Conflicting and entangled human– nature relationships: A discursive- material analysis of the documentary film Kiruna A Brand New World

1. Kiruna - A Brand New World (2019) is a documentary film directed by Greta Stocklassa, and produced by the Czech company Analog Vision. It analyses the move of (part of) Kiruna, a north- Swedish mining city, which is threatened by destruction because of the operations of the state- owned ore mining company, Luossavaara- Kiirunavaara (LKAB). The film focusses on the lives of a number of inhabitants, including Timo, a local activist opposing the move, the teenage Sami Maja and Abdalrahman, a teenage refugee from Yemen. 2. Our discursive- material analysis (see Carpentier, 2017) focusses on how the film represents and intervenes in a discursive- material struggle over the identity of three actors— the soil, the city and the mine— and their interconnections.


| INTRODUC TI ON
The discursive construction of nature, or the ways that we give meaning to nature, is a highly relevant social and political process, and the research interest for this 'constructed nature of nature' (Dingler, 2005;Dryzek, 2013;Hajer, 1995) has slowly gained more prominence in environmental studies, and in environmental communication. This increased attention motivated Milstein (2009, 346) to include environmental discourse studies-in her encyclopaedia entry on 'Environmental Communication Theories'-and write that 'many environmental communication scholars have been interested in discourse theory informed by poststructuralism, as well as contemporary disciplines such as science studies and cultural studies'. These discursive approaches have focussed our attention on how nature discourses can change over time, but also how different discourses engage in struggles over the meanings allocated to the same subjects, objects and processes. At the same time, these approaches have taken considerable care to emphasize that this does not imply that 'anything goes', but that-in contrast-discourses also fixate meanings, sometimes in insurmountable ways.
At the same time, in the same recent decades, we also find a stronger acknowledgement of material agency, supported by an ontology of entanglement (Barad, 2007;Haraway, 2003Haraway, , 2016. These approaches have often been grouped together under the label of new materialism. One of their communalities is that they emphasize-as also this article does-that the material should not be allocated a secondary role. The material is not a passive recipient of meaning, situated outside these discursive struggles, but the material can actively engage with these struggles, which transforms them into entangled, discursive-material struggles. The documentary film Kiruna -A Brand New World that we will analyse in this article deals with a north-Swedish mining city, which is threatened by land subsidence-or the 'sinking' of the soil-forcing its centre to be moved 3 km east. Theoretically supported by an articulation of discourse theory with new materialism, our analysis shows how this film communicates about a discursive-material struggle between the film's three main actors-the soil, 1 the city and the mine. In this film, we can find a cluster of dominant discourses (anthropocentrism, dualism and prometheanism, as we will show later on) invoked by the mine and by a considerable part of the city, legitimating the mine's powerful position. At the same time, the film also communicates the existence of a cluster of ecocentrist, integrationist and survivalist discourses that resist these dominant ways of thinking about the mine (and the city and the soil), which shows the gaps in these dominant discourses. Importantly, the documentary film acknowledges the material agency of the soil, which becomes (seen as) integrated into this counterhegemonic pushback.

As a mostly observational documentary film, Kiruna -A Brand
New World allows unpacking the logics of discursive-material struggles, by choosing to focus on (the observation of) these struggles and thus rendering them visible, also giving voice to the differentand arguably more sustainable-ways of thinking, that provide alternatives to still dominant discourses. This is where this documentary film becomes an intervention, which is part of the (sub)genre of the environmental (or green) documentary. 2 This (sub)genre has significantly gained in popularity in the 21st century (Cooper, 2018;Duvall, 2017;Hughes, 2014), also building on critiques of earlier media representations of the environment (Blewitt, 2010). Even if we always need to be careful not to overestimate the impact of one film, the film's importance is strengthened through its integration into this broader wave of environmental documentary films that engage-in a wide variety of ways-with sustainability and that form a collective and sustained intervention into the discursive-material struggles over the environment.

