Contested energy spaces. Disassembling energyscapes of the Canadian North

• Published in: The Extractive Industries and Society
• Main Author: Wanvik, Tarje Iversen
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: The University of Bergen 2017
• Subjects: Canada; Wood Buffalo
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1956/17409

For decades, extractive industry developments have had direct and indirect impacts on indigenous communities in Wood Buffalo, Alberta, Canada. Yet, in a seemingly paradoxical manner and despite massive negative attention, there are several indigenous communities in favour of industrial developments on their traditional lands. To investigate this paradox, I embarked on an exploration of the contested energy space of the Canadian oil sands—investigating and analysing the characteristics, governance and power plays therein. In this PhD research project, I investigated how to conceptualize the socio-material complexity of contested energy spaces in the Canadian north, to identify instability and potential for change within them, and to understand the power relations between industry, state and indigenous communities. Hence, the overall effort of this PhD transcends the apparently narrow issue of indigenous responses to industrial impact, touching upon larger, more complex and generic problematics of energy and society relations. Employing qualitative, Grounded Theory Methods (GTM) on a variety of scales, I present the research in two theoretically focused papers and two more empirically grounded ones. In paper #1, I discuss how to conceptualize the sociomaterial complexity of contested energy spaces. In this paper, by employing assemblage theory, I identify contested energy spaces as complex places or situations. I argue that to analyse and understand these complex situations, we need to equip assemblage theory with acknowledged geographical concepts of place (and materiality), scale (and networks) and power (as the mobilization of resources), providing analytical categories and tools for geographers investigating contested energy spaces specifically, and hopefully also contributing to the ongoing scholarly discourse on place. Furthermore, in paper #2, I investigate how to identify instability and potential for change in contested energy spaces. Building on my initial reflections in paper #1, I elaborate on the ...