Introduction
The ambition to gain increased self-determination is at the core of indigenous peoples’ political struggles, worldwide. Despite the quite diverse situation of indigenous peoples due to different political, economic, social and cultural histories, the overall moral claim of indigenous peoples is to critically address colonial relations and their inherent structures of asymmetrical power relations. Basically, indigenous peoples are aiming to get rights to culture, land and self-determination respected by states and to establish structures of self-government. By doing so, indigenous peoples are able to create a better position for themselves as future-makers (Sejersen, Reference Sejersen2015). Institutionalised structures of self-government have taken many forms and are evolving continuously due to political changes and possibilities (for example Assies & Hoekema, Reference Assies and Hoekema1994; Dahl, Reference Dahl2012). In 2007, this political aim and moral claim was accepted, respected and supported by the United Nations when the General Assembly adopted the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Arctic indigenous peoples had lobbied hard for the adoption of the declaration and applied many years of experience from their negotiation of land and treaty rights as well as their efforts to establish different forms of self-government structures (for example Dahl, Hicks, & Jull, Reference Dahl, Hicks and Jull2000; Minority Rights Group, 1994). Greenland is considered the homeland of Kalaallit (Inuit) and is one of the Arctic regions where the most elaborate, wide-reaching self-government structure has been established. Over the years, more and more areas of political responsibility have been transferred from Denmark to Greenland, and in 2009 the rights to the mineral resource were transferred, and Denmark recognised Greenland’s right to independence, among other things. This major step in the colonial history of Denmark–Greenland gave the Greenlandic government and parliament major possibilities to pursue the long-time existing political ambition to gain more political and economic independence from Denmark. However, the recognition of Greenland’s moral and political claims as a people with the right to self-determination (and independence if they wish so) was quickly succeeded by concerns related to economic questions. Put differently, the issue of self-determination was displaced from a moral and political discussion into a discussion of economy (that is, how can political self-determination be aligned with economic development). The question is not if Greenland shall have more independence but how Greenland will finance its public expenses in the case of increased independence from Denmark. The fact is that Denmark’s subsidies amounted roughly to 60% of Greenland’s income (in 2016). The discourse on independence was changed from a moral into an economic one. This process of neoliberalisation is according to Altamirano-Jiménez (Reference Altamirano-Jiménez2013), Lindroth (Reference Lindroth2014) as well as Howlett, Seini, MacCallum and Osborne (Reference Howlett, Seini, MacCallum and Osborne2011) taking place elsewhere in the world among indigenous people. Since 2009, Greenlandic politicians have therefore increasingly focused on finding strategies to reduce public expenses and to boost public income. Often, large-scale industrial oil and mining projects as well as large-scale production facilities have been pointed out as the solution to this post-colonial predicament. During the period 2008–2014, quite a number of foreign companies which engage in mineral extraction took a keen interest in the resource potential in Greenland and made large survey investments. In addition, politicians and organisations in Greenland were investing much effort in attracting foreign investors and to brand Greenland as a pro-industrial location good for business. Quite a number of persons and organisations were taking part in this endeavour. However, a certain and small category of individuals played a significant role in promoting the idea that large-scale extractivism would lead to more independence. I term them “brokers of hope”, as they were mobilising narratives of new positive beginnings and emancipatory futures. During the period 2009–2014, the two Greenlandic premiers Kuupik Kleist and Aleqa Hammond stood out as extremely central in the formulation of how Greenland should orchestrate the inclusion of new industries for its benefit. The analysis will show that they approached this challenge quite differently by way of evoking different understandings of what could be seen as the resources. Furthermore, the analysis will demonstrate how both premiers worked to make new beginnings by engaging in new relations with Chinese partners. That strategy was met with considerable resistance from Denmark, and the questions of extractivism whirled up a dense post-colonial scene which the two premiers used creatively to circulate affects to boost their hope narratives.
Resource understandings
There is no doubt about the fact that Greenland has a unique mineral resource potential. Geological surveys have taken place since the beginning of the 19th century (Sejersen, Reference Sejersen2014). Presently, very elaborate mappings of the sub-surface substances (extent, composition, location, etc.) are available to industries. Historically, the most famous mines were Iviittut (cryolite), 1853–1987; Qullissat (coal), 1939–1972 and Marmorilik (lead, zinc and silver), 1973–1990. Recently, profound interest but little productive activity has been on mining potentials in Isukasia (iron), Kuannersuit/Kvanefjeldet (rare earth elements and uranium), Killavaat Alannguat/Kringlerne (rare earth elements and zirconium), Citronen fjord (zinc and lead) and Nalunaq (gold). In fact, only two small mines are in operation in 2019: Kangerlussuaq (anorthosite) and Qeqertarsuatsiaat (rubies).
Prospecting and exploration have taken place, and several public hearing processes have been pursued as part of impact assessments. This relates to both initiatives linked to industrial production facilities (aluminium smelter) and mining and oil production. Two times a month, Greenlandic authorities publish a list of mineral and petroleum licenses in Greenland. To allow better investment possibilities for large-scale projects, the Greenlandic parliament passed the Large-Scale Projects Act, in 2012. Overall, Greenland has done much to appear as a mining friendly, political stable and safe country for investments. In the Frazer index over “good and interesting” mining countries in the world, Greenland was no. 7 in 2013. However, in 2016 the country slid down on the list and ended as no. 55, allegedly due to tax and royalty policies, expensive infrastructural requirements as well as political mixed signals in relation to whether uranium could be a side product in mining (Kristiansen, Reference Kristiansen2017). In 2019, it went even further down to no. 65 on the list. Numbers from Statistics Greenland (2018, p. 24) show how the profits and loss related to mining have been fluctuating but primarily been negative. Despite this negative loss and the fact that neither mining, oil-exploitation nor aluminium melting is taking place to any large extent, Greenland is still determined to boost and underpin future indigenous empowerment and self-government by a productive engagement in extractivism.
Resources in the making and the role of brokers
The processes of turning non-renewable sub-surface substances into resources and later into reserves that can be extracted for human benefit are complicated processes involving more than just geological expertise and technology. If a “substance” has to become a “resource” and later to be turned into a “reserve”, it has to undergo a number of relational interventions, and a resource can become a reserve for mining only if it meets the requirements of geological certainty and economic viability as well as accessibility based on legal permissions to extract it. Furthermore, it has to be made politically legitimate.
