Challenging the set mining path: Agency and diversification in the case of Kiruna

Abstract

The paper follows the development of the tourism industry in a small, traditional mining town in northern Sweden. It highlights local agency in the diversification process, as well as interpath relations between tourism and mining. Drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews, the paper finds that the two seemingly unrelated paths share the need for a variety of local endowments and in so the dominant mining industry both compete with and support the growing tourism industry. The paper further finds that both private and public actors can exercise change agency, in a region dominated by reproductive agency, and that change agency can widen the room for further actors to exercise change agency.