Tag: knowledge

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LKAB Storyteller Supplier

Storyteller #26 – balancing between own people and contractors

Next storyteller is a contractor who (just as many of the other contractors we’ve talked) used to work for LKAB. The quotes below are from the part of our conversation where this person reflects on how a shifting balance between using the mining company’s own employees and contractors impact LKAB’s performance.

– I think the easiest way for LKAB is to cut away more parts (of the operations), to sell out parts and place them with contractors. That’s the easiest way to turn the ship around. […]

– Is there any risk (for LKAB) with such a strategy?

– Yes, you loose the in-house competence and the long-term perspective. And if you let go of too much you risk ending up in that conflict again, “whose responsibility is this?”. So, it has to be clear that LKAB still is the client, whereas the performer could be somebody else.

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Kiruna LKAB Storyteller Worker

Storyteller #19 – youth and work-life career in rural communities

Next storyteller, from the Swedish case, on living in a remote, small community and finding work in the mine:

Where are you born?

40 kilometres from Karesuando and 220 kilometres from Kiruna.

How did you end up here?

I had to start the gymnasium and, well, then you automatically end up here. A lot of commuting, from the village to the town, to the village again.

You lived here [in Kiruna] during the weeks then?

Yes.

How did you end up in the mine?

I was a pupil on the LKAB gymnasium and then you automatically get summer practice, and then when I graduated I ended up below ground.

[—]

What will you do in 5 years time, do you work here?

Don’t know. I was recently travelling [—], then I felt that I could work here for the rest of my life. [—] I was homesick, and even missed my work. [—] I don’t now if it will be the same workplace, but at least somewhere in LKAB. [—] I think it’s good to work for LKAB, but it is hard to compare. Maybe I think this way because I have not experienced any-other employer.

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Researcher

AC/DC, the groin and science

The frontman of AC/DC, Brian Jonson, once replied to a journalist’s question about why AC/DC has remained so popular since the 1970s, that their music enters the listener through the groin first – men and women alike. Listening to, playing and recording music we can sort of relate to this groin sensation. But what has this to do with science?

Nothing says the instrumentalists and the purists. Nothing says those who fear conflict and going against the grain. We say that the importance of groin is there, for sure, but it’s almost a taboo-thing to expose and talk about. Doing fieldwork, reading a text or engaging in conversations, is something that the groin is taking part in. It’s not bracketed off from the rest of the body. The groin, however, is not always related to physical attraction and sex, although this sometimes is the case when reading or writing texts, engaging in conversations or observations.

By this we do not mean to downplay reason. There is great danger in following your groin (or your gut feeling or a sudden feel in the heart), in following your senses, without consulting the faculty of reason. But, we have to accept and be open about that our groins (as well as gut feeling and heartaches) sometimes are dead right from the beginning and without which the faculty of reason many times is helplessly left in the dark.

This post could be interpreted as another text seeking to address the problematic abyss between body and soul, mind and body, but it has a twist: the groin, so connected to physical attraction and sex, is an “elephant in the room”. Very rarely do we come across researchers who take in their groinly experience in research and seriously ponder its scientific importance (scientists do spend time and effort trying to understand how, when and why the groin matters for their objects of study, or interviewees, or respondents, or even co-participants). So, the basic point is to bring in the groin to accompany stomach, heart, senses and reason. An example from our Organizing rocks study would perhaps be appropriate here, but we need to come back on this one…

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Aboriginals Cameco Canada Management Storyteller

Storyteller #16 – from Canada, on the relation between company and community

Last man

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.

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Kiruna LKAB Nature Storyteller

Storyteller #13 – smoke and sustainability

Storyteller #13 is a woman, working in a white-collar position. We asked:

– When you look at the mine, what kind of images do you get (in your head)?

– When you come back from the mountains, we’re very often in the mountains to ski, so when we drive back into town, then you have the view of the (the old) open pit and the backside of the works, which you don’t see from town. Then we use to look and try to decide if there’s a lot of smoke, is production good or how does it look? It’s still the lifeblood in society. I think most feel that they want the mines and the operations to do well.

– Another type of question. If you read about mining, and we’re, and have been for many years now, interested in sustainable development, and efforts to run a “sustainable mine”, how do you think about that? I’ve to be honest and say that it sounds like an oxymoron, a self-contradiction.