The process can be seen as one of translation where a (large) number of diverse agents are involved in mediating and producing the reserve through processes of, for example, identification, evaluation, negotiation and value setting. A substantial part of this process of translation takes place in technical mapping reports and economic assessments. These processes are seldom approached as cultural, social (relational) and creative activities, at all. However, the overall theoretical ambition in Science and Technology Studies (STS) has encouraged scholars to open up this “black box” of subtle translations. STS approaches knowledge production as social, economic, political and cultural practices that are entangled in long and complex relations and networks.
In a similar line with the STS ambition, Richardson and Weszkalnys (Reference Richardson and Weszkalnys2014) urge us to pay analytical attention to resource making as a material process in a way that considers the conjunction of the social and the material without the social swallowing the material or the other way round (p. 7). In doing so, they hope to challenge the analyses that solely link resource to the techno-scientific practices. They want to direct our analytical attention to “all the complex arrangements of physical stuff, extractive infrastructures, calculative devices, discourses of the market and development, the nation and the corporation, everyday practices, and so on that allow those substances to exist as resources” (p. 7). This relational phenomenon which they term “resource materialities” can be approached – they suggest – by a combined examination of matters, knowledges, infrastructures and experiences that come together in the appreciation, extraction, processing and consumption of natural resources. The power of studying “resource materialities” arises from the fact that resources come to exist both through technical intervention and physical production, as well as through acts of epistemological and ontological creativity. The authors draw to some degree on economist Erich Zimmermann’s famous key idea that resources do not simply exist in a fixed and finite state (which we may want to find, map, extract and use) but are instead constantly in the making; they are not – they become, according to Zimmermann (Reference Zimmermann1933, p. 3). By infusing relationality, temporality, process and creativity into the analysis through the concept of “resource materialities” the authors also underline that resource potentiality has its own historicity which also depends on the possibilities that matter (substance) affords to us (Richardson & Weszkalnys, Reference Richardson and Weszkalnys2014, p. 15). In fact, in the framework of Richardson and Weszkalnys, natural resources are not fixed but always in flux and open-ended. This analytical take prioritises relations and distributedness over substances and essences in how the world is constituted. When resources are seen as relational assemblages that are in a constant state of becoming, it is also possible to examine how different engagements with and interventions with substances can make certain political struggles and political systems possible (for example Mitchell, Reference Mitchell2011).
With respect to mining, experts belonging to particular knowledge regimes take up a dominant position in this translation of rock substances into profitable ore. Seen from the point of view of society, this transformation of rock into ore is also of major importance because the ore has to be translated into visible benefits for society. History shows that the many processes related to knowledge production and mining practices may result in unanticipated or unwanted consequences (Sejersen, Reference Sejersen2014). If we approach knowledge production as a process of translation, we may say that something may be lost and something may be gained in the translation. In some cases, what is lost can be substantial. The concepts of “resource trap” and the “Dutch disease” are cases in point, which indicate that the benefits for society may be quite difficult to anticipate, plan, control and distribute. Resource plenty may in fact potentially lead to social and economic stress (Ballad & Banks, Reference Ballad and Banks2003). Consequently, the processes of translation is ongoing and always in a state of becoming.
The translation of hard rock into soft human welfare involves a delicate kind of brokerage, which infuses transformative power into mining activities. Brokers pursuing these complex translations play an essential role in bringing resources into being. According to the sociologists Stovel and Shaw (Reference Stovel and Shaw2012, p. 141), “Brokers trade on gaps in social structure”. Stovel and Shaw make an elaborate review of perspectives on brokerage and the different roles of brokers in an effort to encourage sociology to have a more analytical attention towards these processes and the agents. In particular, they stress that brokerage can be seen as having the capacity to ease social interaction, enhance economic activity and facilitate political development. Thus, brokers mediate and facilitate interaction between separated or disconnected positions, and by doing so make access to or flow of valued resources possible (Stovel & Shaw, Reference Stovel and Shaw2012, p. 141). These resources, for example, could be goods, information, opportunities or knowledge. Brokerage may also take the form of creating new connections between previously unconnected parties or making claims about the future that may benefit the partners involved. Burt (Reference Burt2010, p. 7) refers to this as a “vision advantage”, that may even benefit the broker, when the broker manages to navigate the contradictions and conflicts inherent in translating information across structural holes. Brokers may create this vision advantage by identifying resources that are needed or by selecting alternative ways to go, synthesising new ways to go, framing a proposal to be attractive to needed supporters or detecting likely supporters/opponents to implementing a proposed way to go (Burt, Reference Burt2010, p. 5). Thus, by being agenda setters, brokers have transformative power. In the Arctic, this transformative potential of brokers has been addressed by several authors in the anthologyPatrons and Brokers in the East Arctic edited by Paine (Reference Paine1971). Mainly, the book focuses on persons who mediate through creative and productive re-interpretation. Paine (Reference Paine1971, p. 6) calls it manipulation and possessing. In particular, they focus on the transformative role played by missionaries, white traders, system authorities (for example, police) and bureaucrats in indigenous communities, and they link it up to patron–client theory. The broker role fleshed out in the anthology is primarily one that has to navigate in systems of asymmetrical relations, in some cases to ease or diminish these relations and in other cases to enforce them. The anthology points our attention to power relations and how the broker not only may be powerful in acts of brokerage, but may in fact by that brokerage change, challenge, maintain or attack existing power relations. The broker’s possibility to be agenda setting also points to this potentiality.
