Introduction

Posisjon  1

Scientific basis for the project

How do localized social relations change through processes affected by components with a global range? In what ways have cultural, political and economical transformations involving places and regions developed until today?s situation? How do institutional patterns and informal networks contribute to connect cultural, political and industrial ways of life in the northern areas, in an era of increasing mobility and tendencies of spatial detachment?

The focus of this project is on localized transformations, i.e. the transformation of places and regions characterized as distinctly northern, with inhabitants who were formerly mainly involved in activities based on natural resources, but now moving into hybrid and tensional forms of industrial modernization. Together with characteristics of post- industrial, informational- and service societies, this is putting its mark on life forms within this area.

Northern localization is nevertheless hallmarked by geographical distance, cost elements related to this distance, harsh climatic conditions, and by the fact that natural resource exploitation also in the future most likely will constitute the industrial basis ? and the competitive advantage within a globalized economy ? for these regions. Complexity will be in focus, and our approach will therefore differ from a linear understanding of societal transformations, focusing on ordered phases of societal development.

Transformations all the way have to be reinterpreted and do not appear objectively given. Within the big picture of transformations lies also a linear understanding of a cognitive force, and an influence of local actors self-perception, within groups and within minor or major parts of generations. One classic example of this will be the not unusual conception of business success as a consequence of the size of the firm, a conception that has been challenged and in cases refuted, but which still seem to govern the way people think about economic development.

Research so far has to a little degree focused on the interplay between economy, nature, culture and politics within processes of localized transformation. One can rightly say that performing such a comprehensive-type analysis will not be possible until the partial understandings and knowledge bases have been synthesized. Nevertheless, sector- and thematic delimited social research has reached a level that, in considerably ways today more than 30-40 years ago, has prepared the ground for synthesizing, comprehensive analysis. Parallel to this, social life has been exposed to thorough alterations in such ways that our knowledge no longer, in a linear sense, can be cumulative. One example is the dissemination of digitalized communication that, at this moment in history , represents a qualitative shift and a possibility of contemporary experience that, only few years ago, was unimaginable.

The international academic discussion on the relations between the local and the global has, during the last few years, challenged the understanding of global-local relations in a perspective of systems- in-conflict. Unveiled by empirical research, a complicated interwoven pattern of local social relations and elements of global and mobile character has emerged, both within the economical and the political/administrative field and, not to mention, the development of personal and collective identities (Bærenholdt and Aarsæther 2002).

Robertson's (1992) concept of "glocalization" has given this way of thinking a condensed linguistic expression of what we conceive as a reciprocal relationship between , on the one side, local practices, and on the other side, practices that are conceived of as de-localized, mobile and of a global scope.