 Advances in Anthropology 2013. Vol.3, No.3, 142-148 Published Online August 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/aa) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/aa.2013.33019 Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 142 From Committee to Controversy: An Actor-Network Analysis of the Re-Organization of the Norwegian CHM Svein Vatsvag Nielsen Department for Regional Development, East-Agder County Council, Arendal, Norway Email: svein.v.nielsen@gmail.com Received March 1st, 2013; revised April 1st, 2013; accepted May 19th, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Svein Vatsvag Nielsen. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Com- mons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro- vided the original work is properly cited. Starting in 1986 and ending in 2001, the Norwegian cultural heritage management (CHM) underwent a re-organization. Following the revised Heritage Act of 1978 the protective devise needed revision. The 19 County Councils received increased authority after the Act in 1990, while the five archaeological gov- ernment museums decreased their authority, and were set to focus solely on traditional cultural historic research. The restructuring changed the expert knowledge systems (i.e. institutionalized scientific knowl- edge) integrated in the CHM, and the process was met with suspicion in the academic community. By conducting a close reading of two central governance policy documents from the 1980’s, the re-organization is analyzed in accordance with the methodology of ANT. It is argued that as the re-organization can be considered a success with respect to its political goals, it was nonetheless also a destructive event. The relational effects of the re-organization are then analyzed in relation to Bruno La- tour’s theory of political ecology. Here it is argued that the democratizing and distributional effects on the involved sciences (i.e. archaeology) can be read as an “ecologizing” event, and eventually, that the aca- demic controversy is further proof of this. In the end, the author argues for the potential of CHM studies to enrich the larger discourse on modernity and the political practice of modernizing. Keywords: Organization; History; Archaeology; Political Ecology; Modernity; CHM; ANT Introduction “‘Ecologising’ means creating the procedures that make it possible to follow a network of quasi-objects whose re- lations of subordinates remain uncertain and which thus require a new form of political activity adapted to follow them” (Latour, 1998: p. 22). Why not start with a year. It was 1979 and the chosen thir- teen had gathered in Oslo for the first time. They were all rep- resentatives from central institutions involved in the Norwegian Cultural Heritage Management (CHM), including the five ar- chaeological government museums, the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, the Ministry of the Environment, the Norwegian Fed- eration of Municipalities, the rationing Affair—in short, key politicians and prominent experts on the field. They had been appointed by the Government to examine the basis for a new organization of the Norwegian CHM. The group was well known in political and academic circles, where they simply went under the name “the organization committee”. In the years prior to the establishment of the committee, it had become increasingly clear that the State’s protective device had failed to prepare for the responsibilities that were to follow the new Heritage Act of 1978. The loss of prehistoric monu- ments was increasing, and the system simply did not function anymore. The Norwegian CHM had to be re-organized. In the course of the next four years the committee held a total of 24 meetings, resulting finally in a thick Official Norwegian Report (NOU, 1982: p. 36). The core point was simple; from a “distinctly offensive position” the Norwegian CHM were to develop an “aggressive approach with a targeted, long-term protection policy” (NOU, 1982: p. 36, authors trans- lation). Norway had recently gained a new Heritage Act—perhaps the strictest in the world (Myklebust, 2002), and now the government agencies had to adapt. The final decision on the future organization of the Norwegian cultural heritage was later enshrined in an official White Paper in 1986 (MOTE, 1986). What kind of documents are these, and what happened in them? In this article, which is a processing of a previously pre- pared thesis (Nielsen, 2011), the overall theme is what govern- ance policy documents do. This theme will be illustrated through a close reading of the two aforementioned governance policy documents from the early phase of the re-organization of the Norwegian CHM. The reading will involve analytical as- pects from actor-network theory (ANT) and science-studies (Latour, 1993, 2005; Callon, 2001; Asdal, 2008b, 2011b). Political Documents as Information and Actor As with all text, governance policy documents convey meaning through opinions and speech acts; they store and transmit information from source to reader. In this way, the report from 1982 presents the case made by “the organization committee”, while the White Paper from 1986 lays forth the case made by the Government. However, in addition to being a strict means of communication, the documents are also part of  S. V. NIELSEN physical reality; they have their own materiality. According to ANT, a focus on the materiality