State regulation of mining in a post-fordist economy: Local vulnerability in the shadow of hierarchy

Abstract

The paper investigates two Swedish cases of state regulation of profound infrastructural change in relation to mining above the polar circle. An analytical framework of neoliberal depoliticisation and state regulation is used to investigate the extent to which neoliberal logics, especially the logic of distancing, determine the state relation to peripheral communities dominated by extractive accumulation regimes. The paper finds that the neoliberal prerogatives of distancing and flexibility are dominating the state relation to peripheral communities, and that this relation is determined by different aspects of distance. The dominance of neoliberal prerogatives also leads to a questioning of the widely held notion that the Swedish state has adopted an industrial policy devoted to mining expansion since the release of the Mineral Strategy in 2013.