Our paper on the fly-in/fly-out work regime at the uranium mine in Saskatchewan is now published with open access. Click here to access the paper via the homepage of the Journal of Rural Studies.
Category: Cameco
Our paper on the remote uranium mine in Saskatchewan, Canada, has just been accepted to the Journal of Rural Studies (JRS). It’s a relief, since we’ve worked a long time with this paper and worked hard to improve it after every setback (see the posts from April 2018 or December 2018). JRS got the best version! As soon as the paper comes on-line first we’ll make another post to notify you. Meanwhile, here’s the abstract:
The article presents a case analysis of the work regime at a uranium mine, located on indigenous land in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. All the miners are flown in and out (FIFO), and with nearly half the workforce coming from different indigenous communities. We ask how the miners participate in and experience life as FIFO workers, and enrol the community concept in the analysis. Defining community as not merely a group of people or a place but also, in the wake of Tönnies’ classic work, as a matter of attitude, the case analysis reveals a community at work but fragmentation of indigenous communities off work.
Whether in the Region of Bougainville (Papau New Guinea) or Malmfälten (Sweden), the economic, social and environmental impacts of mining are significant and tend to provoke strong reactions from a vast variety of actors. Contested business, contested areas, means navigating multifaceted, complex and value-laden relations. This requires engaged and sensitive social scientists that continuously reflect on their own values and interests. This is a discussion that we have covered before on this blog, but we just got a very good reason to revisit it.
Stuart Kirsch, anthropologist at the University of Michigan, who previously have contributed to this blog, have written yet another thought-provoking book, this time more focused on the research approach he has practiced and developed when studying mining conflicts, Engaged anthropology: politics beyond the text. ‘Engaged anthropology’, it triggers our thoughts on an ‘engaged organization studies’. Not sure we’ve heard of such a term, have you? Maybe ‘reflexivity’ comes close, but it is, we think, more of an apolitical character; as if reflexivity would be possible from a neutral position.
Engaged, we believe that without being engaged we would never get interesting empirical material, but Stuart takes this more than one step further. So, if you get nervous when scientific ideals such as objectivity, neutrality, distance etc. are challenged, do not read further.
To give you a teaser and an idea of what Stuart’s approach is all about, here are some quotes from the introductory chapter:
- “a commitment to mobilising anthropology for constructive interventions into politics”
- “engaged anthropology is primarily concerned with the politics of participation“
- “the practice of engaged anthropology involves taking risks in how we conduct research and make use of ethnographic knowledge”
- “anthropologists have more to contribute to the solution of these problems [social justice, environmental devastation, neocolonialism etc.] than their texts”
- “It is the desire to both understand and actively respond to these issues that motivates anthropologists who pursue contemporary forms of engaged anthropology”
- “engaged research lacks the certainty of more conventional forms of research in terms of guaranteeing academic outputs”
- “advocacy can actually provide access to a wider range of interlocutors and facilitate participation in events”
As might be guessed, Stuart’s engaged anthropological research on mining, particularly in Papau New Guinea, has also been the target of critique, such as: being dogmatic, not robust enough, lacking symmetry between actors, not levelling stakeholders on equal footing, more activism than science etc. We can recognise our own engagement in Organizing rocks in some of this critique and we have to some extent struggled with it since the start. How do our values, interests, methods, readings, influence our ‘science-in-action’ in the Kiruna and McArthur mines? Are we neglecting some actors, perspectives, statements, signs? Are we shying away from certain topics because we are scared to put our chins out? Are we always ready to question ourselves, ready to change? We’ve previously written about the “risk of being co-opted or of developing rather dogmatic stances” and that we should “constantly be in doubt, a bit skeptical, and to have a sensitive mode”, which, we admit, might come across as rather cryptic formulations, but yes, they matter, to us.
We’ve also met the oppressed, heard the voice and read the words of the privileged, and, yes, we’re not immune to these influences. It is impossible to be impartial, to stand on neutral ground. So, in this sense, why not claim that active engagement (through dialogues, in our case) is required?