Hope and promise are inherent aspects of the brokers’ vision advantage. When brokers use hope and promise, they also work with social inclusion and exclusion and thus engage in processes of social demarcation. Once brokers of hope mobilise an idea of a future-to-come, they also mobilise a future social imaginary, which has a complex relationship to ideas of collective identities. One can say that by producing a “future us”, brokers of hope also produce a “contemporary us” (and an idea about who “we” can become). This creative work with future social imaginaries can also be seen as an interesting and powerful process of escaping the colonial othering (Spivak, Reference Spivak1985). In post-colonial theory, processes of othering often focus on how a hegemonic (colonial) discourse establishes the colonial subjects in a marginalised position through means of stereotyping and stigmatisation, for example. Activities of othering (in post-colonial theory) are quite complex and are entangled in knowledge regimes and deeply enmeshed in the (re)production of powerful social relations and with huge effects for culture and society as well as individuals (Said, Reference Said1978). As a consequence, othering processes generate subject positions and manoeuvre rooms for all involved parties. The dynamics of subtle as well as blatant oppression, discrimination and marginalisation are important points of attention for scholars working within the post-colonial field. This attention is also present in social science studies, where researchers fear that their methods may in fact (re)produce othering of the subjects they study (that is, through interviews) and thus (re)produce simple representations of the persons and communities that they are studying (Riggins, Reference Riggins and Riggins1997; Krumer-Nevo & Sidi, Reference Krumer-Nevo and Sidi2012). Discourses of self/other, insider/outsider, similarity/difference and normality/deviation are indeed powerful in shaping value judgements, social distance and knowledge production (Riggins, Reference Riggins and Riggins1997, p. 5). “The other” may in some cases internalise outside representations and in that process “colonise” themselves. As Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (Reference Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin2000, p. 156) point out, “The subjectivity of the colonized is continually located in the gaze of the imperial Other”. For people trying to escape a marginalised and stigmatised position (for example, indigenous peoples) much effort is invested in breaking processes of othering (for example Smith, Reference Smith1999). They are not only trying to escape the colonial gaze of the imperial Other, but are also creatively trying to establish a potential new position for themselves in the future to come. It may be – and often is – an emancipated position characterised by ideas of potentiality, self-determination, self-realisation, recognition and openness (a discourse that resembles processes of nations and nationalism addressed by Gellner, Reference Gellner1983). This discourse of emancipation is powered by a future imaginary where the “future us” is seen as the realisation of one’s true self and identity, which cannot be lived out under contemporary conditions. The “current us” trapped in the colonial gaze and subdued to othering processes seeks resurrection through the construction of the “future emancipated us” from which a new “true” gaze is installed on the “current us”. Indigenous peoples (and other marginalised groups) may thus have to navigate a space of doublet gaze. Brokers of hope work in that gab.
This article focuses on a particular kind of broker in the extractive industries in Greenland: “the broker of hope”. In Greenland, the two Greenlandic premiers Kuupik Kleist and Aleqa Hammond took up a central role when extractive industries were on the top of the political agenda and the “talk of town”. These brokers are not only pointing at some political or legal technicalities in the process of translating rock to welfare but are in fact also showing the way forward by translating dreams of nation-building into promises. Among other things, the brokerage activity involves the creative evocation of resource configurations. However, Kleist’s and Hammond’s brokerage of hope took two quite different directions, as the analysis will show. Furthermore, the brokers were creatively using the circumstances, at the time. A unique scene was set for the two brokers of hope: Greenland had gained self-rule (and the rights to the non-renewable resources), the Chinese increasingly showed interest in resource investments worldwide and the narrative about a climate change–impacted Arctic opening up for financial possibilities was dominant. The two premier’s strategies of hope brokerage played out resource configurations in different ways even though the circumstances were quite similar. As the analysis will indicate, the brokers’ hope narratives established a complex post-colonial power play where affects of shame, fear and dignity were set in motion and circulated. The brokers established the potentiality of Chinese partnership as a means to break the historical dependency on Denmark. This process unfolded in a way that I conceptualise as double orientalism. The circumstances of the period can be seen as quite unique, and one indeed has to acknowledge the special political, social, economic and legal developments that Greenland experienced in the aftermath of the Act of Self-rule for Greenland in 2009 as well as the global financial scene in that period. The brokerage of hope (for the better) that is assumed to materialise in the future was shaped by the circumstantial possibilities, but the circumstances in themselves cannot be assigned the leading role in how resources are configured and how affects are mobilised. The analysis clearly shows how the same circumstances were activated in different ways by the two premiers. Even though the brokers in this case are politically gifted individuals who creatively work with hope and people-making, the concept of brokers of hope should not be understood to refer to individuals, per se.
The brokering of premiers Kleist and Hammond
Kuupik Kleist who acted as premier of Greenland during 2009–2013 invested much energy and expertise in attracting foreign investors and mega industrial projects to Greenland. The purpose of his activities was to develop a more substantial economy in Greenland that could lead to reduced dependence on the Greenlandic fishing sector and also the Danish subsidies. As he pointed out in the Danish newspaper Politiken: “We are not a rich country and we need to improve our living standard and our infrastructure. The extraction of natural resources like oil, gas and minerals can contribute to this … everybody is welcome, if they apply to our rules and standards” (translated by the author, as cited in Ritzau, 2013a). He assured that Greenland could welcome outsiders in large numbers and maintain national rules and standards, at the same time. For Kleist the most important narrative was to create a better Greenlandic economy resulting in better welfare to the population and a possibility to free Greenland from the Danish block grant. Continuously, he argued for foreign investments as a means to underpin extractive industries that were to generate new jobs for Greenlanders. In this sense, he understood the mining sector as a hope generator, which could benefit Greenlandic families and which could create a strong self-sustaining Greenlandic economy. In this hope narrative, extractive activities should primarily create jobs that would result in increased tax income to benefit the self-rule. Seen from Kleist’s point of view, the non-renewable resources stood out as a means to free a more important resource, which was the one constituted by the Greenlandic workforce that were to fill out the new jobs. He thus created a hope narrative where the future Greenlander was a “working Greenlander” that could produce economic independence through work. For Kleist, the “future us” was a “working us”. That narrative of a “future-us” has an ability to “speak back” to the “contemporary us” because Kleist used the future imagined Greenlandic worker to turn the attention to, organise and produce certain aspects of contemporary society. By introducing a certain teleology (where “we” are going if “we” follow the suggestions) and demarcating subjectivities (what kind of “us” “we” become) the evoked “future-us” infuses a kind of rationality to the discussions in the present. In Kleist’s representation of a future where the working Greenlander is the real resource that will result in a more independent and productive Greenland, certain fields of interests in contemporary society emerged as relevant (and they were accordingly addressed by Kleist’s government): qualification improvement of the workforce and businesses, as well as the mobility of the qualified Greenlandic workforce. Qualification of the workforce through education was the core narrative – a priority which was also reflected in his government’s Strategy for Regional Development 2011 (Naalakkersuisut, 2011).
To give mining companies good investment possibilities, incitement, a competitive framework and a reason to start up activities in Greenland, Kleist’s government primarily developed a framework focusing on corporation tax rather than on royalties. Consequently, the resource rent from resources was not to enter the Greenlandic economy in the immediate wake of mining through royalties because the companies would have to deliver an economic surplus in order to pay tax. That could take many years. For Kleist, the generation of jobs for Greenlanders was the primary focus. According to the Strategy for Regional Development the pivotal way to secure increased public income was to increase the educational level of the workforce (Naalakkersuisut, 2011, p. 11). This accentuation of up-qualification of the workforce was further underlined in his new year’s speech (2011): “In the exploration of oil and in other activities related to minerals we have a very large task in securing the biggest share of the Greenlandic workforce as possible. We have already started to address this task by formulating demands to the industry about its role in educating employees. … I want to use this opportunity to encourage all with the interest to pursue these opportunities” (translated by the author, Kleist, Reference Kleist2011).
