Despite Extractivism – Community

Communities of place are often at the centre of stories about impacts and resistance to extractivism. When we ask what persists ‘despite extractivm’, the question also invites us to think about what we mean by ‘community’ in our stories. In this webinar, we invited contributors to share the stories that feature in their work, and to reflect on how they engage the concept of ‘community’

The second event, on February 3rd 2022, was on the theme of ‘Community’. 

In this webinar, we focused on two ‘communities’. Mbak Dewi Sutejo and Pak Moh shared their stories of community counter-mapping against extractive developments. Husen from JKPP and Pak Sulaiman from Pari Community, part of Pulau Seribu (Thousand Islands) resisting displacement and extractive tourism in Indonesia, and V’cenza Cirefice and Fidelma O’Kane from Save Our Sperrins resisting gold  mining in the Sperrin Mountains, North of Ireland.

For the exhibition, each contribution featured the plural creative practice of counter-mapping in their work. Counter-mapping is a diverse strategy of resistance and reclaiming that creates alternative representations of space to contest extractivism and eviction/displacement. For ‘community’, counter-mapping generates tools for community mobilization and prefigures or experiments with alternative visions of representing/relating to/inhabiting spaces. Counter-mapping can help make visible or reimagine regenerative relationships between people, with the more-than-human, with the natural world – despite extractivism

Our starting point for the webinar involved also thinking about what we mean by ‘community’ in our stories, and we invited guests to participate in the webinar with these questions in mind:

  • How is ‘community’ understood and/or represented in your work? How do communities persist and resist? 
  • What kinds of relations and between what (people, the natural world, landscapes) are at play? 
  • What is relatable about ‘community’ in the stories brought together here, and what role does this have in fostering solidarity and connection? 
  • In your experience, how can we account for but work past differences within and between communities in the journey towards solidarity and justice? 
  • How do we build community and connection with audiences beyond communities of place? 

Due to technical difficulties, the introduction to the event was not recorded. We hope you find the stories shared by the communities in Pari Island and The Sperrins interesting and inspiring.

Check out the original post at the Extracting Us Collective website.