Governing resources, governing mentalities. Petroleum and the Norwegian integrated ecosystem-based management plan for the Barents and Lofoten seas in 2011

Abstract

This paper explores how an analytical focus on the governing of resources and mentalities based on the Foucauldian notion of governmentality widens the understanding of political processes relating to the creation of a knowledge-based approach to potentially opening for petroleum extraction in Lofoten, Norway. As pressure intensifies for extractive resource exploitation in the Norwegian Arctic, policy processes are characterized by the construction of governance regimes depending on techno-scientific knowledge upon which political decisions are to be made. Through analyzing the revision of the Integrated Management Plan for the Barents and Lofoten Seas (IMP-BL) in 2011, this paper addresses (i) that the continued construction of a nature/culture divide is an important basis for governance of nature and natural resources, where (ii) the rationale of scientific truth-telling practices are projected onto political processes, which in turn leads to a process of (iii) governing mentalities besides governing actions, and finally (iv) how the creation of a Scientific Forum Report as a basis for the management plan in effect is what Foucault identified as a technology of security, aiming ultimately at securing population,- a technique that reflects a specific power/knowledge nexus that necessitates processes of inclusion and exclusion of knowledge, values and stakeholder views.