His hope brokerage was mobilising a resource configuration dependent on the Greenlandic workforce.
For Aleqa Hammond, who acted as Greenlandic premier for one and a half year from 2013 to 2014 – thus succeeding Kleist – the foreign investors and workers were also welcomed. For her as well, foreign investments were pivotal to boost and underpin the mining sector. Where much of Kleist’s hope narrative was linked to the potentialities of attracting investors to Greenland in order to release the Greenlandic workforce as a resource, Hammond increasingly concentrated her hope narrative on the potentialities of having the companies in Greenland to release the reserves in the ground. Hence, the resource (for society) came into being by billing the companies for taking the riches of the Greenlandic people. Greenland should be smart traders. She was very critical of Kleist’s political strategy and accused him for handing over Greenland to foreign companies “for free” (as cited in Kristensen, Reference Kristensen2012, p. 23). She portrayed Kleist’s strategy as a “ ‘take all you can eat’-offer” and by doing that mobilised a framework emphasising a potential repetition of the colonial experience, where foreign companies (primarily Danish) extracted the resources of Greenland with no or little benefit for Greenlanders (Schriver, Reference Schriver2013, p. 45). Thereby, she creatively installed a potential colonial attitude in the foreign companies and discursively underpinned her strategy of making them pay for what they take from Greenland. For Hammond, increased mining activities should produce economic input to Greenland through company royalties. Royalties are directly linked to the quantity of raw materials taken out of the ground, and Hammond stated that royalties are the payment for taking the values of the Greenlandic people: “The minerals are owned by the Greenlandic people, and if you want to take them out of the country, you have to pay first” (as cited in Westh, Reference Westh2013). For Hammond, the resource was in the Greenlandic ground and its release could underpin – in the very same movement – the freeing of the Greenlandic nation. The freed national “future-us” through the mineral values spoke back to the present by supported rationalities of governance related to royalties. This focus on royalties created a direct causal and legitimate relation between the amount of valuable rock and the degree of self-determination of the nation. Furthermore, it was formulated as a moral claim as well, when she pointed out that the implementation of royalties was pursued in order to secure the Greenlandic population’s fair share as owners. Hammond did not address substantial societal changes related to mining but linked mining directly to independence and national resurrection. The “future us” produced by Hammond outlined a contemporary site for the invocation and demarcation of aspects of cultural identity from which to think national integrity and national emancipation, where the “outside” was portrayed as a potential threat to Greenland (they may want to take the nation’s resources without paying). The “future us” produced by Hammond was underpinning a government rationality focusing on “the national”, and people were to organise and think themselves in relation to their belonging to the Greenlandic nation, to the legitimising sub-surface claims that a nation can put forward, as well as to the potentiality of the minerals (quantity).
Continuously, Hammond was cited for the following statement: “My personal goal is that the present government takes the first steps that will allow Greenland to gain independence one day in my lifetime” (translated by the author, as cited in Breum, Reference Breum2014, p. 13). By stressing a “future us” as a “national us” that was within reach within her lifetime she translated abstract hope into a more concrete promise which could be within reach of most people her age or younger. The amount of material in the ground was thus linked to the amount of Greenlandic self-determination through the evocation of a particular time horizon. Her basic argument was that Greenland has an abundance of wealth in the ground that can be harvested and sold, and that the wealth can be transformed into independence, quite quickly.
Her hope brokerage was mobilising a resource configuration dependent on the quantities of minerals in the ground.
The brokerage activities of both Kleist and Hammond are based on their creative narratives of productive post-colonial futures of independence. They infuse hope into people’s aspirations and turn this hope into promises by pointing out the potentiality in the engagement in extractivism. In the process of translating rock into national independence, the brokers work with two quite different resource configurations intended to fuel the desired process of emancipation. The resources are configured differently due to the networks they emerge in and thus speak to different government rationalities.
In their hope narratives Kupiik and Hammond create two different kinds of “future us” in a more economic independent Greenland: a “working us” (Kleist) and a “receiving us” (Hammond). The “future us” and the hope invested in becoming a particular “future us” can be understood as a technology of power which form, produce and encourage the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination (Foucault, Reference Foucault, Martin, Gutman and Hutton1988: 18). Kleist encouraged people to educate themselves and to work to reform (transform) society to be part of commercial activities, whereas Hammond accentuated the legitimate and fair flow of income from commercial activities stemming from the national underground through royalties. Kleist encouraged hard work, whereas Hammond accentuated smart trade. Kleist focused on the population as active through becoming engaged in mining as workers, while Hammond focused on the government as active in setting up the legal framework (for royalties). Consequently, Hammond did not install ideas of complex social reforms necessary to make Greenlanders qualified for the jobs related to the mining sector.
One could also say that “mining” as an activity in the hope narratives is black-boxed in two different ways. I take “black-boxing” as a concept from Latour’s work, and STS (Latour, Reference Latour1999). Black-boxing means that complex processes of socio-technological systems are reduced and made invisible by maintaining the primary focus on input and output. Thus, black-boxing is a way to bracket complexity and political sensitive processes. Black-boxing shares similarities with what Richardson and Weszkalnys (Reference Richardson and Weszkalnys2014, p. 13) term “abstraction” which they define as separation, parting, simplification, and reduction (and, occasionally, addition) on both material and conceptual levels.
The use of the concept “mining” by the brokers of hope can be seen as a kind of black-boxing because it hides or makes the actual activities and resource configurations difficult to grasp and thus open for creative assemblage. Both brokers of hope think that mining is the solution. However, if we apply this concept to Kleist’s and Hammond’s hope narratives, “mining” emerges as two different processes. For Kuupik “mining” becomes a social activity in which Greenlanders are to be engaged in to boost the production of society, whereas for Hammond “mining” is a technical activity, which will create a flow of value that Greenland can (legitimately) link into as rightful owners and smart traders. However, even though it can be quite difficult to appreciate what the overall impacts and implications are for society (it has been black-boxed), mining will in both cases lead to new beginnings, according to the brokers of hope.
