Year-end Sale % OFF 
Abstract
During the past decade, Finland has been the target of a global boom in the quest for untapped mineral resources. Based on the mapped information of mineral potential provided by the state, multinational mining corporations are making reservations for and conducting mineral explorations particularly in Finland’s peripheral regions. This paper investigates the emergence of an anti-mining movement in Ohcejohka, in northernmost Finland, in 2014–2015, and the ontological conflict manifested in the outside mapping of the land as “mineral rich” as well as the local people's various knowledges of the land as a lived place. By producing a holistic counter-mapping of their social, ancestral and meaningful landscape, the movement questioned the state’s and the company’s homogenising knowledge in the production of land and resources. While the reality-making effects of modern maps have previously been studied, the entanglements of such mappings in environmental conflicts with local ontological realities and knowledge spheres have not been extensively studied. This paper argues that rather than imposing a “one world ontology”, maps and mappings of land and resources are culmination points in environmental conflicts, where they become renegotiated, challenged and redefined in the local and dynamic enactments of reality.
Highlights
In recent years, the extraction and use of raw materials has intensified around the globe
This paper investigates the emergence of a mining resistance movement and claims for space in 2014–2015 among the indigenous Sami and other community members in the village of Ohcejohka,2 in northernmost Finland, in response to the mineral prospection plans of a multinational company
Looking at these initial stages of mining, when speculation over possible mineral resources is more dominant than an actual mineral reserve, and focusing on the local community’s ways of responding to such speculations, are essential to understanding what kinds of people’s existences are at stake, why people mobilise and the means by which they articulate and represent a different relationship to the environment than the one proposed by the state and the mining companies
Summary
The extraction and use of raw materials has intensified around the globe. This paper investigates the emergence of a mining resistance movement and claims for space in 2014–2015 among the indigenous Sami and other community members in the village of Ohcejohka, in northernmost Finland, in response to the mineral prospection plans of a multinational company. The resistance movement, called the “Anti-Mining Coalition of the Deatnu Valley”, emerged after the company Karelian Diamond Resources ( KDR), a company in partnership with the multinational Rio Tinto, had reserved an area of the Sami lands for preliminary investigations for mineral exploration. As the people in the resistance movement challenged the visions of mineral extraction that came from the outside, they renegotiated boundaries and articulated plural understandings to replace homogenised worldviews of nature, land and resources. The local resistance resulted in the mining company Rio Tinto eventually responding to the activists and KDR withdrawing the reservation. A central question to be examined in this paper is whether an outside vision and mapping of a place as mineral rich, even if this vision is
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
