Belonging to and in the Shale Gas Fields. A Case‐Study of the Noordoostpolder, the Netherlands

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyses how belonging becomes articulated in relation to large‐scale extractive projects. It does so through an ethnographic analysis of the construction of belonging expressed in languages of valuation (the meanings that people give to natural resources discursively and in practice) in the Noordoostpolder, the Netherlands. Belonging is understood to encompass ‘feeling at home in a place’ and the political processes through which belonging becomes a discursive resource (the politics of belonging). We conclude that the ways people position themselves toward shale gas extraction are both rooted in how they give meaning to and interact with their environment and embedded in local history and ideas of political agency and voice. Only those elements of belonging that are considered objective or useful as a policy solution are used as a discursive resource in mobilisation against shale gas. The article is based on 2,5 years of ethnographic fieldwork.