New beginnings
The Greenlandic narratives of hope are deeply entangled in a post-colonial context aimed at demarcating and installing new beginnings (Schulz-Forberg, Reference Schulz-Forberg and Schulz-Forberg2013, p. 15). Thus, “brokers of hope” in Greenland work with temporalities because they primarily engage in the time to come and the paths that lead in that direction. Historian Schulz-Forberg calls this activity the temporalisation of social imagination (Reference Schulz-Forberg and Schulz-Forberg2013, p. 16). On the basis of Bakhtin’s concept of chronotopos he introduces the notion of “uchronotopia” in order to show how “some chronotopoi become ideologically charged and unfold into ideal type normative visions” and by doing so the work with time bears witness to a future that ought to be (here but then). Temporalisation of social imagination is an aspect of the emotional practice of sense-making, because it makes you feel good, secure and comfortable about proposed paths and problem solutions. Contemporary action and decisions find legitimising power in the mobilisation of uchronotopia. Claims on time (the happy future) are used to make claims on normative order as well (Schulz-Forberg, Reference Schulz-Forberg and Schulz-Forberg2013; Sejersen, Reference Sejersen, Stensrud and Eriksen2019), and claims on better (and happier) futures often involve transitory breaks with (unhappy) pasts. A reordering of the future involves a reordering of the past (Jørgensen, Reference Jørgensen2017; Schulz-Forberg, Reference Schulz-Forberg and Schulz-Forberg2013). For indigenous peoples in the Arctic this reordering process and the claiming of new futures are closely linked to historical processes of colonisation and de-colonisation. Post-colonial affects and temporalities are deeply implicated in knowledge practices and governing techniques related to contemporary extractive activities and society’s economic life. The affects that shape economic thinking not only enable particular future imaginaries but help to make that evoked future infuse force into contemporary economic thinking as well. The affects linked to better futures thus cast a productive shadow over contemporary life (and not only the other way round), and one can say that the future is made to colonise the present (Guyer, Reference Guyer2007). The mobilisation of future imaginaries by “brokers of hope” is not only fluffy dream works but must be seen as dreams that can be (and is) turned into active objects of government and control and thus internal to (the transformation of) existing relations of power and economic relations (Appadurai, Reference Appadurai2013). The dream of more (and full, complete and pure) independence and self-determination as the ultimate goal of Greenland becomes the centre stage in many discussions of resource extraction. Affects tie resources to particular transformative processes that will lead to the realisation of “intensive socialities” (Anderson, Reference Anderson, Gregg and Seigworth2010, p. 170) which in the case of Greenland is national independence from Denmark in some form. Resource affects in a post-colonial gaze based on shame and blame on the colonial power often work to calibrate a particular future of liberation and freedom, and the dominance of this affective project frequently makes it impossible to exist outside that particular project framing. The affective post-colonial economy and its continuous circulation of affective resources (Ahmed, Reference Ahmed2004; Kleivan, Reference Kleivan1974/75) can configure as a now-but-not-yet situation where waiting in fact can be seen as an active kind of work (Weszkalnys, Reference Weszkalnys2016, p. 138) or where waiting can be converted into an arena for active planning. This means that anticipated, hoped for, dreamed of extractive activities, which do not take place (yet) or potentially never will, emerge as concrete focus points anyhow and thus can be seen as quasi-events (Povinelli, Reference Povinelli2011). The project is there but not yet and by this quasi nature and non-presence it impacts communities and maintains to be part of reality as a positive/negative experience to relate to (Bille, Hastrup, & Sørensen, Reference Bille, Hastrup and Sørensen2010; Guerrieri, Reference Guerrieri2019; Peyton, Reference Peyton2011). In the case of Greenland, this “period of waiting” and its interim quality opens up an active space for brokers of hope and the integration of new partners to create new beginnings.
New partners for new beginnings
The hope for a new beginning where the former colony is truly liberated from the perceived dependencies on the former colonial power is a major driver of indigenous political discourse. For Greenland, the pan-Arctic as well as international political movement of indigenous peoples in the period of 1970–2000s indeed played a role in creating a platform for putting forward moral claims of indigenous self-determination. After the Second World War, parts of the Greenlandic elite had argued for increased political autonomy and the possibility to be master in one’s own house, and several political parties in Greenland had self-determination on their agendas (Dahl, Reference Dahl1986; Gad, Reference Gad2009; Kleivan, Reference Kleivan1969/70). Since the 1950s, Greenland has been experiencing several political changes that have transformed the political relationship to Denmark. In 1953, Greenland’s status as a colony was repealed; in 1979 Greenland got home-rule (and its own government) which in 2009 was turned into self-rule, where Greenland’s rights to sub-surface resources were recognised. Despite this political development, Denmark had a presence and maintains a position in Greenland which many Greenlanders find a refined continuation of colonial power. In particular, Greenland’s dependence on Danish subsidies amounting to nearly 60% of Greenland’s national income (in 2016) is seen as a clear barrier to a more fully position as independent. Denmark is with its financial support to Greenland a constant reminder of dependence and asymmetry. Major infrastructural investments in Greenland were often dependent on Danish engagement, and it was impossible to bypass the former colonial power and its good will. However, new partners in large-scale infrastructural projects (like mining) have emerged on the global scene. In particular, the Chinese take up a prominent position in many parts of the world hungry for new financial investments (Kopra, Reference Kopra2013; Rosen & Thuringer, Reference Rosen and Thuringer2017). In Greenland, China emerged as a new possible partner, which could replace Denmark as the “significant other” and, furthermore, give Greenland the possibility to navigate itself into a new global position (Anderson, Zeuthen, & Kalvig, Reference Anderson, Zeuthen and Kalvig2018; Gad et al., Reference Gad, Graugaard, Holgersen, Jacobsen, Lave and Schriver2018; Sørensen, Reference Sørensen2018; Xing & Bertelsen, Reference Xing and Bertelsen2013). For the two Greenlandic brokers of hope – Kleist and Hammond – the Chinese interest and financial power has been used as a game changer in their hope narratives. The anticipated presence of Chinese workers and investments in Greenland was framed as a complex political field in which future potentialities, optimism, hope and post-colonial dialogue could take place in a new way. Although the Chinese engagement was understood as the primary lever for economic transformation, it was used skilfully to rethink Greenland’s relation to Denmark, which can be seen as the real aim of the two brokers of hope.
Greenland’s relations to China
For the past 10–15 years, Greenland has actively tried to establish good relations with China in order to maintain and improve not only the market for fish and fur in China, but also to attract Chinese investors to the extractive industries in Greenland. Lately, the Chinese company Shenghe bought 12.5% of the shares in the company “Greenland Minerals and Energy” which focuses on rare earth elements, and an export agreement to China is under development. This engagement adds to the existing Chinese extraction license to the Isukasia iron project. However, these investments and rights do not currently result in “work on the ground” but seem to belong to the more abstract and speculative aspects of capitalism which Tsing (Reference Tsing2000) calls “the economy of appearance”. The reserves are hibernating so to speak (Sejersen, Reference Sejersen2016), and by their status of this kind of in-betweenness the extractive industries can also be looked at as abstractive industries (Mason, Reference Mason2016). However, the periodical abstract nature of extractive industries creates manoeuvre-room for brokers of hope.
