Manoeuvring Conflict: Industrial Land Use Projects and ‘Refusal to Resist’ Among Reindeer Herding Communities in Northern Fennoscandia

ABSTRACT

When local and indigenous communities are faced with industrial projects the situation is often dealt with in research using terms such as resistance or power relations. Such viewpoints and extreme polarisation have been commonplace in the context of mining and reindeer herding in northern Scandinavia. In this article, I take a different approach. I argue for potential in the concept of refusal for understanding complex local realities in the context of land use disputes. I advance the understanding on the concept of refusal by detaching it from the resistance discourse and demonstrate that refusals can be utilised as an expression of cooperation and reciprocity. Furthermore, I introduce refusal to resist as a relevant category for local communities’ strategies of engagement with industrial projects. Local communities may utilise refusal to resist in a situation where they wish to secure the continuity of their livelihood without risking their outer group social relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Reindeer husbandry
• mining
• refusal
• conflict
• local communities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Teresa Komu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1127-8115

Notes

1 ‘Social license to operate’ alludes to a mining company’s need to gain an unofficial social consent for their operations. The usefulness of the concept has been criticised by claims that lack of open contestation, such as in the case study presented in this article, could be interpreted as a ‘social license’ (Owen & Kemp 2013).

2 Concession reindeer herding is conducted below the Swedish Saami Territory Border in the Kalix and Torne River Valleys. In a concession Saami Village, herding activities are conducted by Saami, but non-Saami can own reindeer and sometimes participate in the herding activities. In Muonio Saami Village, all herding activities are done by Saami members (To read more on concession reindeer herding, see Jernsletten & Beach 2006).

3 Despite my efforts, I was unable to reach representatives from the Swedish mining company Northland Sweden.

4 A Finnish dialect spoken in Torne River Valley.

5 These are two separate communities, despite the similarity in names.

6 The quotes are translated by the author.

7 During autumn, all the community’s reindeer are sorted out in this corral as a way of dividing those that will live and those that are to be slaughtered.

8 Negative local attitude towards herders is documented in other research (see Beach 1997; Heikkinen 2002; Beach 2004), as well as the role of media in highlighting negative aspects of herding (see Heikkilä 2003).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported Academy of Finland funded project Understanding the Cultural Impacts and Issues of Lapland Mining: A Long-Term Perspective on Sustainable Mining Policies in the North.