Paper short abstract:

The project examines how actors in a land use conflict between limestone industry, nature conservation interests and local community on northern Gotland, articulate and use competing narratives of sustainability to sanction industrial exploitation or to protect the area as an upcoming national park.

Paper long abstract:

This study discusses how actors in a land use conflict on northern Gotland used stories of sustainability as an argument to legitimize industrial exploitation of the area or to protect it as an upcoming national park. In the conflict, plans for large-scale limestone mining collided with nature conservation interests and the local community. During the conflict, the site became an arena where hegemonic discourses on sustainability, industrial development and eco-modernity came to clash.

The conflict was called "Striden om Ojnareskogen" (The battle of Ojnare forest) and was one of similar conflicts in Sweden during the 2000s between expansive mining industry, nature conservation and local community. A background can be sought in the deregulation of Swedish mineral policy in a neoliberal direction since the 1990s.

The study examines how “sustainability stories” were articulated to influence the course of the conflict. Many actors became involved and vertical networks were formed between the local community, industrial interests, various regional and state authorities and levels of society in Sweden. The networks launched antagonistic narrative programs to promote own interests and to disqualifying others' activities and ways of thinking. In these competing narrative programs, the landscape's meaningful elements such as limestone, water and habitat became actants with discursive functions by being associated with aspects of sustainability.

The study's research material consists of court documents, media reporting and interviews of people who actively participated in the conflict. Theoretically, the networks' narrative programs are analysed with narrative theory and inspiration from political discourse theory and actor-network perspectives.

Paper short abstract:

The paper presents a study of recreational hunting in Sweden. It focuses on accounts and narratives based on interviews with hunting business operators. It shows a contested social space where the notion of sustainability frames different forms of moral accounts related to hunting and game meat.

Paper long abstract:

Recreational hunting evokes emotions and could be described as a contested space. The paper presents a study of recreational hunting in Sweden, focusing on accounts and narratives from ethnographic interviews with hunting tourism operators. It discusses how the notion of sustainability permeates and frames moral accounts of hunting practices, game meat, wildlife management, business ethics, animal welfare and human well-being.

Through the analytical lens of ‘moral gatekeeper’, the hunting tourism operators are depicted as acting from a social position where they navigate in a space of tensions. By focusing on accounts, we focus on the mode in which the social reality is explained, narrated and justified. In this mode, we can discern different voices or counternarratives in the operators’ accounts as they relate to various positions (sometimes conflicting) and opinions of other stakeholders within the hunting community as well as in the general public.

The analysis demonstrates how the operators balance different norms and practices of recreational hunting, wildlife management, and how they talk about ‘good business’. It shows how the notion of sustainability is used in an amorphous way, as an undercurrent or explicitly articulated. For instance, it is discernible in accounts of the culture of ‘Allmogejakt’ as a traditional, democratic form of hunting and how it relates to commercial hunting; in the valuation and critical negotiation of different forms of hunting styles and practices related to the game meat; in ideals and norms of hunting business ethics, and in accounts of human well-being and the role of nature.

Paper short abstract:

“Nunataryuk” is a multi-disciplinary research consortium examining permafrost thaw in Arctic coastal areas. This paper presents outcomes from fieldwork conducted in four study sites: Northwestern Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia, including narrative research of “sustainability stories”.

Paper long abstract:

“Nunataryuk” is a multi-disciplinary research consortium (2017 – 2023, H2020), examining permafrost thaw (PFT) in Arctic coastal areas. This paper presents outcomes from fieldwork conducted in four study sites: Northwestern Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia. First, a risk analysis framework as well as geo-physical & socio-cultural impacts. Second, the results of a quantitative survey on the perceived impacts of PFT on subsistence and livelihood. Third, results from an interdisciplinary sub-project ‘Climate Stories of the Past’, which is based on oral history interviews with Inuit and First Nation Elders, written records and ecological stories (tree-rings, sediment cores) in the Beaufort Sea region in Canada. Finally, this paper presents narrative/ethnographic futures research in the same region, asking what kind of "environment stories" lead to better adaptation, equitable mitigation and more sustainable lifeways – while recognizing the complexity and multi-interpretability of sustainability, mitigation and adaptation. The way people understand their environments influences how they practice adaptation, what they understand as risk, who they see as responsible for acting and what policy options are seen as viable. Narrative research understands society and nature as interlinked and holds the promise to improve adaptation and mitigation strategies. The study thus seeks to answer the following questions: How is the environment ‘storied’ in coastal communities? How are these narratives linked to adaptation and mitigation? We argue that in combination, narrative and ethnographic futures research is particularly suitable for co-developing adaption strategies through scenario-building and defining Arctic sustainability indicators in relation to PFT.

Paper short abstract:

The quote is from a farmer who cultivates horse gram in the outskirts of Bangalore. The horse represents a view from a margin connected to an evolving but niche sustainability discourse of organic superfoods. The paper will unpack different vulnerabilities connected to this sustainability narrative.

Paper long abstract:

The quote is from a small farmer who once used to grow seasonal vegetables for local markets. He now cultivates horse gram (Macrotyloma uniflorum) in the outskirts of Bangalore. His produce goes to select organic stores in the city that cater to people living in premium localities. The horse is not just an animal here but a nuanced narrative marker. It represents a view from a margin that is connected to an evolving but niche urban discourse of organic superfoods. The paper will use this quote, and others, as ethnographic surrogates to probe three emerging trends. The first is the different vulnerabilities of a shared but tenuous prosperity that is connected to global geoeconomics. Superfoods are a material and a narrative bridge between Bangalore’s IT professionals and small farmers; a bridge that would not exist without a global offshoring economy. The second is how such narratives inject notions of a global ecological and environmental vulnerability into local urban built environments thereby complicating imaginations of rural as local and urban as global. The third is how such mingled imaginations are creating new discourses of sustainable urban future as a ‘cultural fact’.