In the type of critique launched against Stuart’s work, we do share the call for broad, inclusive engagements, in terms of whose voices are heard, and the need for phenomenon-driven (less a priori-settled) research strategies. If the phenomenon is complex and multifaceted so must also our methods and conceptual frameworks be. Paraphrasing John Law’s rather brutal take on this: it takes mess to capture mess. A priori openness, a sort of curiosity of what might be found when talking openly, with genuine interest and respect, with a diverse set of people, in different settings, is a research strategy that we’ve practiced in Organizing rocks.
But, we don’t agree with most of the critique launched against Stuart’s work. Although useful to be aware of it, it does suffer from one major deficit: it lacks power and power relations. For us, these issues were upfront, input-value in our project. Entering a large-scale mining arena, such as the one in Kiruna, we know that power relations are asymmetrical and we cannot be naive about this. A priori, whose voices are heard, who matters? Who are marginalized, excluded, silenced? In our case, the first answer on people’s lips is the company, LKAB. In a way, the old saying is true: ‘When LKAB has a cold, society sneezes’. This is an early-warning signal that there are power asymmetries and, hence, no equal footing, in Kiruna. How did we deal with this?
Organizing rocks is a basic research project. One way that we handled power asymmetries while also studying them was to remain in control of our research aims and questions; to not, for example, compromise on the questions we ask. This is our area of control, our responsibility, and one way to treat them all on equal footing. It was also one reason why the company (e.g. top management) did not want to meet us. Top management did not want to participate on any equal footing. Meeting, for example, local unions or local indigenous people, they never tried to control the questions we were asking. They agreed to meet, to converse, so for them we could have empathy, we listened, we tried to understand, and tried to come out as slightly different actors following our meetings. Luckily for a study striving for a ‘multi’ approach, the actor refusing to meet us (e.g. top management) ‘speaks’ in other ways (media, web, social media, reports etc.) so we have at least some idea on where they stand and why, but as we understood it, they felt that we were engaged in the wrong issues, and engaging these in the wrong way. As was told to us: we are not useful to LKAB. So, as also written about on this blog before, we were banned by top management (in Luleå and in Stockholm) from coming inside the gates to the mine in Kiruna (local workers and managers seemed to think that what we were asking were relevant and important).
As Stuart also has reported, when one door closes, others are opened. Ironically, when top management said no, closed the entry gates to the mine for us, actors who would not talk to us previously now decided to do so – but again, without trying to control us.
While our access to people inside the gates in Kiruna was restrained in the end, this was not the case with Cameco at McArthur in Canada, which immediately raised the risk of a wrong type of engagement, of us ‘cozying up to the corporation (see Emily Eaton’s blogpost). Many times, it felt like balancing on a knife’s edge. It’s never easy, for us at least. You might be a judge of how we’ve navigated, comparing the Kiruna case with the Canadian case (based on our blogposts on McArthur; there’s the scientific article on the case, but we’ve just submitted it, again, see the logbook). For now, it helps reading about engaged anthropology!
What if all scholars were as articulated on positioning and engagement as Stuart (what if we were?)? It would for sure enhance derivation and honesty-in-field and in-text, make it easier to evaluate whether or not to trust the descriptions and their arguments, to be able to judge how they have positioned themselves when analyzing. So, we try to consider research that hides behind screens of neutrality, objectivity and impartiality as highly problematic; those who most likely are very engaged but only implicitly so (of course we’re not saying that any subjective stance are okey; again, we’ve to avoid dogmatism and fight analyses that ‘stand on’ shaky ground). But, mirror mirror on the wall, who are you researching for, and why? What about those who write about ‘equal footing’ or assume that capitalist expansion as a ‘natural good’, and their research? We know dozens of skilled Swedish researchers who in their research engage fully in making mining more efficient, productive and profitable, but without any reflections whatsoever about the politics of their engagement. It is more or less taken for granted; perceived as a natural, neutral position; from one perspective thus conflating a currently dominant perspective with a right. Would it not be fair to ask for a similar transparency as in Stuart’s case?
