Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T21:39:19.244Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Drilling for the future: Gendered justifications of the Arctic fossil fuel industry

Part of: Women of the Arctic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2020

Sohvi Kangasluoma Open the ORCID record for Sohvi Kangasluoma [Opens in a new window]
Sohvi Kangasluoma*
Affiliation:
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 42, Unioninkatu 33 FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland
*
Author for correspondence: Sohvi Kangasluoma, Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite the global alarm caused by accelerating climate change, hydrocarbon companies are exploring and opening up new oil and gas fields all over the world, including the Arctic. With increasing attention on the Arctic, companies address the growing global environmental pressure in their public marketing in various ways. This article examines the webpages of Norwegian Equinor and Russian Gazprom & Gazprom Neft. Building on feminist discussions, I analyse the different justification strategies these fossil fuel companies working in the Arctic utilise in order to support their ongoing operations. This article concludes that in order to justify their operations in the Arctic, the Norwegian and Russian companies emphasise values based on discourses that have historically and culturally been associated with masculine practices, such as the control of nature enabled by technology. These justifications are thus reinforcing the narrative of the Arctic as a territory to be conquered and mastered. Even though the companies operate in different sociopolitical contexts, the grounds of justification are rather similar. Their biggest differences occur in their visual presentations of gender, which I argue is part of the justification. Approaching the fossil fuel industry from a feminist perspective allows questioning the dominant conceptualisations, which the justifications of Arctic hydrocarbon companies are based on.

Keywords

ArcticExtractivismOil and gasFeminist theoriesJustification analysis
Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 56 , 2020 , e38
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Primary sources

Equinor webpage. (2019). Retrieved 22 June 2020 from https://www.equinor.com/en.html Google Scholar
Gazprom webpage. (2019). Retrieved 22 June 2020 from https://www.gazprom.com/ Google Scholar
Gazprom Neft webpage. (2019). Retrieved 22 June 2020 from https://www.gazprom-neft.com/ Google Scholar