of things can help demonstrat- ing that documents not only inform, but that in specific social situations, they can become active, mediating parts in social life (Latour, 2005). The documents can in a sense become the case (Asdal, 2011b). As the documents were published in the 1980’s, narrowing an analysis of state affairs to a certain decade is nonetheless problematic. The report from 1982 and the White Paper from 1986 were only the first steps in a process that ended in 2001 (NOU, 2002). According to the state’s own historiog- raphy, the case was originally made by the White Paper (Niel- sen, 2011). So what kind of text is this? When the Government or a min- istry has the need to investigate different conditions in Norwe- gian society, they set up a committee to produce a report on the case (i.e. Norwegian Official Report). These reports are in- tended to create and maintain a vibrant democracy, and a gov- ernment report may in some cases lead to a larger political process resulting in a White Paper. This was the case with NOU (1982: p. 36) and White Paper No. 39. While the report pre- sented views, arguments and votes from a group of experts, bureaucrats and politicians, the White Paper presented the Government’s own position in the case. Why highlight precisely these texts? As mentioned earlier, the White Paper came to play a central mediating role in the post-war history of Norwegian CHM. According to later docu- ments, the foundation for further development was laid here (Nielsen, 2011). In accordance with ANT, where focus lays on the actors, an analysis of recent development in the Norwegian CHM must take into account the role of the White Paper. However, as the conditions of the White Paper are to be found in the earlier report, it follows that the two texts must be read in close relation to one another. But there is also another reason to pay close attention to the documents. The practice of government, in the sense of Fou- caults’ gouvernementalité, implies a use of specific technolo- gies in order to incorporate scientific knowledge into the po- litical field. The Norwegian Official Report and the process of translation it becomes part of, can be considered one of these political technologies (Asdal, 2011b). Writing History (with-) in Politics The post-war period in Norway is often divided into different eras: the reconstruction, the golden 60’s, and the “green wave” in the 70’s (Lange, 1997; Asdal, 2011b). The politics of the 1980’s and the so-called “modernization of government” in the 90’s are often analyzed in light of Neoliberal political influence and the effects of New Public Management (NPM) (Øgard, 2003; Trygstad, 2004; Baldersheim & Rose, 2005; Brattli, 2006; Hernes, 2007). Unlike various parts of the public sector, Nor- wegian CHM was never privatized, and according to political discourse privatization was never an alternative (Nielsen, 2011). In 2013, the organizational pattern follows a centralized distri- bution of power where the Directorate for Cultural Heritage functions as the link between the Ministry and the regional actors. Both the archaeological government museums and the countries 19 County Councils have authority regulated in the Heritage Act. The County Councils are responsible for registra- tion of prehistoric monuments in areas where development initiatives are engaged, while the museums excavate the sites, a practice partly shared with NIKU (The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research). The current system of CHM is a direct result of the process initiated by NOU (1982: p. 36). But the State has not only played a central part in the development of management; inter- vention has also been made in the field of cultural heritage research. In the late 1980’s, and as part of the re-organization, the Ministry of the Environment created a distinction between two types of heritage research. On the one hand was the cultural historic (i.e. traditional archaeological research), and on the other cultural heritage research (i.e. research on management and politics) (Marstein, 1991; MOTE, 1993). The need for an external institution with the prime responsibility for R & D activities and cultural heritage research became one of the key reasons for the creation of NIKU in 1994. This digression from the main case is done merely to point out how re-organizations are more than solutions to supposedly technical problems. The re-organization of the Norwegian CHM even changed the very definition of archaeological ac- tivities in general. By following associations in the State’s own documents, it is possible to demonstrate how the State itself is not limited to one definite location. On the contrary; through a combination of naming objects and creating technologies in order to govern them, new areas of State intervention are de- veloped (Asdal, 2008b). The Practice of Texts Within the field of interdisciplinary cultural research, the ap- plication of ANT in environmental history has been termed a “practical approach” (Asdal, 2008b, 2011b). Political science has traditionally treated policy documents as the state’s official communication (Svardal, 1992). Publication of documents is meant to create and maintain a transparent society where all members have access to political decision making. However, these texts have also a technical side to them. In practice, they are engaged in social networks where they—in addition to