Questions to Stuart (maybe he’ll answer!):
- Stuart, how do you (besides suggesting they should read your book) answer the type of critique we’ve mentioned above?
- Knowing that you want to destabilise the dichotomy between academic and engaged forms of research, we still need to ask: Can basic (phenomenon-driven, no idea of a solution etc.) and engaged research be a happy marriage?
The mining industry is one of those sectors where a gendered division of labour (GDL) is highly evident. Things are changing, however, but sloooowly. Below, we’ve gathered some of the quotes from four different storytellers at MCA, the mine in Canada we visited. We think they help illustrate that thinking about organizing rocks not only need to consider gender but also both life inside and outside the gates (on gender, see also previous posts, here, here and here):
What do people in your community do?
man, indigenous, manager
Majority of the guys work in the mines. A lot of guys I hang out with work in different mines around the area. The women keep busy with working back home.
The normal situation is that the man, father, works here and the wife would be with the children?
Yeah, there are a few women that work here that has their kids at home but that is part of their aboriginal culture that they have the family structured to look after the children, like the grandparents. […] There are very few women here that have children back home.woman, non-indigenous, manager
People at home, they are very helpful. When you have a shift schedule like this you find a lot of people are ready to bend their backs backwards to help you while you’re gone as they know someone is needed to step up and help out, while you’re not there.
woman, indigenous, manager
Most stories I have heard so far, the man works here and the woman stays at home.
Haha, I don’t know who you have been talking to. We have a lot of women up here. […] if I had started when I was younger I would probably only have one child. Especially if I had wanted to continue working up here. Like I told you I do understand that the wife tend to be staying home.
Sometimes things are tough but I call my wife to talk with her every night so if anything happens then she will be pretty helpless when I’m up here, right. Well, especially with a young family it’s tough but when the kids get a little bit older they grow more independent and stuff, and they get used to the schedule too. […] Everyone needs to deal with it and big credibility to my wife that needs to deal with it, she is a strong woman. A lot of other couples can’t handle it and they break up.
man, non-indigenous, worker
The general trend in the mining industry is to increase the use of contractors in order to be more flexible, adaptable and cost-effective. Whether this is achieved can be debated, but the trend is clear and although the markets for iron ore (the Kiruna case) and uranium (the McArthur River/Key Lake case) are different, they are both nevertheless highly influenced by ‘boom and bust’, ‘feast and famine’. Walking the fine line between stability and adaptability is highlighted in northern Saskatchewan, where companies like Cameco has to engage local firms and workers as part of the regional agreements (written about earlier on this blog). Interestingly, in some of the conversations, this is lifted as a competitive advantage from both sides of the table, and although more complex than this, the arguments boil down to ‘local knowledge’ and to ‘loyalty’. The first quote below is from a contractor owned by an indigenous band from the north and the second quote is from a manager at Cameco.
companies like Cameco learn that we can deliver and can count on our loyalty to mobilise quickly and to do it quickly as well because we understand what it takes to get it up there. We get to know the local people, it’s easier to identify with the locals. So after a period of time companies like ours starting to have a clear returning in investment back to Cameco.
I would say that the work we do with the contractors has become more stable over the years because we have pushed to have more northern content in our contracts, for workers as well. I think things like that have made Cameco more stable, has made it more stable for the contractors.
Next storyteller is a man from Saskatchewan, Canada, living in a small town up north called La Ronge. He works at MCA. When reflecting over the challenges for northern communities where a large portion work for the mining industry, he praises Cameco, the company, for its efforts, but also emphasises the many challenges still to deal with. This quote about La Ronge comes to mind as we’re daily seeing pictures from Kiruna and the tearing down of houses due to the mine expanding (just recently, the old railway station):
when I was growing up we had movie theatres and pool halls, bowling alleys. We had a sport store for fishing gear and hockey equipment and all that stuff. None of that is there anymore, only Robertsons trading. There is a liquor store there and a few bars. That is not a good thing, because of the youth and those who are not working they tend to fall into the alcoholism and that’s bad for everybody. It starts fights and wreck families.
