Between party politics and local identification : Political responses to a rural protest

How do politicians make sense of situations in which they may find themselves caught up in between opposing loyalties, for example, party loyalty on the one hand and loyalty to neighbours and friends or ideological convictions on the other? Based on interviews about a rural occupation in protest of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Space and Polity
Main Authors: Nilsson, Bo, Lundgren, Anna Sofia
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper 2021
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Online Access:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-179748
https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2021.1879634
Description
Summary:How do politicians make sense of situations in which they may find themselves caught up in between opposing loyalties, for example, party loyalty on the one hand and loyalty to neighbours and friends or ideological convictions on the other? Based on interviews about a rural occupation in protest of a political decision in a small community in Northern Sweden, this paper explores the approaches of local politicians to the protest and to the people involved in it. The results show how discourses of geographic space and party-political loyalty structured the negotiated responsibility for the situation, affected the politicians’ descriptions of the occupation as such, and made support for the protest become more or less difficult.