image used for representational purpose. Pexels
Oslo: The Norwegian government has funded researchers to explore whether white pain is racist or not.
The rundown of the study, conducted by Norway’s University of Bergen, says, “Whiteness is not only a cultural and societal condition tied to skin colour, privileges, and systematic exclusion, but materialize everywhere around us.”
Claiming that Norway is “not a conventional colonial power”, the government wants to find out whether or not using titanium white colour “everywhere has played a role in establishing it as the superior colour.
“Until now, however, this story has been lesser known to scholars and the public,” it added.
About the study
The study, which has been termed as ‘NorWhite’, strives to observe the Norwegian-developed paint pigment titanium white through “historical, aesthetic and critical lenses”.
Through the study, researchers hope to determine how the development of the white colour played a role in “social transformation”.
The description of the study asked, “Currently the Norwegian innovation TiO2 [titanium dioxide] is present in literally every part of modern life…The primary research question is: What are the cultural and aesthetic changes instigated by titanium white and TiO2 surfaces – and how can both the material in itself and these changes be conceptualized and made visible?”
A whopping 12 million NOK (Norwegian Krone) has been allocated by the Research Council of Norway, a government agency while the associate professor and historian Ingrid Halland is at the forefront of the study.
“The overall objective of NorWhite is to critically and visually investigate the cultural and aesthetic preconditions of a complex and unexplored part of Norwegian technology and innovation history that has–as this project claims–made the world whiter,” the study description concluded.
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