– Yes, of course, sure it is. You cannot do a, you cannot have a mine without making a hole and a serious wound in the ground and in nature. You cannot have a mine without having a large environmental impact from the mine. But at the same time, those who protest against mine operations, such as in the large riots in Kallak, Jokkmokk, they still want a mobile phone, they want to bike, they make use of trains and they use vehicles and transports, and they maybe fly from the south of Sweden to get up here. They make use of societal structures and such, then we need these metals and products that come from the mining operations. We need them, and at the same time we have chosen a way of living that demands these resources, these natural resources. I believe that if you want these resources within the country’s borders, then you have to show solidarity and use part of your land for this in order to extract these resources from the ground. Globally, it might even be good to have a mine and mining operations in Sweden where you have grand rules that are environmentally adapted, that enable a somewhat more sustainable mine than what they perhaps have in Brazil.

[see also post from May 25, 2015, on checking the plumes of smoke]
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Kiruna LKAB Storyteller

Storyteller #7 – wrong research strategy

We met storyteller #7 for the first time in a hotel lobby in Kiruna. He is an experienced miner, a man, presently working above ground. After talking to us for a while, he concludes that our research strategy is wrong.

– Actually, you’re doing this the wrong way, I have to say. If I were you I’d first go around and observe (inside the gates), first get an understanding (of the context of work) and then start interviewing. Because, here you are, you don’t have a clue about how it is, how it looks, what can happen. So come out, an ordinary day, and see. Then you know about different areas, that’s how it looks, how greasy it can be. With your approach, you have to memorise (what I am telling you) and then realise it when your out-there. It should be the other way around! Interviews seem perfect AFTER you’ve been out running.

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Kiruna LKAB Management Storyteller Worker

Storyteller #5 – management

This story about management is told by a man who have been working in the mine for a quarter of a century, both under and above ground, previously as a worker, now as a manager.

– I have my own theory: that it’s more trustworthy, for those (workers) who have to change, when a (a leader with experience of working in a mine) comes. ‘He’s one of us, so he knows what it’s all about’. Lately, I’ve learned to listen to those ‘down there’ (as in the hiearchy and as in under ground). Don’t be up here and go down and tell them that ‘now we do it like this’. It’s much better to try to ‘draw the map’, what are our goals, to get them to understand this also, without explicitly telling them (how to do it). Describe the problem, also from their point of view: ‘How shall we do this then?’ Most often, it does not turn out as I would’ve liked to have it, but it gets close enough.

– You are more reliable, or?

– I’ve seen many managers that have entered, having been assigned management roles (while lacking experience), and then they’ve quickly been ‘dribbled’ away by the personnel.

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Kiruna LKAB Nature Storyteller

Storyteller #2 – leaving, coming, staying

Our second storyteller is a woman, living in Kiruna, working above ground. Here’s a story about leaving, coming to, staying in Kiruna:

– Well, if you live up here, if you stay here, first of all, you like to be outdoors in nature. There’s no high-life, there is no shopping here. This is a probably why of all the youths growing up here, it’s often the girls who move out, the boys stay, usually. But very, very many have their cabins. […]

– It’s a challenge to get people to educate themselves here because many…, it’s tempting to directly start working here (at the Company), particularly for the boys who might be tired of studying. At the outset, to get a salary of 35000 SEK (appr. €3500, before taxes) each month, and then try to convince them to study at the university, that’s difficult, once they come here.

– So it becomes a matter of supply (of workers and managers) to LK(AB), that there are not enough educated (people), local workplaces…

– Yes, it’s very difficult to, for example, get hold of geologists and rock engineers, and so on. Because it’s not only a matter of getting them to come back (to Kiruna), they must also have somewhere to live, and we have a housing shortage. But geologists, I know it’s very difficult (to recruit), but there’s a shortage of them all over the world.

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Anette Music Researcher

Responsible research: combining sense and sensibility

Below is text on responsible research by guest blogger, Anette Hallin at Mälardalen University, Sweden (read more about Anette by clicking here):

What is our responsibility as researchers? To develop knowledge about the world, most people would answer. But how do we do this in a responsible way?

According to my view, performing responsible research involves issues about the relationship between the researcher and that which she studies; a question addressed in several blogs here (see Jan 29 and March 24). My conviction is that it is necessary for us, if we are claiming to develop knowledge about the world, to engage in all ways possible with that which we study. We need to combine sense and sensibility.