| THE D ISCUR S IVE-MATERIAL KNOT
In order to theorize the workings of these discursive-material struggles, we will start with a more general discussion on discourse theory, keeping in mind that the field of discourse studies-rather confusingly-incorporates a wide variety of approaches, with many different definitions of discourse, even though they all still share a focus on how meaning structures social reality and how these meanings themselves are structured in particular ways. In this text, we are interested in the more macro(con)textual approaches (Carpentier & De Cleen, 2007;Carpentier, 2017, 15 and ff), which constitute one tradition within the field of discourse studies, often referred to as discourse theory. One reason for selecting discourse theory is that it already contains a series of bridges to ensure that the material is sufficiently validated. These bridges will be highlighted, and complemented with new materialist discussions, allowing for the theorization of a non-hierarchical relationship between the material and the discursive.
Macro(con)textual approaches use a definition of discourse that is not so much looking at discourse-as-language, but as representational or ideological structures. Discourse is defined here as what Gee calls Big D Discourse, which is '[…] always more than just language,' and refers to '[…] saying (writing)-doing-being-valuingbelieving combinations' (Gee, 1990, 142-emphasis removed).
Similarly, Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 105) define (this version of) the concept of discourse as a structured entity that is the result of articulation, which is, in turn, viewed as '[…] any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice.' In these macro(con)textual approaches, discourses are frameworks of intelligibility, necessary ways of knowing the world, that are condensed in, and communicated through, what Hall (1997) called signifying practices. At the same time, these knowledges about social reality (or discourses) are not the same as language, but what is behind language.
Discourse theory-as most approaches in discourse studies-is grounded in a non-essentialist perspective, which implies in practice that discourses are characterized by a combination of rigidity and contingency. Discourses are not completely stable and rigid frameworks, but they are structures of meaning that (can) become re-articulated through political intervention, and that can be made stable and even hegemonic through discursive struggles. But this stability is not total and permanent, and contingency is generated at two (interconnected) levels. At the intra-discursive level, there is a multitude of discursive elements that can be used to construct a discourse, but that are also always readily available for it to be changed (through the process of re-articulation). Moreover, discourses are not exclusive in their relation to the objects they (aim to) provide meaning to; there is a discursive multitude, and at this inter-discursive level, the struggle between discourses that (aim to) provide meaning to the same object (or subject) differently generates contingency as well.
Still, even at the most basic level-for example, the meaning of a stone-the discursive is both indispensable and not-allencompassing, and both stable and contingent, as Laclau and Mouffe (1990, 108) illustrate with the example of a stone, which '[…] exists independently of any system of social relation […] it is, for instance, either a projectile or an object of aesthetic contemplation only within a specific discursive configuration.' At a less basic level, a similar argument can, for instance, be made for the construction of nature, humanity, animality, … which are objects of fierce discursive struggles and whose meanings are thus far from sedimented, even if hegemonic discourses (e.g. anthropocentrism-see below) do exist.
This brings us to the material. Even when Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory includes the strong acknowledgement that the material exists outside the discursive, discourse theory's focus tends to be on the discursive, and how the material receives its meaning(s).
