More than one story: remaking community and place in Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we study how Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society is interpreted and experienced by communities whose livelihoods and cultural identities are entangled with carbon-intensive industries. The study draws upon interviews with citizen groups in the coastal city of Lysekil, located next to Scandinavia’s largest oil refinery. Our analysis speaks to a growing scholarly literature on just transitions where we argue that a better understanding of place attachment as an active and operating force in local transition processes, can provide important information for just transition policy design. Based on our research on place attachment in Lysekil, we suggest that inclusivity in just transitions, implies acknowledging and addressing more than material aspects of loss, involving loss of direction, loss of identities and loss of imagined futures. Moreover, we argue that the vision of an inclusive transition requires a more nuanced approach to the concept of “community” which recognises different stories, voices, and perspectives and challenges taken for granted assumptions about local people's priorities in debates on just transitions. Finally, based on our experiences from Lysekil we contend that inclusivity requires communicative spaces where citizens can meet to listen, speak, and discuss future pathways towards a fossil free society. The visions of just and inclusive transitions, we argue, can only be realised if driven by a place-based dialogue on future pathways and if agendas for a fossil free transformation are locally anchored.