Next storyteller is a woman, an aboriginal, working at the mill at Key Lake. She talks about the strong social bonds created at work and therefore about having two families, one at home and one at work:
Actually, if you talk with anyone here who has been long term they’re going to tell you that ‘this is my family’. We live with them, we work with them over the years. We have two families. Sometimes they intermingle because we are friends with people up here who are also friends back home. So it’s just like coming from one home to another. If you look at any person’s room at camp, especially here at Key Lake, we’re allowed to make our rooms our home. So I got one wall that is covered with pictures of my children, my grandson, sister, mother. I walk in there and I’m home for the week and then I go on a plane and I get home there. The only difference from when I’m up here, I’m working from 6.30am to 7.30pm, but it’s fun. Ready for anything and I love the job, I love the people up here.
Next storyteller from Canada, a woman, working above ground, 7/7, here on the social life on- and off-site, and on why she couldn’t see herself returning to a normal 9-5 job:
Well here is very social, you are always around people, you are always interacting with people. […] At home it’s a little bit more quiet. You usually just see you family, your immediate family and then go back to work again. A lot of times too, the people you work with here are often the people you go out with for a beer or something in the city back home. So they become your friends here at work and back in the city because you’re on the same schedule even with no work. […]
Could you imagine having a normal 9-5 job?
No, not anymore. It’s hard to think about going back to the city and having to deal with rush hour and packing meals and, you come up here and you are fully taken cared of. You got your meals cooked for you and your rooms cleaned for you. You just have to work, and socialise.
Our next storyteller is an aboriginal man, working as a manager at the mine and as a representative of his local community in the north. Mining companies, including their contractors, operating in the north have to hire Residents of Saskatchewan North (RSN) as labor (see previous blogposts on this, just search for the category “Canada” or “Aboriginals”). Below is an extract from our conversation about this:
So in Canada you have that duty-to-consult. So that is one thing companies do with the local people, the aboriginal. So that’s a good thing, to keep everybody happy.
What would be the critical issues that are argued about during these meetings?
It would be… probably doing new projects and not following up on their agreements. So if they agreed on hiring 50 % and they only have 40 %, then we ask why? I can see it from our part but also from the companies’ part. I work there and I know you can’t keep a guy there that can’t make it to work. You can’t drag them to work. So I can see the companies’ side and the people from the areas’ side. But I think when people are ageing in different generations, I see the younger generation now, a lot of the aboriginals are going to universities now. From what it was before when there were almost no one. So now I see a lot of them getting into universities and getting management positions in different companies, not just in the mine and this province but in the city and in Alberta and the oil industry. That’s what I should have done when I was younger, go to school.
Time to introduce some storytellers from the McArthur River uranium mine in Saskatchewan, Canada. This person, a man, a white-collar with Cameco, working 7/7 (seven days on-site, seven days off-site), talks about the social life on-site:
The social life here compared to the one back home? Here it’s a… there is more visiting, like I communicate a lot more with people up here. At home I sit and recluse, just relaxing and just be with my girlfriend and… I don’t hang out with a lot of people. I only have a few friends that want to go and fish and such. I’m more social here. I don’t know if it’s because of the situation or something else. When I’m home I only contact maybe one, two friends if they want to do something. It’s a lot more social here, but you know, there are all walks of life of the people here, we are 500, so I can’t speak for everybody. There’s always somebody to talk to basically. Around 8-9 pm there’s almost no one around at camp because people need to get up around 5 am in the morning.
Two short questions are still left hanging from my visit to MCA in Saskatchewan and from reading the CVMPP-reports:
What about the contractors? In the reports, contractors are not really dealt with, but they still represent a significant part of the labour process. Just as on site, they had their rooms in a building beside the Cameco employees, but they shared the other facilities (restaurant, wellness facilities etc.). Interestingly, most of the large, visible contractors on site are owned by indigenous bands. In the report on socio-economic benefits it is stated that “the uranium mining industry contributed significantly to the business capacity of northern Saskatchewan (e.g., growth in contracts from northern suppliers from S23 million in 1989 to S464 million in 2011)” (2013: 8; although down to S308 in 2014). In the report, the uranium companies are called upon to explore how small northern companies can have contract opportunities, but beyond this, the contractors are not really included in the reports and analyses by CVMPP.