Arguably, this emphasis places the material in a more passive position and does not do sufficient justice to the idea that also the material can exercise agency, articulating the material as 'agential matter' (Barad, 2007, 246) or as 'generative matter', a concept that Dolphijn and van der Tuin (2012, 93) attributed to DeLanda (1996). Moreover, discourse theory's emphasis on the discursive-and how it generates meaning(s) for the material-also conceals the dynamics of the interaction between the discursive and the material, which can be captured with the concept of (discursive-material) entanglement, or which one of us has earlier labelled the discursive-material knot (Carpentier, 2017).
One field, where this problem has been addressed, is in new materialist theory, where we can find references to what these authors call a 'material-semiotic actor' (Haraway, 1988, 595) or a 'material-discursive' (Barad, 2007) approach. 3 When more radi-cally combining the ontological positions of discourse theory and new materialism, we can argue for a non-hierarchical perspective that does justice to both the agentic and structuring capacities of the discursive and the material. This articulation of discourse theory and new materialism allows acknowledging the capacity of the discursive to structure the social reality by generating frameworks of intelligibility, that are sometimes extremely rigid, and sometimes extremely fluid structures of meaning, that are never permanent nor all-encompassing.
Simultaneously, this articulation of discourse theory and new materialism also allows us to emphasize the capacity of the material to exercise its agencies, which, in turn, implies that the material can also impact on the discursive. For instance, death, as a deeply material process, has invited for the development of a wide range of discourses, including religious afterlife discourses, to be generated. A similar argument can be used when talking about what we call nature, because-to use Stengers's words (2015, 42)-'Gaia intrudes'. Also Haraway (2016, 43) makes this point: 'Gaia's intrusion into our affairs is a radically materialist event', which-we would like to add-is also a strong, almost irresistible, invitation to discursify it. Moreover, this intrusion, with its material nature, impacts on our discursifications: It 'intrudes on our categories of thought' and it 'intrudes on thinking itself'. (Haraway, 2016, 43).
This ontology of entanglement, with its non-hierarchical relationship of the discursive and material, needs one further qualification, as the omnipresence of this entanglement does not automatically imply that every set of discourses signifying practices and materials are always and necessarily perfectly balanced in every situation or event. In order to distinguish between the ontological and ontic level, the concept of the assemblage can be used to refer to concrete articulations of these discourses, signifying practices and materials. In his discussion of the assemblage, DeLanda (2016, 11) refers to the assemblage as an 'irreducible social whole produced by relations of exteriority, a whole that does not totalise its parts'. In an earlier book, DeLanda (2006, 10) explained that these relations of exteriority imply 'that a component part of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage in which its interactions are different'. This emphasis on both irreducibility and contingency (through rearticulation) renders the notion of the assemblage well-suited for capturing the ontic level of entanglement, maintaining an emphasis on contingency, and acknowledging the always unique combination of material and discursive components. To use DeLanda's (2006, 12) words, the components of assemblages may play variable roles, from a purely material role at one extreme of the axis, to a purely expressive role at the other extreme.
These roles are variable and may occur in mixtures, that is, a given component may play a mixture of material and expressive roles by exercising different sets of capacities.
3 New materialist theory still has a slight tendency of privileging the material over the discursive (or the representational, or the semiotic, as this realm is often labelled in new materialist theory), but this can easily be avoided.