be- ing a means of communication, act as full blown mediators in policy making. The White Paper is an example of such a me- diator in Norwegian politics; its role is to create policy, and as such it is a political act in itself. With the White Paper, presen- tation and re-presentation merge. But the constructive relationship between people and things work both ways. As objects determine our practice, our practice determines the objects in the first place (Asdal, 2008b). With the White Paper, a mandatory passage point is made, an actor that no one can avoid dealing with when dealing with the case (Latour, 1993; Brattli, 2006). When White Paper No. 39 was published it declared that a re-organization was on its way, and in that moment, the document was the re-organization. What policy documents actually do is rarely asked within cultural heritage research (but see Brattli, 2006). In Norway this research is of fairly new date (Christensen, 2011: p. 14). On the field of building protection, Hans Emil Lidén (Liden, 1992) has still the only historical work (Christensen, 2011), while major contributions on the protection of prehistoric monuments still remains few in numbers (Trøim, 1992; Hygen, 1996; Brattli, 2006; Glørstad & Kallhovd, 2011). The field is characterized by discursive divisions following disciplinary boarders; as ar- chae ologists have maintained a focus on prehistoric (automati- cally protected) monuments, art historians have in turn covered the history relating to standing buildings and modernity Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 143  S. V. NIELSEN (Hegardt, 1984; Christensen, 2011). In short, there seems to be a discipline still short of discipline. For several years now, science studies have made its definite influence on the field of environmental history in Norway (As- dal, 2003, 2008a, 2011a, 2011b). This research program is based on the tradition following Michel Foucault and the ac- tor-network theory of Bruno Latour where the prime goal is to study environmental history as a continuous interaction of peo- ple and things. Here, the status of actor can be associated with all creatures, while the social is reserved merely for that which binds the actors together (Latour, 2005). This allows for the sociological study of what Latour has termed “the parliament of things”, or as Foucault put it; “the complex of people and things” (Foucault, 2002). Latour famously stated in the Irreduction part of The Paste- urizatin of France that nothing can be reduced to anything other than itself (Latour, 1988). This means that in the study of an object, an actor, or a case, that plays a role in a process of translation, we cannot jump so easily from one social setting to another without having accounted for potential transformations that occurred along the way. Information is transformation, Latour writes (Latour, 2005). In this way, ANT as an analytical tool is an argument for description as well as reluctance to ex- planation. The task of sociology is to provide a rigorous ac- count of the specific situation, of the case. 1979 What was the case in 1979, when “the organization commit- tee” was formed? According to different versions of Norwegian history, heritage protection was not part of the “green wave” in 1970’s, nor of the environmental movement of the 80’s (Lange, 1997; Furre, 1999). The political environmental case was re- served for Nature, and so was the social movement concerned for protecting it. Effectively, past conservation never received the attention of environmentalism. It should be added that cultural heritage protection has tra- ditionally been—and still is, associated with the cultural sphere of Norwegian society and politics. The ecological activism of the 70’s equaled with major changes in the Norwegian cultural policy. Deeply inspired by the new French cultural policy of the 1960’s, the old distinction between “high” and “low” culture were now to be exceeded (Keller, 2006). Culture should be enjoyable for all social strata, not just the upper class. The prac- tical result was a clear focus on decentralization of political decision making to the County Councils. Whether this region- alization made any impact on the Norwegian CHM, the history books avoid mentioning it (Lange, 1997; Benum, 1998). To gain insight into the state of Norwegian CHM in 1979, we must pay attention to the policy documents from the period. In this respect, the work done by “the organization committee” becomes a vital source of information. According to their report, a general conflict between development and conservation reigned in Norwegian society. The conflict had its origin in the post-war era and had been growing consistently ever since, while an additional deterioration had occurred with the new cultural policy of the 1970’s; after the new Heritage act from 1978 cultural heritage was defined as all traces (sic) of human activity. All monuments predating the Reformation (1537), known or unknown, were now subject to automatic protection, and as such, they had to be managed. The condition of the system in 1979 was thus characterized by a long-term problem. Now the Heritage Act had parted the management in two. On the one hand, the State was required to carry out registration of monuments in the context of rezoning and development initiatives. And on the other, if the area in question was to be exploited, the monuments had to be exca- vated and conserved