Mining, Green Steel and the Comfort of Alignment with extractivism in the Swedish North : Podcast: Challenging Nordic Innocence

In this episode we talk to Georgia De Leeuw about her research on mining, green steel and the comfort alignment with extractivism in in the Swedish north, or indigenous Sápmi. Her PhD dissertation deals with Swedish extractivism in Sápmi through the examples of a planned iron ore mine in Gállok/Kallak and the hydrogen-based steel transition. The main aim is to understand the trust that is placed in extraction as a means to arrive at a happy, prosperous, green future. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Sara Ahmed’s notion of the promise of happiness, she suggests that extraction constitutes an object of desire toward which people tend in an affective investment, an anticipation of happiness in the future. Despite the hopes that come with green steel to onboard processing, diversify local economies, and break with resource colony tendencies of North-South dynamics, this results in a rearticulation of the North as a resource frontier and a re-inscription of colonial relations and indigenous injustice. While the allure of the fantasy disguises alternative trajectories, she shows that the misaligned interject productive ruptures in extractive desires. The alternatives they outline echo academic calls for dematerialization, a dismantling of the growth paradigm for the sake of reciprocity, care, and regeneration. These ruptures of the extractive allure may serve as entry points into anti-extractive futures that hold real potential to dismantle the North as a treasure trove for extraction. The dissertation builds on fieldwork data consisting of 65 interviews, twelve observations, and secondary material that is read as performative expressions through narrative analysis.