| The discursive construction of nature and beyond
The logics of the discursive-material knot can be applied to a wide variety of social realities, but the realm of the environment seems to be quite appropriate as a field of study. This emphasis on the constructed nature of nature has, of course, been pointed out by many others. At the same time, there is a wide variety of (discursive or social) constructionist approaches deployed in environmental studies, which is nicely illustrated by Yearley's (2002, 274) opening sentence, '[n]umerous authors in Britain, continental Europe, and North America have deployed constructionist arguments in their analyses of environmental problems', immediately followed by the qualification that 'their precise understanding of constructionism differs'.
One instance of an approach related to one that we are using here is Luke's (1999, 108) work, who is using a Foucauldian perspective, when writing that the environment 'must not be understood either as the naturally given sphere of all ecological processes that human power keeps under control or as a mysterious domain of obscure terrestrial events which human knowledge works to explain'.
Instead, he continues, the environment 'emerges as a very historical artifact of expert management that is largely constructed by techno-scientific interventions'. Nature, environment, sustainability, … are all signifiers-and in discourse-theoretical terms: nodal pointsarticulated in a series of discourses that give meaning to these material realities in a variety of ways, that are contingent over space and time, constructed through political negotiations (Dingler, 2005, 214).
In his introduction of The Politics of the Earth, Dryzek (2013, 5) provides an accessible summary, by pointing to the conceptual history of these signifiers, when he raises these three questions (among others): What is the environment? The environment did not exist as a concept anywhere until the 1960s.
[…] What is climate? Once climate was thought of as average weather. More recently it has been conceptualized as an integrated biogeophysical system highly vulnerable to human interference. […] What is the Earth? We have long known it is a planet, but the idea that it might be a finite planet with limited capacities to support human life has only received attention since the late 1960s.
However important (this analytical focus on) the discursive construction of nature is, we should not fall into the trap of postulating a hierarchy between the discursive and the material. We should thus keep in mind the 'ontologically real and active, lively presence' (Goodman, 2001, 181) of nature, as what Bennett (2010) calls vibrant matter. Or, in Iwachiw's (1997, 30-emphasis removed) words: 'reality is a collective creation of human and nonhuman actors (and "actants") engaged in a variety of activities and practices which produce, reproduce and negotiate the multiple "worlds" we inhabit'. Of course, 'we always come to understand "natural" entities posited as ontologically real and outside us through and in terms of categories, concepts and language' (Castree, 1995, 15), but we should also take the materiality of nature seriously, together with its agencies, diversities and contingencies (ibid., 13). Nature itself is a 'sociomaterial entanglement' (Arias-Maldonado, 2015); it is 'an active becoming, a creative not-quite-human force capable of producing the new'. (Bennet, 2010, 118-emphasis removed) 3.2 | Discursive and material conflicts on/ with nature many different articulations, being a much less rigid and coherent cluster. In Gramscian terms, these dislocatory strategies could be grounded in a (discursive) war of manoeuvre or a war of position.
A first component of this counterhegemonic cluster is ecocentrism (or biocentrism), which constitutes humans as 'no more or no less important than other portions of [the web of all life]' (Corbett, 2006, 27), which implies a horizontalization of the human, other biotic and abiotic realms of life, or, in Corbett's (2006, 27) words, a replacement of hierarchy by heterarchy. A second component is what we can call integrationism or entanglementism, which conceptualizes the interconnectivity of nature and culture, very much in line with the logics of the discursive-material knot. In The Companion Species Manifesto, Haraway (2003) introduced the notion of 'natureculture', to capture this 'inseparability in ecological relationships that are both biophysically and socially formed' (Malone & Ovenden, 2017, 1), in the following terms: There cannot be just one companion species; there have to be at least two to make one. It is in the syntax; it is in the flesh. Dogs are about the inescapable, contradictory story of relationships-coconstitutive relationships in which none of the partners pre-exist the relating, and the relating is never done once and for all. Historical specificity and contingent mutability rule all the way down, into nature and culture, into naturecultures. There is no foundation; there are only elephants supporting elephants all the way down. (Haraway, 2003: 12) Finally (as the overview in Table 1 shows), this counterhegemonic cluster also has a discourse on problem control, emphasizing that human intervention has its limits. Dryzek (2013) labels this discourse of limits and survival, survivalism. As Fisher (2017, 39) writes, survivalists believe 'that current rates of economic growth, abuse of the collective commons, depletion of unrenewable resources, ecological destruction, and population increases are out of control and leading to an unprecedented-even apocalyptic in the view of some-ecological crisis'.
But again, we should be careful not to exclusively focus on the discursive, and avoid relegating the material to a secondary position.
The material actively intervenes in these discursive struggles, transforming them into discursive-material struggles. As Haraway (2003, 17) writes, 'animals "hail" us to account for the regimes in which they and we must live. We "hail" them into our constructs of nature and culture, with major consequences of life and death, health and illness, longevity and extinction. We also live with each other in the flesh in ways not exhausted by our ideologies. Stories are much bigger than ideologies. In that is our hope'. The logics of the discursive-material knot also implies that the material-we-call-nature can dislocate existing discourses, by generating events that undermine particular discursive structures. In this sense, the hegemonic cluster of anthropocentrism/dualism/prometheanism seems to be an obvious target of these dislocations through nature's ability to speak and act back, disrupting the idea of human centrality and omnipotence. But this hegemonic cluster has proven to be resilient, and strategies of discursive repair have proven to be often successful. Moreover, even if the material seems to invite-rather incessantly-to side with the counterhegemonic cluster, nature's disruptive and dislocatory force can also affect this counterhegemonic cluster, as for instance, conservationist and preservationist attempts are frustrated by nature's reluctance to be conserved or preserved.

