Sustainable Development on Colonised Land : A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Sustainability of Wind-Power

• Main Author: Waara, Oskar
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper 2017
• Subjects: Sustainable Development; Critical Discourse Analysis; Colonialism; Sámi; Indigenous; Centre-Periphery; Earth and Related Environmental Sciences; Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-324544

Sustainable development is major post of global and national political agendas, and notions of sustainability permeate whole societies. Sweden is heavily influenced by sustainable development which can be exemplified by the ambitious goal of fossil-free energy and the current phase of rapid wind-power developments. In the name of sustainability many of these wind-power turbines and parks are now placed in the northern regions of the country, but whether it is sustainable is questionable. The northern region is a colonised territory, and the colonial relations between the indigenous Sámi people and the non-indigenous population remains an unresolved area. It is a cause of grievance and continuous conflict over land-use in the north – by of which wind-power developments are a part of. Therefore, this thesis examine the discursive construct of sustainability, in terms of content and underlying power relations, when applied to wind-power in four north Swedish newspapers between 2009 and 2016. The thesis use discourse and media-sociological theories in order to understand the role of media texts in the social construction of knowledge and how knowledge is shaped by social realities and shaping the social interpretation of reality. To study discourses a qualitative method based on critical discourse analysis is employed with the aim of investigating contextual meaning derived from the relationship between the text and the surrounding society. The empirical material is subject to an inductive analysis that has much in common with a grounded theory approach, but which involves some deductive analytical elements derived from theory and previous research. The findings of this thesis is that there is no singular discursive construct of sustainability, but rather a multiplicity of perspectives that together form a general representation of how sustainability is perceived when applied to wind-power. However, the discourses were dominated by non-indigenous actors with a national perspective - such as political parties, ...