We adapt … but is it good or bad? Locating the political ecology and social-ecological systems debate in reindeer herding in the Swedish Sub-Arctic

Abstract

Reindeer herding (RDH) is a livelihood strategy deeply connected to Sami cultural tradition. This article explores the implications of two theoretical and methodological approaches for grasping complex socioenvironmental relationships of RDH in Subarctic Sweden. Based on joint fieldwork, two teams -one that aligns itself with political ecology (PE) and the other with social-ecological systems (SES) -compared PE and SES approaches of understanding RDH. Our purpose was twofold: 1) to describe the situation of Sami RDH through the lenses of PE and SES, exploring how the two approaches interpret the same empirical data; 2) to present an analytical comparison of the ontological and epistemological assumptions of this work, also inferring different courses of action to instigate change for the sustainability of RDH. Key informants from four sameby in the Kiruna region expressed strong support for the continuation of RDH as a cultural and 1 Dr. Gloria L. Gallardo F., Centre for Sustainable Development, Uppsala University, Sweden. Email: gloria.gallardo "at" csduppsala.uu.se. Dr. Fred Saunders, School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden. Tatiana Sokolova, Freelance researcher in socio-environmental studies. Kristina Börebäck, Department of Education, Stockholm University, Sweden. Dr. Frank van Laerhoven, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Netherlands. Suvi Kokko, Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden. Dr. Magnus Tuvendal, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden. Acknowledgements: We would like to first and foremost thank Sami community representatives (Table 1), for engaging with the research presented here in a generous, knowledgeable and forthright way. This also extends to those representatives from the Sami Parliament and other Sami organisations, who were also very generous with their time and knowledge. We acknowledge the Centre for Sustainable Development, Uppsala University for seeing the potential value of the research, as well as the Swedish Polar Secretary for the network support grant for our Polar network 'People, nature and sustainability network: environmental humanities, social and natural sciences perspectives on the development of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic region ' (2013-2014), and for facilitating the stay of the Sami community representatives at the Polar Forum November 2014 in Stockholm. There are also numerous individuals, most important among them is H. Beach, who carefully read, commented on and engaged in discussions of previous iterations of this article, as did M. Kuschler. We acknowledge L. Eunice who participated in the first field visit to Abisko. We are also grateful to C. Jansson, former Director of the Abisko Scientific Research Station, for supporting the empirical work. In addition, we thank I. Berit for her hospitality and an anononmous informant for the inspiration for the title. We would also like to acknowledge those who were sceptic...

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