| K IRUNA -A B R AND NE W WORLD
These discursive-material struggles over nature are waged at a wide variety of locations, in many different societal fields. The field that we want to focus on in this article is the media field, with its many signifying machines that allow discourses to circulate widely, even if each media assemblage has its own specificities (and limits).
One thing that renders media, and in particular audiovisual media, specific is that they can visualize the material, giving the material a presence as material, while simultaneously transforming it into a signifying practice (e.g. through editorial decisions on what to show, and how). Of course, as for instance Parikka (2015)  (music/sound). The film was produced by Anolog Vision, in coproduction with FAMU, PFX and the Filmtalent Zlín Foundation. This 87-min-long film is a particular signifying practice that intervenes into the discursive-material struggles over nature-which renders it highly relevant to our discussion-through its thematic choice (the moving of a substantial part of a Swedish city), and its explicit representation of the struggles that accompany this large-scale project.

TA B L E 1 Hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses
The documentary film shows the struggles between the inhabitants of the city, as they identify with different future projects, focussing on three inhabitants, Maja Jannock Björnström, a high-school student with Sami roots, Abdalrahman Josef, a Yemeni refugee waiting for his Swedish residence permit, and Timo Vilgats, a high-school teacher and activist. But the film also represents the conflict between the city and the mining company, and the conflict between the soil and its human occupants.
The mine also makes the city of Kiruna an example of a singleindustry community (even if Kiruna is also a centre for space research), rendering the city highly dependent on the mine; as a local saying goes: 'Kiruna catches a cold if LKAB sneezes' (cited in Nilsson, 2017, 433). The mine is not uncontested, as is the case with many mining activities in the Arctic. Zachrisson and Beland Lindahl's (2019, 4) analysis of what they call a Swedish 'national-level miningsceptical movement' shows the establishment of a number of NGOs in the 2000s and 2010s, whose aim is to 'reduce negative environmental impact of mining and to increase mineral recycling'. These NGOs aligned with Sami community representatives, who protest the negative impact on the environment and on reindeer herding (see Bäck, 1993;Österlin & Raitio, 2020). 9 A more recent problem is caused by the iron ore body stretching out underneath the city; the continuation of mining operations will lead to land subsidence, eventually destroying (a large part of) the city. In 2004, the local city council thus announced that (most of) the city will be moved; the actual move started in 2014, and is estimated to affect 6,000 people.
In September 2020, LKAB-which is obliged to finance the moveannounced that '[b]y 2035, the current city centre will have been phased out and the new, developed centre will be in place, three kilometres to the east'. 10

| A D ISCUR S IVE-MATERIAL TRIANG LE OF CONFLI C T IN K IRUNA -A B R AND NE W WO RLD
Our discursive-material analysis sees the documentary film itself as a discursive-material assemblage, with its own aesthetics, audiovisual language and materiality. As a discursive-material analysis (see Carpentier, 2017), our analysis deployed discourse-theoretical and new materialist theoretical concepts (e.g. hegemony) as sensitizing concepts, as is common in qualitative research (following Blumer, 1969 10 https://samha llsom vandl ing.lkab.com/en/kirun a/we-are-movin g-a-town/ the more practical level, qualitative coding methods were used, as is common in textual analysis (Saldaña, 2013), enriched with visual and multimodal analysis methods (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001;Rose, 2016).
Through several coding cycles, supported by our sensitizing concepts, we identified three main actors, 11 which are simultaneously three assemblages, namely the mine, the city and the soil, and analysed their identities. Their identity is constructed in a particular way, which is already connected to the struggle between hegemonic and counterhegemonic positions (also by acknowledging the agency of the soil). Especially in the second part of the analysis, this discursivematerial struggle becomes clear, as this triangle of interconnections not only and necessarily consists of harmonious relations, but is also (seen to be) represented through a series of (sometimes intense) conflicts.

| The identities of the mine, city and soil
The film represents the soil in two main-and almost contradictoryways. First, the film shows its vastness and suggests that the soil is untouched, as the first part of the opening shot demonstrates (see Figure 1). When the film starts, we see the endless forest, stretching out over the hills, covered in snow. This spatial vastness also suggests a temporal dimension, where this spatial arrangement is suggested to have been like this for centuries.
The same opening shot already indicates a second representation of the soil, when slowly but surely, a freight train makes its way, from one side of the screen to the other, demonstrating the human capacity to master this vast nature. Several other shots show a scarred landscape, as for instance in Figure 2. Simultaneous with these images of the opened-up soil, we can hear the sound of an explosion, originating from the mine exploitation.
The second actor of the documentary film, the mine, is also signified in two main ways. First, we see the mine as a symbol of modernist technological achievement and a source of (economic) progress (supporting the city and the entire country), where the mine is equated with the LKAB company through the logic of ownership. One key series of scenes focusses on a tourist visit to the mine.
During this visit, we get to hear an upbeat voice, during the screening of a promotional video, with celebratory statements, such as: 'From the iron ore we mine in one day, one could build more than six 11 Or actants, in the language of Actor Network Theory (see Latour, 2005  14 https://www.kirun alapl and.se/en/see-do/kirun a-churc h/ 15 A siida is a pastoralistic community.