But how to we do this? As researchers we are trained to use our heads; to observe, document, measure, analyze and theorize. We are less skilled at feeling and expressing emotions. It is as if we have ruled out the possibility of knowledge residing also in the parts of the brain where this type experiences are processed. Even though there has been a lot of talk about “embodiment”, “situated practices” and phenomenology-informed research, we seem, also as qualitative researchers, to trust one part of our body the most when developing knowledge about the world: the part of our brain prone to analytical thinking.

Maybe we are not to blame. After all, the moving away from the human body as the source of knowledge about the outside world and the development of logical positivism was developed based on the same set of ideas that led to development of the metric system. Before this, people used their bodies to gain knowledge about things outside their bodies through anthropomorphic measurements like “a foot”. In stratified societies, exact and non-anthropomorphic measures however were symbols of justice and came with time to be seen as a criteria distinguishing civilization from non-civilization. Today, just as the knowledge about how to use the physical body to measure and weigh things has gone out of fashion, we seem to not know how to use all of that which is ourselves when it comes to doing research. We may even have lost our ability to feel with other people, as concepts such as “feelings”, “emotions” and “empathy” seem to belong to a different discourse than that of science.

This is sad because if we are to believe Aristotle and his idea of catharsis, knowledge about the human condition (which we all are interested in understanding better in some way as social scientists), can be developed through the internal process of experiencing a strong emotional experience, which is what fictional tragedy provides us with, according to him. And he is right. How many of us have not been struck with radical insights when reading a piece of fiction, or when watching a film? The notion of catharsis suggests that knowledge can only be developed when we experience strong emotions in relation to something. This is, as we all know, quite far from how we are supposed to perform research.

What would happen if we became better at using all of our selves when performing research; if we combined sense and sensibility? I think that developing a research of sensibility would help us move beyond the dichotomies that we seem to be so fond of creating in our attempts at making sense (sic!) of things. For a long time now, thinkers have argued that dichotomies like subject-object; body-mind; local-global; humans-artifacts; science-art; etc, don’t correspond to reality – in the world there are no dichotomies, only continuity and interaction. At the same time we keep using them, lacking better ways of making sense of what we experience. A research where we combine sense and sensibility would thus provide us with a different understanding of the world.

But how would such research be performed in practice? And how would scientific criteria be challenged – and met – with such a research agenda of combining sense and sensibility? There have been some suggestions as to how this could be done, often based on a phenomenological understanding of the world, for example by learning from the work of artists. And I hold good hopes there will be more. As human beings we are equipped with the ability to feel, not only to think. So in order to combine sense with sensibility we, the researchers, need to develop the ways we work with feelings and emotions in addition to our work with (visual) observations and analytics in all phases of research work. This way, the research we perform will be “thick” and will draw upon all kinds experiences we have when studying a phenomenon.

The exploration by the Organizing Rocks-team, of how to express their research in music is such an example. Music can in a special way express emotions and capture feelings, thus relating to a different sphere than the sphere of analytical logics that we so commonly use as researchers. Therefore, music has the ability, together with other forms of expression – also the traditional ones such as papers in journals and presentations at conferences – to constitute a “thick” description such as the one argued for here.

As researchers and intellectuals we organize, direct, lead and educate others, which means that we inevitably exercise cultural hegemony as Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci put it, also when aiming at making our informants active participants. I think that our position as researchers involves a responsibility to aim at a nuanced understanding – to the extent that this is possible – about the life-worlds and practices that we aim at saying something about. In order to do so we need to make research a matter not only of sense, but of sensibility.

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Aboriginals Book Nature Researcher Review Stuart

Mining capitalism

We’re reflecting on the book Mining capitalism (University of California Press, 2014) by Stuart Kirsch, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan.

We’ve mentioned this book before, but thought we’d dedicate a post on why we see it as relevant and useful to Organizing rocks. First of all, it’s a very encompassing book, targeting the relationship between corporations and their critics, between capitalist modes of production and critics of it, a dialectical relation that “can never be completely resolved; they can only be renegotiated in new forms” (p 3). Kirsch’s main research focus is how corporations “counteract the discourse and strategies of their critics” (p 3), and vice versa, our reading tells us. The book, and the main case in the book, is based on “more than two decades of ethnographic research and participation in the indigenous political movement that challenged the environmental impact of the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea” (p 9).

Kirsch states that as the mining industry traditionally hasn’t been involved in consumer politics (not a consumer product), it rather recently has had to engage in public relations (PR) and communication, where the Ok Tedi case constitutes a pioneering case. It’s now common that mining companies have elaborate strategies for targeting their critics and for their need to achieve or keep a social license to operate mines (the quest for legitimacy).

