II: Place Enactment

Posisjon  3

II: Place Enactment

Participants:
Cecilia Waldenström, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala
Gestur Hovgaard, Center for Local and Regional Development, Klaksvik
Seppo Aho, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi
Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, Roskilde University
Gry Paulgaard, University of Tromsø
Willy Guneriussen, University of Tromsø
Torill Nyseth, University of Tromsø
Brynhild Granås, University of Tromsø

'Place enactment'
Our group has started its discussions from a common interest in the social processes of 'making a place', expressing what is unique about a place, how it should be presented and understood, and what it is that defines the identity of a place. Common for the group participants is the rejection of a 'politically correct' version of the concept of 'place uniqueness', but rather openness towards understanding the concept as a social construction, performed within social processes of negotiation and power structures.

Nevertheless, we have gone into these discussions from different angles and orientations within the social sciences, i.e. human geography, sociology, political science and theories of learning, and also with experience from and interests in different, but also related, empirical focuses. The processes we are pointing to, are approached within many ongoing discussions within the social sciences, such as more empirical ones like tourism studies, more philosophical ones such as describing the modern experience, and within general discussions on cultural globalization.

The starting point of discussions within our group has been marked by a first preoccupation with the constructionist approach and criticism of this approach. Elements built in to the uniqueness of place development process, will quite obviously relate to constructivists' concern for how images of places appear as (preliminary) results of construction processes.

Within this discussion, the concept of place enactment was suggested as a notion that could constitute a valuable way into this field. Place enactment is not an established scientific concept, but is a creative product of an actor network theory (ANT) approach, relating also to discussions on constructivism. This concept has this far seemed promising for us, and the group will hold on to it in its further approach to the field. The objective is to develop theoretical frameworks and thereby throw light on important aspects of the making of place process mentioned, something that we define as the social process of place enactment.

Place enactment can be understood in relation to development of economy, materiality, nature and politics. Our aim is to follow the interwoven processes of place enactment and ongoing transformations of social practices, industries and material structures within northern places.

The use of place associative labels
In aspiring to give financial values to products, efforts are made to connect symbolic valued labels to different categories of products. Such labels can be linguistic and/or visual expressions. Examples that are very relevant to our studies would be the use of the names of places/regions in the marketing of local products and the marketing of the geographic localities themselves. Localities are marketed for tourist purposes, for political positioning and legitimate efforts, and for purposes of attracting people and industries to settle in the area. Other relevant examples would be the use of not only geographical names, but also labels that are meant to give direct associations to a geographical area. 'Clean', 'cold', 'magic', and 'exotic', would be examples of such use of linguistic labels that can be recognized within a northern context. Both ways of using symbolic valued labels depend on and affect associations related to geographic localities.

This practice is present in tourism, but is also evident within other spheres of production, such as the transformation of production and product profile within the fishery and agricultural industry of the North. Intensified marketing efforts within the fishery industry has focused on selling fish at a higher price based on a certain quality profile, and has included the symbolic value added when the geographical origin of the fish is revealed to the consumer together with information about how the fish is caught and processed, for example "according to local traditions". Such strategies play a significant role when approaching (established and new) markets (Røiseland and Granås 2004).

The use of symbolic valued labels constitutes a cultural component within industries, and represents interwoven processes of cultural and industrial development, part of an expanding cultural economy. In the case of tourism, we touch the processes of an expanding industry interconnecting with and part of important contemporary global development features, as approached through discussions on subjective mobility. In the case of adding symbolic valued labels to other, more traditional, and often material, categories of products, the use of symbolic values reflects ongoing intensified marketing efforts within many markets and industries, part of an expanding symbol driven economy, being a socio-economic process of global range.

Place enactment and its relation to the practice of using place associative symbols
The processes of place enactment are closely connected to this aspect of the cultural economy. The cultural component that the above-mentioned practice of using geographical names and associations represent in economic life, is interwoven and utterly part of a broader process of negotiating presentations and ways of understanding places.

Places are not only territorially bounded but performed alongside with mobile practice. Our approach has the ambition to bypass the external-internal dichotomy through, amongst others, inspirations from the ANT approach, following the processes of interpretations, and negotiations as they 'circulate' within social networks. The use of place associative symbols is at the same time also a representation of the locality, a representation that in itself affects various actors' understanding of the place. All the way, these examples point to cultural cursors that exist in the two-sided illumination of insiders' and outsiders' views. This two-sidedness is described by Shields (1991) in his discussions on the concept of place myths, and Friedman (1990) in his studies of the Ainuis in Japan, as interdependent - the place enactment process (of making a place) also depends on and is stimulated by an external acknowledgement of a local presentation of the place. The 'selling of a place' can therefore be viewed as something that depends on and strengthens a certain understanding of local uniqueness. The same selling of place also covers the phenomenon of place consumption, as described by Lash and Urry (1994).

Physical restructuring and place enactment
The place enactment process can also be used as an approach to processes of material/physical restructuring of place. This includes the physical use of the place, meaning in a broader sense forms of local social practices. One empirical phenomenon, among others, of interest that we have noticed so far is ongoing physical restructuring processes within Northern Norwegian localities; the most obvious pattern in this process is the centralization of settlement that is seen within some municipalities where the settlement pattern was formerly more geographically widespread. Now, many move to the municipal centres or larger villages of the municipality.

Physical restructuring processes are also seen when changing social and economic practices restructure rural spaces and the meaning of natural resources. Changing use of and meanings of land-based natural resources such as forests, (ex-) farm land, mountains and rivers may involve partly different processes for such rural places than for those that are based on the coast.