The increased interests by the Chinese investments in Greenland are often understood to be the result of diligent Greenlandic political and business brokers participating at mining conferences and in political and business delegations to China. They have continuously promoted Greenland as the country of potentialities by the use of maps indicating resource availability, by the accentuation of the political stability, transparent bureaucracy, positive legal framework for use of cheap imported labour and the international competitive position of Greenland with respect to royalties and taxes. These brokers could be an interesting object of analysis as they are indeed brokers of hope for businesses. They bring actors together through their brokerage activities and infuse hope into the investors, local communities, the government and the business world.
However, Kuupik Kleist and Aleqa Hammond also used the new arena of anticipated Chinese investment in their hope brokerage to mobilise and infuse a particular kind of hope in the political discourse in Greenland. One could also formulate it in a different way: brokers that use the anticipated Chinese investments to create a certain kind of Greenlandic population and a self-image around the idea of hope.
By phrasing the question this way, the broker “makes up people” – to use Hackings term (Reference Hacking, Heller, Sosna and Wellbery1986) – in the process of brokerage rather than just bringing people or groups together. By applying this perspective, I do not want to see “brokers of hope” as brokers of social relations or social groups by the means of hope narratives. Rather, I want to see “brokers of hope” as brokers of relations between an imagined “contemporary us” and an imagined “future us”. Hope is in this approach seen as linked to a kind of promise based on anticipatory statements and models, which create images of collective identities through encouragement. These hope-activities influence and shape people’s self-perception, behaviours, choices and aspirations according to the future which has been anticipated for them (Guerrieri, Reference Guerrieri2017).
Danish concerns about new beginnings
The routes and potentialities created by the construction of a “future us” are deeply situated in post-colonial discourse, and recurrently the Danish-Greenlandic affective relations take centre stage in discussions and are played out in new ways (Gad, 2009, Reference Gad2016) – also by brokers of hope. The colonial relationship has often been compared to a parent and child relationship, and this metaphor was used creatively by the brokers of hope to establish ideas of new beginnings through new partnerships (with the Chinese). Much of the historical relationship between Denmark and Greenland can be characterised as a relationship where Denmark took the role and saw itself as protector and introducer of modernity. According to Paine (Reference Paine1977), the relationship between Inuit and white people generally has been characterised by a superior attitude by the whites who have pointed at their technical, political, moral and cultural superiority to legitimise colonial interventions and attitudes. This image of oneself as superior and a counter image of the Inuit have produced an othering process where Inuit have been related to on the basis of the child metaphor (Gad, Reference Gad2016; Langgård, 2013; Rud, Reference Rud2014; Thisted, Reference Thisted, Andreassen, Johannesen, Johansen and Sigurðardóttir2012; Thomsen, Reference Thomsen1998). This child metaphor results in a number of related understandings of the Inuit: they need to learn from the whites, they need to be tutored, guided and helped and to be protected from the world until mature enough to engage in it. Consequently, the gradual historical change from colonial dependence to more self-determination has often been phrased as similar to a maturing child getting ready to move away from home – away from the well-meaning care, embracing protection and supervision of parents (Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen, Reference Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen2018). The relationship between Denmark and Greenland can be understood by the concept of pastoral power, where Inuit in their helplessness (as seen from Denmark) are taken under the motherly wings of the Danes, brought into the modern world with the best intentions and rewarded when following the new standards and values. In Arctic literature, this image of Inuit as childlike is extremely widespread. Vallee (Reference Vallee1962) was one of the first to describe this relation, and Parsons (Reference Parsons1970, p. 38) noted in his study of whites in the Canadian North the “widespread conviction that natives tend to behave in a manner which is essentially child-like, and thus like children, they must be taught to exercise initiative, develop self-reliance, practice self-restraint, and generally cope with a complex, changing world”. This child-like position furthermore links to the perception of Inuit as closer to nature compared to Western people. Being “children of nature” and “children of the moment” (Müller, Reference Müller1906) they are, of course, to face problems when they meet the giants of modernisation be it the big city or the transnational mining company. This presupposed childish attitude has been a permanent theme in writings about the Arctic – and it is still today. Ann Fienup-Riordan (Reference Fienup-Riordan1990, Reference Fienup-Riordan1995) terms the production of this image Arctic Orientalism. It is this complex post-colonial political and affective field that the brokers of hope need to navigate diligently.
A Greenland faced with an industrial future driven by large transnational corporations with huge Chinese investments and thousands of workers has created a fear in Denmark that the Greenlanders will not be able to handle the situation – at least not on their own and without help. If not helped, Greenland would be turned into a Chinese work camp as mentioned in a Danish newspaper (Jyllands-Posten, 2013). Despite the fact that Greenland under the Self-rule Act has the right, possibility and responsibility to manage the its non-renewable resources, the Danes maintain to be concerned. In 2013 (May 20), the former Danish foreign minister Uffe Elleman Jensen raised concern about the Arctic interests shown by China and other Asian countries. He concluded that it was about time that Denmark and Greenland joined forces to protect themselves against “the many big hungry wolfs that forage the landscape on the look-out for opportunities to get close to the natural wealth that everyone dreams about exploiting” (translated by the author, Ellemann, Reference Ellemann2013).
He had three focus points: (1) China has predator interests in the Arctic; (2) the West should protect itself, its sovereignty and its resources from this threat; (3) Greenland and Denmark should cooperate to withstand the pressure from the outside.
By stating this, he joined the choir of Danes that expressed concern about Greenlandic wealth that may be grabbed by foreign firms – especially Chinese. The problem was understood as more than just profit that would run out of the Danish Kingdom. It was also phrased as a security problem that China potentially would get access and control over resources important for the Western world. In line with this way of thinking, the Danish political party Dansk Folkeparti encouraged (and even demanded) that Denmark and Western firms entered the Greenlandic scene in order to secure the resources and Western interests from Chinese dominance. If not done, Dansk Folkeparti claimed, the Chinese would have huge power over a large part of the world (Ritzau, 2013b). Dansk Folkeparti wanted Denmark to take responsibility immediately – “otherwise history will judge us hard”, as the party’s spokesperson announced. It seemed as if Denmark really needed a wakeup call, and the Danish admiral Nils Wang also added that “the EU and the US have been utterly inattentive” (translated by the author, as cited in Halskov & Davidsen-Nielsen, Reference Halskov and Davidsen-Nielsen2012) and thus given China the best opportunities. Foreign experts aired the same concern about Chinese expansion. In a warning statement from Hugh Stephens in The Diplomat, he underlined that “one thing is certain: China’s interests in the Arctic, whether regarding possibilities for expanded navigation and shipping, access to resources, concerns over the environmental impact of the melting ice packs or possibly even defense and security issues in the region, are only going to grow. Canada (and the US) would be wise to take note” (Stephens, Reference Stephens2012).