F I G U R E 4 A conversation with
Maja's Sami grandparents (screenshot). Permission for publication of the screenshot is granted by Analog Vision political hatred, because we, especially reindeer herders, use land the Swedish state would like to exploit and make some easy money on.
Finally, Kiruna is also represented as a modern city, firmly controlled by humans, despite the sometimes-dire living conditions. The city is only slightly more than a century old, built to accommodate the first miners, and its reconstruction is now very much the topic of the documentary. This human agency is visualized through the material moving of houses, that are lifted on trucks and driven to their new locations, but it is symbolized through the reoccurring shots of a maquette of the city in the old town hall. We see the changes mapped out on this maquette, with little houses being removed, and eventually, at the end, we see the entire maquette being disassembled, as also the old town hall has to be demolished. When we see the inauguration ceremony of the new town hall, we also find this framing, through the metaphor of the phoenix, which features in the lyrics of a song which was sung during the ceremony: 'From the dust of the old, the town rises again, the fire will burn again, like a phoenix. And nothing lasts forever but everything starts again!
We are those who know that, we know'! These signifying practices turn out to be-at least partially-convincing for (or already shared with) the inhabitants, even when the documentary film will also show us some of the contestations of these progress-driven framings. Still, the framing-as-progress remains (shown as) dominant. For instance, during a philosophy café meeting, we can witness the following conversation: Woman: I was thinking: It is necessary and you can't be a reactionary. You mustn't be so nostalgic, keeping everything as it's always been. Imagine! How amazing it will be in 50 years! And everyone will be saying: 'What a fantastic city hall we have! Do you remember the old one, with the weird iron structure on top? That looked like crap.'

| Conflicting interconnections
The documentary film places significant emphasis on the interconnections between the three actors, which also implies that the film structurally aligns itself with a natureculture discourse, which, arguably, generates the backbone of its intervention. But this film also demonstrates that the natureculture assemblage (of the soil, city and mine) is not necessarily harmonious, but that it is-in contrastcharacterized by a series of tensions and conflicts.
The first interconnection (as represented in the film) is between the mine and the city. The city has been constructed to serve the needs of the mining industry and it is represented as strongly dependant on the mine. Visually, this is represented in the film through a series of shots that show the mine (on the mountain) towering over the city (see, e.g. Figure 5). On two occasions, we can also hear the explosions (as a result of the mining), which serve as permanent reminders of the presence (and dominance) of the mine.
But this relationship of dependency-where the mine has contributed to the city's and the country's prosperity-is now the cause of the city's (partial) destruction and relocation. Apart from the city's economic and symbolic dependency on the mine, their relationship is also deeply material, as the mine will cause the city to sink into the soil, if it is not moved. As mentioned before, there is a strong presence of the TINA topos, rendering the idea of closing the mine unthinkable, combined with a framing of the move as progress, which the film also clearly shows. Both the official communication, and also the everyday conversations in the city, align themselves with these signifying practices, which are grounded in prometheanismthe idea that humans are perfectly capable of solving these kinds of problems. A considerable part of the documentary film shows exactly this. We see houses placed on trucks, moving through the landscape, as they are driven to their new location ( Figure 6), a process F I G U R E 5 Mine domination (screenshot). Permission for publication of the screen shot is granted by Analog Vision which is articulated as a formidable and impressive achievement.
We also see the grandeur of the new Kiruna, with the new town hall being constructed and eventually inaugurated (and the old bell tower being moved there).
But this idea of progress and improvement is not completely accepted. Timo, the teacher, plays a significant role in the articulation of this counterhegemonic discourse. He is quoted saying: 'Now we're doing this, as they call it, "city transformation". "Building a new city", according to the propaganda. But by now, we have mostly seen demolishing, so that's also a matter of definition, what is a "move" and what is a demolition.' Moreover, we also see this destruction visualized in the documentary, with a multitude of shots of bulldozers and cranes demolishing buildings (e.g. Figure 7).
One key scene is when Timo is playing with his two grandchildren. After they have built a house in Lego bricks, the following conversation takes place, after which the ( Figure 8).
The second interconnection is between the soil and the mine.
The mine, even when-for a large extent-being located underground, leaves its traces on the surface, and is represented taking over the soil (and the city), gradually expanding and pushing away living populations (human, animal, vegetal). The mining-related activity has been causing significant deformations and alterations to the soil and the landscape, contributing to the degradation of the flora and fauna of the area. The soil is not only represented as scarred, but the agency for this scarring is attributed to the mine and its railroads, with the soil represented as being scarred by human mining activity (see Figure 2).
Interestingly and importantly, the soil is also attributed agency in this conflict, as it resists the mining activities: it trembles, it moves,