References

Aarekol, L. (2016). Arctic trophy hunters, tourism and masculinities, 1827–1914. Acta Borealia, 33(2), 123–139. doi: 10.1080/08003831.2016.1238173 Google Scholar
Anshelm, J., & Hultman, M. (2014). A green fatwā? Climate change as a threat to the masculinity of industrial modernity. NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, 9(2), 84–96. doi: 10.1080/18902138.2014.908627 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arctic Council. (2009). Arctic Offshore Oil and Gas Guidelines. Retrieved 13 December 2019 from https://oaarchive.arctic-council.org/bitstream/handle/11374/63/Arctic-Guidelines-2009-13th-Mar2009.pdf Google Scholar
Arctic Council. (2017). Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programmes’ Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA assessment). Retrieved 17 December 2019 from https://www.amap.no/documents/download/2909 Google Scholar
Arora-Jonsson, S. (2011). Virtue and vulnerability: Discourses on women, gender and climate change. Global Environmental Change, 21, 744–751. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.01.005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauhardt, C., & Harcourt, W. (Eds.). (2019). Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care. London: Routledge. https://doi-org.libproxy.helsinki.fi/10.4324/9781315648743 Google Scholar
Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (2006). On Justification. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1991)Google Scholar
Brough, A. R., Wilkie, J. E., Ma, J., Isaac, M. S., & David, G. (2016). Is eco-friendly unmanly? The green-feminine stereotype and its effect on sustainable consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 43(4), 567–582. doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucw044 Google Scholar
Caprotti, F., & Bailey, I. (2014). Making sense of the green economy. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 96(3), 195–200. doi: 10.1111/geob.12045 Google Scholar
Carey, M., Jackson, M., Antonello, A., & Rushing, J. (2016). Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research. Progress in Human Geography, 40(6), 770–793. doi: 10.1177/0309132515623368 Google Scholar
Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Connell, R. W., & Pearse, R. (2014). Gender: In World Perspective, 3rd edition. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Daggett, C. (2018). Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 47(1), 25–44. doi: 10.1177/0305829818775817 Google Scholar
Dale, B., & Kristoffer, B. (2018). Post-petroleum security in a changing arctic: Narratives and trajectories towards viable futures. Arctic Review on Law and Politics, 9, 244–261. doi: 10.23865/arctic.v9.1251 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dale, B., Veland, S., & Merrild Hansen, A. (2019). Petroleum as a challenge to arctic societies: Ontological security and the oil-driven ‘push to the north’. The Extractive Industries and Society, 6(2), 367–377. doi: 10.1016/j.exis.2018.10.002 Google Scholar
Dobretsov, N. L., & Pokhilenko, N. P. (2010). Mineral resources and development in the Russian Arctic. Russian Geology and Geophysics, 51, 98–111.Google Scholar
Equinor. (2019). Sustainability Report 2019.Google Scholar
Etkind, A. (2014). Post-Soviet Russia: The Land of the Oil Curse, Pussy Riot, and Magical Historicism. Boundary 2, 41(1), 153–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
European Institute for Gender Equity. (2016). Gender and Energy. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Retrieved 10 October 2019 from https://eige.europa.eu/rdc/eige-publications/gender-and-energy Google Scholar
Finger, M., & Heininen, L. (Eds.). (2019). The Global Arctic Handbook. Cham: Springer Nature.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gazprom. (2018). PJSC Gazprom Annual Report 2018. Retrieved 10 December 2019 from https://www.gazprom.com/f/posts/67/776998/gazprom-annual-report-2018-en.pdf Google Scholar
Gibson-Graham, J. K., & Roelvink, G. (2010). An economic ethics for the anthropocene. Antipode, 41(1), 320–346. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00728.x Google Scholar
Goldman, W. Z. (2002). Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin’s Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Government of Norway. (2017). Documents: Nordområdestrategi - mellom geopolitikk og samfunnsutvikling. Retrieved 9 June 2020 from https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dokumenter/strategi_nord/id2550081/ Google Scholar
Government of Russia. (2020). Documents: Утверждён национальный план мероприятий первого этапа адаптации к изменениям климата на период до 2022 года. Retrieved 9 June 2020 from http://government.ru/docs/38739/ Google Scholar
Greenpeace Norge. (2019). Retrieved 7 November 2019 from https://www.greenpeace.org/norway Google Scholar
Greenpeace Russia. (2019). Retrieved 7 November 2019 from http://www.greenpeace.org/russia Google Scholar
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599.Google Scholar
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books Ltd.Google Scholar
Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hevly, B. (1996). The heroic science of glacier motion. Osiris, 11, 66–86. doi: 10.1086/368755 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoogensen Gjørv, G. (2017). Finding gender in the arctic: A call to intersectionality and diverse methods. In Latola, K. & Savela, H. (Eds.), The Interconnected Arctic– UArctic Congress 2016 (pp. 293–303). Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
Hultman, M. (2013). The Making of an Environmental Hero: A History of Ecomodern Masculinity, Fuel Cells and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Environmental Humanities, 2, 79–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackman, A., Squire, R., Bruun, J., & Thornton, P. (2020). Unearthing feminist territories and terrains. Political Geography, 80, 1–12. doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102180 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jasanoff, S. (2015). Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. In Jasanoff, S. & Kim, S. (Eds.), Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power (pp. 1–33). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jensen, L.C. (2007). Petroleum discourse in the European Arctic: The Norwegian case. Polar Record, 43(3), 247–254. doi: 10.1017/S0032247407006559 Google Scholar