in a proper, scientific manner. Both tasks belonged to the Ministry of the Environment, but the roles and authorities in the practical administration were unclear. The agencies needed structure and efficiency. However, this was not a public issue, and the re-organization became a purely internal affair. It remained a clear case for an expert committee. The Experts By including experts from a specific scientific field in poli- tical committees, these actors get to play a vital role in policy making. Among the expert members of “the organization com- mittee” were Stephan Tschudi-Madsen and Odmund Møllerup. Tschudi-Madsen, an art historian by education, was head of The Directorate for Cultural Heritage. Odmund Møllerup on the other hand was a prominent archaeologist and director of one of the five archaeological government museums. He had previ- ously been a key player in the committee behind the revised Heritage Act (Trøim, 1992). Still the majority of the members were representatives of po- litical institutions, including the Ministry of the Environment, the county and the municipality. The committee’s chairman, Yngvar Johnsen, was a representative of the Ministry, as was the member Astrid Bonesmo. Bonesmo was an architect by education and had her background as bureau chief in the Minis- try. Into what political, social or scientific setting was the com- mittee to inscribe their case? “There is an increasing pressure on cultural heritage from development interests, while there seems to be a growing interest in and appreciation for preserv- ing precious memories about past life and culture” (NOU, 1982: p. 36). This is stated in the introduction of the report as an ex- cerpt from the resolution that had originally appointed the committee. By linking the cultural heritage to both environ- mental and cultural policies the case gained great political sig- nificance, but as this was stated in the resolution, the Ministry had already defined the case. The limits were set. The main task of the committee was to report and vote on future organization patterns for the district apparatus. The re- sponsibility for registration of monuments entailed keeping procedures with local authorities and developers. Should a separate agency be in charge of this, or should both registration and excavation be collected in a single unit? Polls showed that the expert knowledge stood strong; the majority of the commit- tee voted for placing all authority at the five archaeological government museums. According to the majority, it was “im- portant that management decisions have their basis in science”. But the proposal did not go unchallenged. In what was termed a “special statement”, the member Bonesmo voted sin- gle-handedly for placing the registration practice at the County Councils. This was justified because the model proposed by the majority went against “common management practice” and “the normal levels of state, county and municipality”. Accord- ing to this member, it was only matter of time until authority would be transferred to the County Councils. It is obvious that the committee was split between different interests. On the one side were defenders of the old organiza- Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 144  S. V. NIELSEN tion structure, where expert institutions maintained authority. On the other was the Ministry defending the new policy with its focus on decentralization. The conflict became crystallized when the case of ministry linking was voted on. Though this was not part of the original mandate, the majority saw this as essential for an alternative future organization of the CHM. Shockingly, the vote resulted in a majority to move the CHM from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Cul- ture and Science, where it originally had been located in fore- front of the establishment of the Ministry of the Environment in 1972. In a quite literal sense, the majority associated CHM with culture and cultural work, not with nature and environmental protection. The Politics Reading the report from 1982 we are witnessing a committee taking a stand against the major policies of the time. The ma- jority wanted to strengthen the position of the scientific institu- tions and the traditional know-how gathered there, effectively demonstrating a direct antipathy to both cultural policy (i.e. decentralization of political decision making) and environ- mental policy (i.e. decisions grounded in science, not develop- ment interests). The White Paper from 1986 was prepared by the Ministry of the Environment, and through this the govern- ment made its decision in the case. What happens in and with the White Paper? Compared to the report, this document differs in both form and content. The White Paper is much shorter and decisions are declared through performative statements. The ministry link, which “the organi- zation committee” had insisted on voting on, was not men- tioned by the Government. Regarding the district apparatus, it was stated that the only real candidate were the County Coun- cils. Giving authority for both registration and excavation of monuments to the archaeological government museums would not fulfill “the objectives of a single and unified management model”. On the contrary, the museums were to be “excused” for purely administrative tasks, and should only be concerned with traditional cultural historic research and scientific excavations of