F I G U R E 7
Demolishing one of the buildings (screenshot). Permission for publication of the screen shot is granted by Analog Vision

F I G U R E 8
Graffiti and loss (screen shot). Permission for publication of the screen shot is granted by Analog Vision F I G U R E 6 Moving a house (screenshot). Permission for publication of the screenshot is granted by Analog Vision it cracks and slides, creating chasms and an unsafe environment for people and animals to live in. It dislocates the hegemonic discourses cluster, and the city assemblage. Here, again, we find a natureculture discourse in the documentary, demonstrating the interconnectedness of nature and culture, with an active role allocated to nature.
Obviously, the land subsidence is the prime example of this, as it is forcing a (substantial part of a) city to move (and as it is the rationale behind the entire documentary). But the documentary also shows more small-scale changes to the infrastructures, as for instance, cracks in the floor (see Figure 9). Of course, the soil's resistance is countered, by moving the city, so that the mining of the soil can continue.
Finally, also the third interconnection, between the soil and the city is represented in the documentary. The city often appears in the documentary as absorbed by nature, engulfed in darkness, fog or snow (see Figure 10). The frequent distant shots of the city as only a (small) part of the vast land construct the city as hosted by nature, as being the land's guest. This image is strengthened by the portrayal of the seasonal climatic conditions determining a lot of people's indoor and outdoor activities. And, as already mentioned earlier, the city is built on a part of land which, by responding to the mining activity, is now trembling and cracking, challenging the city's vitality. This is a warning that the land that has hosted the city for the past 120 years cannot nurture the city and keep it safe any longer. Again, these elements represent the entanglement of culture and nature (and a natureculture discourse).
Here, we also need to unpack the questions about whose city this is, and who its inhabitants are, as their rights to the soil and its ownership are not uncontested. The soil is the objective of a con-

| CON CLUS ION
The documentary film Kiruna -A Brand New World allows unpacking the sometimes-subtle presences of discourses within particular signifying practices (e.g. a film), and demonstrates the difference between these discourses and signifying practices. For instance, anthropocentrism, dualism and prometheanism are not addressed F I G U R E 9 The soil's movement-cracks in the floor of the old town hall (screenshot). Permission for publication of the screen shot is granted by Analog Vision F I G U R E 1 0 City in fog (screenshot). Permission for publication of the screen shot is granted by Analog Vision explicitly, in the sense that these signifiers do not feature explicitly in the film. Still, they remain very present. This is where the strength of a discourse-theoretical (and discourse-material) approach lies, as it allows analysts to render these frameworks of intelligibility visible and explicit.

What makes Kiruna -A Brand New World important-as an in-
tervention-is that the documentary film also makes the discursive struggle over (the construction and control of) nature visible. We arguing that some actors are more at the centre than others. The film also shows the cost of the hegemonic discourse cluster, by zooming in on the damage done to the soil, on the destruction of the city and the pain that it causes to-at least some of-the inhabitants.
Second, we can find different counterhegemonic discourses articulated in a variety of ways, very much centred around the natureculture discourse, as it is voiced by some inhabitants (especially Timo). But it is in particular the agency that is attributed to the soil seen to be engaging in active resistance against its exploitationforcing a city to move-that provides support for the natureculture discourse. Especially through this acknowledgement of the material agency of the soil, the documentary film intervenes in the discursive-material struggle over nature and provides support for thinking about nature and culture as entangled.

ACK N OWLED G EM ENTS
This research has been supported by Mistra, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, through the research program Mistra Environmental Communication. The authors thank Greta Stocklassa for making the film available to us.

CO N FLI C T O F I NTE R E S T
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

AUTH O R S ' CO NTR I B UTI O N S
N.C. has developed the concept of the paper, and developed the theoretical and analytical framework; N.C., V.D. and A.R.P. analysed the film first separately, and then jointly decided on the analysis; The context part was written by A.R.P., and V.D. and A.R.P. wrote the first drafts of the empirical parts, which were then rewritten by N.C.; N.C. also wrote the conclusion. All the authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
The manuscript does not include any data.