Shafted : a case of cultural and structural violence in the power relations between a Sami community and a mining company in northern Sweden

In the summer of 2013 a conflict between a mining company and a group of protesters took place in Gállok (Kallak) in northern Sweden. The conflict brought a long-standing debate to the surface about the so-called Swedish mining boom and its impact on both natural environments and the traditional Sam...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sehlin MacNeil, Kristina
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Umeå universitet, Centrum för samisk forskning (CeSam) 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-108100
Description
Summary:In the summer of 2013 a conflict between a mining company and a group of protesters took place in Gállok (Kallak) in northern Sweden. The conflict brought a long-standing debate to the surface about the so-called Swedish mining boom and its impact on both natural environments and the traditional Sami livelihood, reindeer herding. This article explores the power relations and structural and cultural violence experienced by members of a sameby (a Sami reindeer herding community) in its relations with the Swedish government-owned mining company LKAB. The study centres around the events that took place before and during the creation of an opinion piece, published in a Swedish national tabloid, involving both parties. The analysis uses two of the sameby members’ narratives to describe their experiences in order to investigate the power relations, which are then analysed using peace researcher Johan Galtung’s theories on structural and cultural violence.