Landsbygder i brand

Kroniska kriser och krishantering i periferin

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore how an acute crisis, in this case the wildfires of 2018, is understood in the light of a broader social and political context, namely the chronic crisis that the peripherialisation of rural areas constitutes. In this article, such peripherialisation is studied primarily through how it manifests itself in people’s stories about and experiences from the wildfires of 2018. The article is based on interviews with rescue personnel, volunteers and evacuees from some of the villages threatened by the wildfires. These interviews contain aspects of both resistance and affirmation: a resistance to, and a questioning of, rural communities’ unequal conditions for crisis management and at the same time an affirmation of the place where they live and the political conditions that prevail there.