Saving or destroying the local community? Conflicting spatial storylines in the Greenlandic debate on uranium

Abstract

A downturn of economic activities the last four years has intensified the debate on mineral resources in Greenland. This paper undertakes a discourse-centered examination, focusing on key storylines about uranium mining in Greenland; here conflicting spatial storylines about “saving” or “destroying” the local community often appear. The analytical focus on storylines and frontier stories reveals that considerable power is embedded in structured ways of seeing, which causes certain things to seem fixed and important, while other elements appear to be problematic or absent. The production of storylines has facilitated a discursive paradigm shift which has turned mining in Greenland into mining for Greenland, as well as stabilized an argument about mining as the primary road to development. This article argues that investments in mining are also investments into different spatial development futures for local communities co-constructed by politicians, the media, NGOs, the mining sector as well as the local stakeholders. The analysis incorporates knowledge and experiences from a continuing ethnographic case study in Narsaq, a community close to Greenland’s potentially biggest mine of rare earth elements and uranium, and also includes insights from the public debate on uranium taking place at various locations.