Suchergebnisse

Video link of presentation January 31st, 2015. Photos and videos are approved of those that are on the images/videos. All rights reserved! For any kind of publishing beyond this link, please contact may-britt.ohman@gender.uu.se. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsLK6Avr0FY Conference link: http://newkirkcenter.uci.edu/2015/01/ Supradisciplinary conversations on security, safety and resilience in the river valleys of Sábme – land of the Sámi Since 2008 I combine the study of the (perceived) control of rivers through hydropower and the impacts of the hydropower exploitations during the 20th century within Sábme, the land of the indigenous Sámi people. I apply a methodology which I refer to as supradisciplinarity. My own academic field being History of Science and Technology, the method involves collaboration with different academic disciplines, inviting co-researchers from other academic disciplines; amongst other water resource management, political science, and archeology. Furthermore, I integrate knowledges and people outside academia. This approach goes along with the argument by scholar Haraway, about "situated knowledges" and "partial perspectives" in regard to the production of scientific knowledge.[1] In my interpretation, it also includes the necessity for me as a researcher, and Sámi, to take a stance and not pretend to be "neutral" in front of colonial destructive natural resource exploitation of Indigenous Peoples water- and landscapes. I will describe parts of this work, and the challenges it involves, along with the important work of healing that I find equally important. [1] Donna Haraway, "Situated knowledges: The Science question in Feminism and the privilege of partial perspective", Haraway Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The reinvention of Nature (New York, Routledge, 1991), 183-201. ; Video link of presentation January 31 st , 2015. Photos and videos are approved of those that are on the images/videos. All rights reserved! For any kind of publishing beyond this link, please contact may-britt.ohman@gender.uu.se . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsLK6Avr0FY Conference link: http://newkirkcenter.uci.edu/2015/01/ ; Rivers, Resistance, Resilience: Sustainable futures in Sápmi and in other Indigenous Peoples' territories

Recent examples have very dramatically exposed how energy and power systems are vulnerable structures, which may cause severe and fatal damages on both short term and long term; for instance the British Petroleum Oil Spill in the Mexican Gulf 2010, the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, March 2011, the Wivenhoe dam causing the flooding in Brisbane, January 2011. Energy production as well as consumption is a highly contested area within both short term as well as long-term policy making. Scientific claims of human induced climate change currently affects both policy making and efforts in energy transitions, as well as funds invested in new technology development. At the same time, the recent natural disasters have raised growing concerns about the structural safety in regard to energy and power systems, calling for all states to review their own safety procedures. In Sweden, as is the case in many other countries, the natural resource extractions being the basis for a large part of the energy production takes place within contested territories, where upon indigenous people reside and have their daily life and traditional economic activities. Being a complex scenario already, it is further complicated by the fact that the actors involved in the critical decision-making are found on all possible levels; from the household level to international negotiations. Furthermore, it concerns both every day practices in terms of operation at the power plants and grids, as well as the long-term power production strategies of power companies. Each actor, at any level, is also involved as an individual with his or her specific historical and social contexts, knowledges, perceptions, emotions, and affections, not to forget power position. Thus, actors on governmental level, as well as on all other decision-making levels including the power companies, are in for dealing with the sometimes extreme forces of nature, a potential climate change with all its consequences, continued demand of energy and electricity. At the same time, in Sweden as in many other countries, they are supposed to take into consideration international conventions and treaties signed by the state in regard to biological diversity as well as the rights of indigenous peoples to their territories. This scenario calls for new approaches which combine the use of old and new technologies for energy production (and consumption), analyze the assumptions and visions attached to these technologies and while taking into account contentious issues of the contested territories affected by the energy and power production. The aim of this symposium is to bring together persons from different disciplines and backgrounds, inside and outside academia, to present perspectives, ideas and ongoing research which can be linked to feminist technoscience and energy systems. Within this aim, the idea of the symposium is to tie together issues of silence, voicing, technoscience, feminist embodiment and security/safety/risk. The ultimate objective is to form a feminist technoscience platform with basis in Uppsala, to work as a ground for future research collaborations. The symposium is organized by Dr. May-Britt Öhman, Centre for Gender Research, in collaboration with the symposium participants and the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, and partly in collaboration with UPPSAM, the Association for Sámi Related Studies in Uppsala [Föreningen för samiskrelaterad forskning i Uppsala]. The symposium is financed by research funds from the Swedish Scientific Research Council [Vetenskapsrådet] the research project DAMMED: Security, Risk and Resilience around the Dams of Sub Arctica (2010-2012), and with financial and organizational contribution from GenNa/ Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University. ; DAMMED: Security, Risk and Resilience around the Dams of Sub Arctica