endangered monuments. The White Paper did not take into account the majority votes in the older report. On the contrary, to justify its decisions the document referred directly to the “special statement” made by Bonesmo, but without mentioning that this member was herself a bureau chief from the Ministry. Furthermore, we are informed that a trial period with the County Council model had already been implemented in 1983. As already mentioned, the White Paper can be read as a pi- votal point for post-war CHM in Norway. This document marked the announcement of major changes to come, the first being deployed in 1989 through a new regulation of the Heri- tage Act (MOTE, 1989). This is also confirmed by the State’s own historiography, where the White Paper is recognized as the foundation of todays “modernized” CHM (NOU, 2002). Controversy as Translation How should we understand the process accounted for above? According to Michael Callon (Callon, 2001) a process of trans- lation consists of four different stages. The first stage is recog- nized as a phase of questioning, where the actors involved at- tempts to define the roles and identities of the others. The ques- tioning is followed by an interesting, wherein the winning party attempts to stabilize the new order of things. At the stage of interesting, the modus operandi among the actors is anything goes (Callon, 2001: p. 102). Can the early phase of the re-organization be read as a scien- tific controversy? By cutting the literary ties to the earlier report, the Ministry succeeded in stabilizing the vision of the County Council as district apparatus, a model it had itself proposed in the first place through a “special statement”. By re-producing the same history repeatedly in subsequent documents, it man- aged to maintain its own interesting. A striking example of this occurs in the Ministry’s action plan from 1992. While account- ing for the history of the Norwegian CHM it is explicitly stated that in respect to the political purpose of the action plan, the report from 1982 had been subject to strict censorship (Nielsen, 2011). But what about the scientific interests invested in “the orga- nization committee”? It is a historical fact that that the origins of the institutionalized protection of prehistoric monuments are linked directly to persons with scientific interests, and that the guard has since been sustained by institutions sharing similar interests (Shetelig, 1944; Glørstad & Kallhovd, 2011). The Ministry of the Environment took issue with this tradition in the White Paper by stating that “… it is in line with current cultural policy a national responsibility to protect cultural heritage. However, there is generally no national interest associated with removing them. For protection authorities and scientific inter- ests, it is desirable that the source material remains intact in its natural context” (MOTE, 1986: p. 19). By allowing itself to speak on behalf of all the parties involved, including the sci- ences, the Ministry could convince all readers that there was no internal controversy. Apparently, both politicians and scientists were unanimous in the case. According to the model proposed by Callon (2001), a suc- cessful interesting is followed by an enrollment, a phase of theoretical planning. This institution building propagates phy- sically at the moment the mobilization takes place (Brattli, 2006: pp. 45-46). Following this, the new regulation of the Heritage Act in 1989 can be read as an enrollment, while the practical changes occurring the following year marked the final mobili- zation. The Role of Free Association While the original resolution effectively reduced the problem to a purely technical matter—as long as the right actors were placed into the right order it was thought that the problem would vanish, the reading of NOU (1982: p. 36) and White Paper No. 39 showed that the changes would cause dire conse- quences. The documents testified to a deeper issue; that the various actors in the administrative apparatus ware not col- lected. As the split was evident in the report, it was subsequently brought to discussion in the Recommendation to the White Paper in 19871. According to the White Paper, the archaeologi- cal government museums were to be put into a position ena- bling them to pursue their research interests. As for their role in the CHM, they were only to carry out excavations on the order of the authorities. However, from academic hold such a distinc- 1The source here is Recommendation S.135 (1987-1988) by the Parliament Municipal and Environmental Protection Committee. Through Recommen- dations, the political parties highlight their position in a case put forward by the government. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 145  S. V. NIELSEN tion was seen as “very problematic”. In the Recommendation, it was also pointed out that the Ministry of the Environment had in fact ignored the earlier majority vote against the County Council model, and had effectively acted against the vibrant democracy. This attempt at questioning in the Recommendation was nonetheless unsuccessful. How did the Ministry get approval of their politics? Here we need to take a step back in the above story, and go outside the network of associations the State itself conveyed. This analytical “going outside” is what Callon has termed free association (Callon, 2001). One missing document in the process is an older report called NOU (1977: p. 50). Published by the Ministry of the Environ- ment, there is no mentioning of this text in the whole process of the re-organization (but see Hygen, 1996). The committee behind NOU (1977: p. 50) had been ap- pointed by the Ministry, but as the report was not meant to lead to a political process it served solely an internal purpose. Its chairman was Astrid Bonesmo, later to be recognized as part of “the organization committee” and the one member who was cited in White Paper No. 39 favoring the County Council model. The primary task of NOU (1977: p. 50) was to report on the possible impacts of the new Heritage Act once it had been im- plemented, with a special focus on future organizational changes. As the committee agreed that authority eventually had to be transferred to the County Councils, this report demon- strates how the organizational model had in fact circulated within the Ministry for over a decade before the publication of the White Paper in 1986. A Growing Controversy It becomes clear then, that this decisive period of post-war CHM in Norway was in fact characterized by more than an increasing loss of monuments. It is significant that up until the revised Heritage Act of 1978, systemic problems had been tak- ing care of solely by internal commissions, all of which were products of expert knowledge systems (i.e. archaeologists and their institutions) used to handling problems in their own fash- ion (Trøim, 1992). The re-organization shook this old network, and thus the re-organization was not purely a solution; it was also a destructive act. Of this controversial process several different readings are possible. According to art historian Arne Lie Christensen, the transmission of the CHM to the Ministry of the Environment in 1973 happened originally as a result of the “new thinking” in Norwegian environmental policy (Christensen, 2011: p. 137). Further, when the County Councils were later to be mobilized, it was only because this vision “won” (Ibid). Evidently, inter- preting political history as a continuing flow of change and effectively avoiding mentioning internal controversies is possi- ble. But is this a reading that takes into account the particular by the case itself, or even acknowledges the case as such? To presuppose a social substance that has the potential to ex- p lain everything is, following Latour, the greatest fault in soci- ology (Latour, 2005: p. 144). Through practical examples, sci- ence studies have demonstrated how history is not linear, but rather full of uncertainty and controversy (Shapin & Schaffer, 1985). Following this field, a close reading of the central gov- ernment policy documents from the re-organization of the Norwegian CHM could show that this was exactly the case. From an academic hold, the deprival of authority from ar- chaeological government museums in 1990 has been inter- preted as an historic milestone for the bureaucratic powers that affect Norwegian archaeology, transforming the CHM into a political field (Boaz, 1998; Keller, 1999). Consequently, central in the academic discourse has been a hermeneutic of suspicion aiming at identifying the suspects (Nielsen, 2011). In light of this discourse, the White Paper from 1986 can be read as a turning point not only for the CHM, but also for the field of archaeology in Norway. One could say that the re-or- ganization changed archaeology’s most basic conditions for production (Keller, 2006). The academic community became critical to the development that started with “the organization committee”. But was the criticism unjustified? Within political science, the 1970’s are often characterized by the Labor Party losing its post-war dominant position (Pettersen, 2009). Significantly, this rupture is tangent with two phenomena; the increasing use of public committees in policy making, and the final breakthrough for lobbying within Norwegian politics (Pettersen, 2009, with ref- erence to Espeli, 1999: p. 169). The reading of the central docu- ments from the re-organization of the CHM is consistent with this panorama; the organizational model was planned by the Ministry of the Environment and all subsequent disagreements were discarded. It was even possible to identify central actors in the process. However, while it remains significant that the scientific ex- pert systems failed in their attempt at defining the case, should this historical fact in itself be considered controversial? Through case studies, science studies have demonstrated that this is more the rule then the exception. As it happens, scientific knowledge quite often do not determine policy making (Asdal, 2011b: p. 237). While scientific knowledge is often involved through representatives in committees, there is always a process of translation. As this analysis could show, the basis for the re-organization was visions and ideas, not scientific knowledge. Political Ecology and CHM Within ANT and the discourse on modernity, Latour highly- ghts political ecology as the only real alternative to moderniza- tion (Latour, 1998, 1993, 2004). His analysis points out that ecology, as far as being a political rationale, has effectively been reserved as a normalizing project (Latour, 1998). Just as the 19th century never saw a “hygienist party”, there will never be a “cultural heritage party” in 21st century. Following Rich- ard Bradley’s take on British CHM, the reason for this is