Kirsch outlines two different strategies, the politics of space and the politics of time. The politics of space is used to deal with how indigenous people and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) organize in “transnational action networks” (p 2) and how this enables them to “replicate the geographic distribution of capital by putting pressure on the corporation wherever it operates” (p 3; p 53). Global, boundary-crossing corporations (and their use of the politics of space) are today matched by global, boundary-crossing NGOs. The politics of time is used to deal with “the means by which elites extend their power over the body politic through their control over the social construction of time” (p 191). We think particularly of the sunk costs and inertia permeating mining projects. Once started, they are usually very difficult to challenge; talk about a rock solid path dependency! Or? It’s of course not carved in stone, solids (usually) leak and risk becoming something else (e.g. a mine turns into an environmental problem in the presence and future, a mine turns into a turist attraction, etc.). This makes Kirsch conclude that focusing on the time before a mine is opened is a more hopeful strategy when aiming to prevent environmental harm. This is also a debate that has emerged in Sweden rather recently.

Kirsch’s chapter on “Corporate science” speaks very well to our project. It compares the tobacco, petroleum, pharmaceutical and mining industries in their approach to scientific research. In order to handle corporate critics, PR alone doesn’t seem to get the job done. Corporations also need to enroll science in their quest for legitimacy and continued exploration. Kirsch finds strong similarities among the industries in how they increasingly permeate the directions and contents of university research, enhancing the risk of uncritical science and co-opted scientists. Kirsch even argues that this might be intrinsic to contemporary capitalism. Among the examples he cites to support his analysis, we can also add the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility at Nottingham University, UK, being launched with 3,8 million British pounds from the tobacco industry (click here, and see bottom of page 2). This is also an example of how industry increasingly has taken over the promotion of the CSR discourse from their critics, ending up with a weak version of sustainability, at best, often filled with oxymoron’s such as ‘clean coal’ (mentioned by Kirsch) and ‘green pellets’ (iron ore, as in our study).

A highly relevant aspect in Kirsch’s book, for Organizing rocks, is the focus on different power asymmetries. Indigenous people and NGOs are usually not in a position to offer 3,8 million British pounds to ‘independent’ researchers and institutions, or mount an impressive staff of litigators to manage a legal conflict on mining. These are not only asymmetries in financial and legal muscles, but perhaps more importantly in knowledge and in which discourses conflicts are supposedly decided. For example, for indigenous people to use their own discourse on the environment in conflicts with mining corporations runs smack into the rational, scientific discourse and the judicial discourse inherent in court rooms. On power and knowledge, asymmetries on the environmental, social and economic consequences of mining are what seem to motivate Kirsch’s engagement in the Ok Tedi case, working more on the side of the locals, of those affected. Which information did the locals get, which did they not get, and how could they interpret and make sense of it? We see similar asymmetries in the Swedish case, where, for example, neither the municipality of Kiruna or the Sami villages have an expert in geology and is therefore in the hands of the information the mining company, LKAB, gives.

Hovering over the conflicts between corporations and their critics is the role of the state(s), and it’s a complex and complicated ‘body’. The state often have multiple roles as a shareholder/owner, a regulator (also in our Swedish case) and as geopolitically accountable for securing equal opportunities and conditions throughout ‘the whole state territory’. Mining companies also come with promises of economic growth, promises difficult for states to neglect, it seems. Kirsch states that: “the state can be described as riding on the backs of the elephants, on which it depends to run the country (Kirsch 1996). The interests and appetites of the elephants may be placed ahead of the needs of citizens, who only contribute a small share of the country’s budget.” (p 32) With the state actively promoting mining, might also place a wet blanket over other initiatives to develop the particular region, resulting in that “the other sectors of the economy continue to be neglected” (p 33).

Much has been said about the eroding of the state (from the argument that it is a serious problem to that it is simply a wrong assumption), but it is hard to deny the complexities globalization (cf. Jensen & Sandström 2011*) brings with it and its pressure on (the very recent innovation) of the nation state, its governments and state apparatus.

