Exceptionalism

Lars Jensen is Associate Professor of Cultural Encounters in the Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, Denmark. He is the author of Postcolonial Denmark: Nation Narration in a Crisis Ridden Europe and Postcolonial Europe, and co-editor of Crisis in the Nordic Countries and Beyond and Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region. Kristín Loftsdóttir is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Iceland. She is the author of We Are All African Here: Race, Mobilities and West-Africans in Europe, Crisis and Coloniality at Europe’s Margins: Creating Exotic Iceland and the co-editor of Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region, Messy Europe and Teaching ‘Race’ with a Gendered Edge.

• Introduction 1. From Colonial to Postcolonial Exceptionalism 2. Welfare state exceptionalism in the Nordic countries and Britain 3. Nation-building and Nation Branding 4. Altered states of exceptions: Africa-Europe/ US-Latin America 5. Exceptionalism in the Times of Crisis and Pandemics