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Arctic Silk Roads
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01 January 2026

As climate change accelerates, melting sea ice is fueling the global imagination and geopolitical anticipation of the Arctic region’s accessible transport routes and possibilities for resource extraction. “Silk Roads” are being conjured across the circumpolar North, both as official Arctic and infrastructural policy, and as broader visions of global connectivity with other markets. Following the myriad ways that local economies and agencies are proliferating around the anticipation of large-scale infrastructural corridors and their often-unrealized arteries, Arctic Silk Roads examines the different conditions under which top-down infrastructural dreams facilitate or constrain individual agencies.
“I found this book to provide a novel and interesting take on the Silk Road concept, by relating and applying it to movements in the Arctic.” • Per Ditlef Fredriksen, University of Oslo
Natalia Magnani is Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. She leads the Norwegian Research Council project “Arctic Silk Road” at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Imagining Unbuilt Infrastructures across the Circumpolar North
Natalia Magnani and Matthew Magnani
Chapter 1. Imagining the Arctic in Northeast China: Ethnic Minorities and the State along the Polar Silk Road
Richard Fraser
Chapter 2. Vast Spaces and Inconsistent Anticipations in the Northeast Siberian Arctic
Florian Stammler, Aytalina Ivanova, and Piers Vitebsky
Chapter 3. Economies of Ghost Infrastructures in Arctic Norway
Natalia Magnani and Matthew Magnani
Chapter 4. Polar Silk Worlding: Imagination, Infrastructure, and Anticipation in Chinese Arctic Tourism
Ria-Maria Adams and Mia M. Bennett
Chapter 5. Anticipating Arctic Roads in Sápmi: From Finnish Nation Building to Global Geopolitics
Veli-Pekka Lehtola
Chapter 6. The Expansion of the Port of Prince Rupert:Between Economic Development and Alternative Life Paths
Giuseppe Amatulli
Chapter 7. The Promises and Fears of Infrastructure: An Alaskan Port Expansion, Geopolitics, and Local (Dis-)Engagement
Olga Povoroznyuk and Peter Schweitzer
Conclusion: The Resonance of the Unbuilt
Matthew Magnani and Natalia Magnani