Kojola, E. (2019). Bringing Back the Mines and a Way of Life: Populism and the Politics of Extraction. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109(2), 371–381. doi: 10.1080/24694452.2018.1506695 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopmans, R. (2006). Codebook for the analysis of political mobilisation and communication in European public spheres. 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission.Google Scholar
Krivorotov, A., & Finger, M. (2019). State-owned enterprises in the arctic. In Finger, M. & Heininen, L. (Eds.), The Global Arctic Handbook (pp. 45–62). Cham: Springer Nature.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuokkanen, R. (2007). Myths and realities of Sami women: A postcolonial feminist analysis for the decolonization and transformation of Sami society. In Green, J. (Ed.), Making Space for Aboriginal Feminism (pp. 72–92). Halifax, NS: Fernwood Books.Google Scholar
Lempinen, H. (2018). At the margins of the Barents energyscape. Barents Studies: At the economic, social and political margins, 5(1), 13–34.Google Scholar
Lempinen, H. (2019a). Arctic Energy and Social Sustainability. Cham: Palgrave Pivot.Google Scholar
Lempinen, H. (2019b). “Barely surviving on a pile of gold”: Arguing for the case of peat energy in 2010s Finland. Energy Policy, 128, 1–7. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.12.041 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieu, J., Sorman, A. H., Johnson, O. W., Virla, L. D., & Resurrección, B. P. (2020). Three sides to every story: Gender perspectives in energy transition pathways in Canada, Kenya and Spain. Energy Research & Social Science, 68(101550), 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livesey, S. M. (2002). Global warming wars: Rhetorical and discourse analytic approaches to exxonmobil’s corporate public discourse. The Journal of Business Communication, 39(1), 117–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loe, J. S., & Kelman, I. (2016). Arctic petroleum’s community impacts: Local perceptions from Hammerfest, Norway. Energy Research and Social Science 16, 25–34. doi: 10.1016/J.ERSS.2016.03.008 Google Scholar
MacGregor, S. (2009). A stranger silence still: The need for feminist social research on climate change. The Sociological Review, 57, 124–140. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2010.01889.x Google Scholar
MacGregor, S. (2010). ‘Gender and climate change’: From impacts to discourses. Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 6(2), 223–238. doi: 10.1080/19480881.2010.536669 Google Scholar
Mason, A. (2016). Arctic energy image: Hydrocarbon aesthetics of progress and form. Polar Geography, 39(2), 130–143. doi: 10.1080/1088937X.2016.1181681 Google Scholar
Mellor, M. (2017). Ecofeminist political economy. A green and feminist agenda. In MacGregor, S. (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment (pp. 86–100). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Miller, G. (2004). Frontier masculinity in the oil industry: The experience of women engineers. Gender, Work and Organization, 11(1), 47–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland. (2002). Taking Wing, Conference Report. Retrieved 4 November 2020 from https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/74685/Selv200212.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Google Scholar
Mittler, D. (2014). The changing ethics of climate change. Ethics & International Affairs, 28(3), 351–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norby, T., Jensen, E., & Sartori, S. (2019). Deep decarbonization efforts in Norway for energy sustainability. MRS Energy & Sustainability: A Review Journal 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1557/mre.2019.12 Google Scholar
Norsk Petroleum. (2020). Retrieved 7 November 2019 from https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/exports-of-oil-and-gas/ Google Scholar
Norwegian Constitution. (2019). Retrieved 7 November 2019 from https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1814-05-17-nn/KAPITTEL_5#112 Google Scholar
Oldrup, H., & Breengaard, M. H. (2009). Gender and Climate Change. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers.Google Scholar
Palosaari, T. (2019a). Climate change ethics in the arctic. In Heininen, L. & Exner-Pirot, H. (Eds.), Climate Change and Arctic Security. Searching for a Paradigm Shift (pp. 53–60). London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Palosaari, T. (2019b). The arctic paradox (and how to solve it.) oil, gas and climate ethics in the arctic. In Finger, M. & Heininen, L. (Eds.), The Global Arctic Handbook (pp. 141–152). Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
Pelyasov, A. (2013). Commentary: Russian Strategy of the Development of the Arctic Zone and the Provision of National Security until 2020. Arctic Yearbook 2013.Google Scholar
Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Powys, W. K., & Cuomo, C. J. (2017). Ethics of caring in environmental politics. In Thompson, A. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook on Environmental Ethics (pp. 234–247). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199941339.001.0001 Google Scholar