Basically, Denmark and the Western world expressed a concern and fear that the values of Greenland would fall into the hands of the Chinese. The affective relations circulated were turned into a situation which was considered a security threat and an (unwanted) increase of a powerful position of China. Put differently, the concern was that China would take the riches and resources from the former colony of Denmark, which could be used to outrun the Western world at the free market. Or even worse, a former Danish colony (Greenland) helped one of the biggest competitors of the Western world (Sørensen, Reference Sørensen2013). Anne Knudsen, former chief editor of the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen bluntly stated that it is both stupid and dangerous to help the Chinese in Greenland (Reference Knudsen2012). Seen from a Danish point of view Chinese activities in Greenland seemed to be a “lose-lose” project for Denmark.
It is indeed a clash of two processes of otherings: on the one hand, we have the colonial image of the childish and naïve Greenlanders, and on the other hand, we have the Eurocentric image of the self-centred and expansionistic Chinese. And these two (in)significant “others” are in fact now joining forces in a global economy which potentially will threaten the centre status of the West and transform the West into the frontier and a margin of China. That was the fear that seemed to be circulating in the media (Sejersen, Reference Sejersen2018). Chinese expansion into a Greenland, which welcomes them with open arms, makes the Arctic an intensive site for a Western self-reflection. It is a dense site laden with new and troubling associations. The way the West has appropriated and constructed the “others” as exotic dependents is challenged to a degree not seen before. That created an intense new scene for the brokers of hope.
Double orientalism
During the colonial period, the colonial powers produced a variety of images of the Inuit as inferior which resulted in processes of marginalization. Now, these images play an important role in how the potential consequences of the Chinese interests and engagement in Greenland are approached. In fact, we may say that from a Western point of view, the Arctic is an arena where we are to witness an encounter of double orientalistic proportions, when the Chinese establish economic, political and cultural partnerships with the Inuit. In Denmark, this self-determination approach by Greenland creates uncertainty and is not openly appreciated even though it may provide Greenland with a necessary economic input to boost development without the intervention of Denmark. When Danish politicians suddenly argue for a self-evident Danish presence in Greenland, an assigned place in the run for resources and a concern for Greenlanders’ competence to navigate a global world it was used strategically by Kleist and Hammond in their brokerage of hope. The Danish attitude was seen by the brokers of hope as a new (colonial) hindrance installed to block Greenland’s vision of more self-determination, more self-reliance and more equality in its relations to outside partners. Chinese interests in Arctic and the open arms of Greenlanders indeed created a troubling post-colonial situation for Denmark. When Danes fear a Chinese invasion in Greenland and verbalise anxiety about Chinese world domination they are – in a Danish–Greenlandic context – also touching upon a delicate historical relationship with strong colonial connotations and affects. In the case that post-colonial countries like Denmark and Greenland are caught in power struggles, it often constitutes an ambivalent political field in which Danes and Greenlanders have to move, organise and navigate (Rud, Reference Rud2017). In this grey zone of post-colonial political identities and political strategising, the brokers of hope may find fruitful opportunities to evoke different versions of future-making and people-making that may carry particular affective potential.
That means that partnerships in extractive industries (that is, between Greenland and China) are neither neutral nor detached from colonial history. Furthermore, these partnerships are not detached from Greenland’s vision of more self-reliance and more equality in its relations to outside partners. The affects linked to the Chinese investors and entrepreneurs by the Danes did not only say something about how they perceived the Chinese but also (and moreover) something about how they perceived Greenlanders. The latter emerged as incompetent, vulnerable and unfit to deal with large-scale financial players on the global scene. In that way, the Danish response had resonance in its historical colonial relationship to Greenland. It was this new field of post-colonial Danish melancholia and fear the brokers of hope used in their narratives to make clear demarcations of new beginnings.
Greenlandic responses by the brokers of hope
This Danish sense of loss, melancholia and potential marginalisation were not relieved at all when Kuupik Kleist teased the Danes in a front-page article in the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen (Andersen, Reference Andersen2013), where he smilingly asked if the Chinese people were worse than other capitalists. He maintained that Greenland was very open for investors and that much had been done to encourage Danish and European investors to engage in resource extraction activities – but without luck. When asked by the journalist if he was nervous about a future with huge Chinese investments in Greenland he ironically replied, “Yes, I am trembling”. He elaborated that in Greenland they have a history where foreign interests have taken the wealth of the land, without any concern or interest for Greenlanders. But – he claimed – that the Chinese have a different cultural attitude which he appreciated compared to the colonial attitude he was used to. He said:
I am astonished that businessmen from East Asia apparently make themselves acquainted with the state of affairs to a larger extent than Western investors, who presumably are indifferent to where they are and in what society. Time and again, I have been struck by how much people from Asia know about the history of Greenland and the conditions present here. They have a tradition of respect and humbleness. … People from the West often think they are world champions. My advice is to be humble and not behave with this natural master attitude. Genetically speaking, Greenlanders are also in family with people coming from the East. (translated by the author, as cited in Andersen, Reference Andersen2013)
Kleist directly spoke to the colonial attitude and the superior position that Danes have seen (and see) themselves in. For Kleist, the Chinese stood out not only as (serious) business partners but also as a radically different kind of business partner. By welcoming the Chinese as new partners, he infused hope into the narrative of economic growth unchained from colonial ties. He also created an image of Greenland as “on its own” in the global economy looking for new (serious) partners; it was a new emancipated collective “we” that he evoked. It was hope invested in foreign (non-Danish) investments, business partnerships and Greenlandic jobs. In particular, he produced a hope where the Greenlandic growth and prosperity was detached from the historical ties saturated with experiences of colonial relations.
As premier of Greenland, Aleqa Hammond also used China’s interest in Greenland as a means to address the control that Denmark still maintains over Greenland’s foreign policy (the Act of Self-Rule for Greenland does not include a transfer of responsibility of foreign policy). Despite this, she proudly announced in an interview in the Danish newspaper Information (Jensen, Reference Jensen2013) that her minister for minerals had returned home from a successful diplomatic trip to China. Furthermore, she expected that her government would receive a record high amount of foreign diplomats in the year to come because “Greenland has become an interesting country that everyone wants to be friends with … everyone wants their part of the cake” (translated by the author, as cited in Jensen, Reference Jensen2013). As part of her government’s strategy for attracting foreign investment, funds were also set aside in order to open a Greenlandic representation in China (Thorsen, Reference Thorsen2014).