What about the future of so-called more responsible mining, then? Kirsch states that: “More than two decades of research and practical experience in seeking reforms tempers my optimism” (p 221). The responsible mine, according to Kirsch, is like a mythical beast that people have heard about but not seen. Concluding the book, he states that: “The goal of political organizing on these issues is not to stop all new mining permanently but rather to compel the industry to improve its practices by raising international standards; to ensure that these standards are obligatory rather than just voluntary; and to establish fair, effective, and transparent mechanisms for complaint resolution, coupled with the swift application of strong sanctions to ensure compliance.” (p 221)

Reading Kirsch’s book, we also come to think of how most studies on globalization, capitalism, mining and corporations, tend to focus on tensions between a colonizing West/North and a colonized East/South, on a Western mining company in a developing nation (as in Kirsch 2014, Rajak 2014, Welker 2015; Alex Golub, Leviathans at the gold mine, 2014, x-x1, decides on the concept of “Euro-christian”), whereas we try to stay with the enactment of similar processes but in affluent settings, in well-developed nations (Canada and Sweden), and remote areas therein (Saskatchewan and Norrbotten). There are, we notice, similarities between affluent countries and countries that are hard to pin down as ‘states’ (weak states, failed states), but in our study we see emerging and somewhat unique vulnerabilities in so-called developed regions (or Euro-christian). We also argue that labor processes have been neglected in contemporary research. As Kirsch states: “Although labor conflict in the mining industry has not disappeared, its political significance has been greatly diminished” (p 5), based on the argument that worker collectives and unions are weakened and where more neoliberal ideas increasingly permeate the industry. But, we believe, therein lies an important reason to once again focus on labor and power.

These are some of our reflections from Kirsch’s book, but we promise, there are plenty more (on audit culture, freedom and money, the resource curse etc.). It’s a very rich and thought-provoking book.

 

* Jensen, Tommy and Sandström, Johan (2011) Stakeholder theory and globalization: The challenges of power and responsibility. Organization Studies 32(4), 473-488.

 

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Documentary Iron Kiruna LKAB Luleå Management Moviemaking Researcher Sweden Union Worker

Work and mining

A video interview on work and mining with professor Jan Johansson, Luleå, Sweden (11 minutes):

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Cameco Canada Emily Researcher Uranium

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.”

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Michal Music Researcher

Opening black boxes

Please find the second comment from guestblogger Michal Zawadzki:

With the popular metaphor developed by Bruno Latour, one could say that neoliberalization of the contemporary academia too often brings down lecture halls in the universities and business schools to the level of ‘black boxes’: discourses closed to criticism, where interpretations of the reality authoritatively imposed by the teacher are reproduced. This situation stays in contradiction to the cultural mission of the university: university is an institution with the potential for opposition, whose mission includes cultural democratization of social life, social solidarity and critical reflexivity. Preparing students for the role of critical citizens is the basic function of higher education. Teaching and learning at a university constitute a border space that should enable students to confront ethically and politically the connecting tissue of experience and thought, theory and praxis, ideas and public life.

This possibility is given by the project “Organizing Rocks” and its use in the classrooms. Both me and my students from the Institute of Culture in Krakow are impressed by the musical layer of this project: the songs composed by Johan and Tommy, and played and sung by Tommy (and a few others) which allow you to understand the twists and turns of management and work processes. Within the blues “Kiruna you maggot” we are able to understand the specificity of life in the Swedish Kiruna and work in the local mine: dangerous mountains, harsh climate, loneliness and hard work are complemented here with the beauty of the aurora and blue lakes. A song “What local people? Us local people” gives us the possibility to empathize with the situation of indigenous people of Kiruna: nomads from the north coping with the problems of globalization and commodification of the local goods. A hard rock track “We the north” – so far my favourite one, especially because of the great repetitive guitar riff – also reveals the mentality of the people from the north: cordial, but aloof inhabitants from the mountains.

“Organizing rocks” is a great resource for the teaching courses in management and gives the possibility to open the “black boxes”. As one of the students attending my bachelor seminar, Monika, observes:

“Organizing Rocks” is the one of the most interesting projects which I have met recently. This is a fantastic way to share scientific research results. Through music, we can reach a wider audience and publicize important aspects of academical issues. Thick volumes written in difficult language discourage, so the rock music is a great alternative. I hope that this project will develop and maybe will be picked up by other scientists. Aspects of quantum mechanics singing with growl in accompaniment of heavy guitars? Why not!”

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Aboriginals Cameco Canada Documentary Moviemaking Researcher Saskatoon Uranium

Challenges for the mining industry in Saskatchewan

On his trip to Canada, Johan took the chance of placing professor Greg Poelzer in front of the camera (arranged and managed by Max Poelzer) to talk about the challenges to the mining industry in northern Saskatchewan. The emphasis on capacity building in the north, particularly in aboriginal communities, is strong and not something that we experience back home in the north of Sweden.