Ulrika Waaranperä (Lund University) presents a paper titled "Prospective mining and histories of property in Skåne and Lapland". Nina Carlsson and Karin Borevi act as discussants.

Ulrika Waaranperä is appointed as a Postdoctoral research fellow at Global Political Studies, Malmö University. Her research centres on the land-politics nexus and its local trajectories, which she previously explored in the PhD thesis Histories of land. Politicization, property and belonging in Molo, Kenya (Lund University, 2018). She is in the process of initiating a research project on the land-politics nexus in relation to prospective mining in Sweden.

Abstract

This presentation will revolve around how a broadened conception of property can shed light on the multiple values at stake in debates over prospective mining. From the eighteenth century onwards, the liberal concept of property has dominated understandings of what land is and how access to land is to be regulated.

According to the liberal view, individual and absolute property rights to land ensures prosperity also for the broader society. Mining turns this conception of property upside down. Since mining is directed to the tiny fraction of the bedrock which is not covered by property rights to the surface above it, mining appears to disconnect property rights to land from the accumulation of wealth.

Further, the debates over prospective mining highlights historical, environmental and emotional values of land, revealing how property is contingent on social and political relations. In order to illustrate how this is so, the presentation will revolve around two cases of mining explorations: for vanadium in Hörby and Österlen, Skåne and for iron in Gállok, Lapland.

These two cases actualizes the principal questions of local veto rights against mining and the territorial rights of indigenous populations, respectively. Further, the cases represent locations where property and access to land have been subjected to historical disputes.

Building on preliminary findings from research on the Skåne case, I will resonate around how the findings contribute to the critical literature on property (Blomley 2008, Bhandar 2018, Underkuffler 2003), but also to the ontological discussion around land in relation to both property and indigenous rights (Hyllan Eriksen, Valkonen & Valkonen, eds. 2019, Anthias 2016, Bryan 2000) , and on how property intersects with notions of belonging (Cooper 2014).

The seminar is followed by fika. Welcome!

Please note that the research seminars in Political Science are internal for researchers at Södertörn University. For questions, please contact statsvetenskap@sh.se