Industrial Development in Nuuk and Sermersooq: Empowerment Through Action Research

This chapter recounts an action research project aimed at co-constructing action points for industrial development in Nuuk and Sermersooq. The project intended to create an intersubjective understanding of how to pursue avenues of industrial policy and private‒public endeavours aimed at supporting processes of industrial development and growth. The project evolved in three steps. First, 14 conversations were conducted in which the researchers engaged with a subset of key actors who represented a variety of views on drivers, opportunities, and barriers for industrial development. Second, based on these conversations, scenarios were derived for future development that reflected the clash between tradition-bound and modern development, as well as the dichotomy of disjunctive and conjunctive avenues of change. Third, a wider subset of key actors explored the scenarios at a workshop in Nuuk and developed a series of propositions from which 19 action points were derived. Describing the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the project and the practical content of the project stages, the chapter reflects on the appropriateness of the methods employed and the importance of local competencies for action. Finally, the chapter provides recommendations on doing action research targeting industrial development and policy in the setting of the Greenlandic capital.