simple; cultural heritage is not attractive for real-politik (Bradley, 2006), and when there is no voting, there will be no new policy. Later policy documents from the 1990’s show that the re-organization of the Norwegian CHM eventually came to be understood as part of the larger government project called “modernization of public sector” (Nielsen, 2011). Restructuring became a key technology in this project, and it is estimated that in the period of 1985-1995, more than 900 re-organizations were mentioned in state budgets (Riksrevisjonen, 2005). And the trend only increased the following decayed. Again, the Ministry’s identification of the re-organization with the “mod- ernization” project must be read as part of a continuing inter- esting. By increasing the associations connected to the re-orga- nization, the phenomenon in itself became bigger, more social —more real. Though the origin of the process was found to be in the 1970’s, according to the State’s own historiography the Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 146  S. V. NIELSEN re-organization became increasingly understood as a footnote to the major government restructuring of the 90’s. As such, the re-organization can be associated with the early phase of NPM influence in the Norwegian public sector, but as the analysis here have shown, in anything the influence was nothing but skin. Down to this point, this analysis has demonstrated how the re-organization of the Norwegian CHM has been considered an adverse event—even a symptom of a larger destructive process. But can we make yet another reading here? Following the re-organization, it has been said that Norway’s protective sys- tem is among the strictest and most successful (Myklebust, 2002). The old problems have been resolved, and as such, the re-organization can also be read as a constructive process. Something was made through the re-organization. How can this be related to Latour’s take on political ecology? In his book Politics of Nature (Latour, 2004), Latour notes the following: “It was thought that political ecology had to bring hu- mans and non-humans together, whereas it actually had to bring together the scientific and the political ways of intermingling humans and nonhumans. There is indeed a division of labor, but there is not a division of the collec- tive” (Latour, 2004: p. 148). A bringing together of scientific and political practice—is this not exactly what the above analysis could demonstrate happened to the Norwegian CHM in the period from 1979 to 2001? In a quite literal sense, the re-organization moved the monuments—i.e. the non-human social actors, away from the expert institutions and into the local democracy of the County Councils. Connections were cut, new was made. The monu- ments became an integral part of land use planning in the mu- nicipalities, and of society, in a whole new way. And this hap- pened not in spite of expert knowledge; following the regula- tion of the Heritage Act in 1989, archaeologists were now dis- tributed to counties across the country, increasing the degree of intermingling. According to Latour, political ecology as realpolitik imposes a re-organization of the sciences involved in political policy making. Science should be democratized, not hidden away in expert knowledge systems. Latour’s definition of political ecology must of course be read as a part of his work within the discourse on ANT. It is therefore significant that only an analy- sis in accordance with this can successfully capture the differ- ent forms “ecologizing” can take in practical policy making. Perhaps the growing academic controversy tangent with the re-organization can be read not as sign of its failure but, on the contrary, as an argument for its success? Conclusion As the environmental historian Kristin Asdal writes, go- vernance documents are linked to a political machinery that helps the texts to reach far and wide (Asdal, 2008b). This arti- cle has made an attempt at demonstrating how a “practical ap- proach” can enlighten the relation between science and politics in CHM through studies of organizational change. A close reading of these mediating texts can demonstrate how they enact out, how they both inform and transform the specific case. Taking these documents seriously can lead to the creation of new and unknown histories. In contrast to earlier interpretations, it has been argued here that uncertainty and controversy played a major role in re-organizing the Norwegian CHM in the 1980- and 90’s. I have pointed out that the process was both constructive and destructive; destructive because it dramatically changed the nature of the scientific expert systems, and constructive because it led to the functional and aggressive system that was origi- nally intended in 1979. It has also been argued that the democ- ratization and regionalization of authority to the County Coun- cils in 1990 was an event corresponding positively with La- tours’ theory of “ecologizing” politics. Regionalization brought the representatives of protected things closer to local political decision making, distributing the uncertainty and caution asso- ciated with prehistoric monuments as far as possible. One could say that the Norwegian CHM went one step further into be- coming “a collective experimentation on the possible associa- tion between things and people” (Latour, 1998: p. 21). 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