Furthermore, she underlined her perception of Greenland as an independent global political agent when she pointed out that she “thinks and acts as a leader of an independent country. I produce nation-building and much more. The desire to become independent is increasing rapidly, and currently the status of the Danish language is changing. I would like to see English and Danish language at the same level” (translated by the author, as cited in Jensen, Reference Jensen2013). She continued challenging the Danish attitude of cultural superiority when she announced in the interview that the best that she has ever received from Denmark is a steak with fried onions and gravy.
She addressed the desire for independence and nation-building, but in the same take ridiculed the historical presence and impact of Danish culture. By doing so she sent a clear message to Denmark that they should “back off” and not intervene in matters related to sub-surface resources and Greenland’s engagement in creating new global partnerships.
Kleist and Hammond used the increased Chinese and global interest in Greenlandic minerals in their brokerage as a lever to make the dependence on Denmark appear decreasing. This brokerage of hope was not solely addressing the possibility to escape the economic dependence on Denmark, but – and perhaps most importantly – a circumvention of Danish cultural and political dominance.
In this brokerage of hope, the significant other (Denmark) which according to the brokers of hope infused inertia into the Greenlandic nation-building process was ridiculed and teased because Denmark was considered to stand in the way for Greenlanders to become the independent “future us” that they aspire to. The post-colonial teasing process, where Greenlanders invest in partnerships with the Chinese – who can be seen as the “oriental others” par excellence (Dirlik, Reference Dirlik1996; Sejersen, Reference Sejersen2018) from the significant other’s point of view (Denmark/the West) – established a political field which nurtured hope and the future imaginary of an emancipated nation freed from colonial othering processes. The Chinese as partners were narratively used to overcome a subordinate position (for example, as children dependent upon parenting). China emerged as a new important other willing to enter a relationship through a partnership implying equal relations. In a post-colonial context, that indeed marked a new beginning and opened a gate of potentiality to imagine new futures. The brokers of hope used China to turn hope into promise, and in that process evoked the Greenlandic nation in the very same movement.
Conclusion
In the ambitious strategy of Greenland to attract foreign companies to invest and engage in extractive industries (primarily oil and gas development as well as mining) as a means to create a more independent economy from Denmark the question of sub-surface minerals is pivotal. The article investigates how two prominent Greenlandic brokers of hope – in the heydays of mining discussions (2009–2014) – translated hard rock into soft human welfare in a complex post-colonial context. The article develops the concept of “brokers of hope” which points the analytical attention to the entrepreneurial activities of future- and people-makers in a dense field of indigenous politics. By linking this concept to Richardson and Weszkalnys’s concept of resource materialities (Reference Richardson and Weszkalnys2014) it becomes possible to see resources as relational assemblages that are in a constant state of becoming and it also becomes possible to examine how different engagements with and interventions with substances can make certain political struggles and political systems possible. This approach makes resources come to exist both through technical intervention and physical production, as well as through acts of epistemological and ontological creativity. The analysis shows how brokers of hope are transforming hope into promise through epistemological and ontological work. The premier Kuupik Kleist made the sub-surface substances emerge as valuable resources through the mobilisation of a qualified Greenlandic workforce and a tax regime on salaries. The Greenlandic workforce becomes an intimate part of the resource in such a hope narrative. The succeeding premier Aleqa Hammond applied a quite different strategy. She invoked a resource independent of the mediation of a Greenlandic workforce because she linked the value to quantity of substance and a royalty regime where Greenlanders – as the rightful national owners of the sub-surface substances – would be the rightful beneficiaries. In both cases, the brokers of hope produced a promising future of economic independence but the means to get there were different because they worked with different resource configurations. These resource configurations not only laid out a future for the (independent) nation, but spoke back to contemporary government rationalities and nation-building processes. Hence, the brokers of hope engaged in future-making which they used to colonise the present. The article shows how this constructed “future us” in a post-colonial context emerged as an interesting representation of the “true us” that would emerge by the means of particular resource materialities. It was from this imagined gaze in the future that contemporary political strategies and nation-building were informed. Whereas premier Kleist conjured a “working us”, premier Hammond evoked a “receiving us”. In both cases they used their brokerage to mediate the “present us” with a “future us”, and by doing so were people-makers and nation-builders. Finally, the emergence of Chinese investors and companies on the Greenlandic mining scene was not only used in a creative post-colonial political game of teasing and shaming, but to make Greenland appear as an independent global actor (free of Denmark) looking for serious partnerships. Hence, the Chinese were given a pivotal role in the resource configurations developed by the two brokers of hope. Partnerships with the Chinese were made to constitute a true new beginning for Greenland and a boost to its ambition to become disentangled from its former colonial relationship with Denmark.
The success of both brokers to mobilise hope under particular good circumstances where political aims and prospects of economic development intertwine can be ascribed to the way they creatively played out new resource configurations in a post-colonial field of complex othering processes. I term these othering processes double orientalism because it activates different kinds of orientalist otherings. However, the workings of double orientalism was here used by the brokers to shame and tease the former colonial state of Denmark and to infuse dignity and independence into the promises of better futures of Greenland. The brokers’ hope narratives of better futures were concretised and in that process turned into promises. Concretisation was pursued by the articulation of new beginnings with new concrete partners and by articulating particular resource configurations that were translating sub-surface substances into concrete societal value through existing political instruments like tax and royalty regimes. Thus, the brokers not only worked creatively with resource configurations and hope in abstract ways, but linked them to existing and recognisable fields of evolving social and political relations (both within Greenland and between Denmark and Greenland). The two brokers of hope made futures for Greenlanders (not only mining companies) and in that process their future-making can be seen as processes of people-making, at the same time. Both brokers tapped into and re-triggered the Greenlanders’ long-lasting post-colonial dream of more independence from Denmark and a more dignified position in the world where they can choose their own partners more freely. The constructed hope was not only a hope for better futures, but better and more dignified futures for “us”. Thus, creative articulations of a “future us” and how it is linked to resource configurations can be seen as integral in the work of brokers of hope.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the members of the Arctic Politics Research Seminars and the REXSAC research group for their critical readings and constructive feedback. In the process of writing this article, Kirsten Thisted, Ulrik Pram Gad, Valeria Guerrieri, Lars Højer, Rasmus Christian Elling and Lill Rastad Bjørst have continuously provided me with inspiration and guidance.