What about the communities? What seems to be a recurring issue, when mining companies operate or seek to operate on indigenous people’s land, is how the companies could/should approach the complexities of indigenous communities. In the socio-economic report one of these complexities is addressed under the heading “On local participation” that: “While the uranium mining companies indicated that they try to respond to community interests, they have found it challenging to communicate effectively with a large number of communities (57) located across the vast region of northern Saskatchewan.” (2013: 10) Several views on what dictated community relations were expressed during my visit and in the reports aspects such as accessibility to educated labour, particular need for labour, how vocal the community is etc., were mentioned. This echoes research on what happens when capitalism and science meet indigenous wisdom and folklore, in that the complexity of the latter discourse often have to be reduced so as to fit the former discourse.
Categories
Goffman and the Wolfpack
“How long would it take for me to know what’s really going on here?”, I asked. “About three to four months”, the worker answered. I looked at my watch. Twenty hours to go before my flight back to Saskatoon.
It takes time to get to know the social codes of a wolfpack. Arriving, staying at and leaving the McArthur River mine site, I kept thinking of the sociological opportunity to study social life in a very confined context. Workers, managers and contractors work, eat, sleep and play within the gates, for at least seven days at a time.
The sociologist Erving Goffman, particularly in his studies of life on an island (Presentation of self, 1959) and at a mental institution (Asylums, 1961), shows that regardless of how much rules and routines are imposed on subordinates under such circumstances, an organizational underlife develops, where “locals” and “inmates” reserve a space for themselves. These are not only stories of control, but also of autonomy, discretion and freedom (which counters many scholars’ reading of Goffman, who rather only see him as a functionalist). These are stories, however, that largely escape the researcher as a paratrooper, flying-in, flying-out. A frustrating feeling.
Below, you can listen to the song “Wolfpack (meeting the Other)”, through which we try to address this issue, by clicking on the audiofile here (you might have to reload the page for it to show):
Wolfpack (meeting the Other)
Lyrics: Johan Sandström
Music: Johan Sandström and Tommy Jensen
Instruments, vocals: Tommy Jensen
Can you show me
What’s going on
What’s everybody looking at
But no one sees
Can you tell me
What’s on your mind
What’s left unspoken
But that everybody knows
It’s the wolfpack
Howling in silence
Watching you move
Letting you go
It’s the wolfpack
Howling in silence
Watching its space
Letting you stay
I say letting you stay
Letting you stay
Can you move me
Tell me a story
Look me in the eyes
Speak from your heart
Can you fool me
Tell me a lie
Look me in the eyes
Say you don’t care
It’s the wolfpack
Howling in silence
Watching you move
Letting you go
It’s the wolfpack
Howling in silence
Watching its space
Letting you stay
I say letting you stay
Letting you stay
Let me show you
A story you know
A story you feel
But that’s never been told
Put into words
Put into colors
A humble return
A powerful tool
It’s the wolfpack
Howling in silence
Watching its space
Letting you stay
Categories
On Cozying Up to Corporations
Below you’ll find a post from our guestblogger Emily Eaton, Associate Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Regina, Canada:
“I read with interest the January blog post “Empathizing with the subjects of study” and was reminded of a conversation I had with Johan when he visited the University of Regina. At that time we discussed Organizing Rocks’ relationship to Cameco Corporation, the owner of the uranium mine and mill at the centre of this study. I was happy to hear that the Organizing Rocks project is funded by public money because it has already been well-established that corporate funding of research influences projects to their core, shaping the design, methods, analysis and dissemination of research. In other words, social science research cannot be ‘dis-interested’ when funded by private corporations.
Yet, the Organizing Rocks project has had to engage with Cameco Corporation in order to gain access to the project’s research site, which is a fly-in/fly out mine and mill in northern Saskatchewan where workers stay at gated work camps. Johan disclosed in an email to me that he offered to pay all his expenses associated with travel and room and board, but that the corporation declined and paid for everything. The corporation also helped arrange access to many of the workers that Johan was interested in interviewing.
