustainable development and connectivity in and through the Arctic and focuses on fixed-line infrastructure. This study builds on the theoretical literature on infrastructure, infrastructuring and pipeline ecologies and demonstrates how the peculiar features of the Arctic, such as coldness, snow and i

The global data center industry is a huge and rapidly growing sector. This growth has resulted in the development of significant data center clusters in various northern regions. Furthermore, the desire to attract new data center investments has been incorporated into regional development plans and strategies in different parts of the Circumpolar North. Although the policy-makers seem to have great expectations, they and the general public often know little about the industry, which consumes hug

The role of international development strategies in making regional development policies: Hokkaido as a case study During the past decades, national governments and international institutions have both searched for ways to equalise disparities and revitalise lagging regions. Although ideas and examples of the most effective ways to achieve these goals originate in various places, their influence is inclined to permeate elsewhere. Therefore, the processes involved in policy transfers are highly r

The near revolutionary reforms that U.S. occupiers enforced in Japan between 1945 and 1952 altered the characteristics of the Hokkaido development system, but did not make it correspond to the administrative system in the rest of Japan. Although the establishment of the postwar Hokkaido development system was a subplot of the nationwide local government reform from the perspective of the U.S. occupation authorities, this process can be explained only when one understands the changes to the gener

The origins of Japan's involvement

The recent political turmoil challenges one to study the function and form of the post-war Japanese political parties. The obvious differences in the spatial and temporal contexts do not change the fact that many of the organizational behavioral patterns that are topical in the analysis of the current situation can be found in the parties that were established during the erratic years following Japan's defeat. With a focus on intra-party relations and on the multilayered institutional environmen

The dominating and often contradicting tendencies of the early post-war Hokkaido were the continuing otherness, foreignness and distinctiveness from the rest of Japan, and the growing integration into the nation state. In other words, Hokkaido became more tightly connected to and more a part of Japan than ever before, but it clearly retained its peculiarity and was not simply a region or prefecture among the others. This study of Hokkaido is built on the premise that rather than being ahistorica

Reconstruction of a society through foreign intervention has been a topical issue during recent years mainly because of the events that have taken place in Afghanistan and Iraq. These countries are facing an extrinsic pressure to undergo a series of social, political and economic reforms. While the prevailing interest is derived from ongoing occupations, notable attention has also been paid to corresponding experiences of the past. This has especially placed the Allied occupation of Japan under

This study focuses on local ice-breaking tourism initiatives in Kemi (Finland), Mombetsu (Japan), and Abashiri (Japan). It adds to research on winter and cruise tourism and analyzes multiscalar challenges—ranging from the global warming and COVID-19 pandemic to dependency on local governmental support—threatening the future of tourism dependent on frozen maritime conditions and vulnerable to changing climate conditions. As the case study cities have invested significantly in tourism built around

The purge of Hatoyama Ichirō and the elevation of Yoshida Shigeru as a substitute prime minister in May 1946 deeply impacted their respective political careers. More important, these actions taken by the Allied occupation authority set the course for postwar Japan's conservative parties. This article examines the thinking of GHQ leaders that led to these actions. The bureaucratic rule of the so-called Yoshida-school was the long-term side effect of a policy that was meant to guide the developmen