Robinson, F. (2011). The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Approach to Human Security. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Rogers, D. (2015). The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power and Culture after Socialism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ryall, A., Schimanski, J., & Wærp, H. H. (2010). Introduction. In Ryall, A., Schimanski, J., & Wærp, H. H. (Eds.), Arctic Discourses (pp. 9–22). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Salonen, H. (2018). Public justification analysis of Russian renewable energy strategies. Polar Geography, 41(2), 75–86. doi: 10.1080/1088937X.2018.1457730 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saxinger, G. (2015). “To you, to us, to oil and gas” – The symbolic and socio-economic attachment of the workforce to oil, gas and its spaces of extraction in the Yamal-Nenets and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Districts in Russia. Fennia, 193(1), 83–98. ISSN 1798-5617.Google Scholar
Saxinger, G., Öfner, E., Shakirova, E., Ivanova, M., Yakovlev, M., & Gareyev, E. (2016). Ready to go! The next generation of mobile highly skilled workforce in the Russian petroleum industry. The Extractive Industries and Society, 3, 627–639. doi: 10.1016/j.exis.2016.06.005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scrase, I., & Ockwell, D. G (2010). The role of discourse and linguistic framing effects in sustaining high carbon energy policy—An accessible introduction. Energy Policy, 38(5), 2225–2233. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2009.12.010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seag, M., Badhe, R., & Choudhry, I. (2020). Intersectionality and international polar research. The Polar Record, 56. doi: 10.1017/S0032247419000585 Google Scholar
Sergunin, A., & Konyshev, V. (2018). Russia’s Arctic Strategy. In Studin, I. (Ed.), Russia. Strategy, Policy and Administration (pp. 135–144). London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Simola, H., & Solanko, L. (2017). Overview of Russia’s oil and gas sector. BOFIT Policy Brief 2017 No. 5. Helsinki: Bank of Finland.Google Scholar
Sinevaara-Niskanen, H. (2012). Gender, economy and development in the north. In Tennberg, M. (Ed.), Politics of Development in the Barents Region (pp. 362–377). Rovaniemi: Lapland University Press.Google Scholar
Sinevaara-Niskanen, H. (2015). Vocabularies for human development: Arctic politics and the power of knowledge. Polar Record, 51(2), 191–200. doi: 10.1017/S0032247413000946 Google Scholar
Sinevaara-Niskanen, H. (2019). When gender matters: Equality as a source of Arctic sustainability? In Tennberg, M., Lempinen, H., & Pirnes, S. (Eds.), Resources, Social and Cultural Sustainabilities in the Arctic (pp. 131–143). London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperling, V. (2015). Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stuvøy, K. (2011). Human security, oil and people: An actor-based security analysis of the impacts of oil activity in the Komi Republic, Russia. Journal of Human Security, 7(2), 5–19. doi: 10.3316/JHS0702005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Squire, R., & Dodds, R. (2020). Introduction to the special issue: Subterranean geopolitics. Geopolitics, 25(1), 4–16. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2019.1609453 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thévevnot, L., Moody, M., & Lafaye, C. (2000). Forms of valuing nature: Arguments and modes of justification in French and American environmental disputes. In Lamont, M. & Thévevnot, L. (Eds.), Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology. Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States (pp. 229–271). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tickner, J. A. (1992). Gender in International Relations. New York: Colombia University Press.Google Scholar
Tickner, J. A. (2001). Gendering World Politics. New York: Colombia University Press.Google Scholar
Tynkkynen, V.-P. (2016). Energy as Power — Gazprom, Gas Infrastructure, and Geo-governmentality in Putin’s Russia. Slavic Review 75(2), 192–212. doi: 10.5612/slavicreview.75.2.374 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tynkkynen, V.-P. (2019). The Energy of Russia. Hydrocarbon Culture and Climate Change. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.Google Scholar
Tynkkynen, V.-P., & Tynkkynen, N. (2018). Climate Denial Revisited: (Re)contextualising Russian Public Discourse on Climate Change during Putin 2.0. Europe - Asia Studies, 70(7), 1103–1120. doi: 10.1080/09668136.2018.1472218.Google Scholar
United Nations Development Programme. (2020). Human Development Reports: Gender Inequality Index. Retrieved 8 June 2020 from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-inequality-index Google Scholar
Ventsel, A. (2018). Blurring masculinities in the Republic of Sakha, Russia. Polar Geography, 41(3), 198–216. doi: 10.1080/1088937X.2018.1498141.Google Scholar
Vladimirova, V., & Habeck, J. O. (2018). Introduction: Feminist approaches and the study of gender in Arctic social sciences. Polar Geography, 41(3), 145–163, doi: 10.1080/1088937X.2018.1496368 Google Scholar
Ylä-Anttila, T., & Kukkonen, A. (2014). How arguments are justified in the media debate on climate change in the USA and France. In International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 8(4), 394–408. doi: 10.1504/IJISD.2014.066658 Google Scholar
Ylä-Anttila, T., & Luhtakallio, E. (2016). Justifications analysis: Understanding moral evaluations in public debates. Sociological Research Online, 21(4), 1–12. doi: 10.5153/sro.4099 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ylä-Anttila, T., Vesa, J., Eranti, V., Kukkonen, A., Lehtimäki, T., Lonkila, M., & Luhtakallio, E. (2018). Up with ecology, down with economy? The consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation in the global sphere. European Journal of Communication, 33(6), 587–603. doi: 10.1177/0267323118790155 Google ScholarPubMed
Yusupova, M. (2016). Shifting Masculine Terrains: Russian men in Russia and the UK. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Manchester: University of Manchester, Faculty of Humanities.Google Scholar
Ziker, J. P. (2010). Changing gender roles and economies in Taimyr. Anthropology of East Europe Review 28(2), 102–119.Google Scholar