According to Kirsch (2014) this kind of ethnographic research within the corporation “poses a risk of co-optation, because the tendency of ethnographers to empathize with the subjects of their research may influence their findings or temper their critical perspectives.” Here I side with Johan and Tommy in suggesting that empathizing with research subjects is always a ‘risk’ no matter whether they are those suffering the impacts of extraction or those working within the extractive machine. Empathizing with subjects is not something to be warded against or denied, but rather, a way of getting deep into people’s stories and connecting with them on a human level. I must agree that those working for corporations, whether they are out-of-scope workers, or management are whole human beings with complex relationships to the work they do. In fact, in my experience researching the oil and gas industry in Saskatchewan, such workers and management can offer strident critiques of their industries from places of intimate knowledge. Such people ought to be engaged and often need the protection of confidentiality in order to speak their truths to probing outsiders.
The more pertinent question, I think, in relation to the Organizing Rocks research project is what Cameco is getting out of the research and relationship. We have already established that they are not intervening in or influencing the research trajectory, collection of data, etc. In fact, Johan suggested they have been remarkably accommodating in granting access to their personnel and operations. If the corporation is not getting anything tangible out of the research, why would they pay for travel and open themselves up to probing researchers? When corporations offer ‘no strings attached’ funding or perks (such as travel and accommodation) social scientists consider their research conflict of interest-free. Yet corporations still get something out of these relationships. In this case, they strengthen their ties to the University of Saskatchewan and a group of public policy researchers at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy who have significant input into and influence on public debate in Saskatchewan. This is not uncontroversial, many critics are already wary of Cameco’s relationship to the University of Saskatchewan. Furthermore, in its support of the Organizing Rocks project the corporation fosters positive public relations and scores points as a good corporate citizen. All of these soft benefits play into the corporation’s ‘social license to operate’, which is required not just in the northern communities where they extract and mill, but across the province among a population that has seen nuclear energy and the uranium industry as a controversial issue and a site of fractious politics for over 50 years.”
We’re reading the book “Mining capitalism: the relationship between corporations and their critics” by Stuart Kirsch (2014, University of California Press). It’s an impressive study, based on more than two decades of ethnographic research related to particularly one indigenous community and its struggle with the OK Tedi mine on Papua New Guinea. We’ll have reasons to come back to this book further on, but one thing strikes us early on.
On page 12 Kirsch writes: “However, conducting ethnographic research within the corporation poses a risk of co-optation, because the tendency of ethnographers to empathize with the subjects of their research may influence their findings or temper their critical perspectives.” First impression reading this is that this is always a risk, regardless of where we move about, who we talk to, interact with. It has to be dealt with, not avoided or rejected. Second impression is that in Kirsch’s case, it is perhaps more straightforward in terms of where his values align, given the proven environmental and social devastation inflicted on indigenous communities following the OK Tedi operations and on the rather evident power asymmetries between corporations and states on one hand and the communities and NGOs on the other hand. Still, even in cases where the actors and their interests seem clear, they’re oftentimes not.
We sometime move around inside different companies within the realm of our project (LKAB, Cameco, contractors). For sure, we get to know people, develop relations beyond mere professional relations with some of these persons. And they are not homogeneous ‘corporate persons’. They are ‘whole’ persons in ‘whole’ realities. Large companies like LKAB and Cameco are also not homogeneous, regardless of how effective the communication and branding departments are.
But, as we see it, to be able to discover something, researchers, as do all human beings, need empathy to be able to investigate an interest further. This said, the so-called subjectivity is not a fallacy, it is a precondition for scientific research.
However, there is a risk of being co-opted or of developing rather dogmatic stances. The cure for this is to constantly be in doubt, a bit skeptical, and to have a sensitive mode. We might be wrong. It might even be reasonable to think that we are very often wrong (wrong in the meaning of understanding different perspectives, not in terms of true or false).