This study analyses the history of a large hydroelectric scheme – the Great Ruaha power project in Tanzania. The objective is to establish why and how this specific scheme came about, and as part of this to identify the key actors involved in the decision-making process, including the ideological contexts within which they acted. Although the Tanzanian actors and the World Bank (IBRD) are discussed, main focus is on the Swedish actors on project level.Kidatu, the first phase of the Great Ruaha power project (constructed between1970-1975), became the first large-scale hydropower station in Tanzania. As such, it paved the way for Tanzanian entrance into the Big Dam Era and significant changes within the Tanzanian landscape. As well as the dry river bed at Kidatu, and the small reservoir that precedes it, the Great Ruaha power project also involved the creation of a huge artificial lake, the Mtera reservoir. The Kidatu hydropower station was the first large undertaking within Swedish bilateral aid, and implied the takeover of control of hydropower construction in Tanzania by Swedish enterprises, replacing the enterprises of the former colonial power. A hydropower plant is a complex technoscientific artefact. The construction of a hydropower plant is preceded by a large number of technological choices, scientific prestudies and estimations of costs and revenues. A hydropower plant is also a complex social creation, and is as such filled with social actors engaged in conflicts, compromises and power structures. The decision to construct Kidatu hydropower station was a result of negotiations and activities within what is called "development assistance". This brings in yet another dimension, the political one, involving export and import of technology, foreign capital, and foreign influence in decision-making processes, as well as ideas about how to bring development and progress to a people supposed to be living in "poverty and misery". The study is divided into three main parts. The first part analyses the context of ...

This study analyses the history of a large hydroelectric scheme – the Great Ruaha power project in Tanzania. The objective is to establish why and how this specific scheme came about, and as part of this to identify the key actors involved in the decision-making process, including the ideological contexts within which they acted. Although the Tanzanian actors and the World Bank (IBRD) are discussed, main focus is on the Swedish actors on project level.Kidatu, the first phase of the Great Ruaha power project (constructed between1970-1975), became the first large-scale hydropower station in Tanzania. As such, it paved the way for Tanzanian entrance into the Big Dam Era and significant changes within the Tanzanian landscape. As well as the dry river bed at Kidatu, and the small reservoir that precedes it, the Great Ruaha power project also involved the creation of a huge artificial lake, the Mtera reservoir. The Kidatu hydropower station was the first large undertaking within Swedish bilateral aid, and implied the takeover of control of hydropower construction in Tanzania by Swedish enterprises, replacing the enterprises of the former colonial power. A hydropower plant is a complex technoscientific artefact. The construction of a hydropower plant is preceded by a large number of technological choices, scientific prestudies and estimations of costs and revenues. A hydropower plant is also a complex social creation, and is as such filled with social actors engaged in conflicts, compromises and power structures. The decision to construct Kidatu hydropower station was a result of negotiations and activities within what is called "development assistance". This brings in yet another dimension, the political one, involving export and import of technology, foreign capital, and foreign influence in decision-making processes, as well as ideas about how to bring development and progress to a people supposed to be living in "poverty and misery". The study is divided into three main parts. The first part analyses the context of Swedish development assistance in the support to the construction of hydropower plants. This part discusses Swedish state-supported hydropower exploitation of indigenous people's territory within Sweden's borders in the 20th century and the background of Swedish development assistance, from the 1950s to the early 1960s. The second part analyses the event of Swedish development assistance entering Tanzania and the Great Ruaha power project, with the main focus being on the period 1965 – 1970. The third part is an analysis of the technoscientific basis for the decisions taken to implement the Great Ruaha hydropower scheme. Main focus is on the period 1969-1974, discussed against the backdrop of precolonial and colonial studies. While focus is on the 1960s and 1970s, in both part two and three events in the 1980s and 1990s are discussed. The study shows that although Sweden was not a colonial power in Tanzania, colonial imagery, and relations to the colonial era, as well as Sweden's background of internal colonialisation, exerted an influence on the decision-making process and the actors involved in the Great Ruaha power project.The study is mainly based on archival sources, complemented with oral sources from Tanzania and Sweden. Recognizing the complexity of large-scale hydropower and the attempts to control watercourses that large scale hydropower necessitates, in the specific context of decolonisation and development assistance that the decision-making process behind the Great Ruaha hydropower scheme reveals, the analysis of the actors involved is based on feminist and postcolonial perspectives.

