Programme
- Welcome - Sidsel Roalkvam
- The oil workers and us - Lecture by David Jordhus-Lier, University of Oslo
- Drinks and cake
David Jordhus-Lier about the lecture:
Petroleum workers inhabit a peculiar position in Norwegian climate politics. Their labour has helped produce our wealth. Through their hard work, Norway has also been able to supply the world with an energy source that powers economic growth and heats up the atmosphere. Climate activism in oil-producing countries like Norway must therefore target our own role in fossil fuel extraction. Failing to do so would be outright hypocrisy. But calls for a phase-out of oil and gas are almost always seen as threatening by those who work in these industries. Not only do they have decent jobs, but they are also protected by strong unions.
Taking a stance is never easy. Climate activists and sustainability researchers have found that by supporting a phase-out of petroleum extraction, they might unintentionally add to levels of polarisation and alienation in society. As academics we must take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. If we help undermine the social contracts that enabled societal transformations in the past, we need to consider ways to build new forms of solidarity – or repair existing bonds. The ivory tower has thus far been better at writing down political alternatives (and getting them published) than creating viable alliances that would speed up transformation efforts and make them legitimate in the eyes of workers and local communities.
In my talk, I will not assume the role of a political strategist. Rather, I will share experiences from qualitative research conducted over the course of the last five years. I am hoping to achieve three goals: firstly, to show why the assumed ‘we’ in climate discourse often is a false one, and argue that academics have a particular responsibility to avoid ‘anthropocentric flattening’ in their scholarly analyses; second, to introduce the climate debate as seen from a standpoint of oil workers, and encourage the audience to relate to and reflect on this positionality; and third, share some thoughts on what kind of strategic alternatives we have as environmentally conscious social scientists. Through this last point, I do not wish to prescribe any particular kind of action, but to encourage young researchers to embrace the ambiguity of the academic vantage point, which is full of possibilities and limitations.