Conflicting knowledges, competing worldviews : Norwegian governance of Sámi reindeer husbandry in West Finnmark, Norway

This thesis contributes to the field of political ecology by presenting an empirically driven analysis of the power dynamics between the state and Sámi reindeer herders and the knowledge systems that inform the governance of reindeer husbandry. The phenomenon studied consists of the actors’ competing accounts of what reindeer husbandry is and what it ought to be. This phenomenon is addressed through four research questions: 1. What values and knowledge systems inform the actors’ presentations about reindeer husbandry? 2. What are the actors’ presentations of the ‘proper’ management of reindeer, herders and land? 3. How do the actors influence and claim authority in decision-making concerning reindeer husbandry? 4. How does the state’s governance of reindeer husbandry affect power relations among the actors? The research was qualitative. The core data have been collected from in-depth interviews and informal conversations with herders and government officials in the 2012–2015 period. One of the case studies of the thesis was based on participatory research. The study has also been informed by direct observations of meetings between the actors and written sources such as government documents, letters between the actors and scientific publications. The study used a grounded theory approach to conceptualise the information that was collected. It engages the concepts of governmentality, weapons of the weak, politics of belonging and political ontology – concepts that were useful in the analysis of how policies meet practice, and how state regulations affect power relations between the state and herders, as well as within the herding community. The geographical scope of the study is West Finnmark, in the far north of Norway. This is the largest reindeer-herding region in terms of numbers of reindeer and herders. For more than a century, the Norwegian state has been concerned that there are ‘too many reindeer’ and ‘too many herders’ in West Finnmark. The state has therefore used regulations and incentives since the late 1970s to rationalise reindeer husbandry to make it economically efficient. Since 1992, sustainability has been an added objective. To make decision-making more effective, new policies were introduced in 2007 to strengthen the aspect of self-governance within reindeer husbandry. At the same time, it also increased the state’s capacity for sanctioning unwanted herding practices. Although the rationalisation policies have been in place for 40 years, government officials state that this objective has not been met. West Finnmark has specifically been identified as a region where herding practices continue to be irrational. At the same time, the region faces an increasing number of land-use conflicts between reindeer herders and other interests such as mining, wind power and hydropower installations, and roads and other types of urban development. The state’s destocking efforts and the land-use conflicts form the backdrop of the study. The thesis is built on four separate, but interrelated papers. They explore the actors’ narratives about decision-making related to reindeer husbandry, techniques for governing and being governed. The papers also report on the conflicting knowledge systems and competing worldviews that inform the actors’ presentations about ‘proper’ management of reindeer, herders and the land on which reindeer husbandry depends. Further, the papers explore the power structures that affect the actors’ ability to present their accounts and their ability to be understood by society at large. They examine how the actors describe the decision-making processes, explain their own actions, and claim authority. The study shows that the herders and government officials hold different and competing narratives about destocking and land-use decisions. However, one collective actor – the government officials – holds more economic and discursive power to legitimise its presentation. Thus, their narrative is perceived as objective and rational, while the herders’ counternarratives are labelled subjective and opportunistic. Further, the actors have unequal access to arenas for promoting their stories. The government officials’ narratives are repeated in Parliament and by the media and society; the counternarratives are almost invisible in the public debate. Moreover, the persistent dominant narratives have established an undisputed truth about Sámi reindeer herders – that the herders are overstocking the range to maximise their personal benefits and that reindeer husbandry is a bottleneck for the economic development of Finnmark. The thesis identifies four ‘techniques of power’ – discipline, neoliberal rationality, sovereign power and truth – used by the state to stimulate ‘rational’ herding practices, together with the techniques of resistance used by the herders to hamper the implementation of the rationalisation policies in West Finnmark. The analysis reveals the forms of resistance that the herders use daily to maintain control of their own livelihoods and practices. A common strategy is to partly adopt and partly avoid state regulations. Individual responses to the rationalisation are determined by personal desires and capacity, as well as relationships with and the behaviour of fellow herders. The thesis argues that the state governance of reindeer husbandry promotes herding practices that are primarily based on Western knowledge and the Western way of understanding the world. The governance regime is in conflict with traditional Sámi reindeer-herding knowledge and worldviews. Despite 40 years of attempting to transform reindeer husbandry by means of policies, the Sámi worldview continues to influence the herders’ understanding of the relationship between humans, reindeer and nature and how this relationship should be governed. The conflicting knowledge systems and competing worldviews about what reindeer husbandry is and ought to be undermine the identity and rights of the herders. The state’s attempts to control the Sámi reindeer husbandry skews the power relations between the state and the herders to the benefit of the state, and it creates winners and losers within the Sámi herding community. The Sámi herders’ ability to engage in reindeer husbandry and claim the right to land has become dependent on their success in adapting to a Norwegianised form of reindeer husbandry