Hydropower has commonly been promoted as an environmentally friendly and renewable energy resource. Despite this, the major negative social and ecological impacts on the environment and its local inhabitants have been well established for a long time, as well as the high risks for large-scale disasters caused by hydropower dam failures. Drawing on a qualitative study that focuses on the Lule River in Sweden, this article analyses the cultural politics of emotions with regard to dams, reservoirs, safety and human security. Annually between one and two major dam failures occur around the world, with major consequences for human and non-human lives, the environment and the economy, and the issue has been addressed in policy making and within the work of power companies since the 1970's. However, more people die due to accidents on dams and reservoirs than due to dam failures. In Sweden, the number of hydropower regulation related deaths within the demographically small municipality of Jokkmokk, where a major part of Sweden's hydropower is being produced, is on average 0,02 per cent per year, or 1-2 persons, which would correspond to 180-360 deaths in the Swedish capital Stockholm. Yet, there are no calls for inquiries, investigations and measurements to ensure public safety around dams in Sweden. Linking these two aspects on hydropower dams and safety through the concept of human security we identify a void of understanding and valuing the importance of humans' – operators - lived experiences and invested emotions in the work to avoid dam failures, accidents on the reservoirs and loss of lives. We address the fact that the operators live and are related to the inhabitants of the regulated Lule River and what role this may play in enhanced human security. We argue that technical reports and studies on dam safety are written in a way that invokes false emotions of control, safety and security for inhabitants as well as political decision makers. New technologies for camera surveillance and monitoring provide opportunities to assemble data on a dam and the water flowing through it (seepage), with the purpose to enhance safety. However, we suggest that these systems actually may produce false emotions of safety and security, reinforcing a paradigm of perceived control of nature's forces and thereby may contribute to decreased safety and human security. ; Dammed: Security, risk and resilience around the dams of sub-arctica

Analyzing the intra-actions between the actors involved, this paper presents results from interviews and participatory observations with local authorities, local inhabitants, power companies representatives as well as dam operators. We argue that the Swedish model for dam safety currently is suffering from a major deficiency as the expertise and understanding of the technical constructions remain among the dam owners and that the societal authority in charge of supervising the dam owners work have no capability of achieving the same level of understanding and thus to take informed and relevant decisions. Furthermore we argue that the lack of technical understanding of dams and hydropower outside of the dam sector has become a huge threat to dam safety as state representatives and political decision makers currently allow and even encourage mining exploitation both next to high risk classified hydropower dams and even within existing hydropower reservoirs. We argue that the actual challenge to safeguard an increased dam safety is by bridging the gap between the multitude of different actors– engineers/operators, users, political decision makers - in order to generate new understandings and new methodologies to deal with risk, safety and security. It is necessary to bridge the gaps between the sectors and actors involved, and that this should be done through investment in close collaboration between the dam sector and engineering research on the one hand and social sciences and humanities on the other – to ensure understandings of political decision making as well as of technical artifacts and water flows. The geographical focus is on two rivers – the Ume River and the Lule River in the north of Sweden. Both rivers are of major importance for national production of electricity, and the rivers are water suppliers for a large amount of inhabitants. ; DAMMED: Security, Risk and Resilience around the Dams of Sub-Arctica ; Rivers, resistance and resilience: Sustainable futures in Sápmi and in other indigenous peoples' territories FORMAS, 2013-2016, 6 MSEK. Project leader and only researcher: May-Britt Öhman, PhD. Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University