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Overall summary articles lectures Place, regions and identities
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Summary Place, regions and identitiesLecture 1: intro
Point of departure: increasing presence of, and attention to, culture and place-specific characteristics in
society, public debates, economy and science.
Cultural turn in Geography: Basis in postmodernism of 1980s: blurring of boundaries between sectors,
policy field and academic disciplines:
Multitude of research foci and approaches, e.g. attention to: - Postcolonial geographies - Cultural
embeddedness of economic processes - Mobilizing culture as an accumulation strategy - Relationship
between identity and consumption - Cultural construction of the environment and nature
Two processes according to Du Gay (1997):
- Substantive: it points to the “increased importance of cultural practices and institutions in every area of our
social lives”
- Epistemological: the concept of culture is used to increase knowledge of certain phenomena.
The culture – identity interface
Raymond Williams: about culture
- Social definition (daily culture): specific way of life and therefore forms a sort of ‘daily culture’ that is made
and experienced in every-day activities. Regulates social practices
- Documentary definition (documented culture): all
recordings (objects, artefacts) of thought and
experiences, including the organization in which it
was produced.
- Ideal definition (selective tradition of culture) “in
which culture is a state or process of human
perfection” selection from specific documents
that represent a particular culture/identity in
general
Culture characterized by: actions – works – institutions
Du Gay ‘Circuit of culture’ → culture as a process . The
model is in constant state of flux and starts nowhere.
Technical but also cultural production: how it is made
meaningful. Meaning does not reside in the object but is
represented in language (oral, written), advertised in texts,
… Identity component (meaning-creating, lifestyle
formation): association with certain groups. Consumed by
specific groups for specific reasons – use but also symbol
Regulated in daily life e.g. challenging distinctions between
public and private space.
Castells
- Identity as the source of meaning, self-representation and explaining the purpose of actions, created by:
Certain cultural attributes - Spatial living environments → material reflections of largely intangible meanings
in daily environments.
,Culture and identity as more than just objects or something present in an area
→ Set of processes by different stakeholders
→ Individual, collective, institutional and political component.
Also a spatial phenomenon (castells)
+ They are time-space specific (so the role is changing in a globalizing society)
Changing situations in globalizing contexts – Globalization and cultural change
Through globalization time and space are compressed → network of cities. Castells: space of flows vs space of
places.
Process of cultural identification done by nation-states through scheme of Williams, like in the history canon
of the Netherlands. Nation state territorializes meaning, which reflects in physical, symbolical and narrative
representations in space that further legitimize and confirm the domination of empowered institutions
(process of signification (Paasi 1996).
But now states is not the only dominant force anymore for culture and identity:
→ Culture and identity as connecting and integrating elements become problematic (changing forms and
expressions)
→ A more flexible domain of individual, collective, institutional/political and economic spheres (changing
scale)
→ From state control to partly state control (EU), partly economic control (changing political dimension)
Overall: more fluid interactions between people, place and culture/identity than before.
Scheme of the course:
,Lecture 2: Culture, culture economy and consumer culture
Place of the concept in the scheme:
Four (Urry 1995) claims about place, culture and identity: (consumer culture and culture economy)
1. Places are increasingly restructured as centers for consumption (city centers)
2. Places themselves are in a sense consumed (the culture of that place)
3. Places can be literally consumed (like negative effects, building etc)
4. Localities can become places of consumption for one’s own identity (like yoga and wanderlust)
→ this makes that place compete to attract and keep mobile capital (in a globalizing world)
Link to the economy: globalizing societies
- Cycle of culture [production, consumption, regulation, representation and identity] cannot be seen in
isolation from economic transformation over time
- Changing modes of production and consumption à changing place – identity – culture relationships.
- Globalization: key economic processes - Rapid improvement of agricultural productivity; - Separation
production and consumption; - De-industrialisation with less manufacturing employment in the global north;
- ‘Mobile’ capital that with new communications technology can be located anywhere.
Culture economy (Ray 1998); adoption of cultural/territorial markers in the pursuit of territorial
development objectives. Like Adam with their EU agency. → more a focus on local resources(knowledge)
uniqueness, culture and identity as tools to improving wellbeing of local rural areas.4 modes of culture
economy:
, Mode I: commodification of local/regional
culture for marketing purposes
Mode II: projection of a ‘new’ territorial
identity to the ‘outside’ to promote the
territory. → Make sense of the world that is
too complex to fully grasp
Mode III: selling itself internally to gain support
e.g. through boosting local culture, histories or
habits
Mode IV: different reactions to/interpretations
of the previous modes, e.g.
- Normative → join this trend
- Use this trend to break free from it to focus
inward e.g. focus more on endogenous or
exogenous strategies
Broader change from Fordism to post-Fordism – mass production to flexible and individual → this fueled the
creation of consumer culture –> Differentiated production and consumption to create meaning and identity
of individuals. → Consumption of a product (object/artefact/place) is also symbolic.
So place does matter
Jackson (2004):
- Consumer culture has clear spatial differences and resilience to external influences + Different adoption
and adaptation of global brands.
So there is no general cultural homogenization in globalizing societies but Geographically uneven nature of
globalization processes.
2 Places where culture economy was a strategy for rural regeneration
-Commana
- History of top-down planning, political conflict around nature park
- Revalorization of traditional symbols by newcomers in the region vs. agriculturalists in community council =
clash of sense of place
Foxford
- Tourism as a strategy to fight against neglect of the central state
Summary
Paradox in globalizing societies:
- tendencies of (cultural) homogenization
- Increased focus on culture, identity and place
→ For places/regions = production & regulation side (culture economy)
- external orientation: (Inter)national market place: “wealth flows from culture while in the 19th century
culture flowed from wealth”
- internal orientation to optimize regional pride / social cohesion
→ For individuals and communities = consumption side
- Consumer culture (Featherstone, Ray): symbolic consumption
- Making sense of the world (Sum & Jessop) = search for (place) identity
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