Many factors have an influence on such transformations, and the phenomenons themselves must be handled carefully to avoid exaggerating them as historic trends. Nevertheless, we see such possible trends as part of social processes that affect the questions of how place is to be understood and presented, and therefore as an aspect of place enactment processes. Our interest is to explore the links and relationships between these possible transformations and place enactment processes.

Our idea so far is that the interplay of 'the way people use a place' and 'material restructuring of place' can be further understood by going into discussions on modernity and 'the modern experience'. The relationship between the use of place and material restructuring is not a dichotomy but interwoven. In other words: The material restructuring of place is also affected discretely and continuously through people?s use of place.

Our point of departure is a 'hypothesis' or anticipation that some of the changing patterns seen are characterized by their urbanity and urban social practices. Descriptions of urbanity constitute a central task of the early writings on theories on the modern experience, such as seen in Baudelaire's texts about the flaneur. Simmel brought some of these thoughts further and into a more complete theory of modernity. Simmel opens up for an understanding of the urban experience of the flaneur to be something that has a wider and more general meaning, covering the modern experience in itself, in a de-territorialized sense, and not connected to life in the city alone. Lash and Urry (1994) follows this reasoning as they point to a lack of focus within theories on modernity on mobility between cities and towns. We will bring this reasoning further, including not only mobility between urban centres, but also mobility as something that affects livelihood within peripheral areas, where some might not expect to find urbanity. This way, we seek to break up the concept of 'urbanity' into a description of modern livelihood detached from the urban space as such.

In the northern localities, we aim to explore changes of social practices and their possible urban resemblance. This follows a line of reasoning where the concept of 'the rural' is also broken up, and is distanced from a more geographical essentialist understanding of place. There may be 'essential' differences between urban and rural areas, although they are not only geographical and need to be redefined after doing away with the rural-urban dichotomy based in earlier theory. Among possible characteristics of rural, as compared with urban settings) are: sparsely populated, partly lacking infrastructure, long distances, SMEs with particular preconditions, natural resource managing and economies, 'landscape production', ecosystem services (or degradation), local social relations possibly drawing on a multitude of different kinds of activities and kinship, etc.

Further, we would like to bring this understanding with us in the tracking of place enactment processes and the physical use and making or remaking of place. Through this approach we aim to throw light on the field of planning theory and at the same time explore the place enactment process by including also more material expressions of 'the making of place' process.

Northern urbanization processes in the light of place enactment
Aiming to follow the interwoven processes of place enactment and ongoing transformations of social practices, industries and material structures within northern places, we would also like to shed light on 'the urbanization process of the North'. Cities, towns and regional centres has for a long time been part of the historical development of northern societies. The characteristics of the later development and dynamics of cities, towns and regional centres are first and foremost the regional dominance of these places, as more and more people move in. Furthermore, we see physical restructurings of northern towns in regard to the physical structures of settlement, commerce and production.

A point of departure for this focusing is that we consider the urbanization processes taking place within the North as an important social phenomenon that has not been paid enough attention within the last decade's general politically and academically discussions. Many possible paths could be followed in an exploration of this phenomenon, like for example through focusing on a political structural level and the connected regionalization efforts. Our intention is to approach the northern urbanization processes by the use of the place enactment concept and to strive for a better understanding of the, 'from below', social and cultural driving forces in the physically manifest process of urbanization. This would mean that we try to distance ourselves from perceptions of strong regional centres now establishing as consequences only of political ambitions and economical necessity. Some of these cities are being transformed as we speak, from industrial to cultural cities, as a consequence of a global economic shift that forces de-industrialization of cities and strengthens the cultural economy.

Drawing on the discussions on the modern experience and the mobility aspects of social analysis, we intend to enter the field through following tracks of place enactment, i.e. interpretations, negotiations and translations of the understanding of place and place livelihood involved in a process where communities grow into, establish and develop as 'strong regional centres', towns and cities.

A conclusion so far: The processes of place enactment
By focusing on material and financial aspects part of place enactment processes, we intend to bring discussions on cultural and social transformations, as described in theories drawing on discussions on modernity, globalization and mobilities, into the fields of planning and industrial economic development. Our contribution to ongoing discussions within this field is to reveal and explore these processes themselves, and their negotiating and interpretative aspects. Tracking place enactment as a social process, involving their parallel material and economic aspects, we expect many people, and possibly many differences in interests, to be involved. Analysing such interwoven development processes would therefore be of interest, to reveal possible tensions, describe negotiations and, finally, reveal possible potentials for cultural and economic growth.

So far, the participants of the group approach the field with openness, drawing on ideas, concepts and inspiration from the diversity of theoretical traditions that we as researchers bring with us. One methodological approach that we will discuss further, is an actor network based theoretical conceptualisation that focuses on social processes and 'circulations', 'translations' and negotiations within relations of 'actants'/actors connected to the place enactment process. We also have an interest in how learning processes are mediated in new ways as part of globalization processes and in what way such mediating tools and activities are used, drawn on or constructed. How is the symbol driven economy drawn on in activities and translated locally, what means are used, how are these perceived, etc. Mobility should be considered a focal aspect of all such processes, constituting a vital element of modern livelihood, as understood within a more de-territorialized approach to social analysis, also highlighting networks and paths of social interaction.

We intend to work in different ways when approaching this field. For some of us, an ambition is to further analyse empirical work done during the last two years within the NORDREGIO project 'Innovations in the Nordic Periphery'. Within this material, many (more than 60) processes of entrepreneurship and innovations are told, some of them of more interest than others in a place enactment perspective. Some will also consider doing more empirical work, on 'new' and 'familiar' cases and places. Comparative analysis will possibly be integrated in the empirically based work. Nevertheless, just as important is our ambition to, through continuous discussions, reading, joint and individual writing, and possible empirical work, to work on theory development related to the field.