Cultural Sustainability and Regional Development

Theories and practices of territorialisation

Joost Dessein, Elena Battaglini, Lummina Horlings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317570042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Meeting the aims of sustainability is becoming increasingly difficult; at the same time, the call for culture is becoming more powerful. This book explores the relationships between culture, sustainability and regional change through the concept of 'territorialisation'. This new concept describes the dynamics and processes in the context of regional development, driven by collective human agency that stretches beyond localities and marked-off regional boundaries.

This book launches the concept of 'territorialisation' by exploring how the natural environment and culture are constitutive of each other. This concept allows us to study the characterisation of the natural assets of a place, the means by which the natural environment and culture interact, and how communities assign meaning to local assets, add functions and ascribe rules of how to use space. By highlighting the time-space dimension in the use and consumption of resources, territorialisation helps to frame the concept and grasp the meaning of sustainable regional development. Drawing on an international range of case studies, the book addresses both conceptual issues and practical applications of 'territorialisation' in a range of contexts, forms, and scales.

The book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates in sustainable development, environmental studies, and regional development and planning.

1 Introduction

The role of culture in territorialisation

Lummina Horlings, Elena Battaglini and Joost Dessein

Notions on region, territory, place and space

Concepts such as place, region and territory are all terms that underpin crucial concepts in the processes of regional development. These concepts have taken on specific connotations concerning the different scientific, general and disciplinary paradigms that have succeeded one another over the course of time. The complex use of similar words in different cultures and languages, with slightly or strongly different meanings, illustrates the challenges we face when speaking of regional development. A variety of words are used to refer to the regional scale, such as regione, région, region, territorio, territoire, territory, luogo, lieu, place. There are analogies in the semantic thematisation among Southern European languages (Italy, France and Spain) which are less relevant in the English-speaking world. To illustrate this, in Italian the term territorio refers, on the one hand, to the sense of belonging to a place and, on the other, to its organisational principles: cultivation techniques, habitat, social rules that shape its land, nature and landscape. In the English definition the term territory indicates an area under administrative or state jurisdiction, understood as control and primary expression of social power exercised by the state.

Territory in scientific literature generally refers to territorial settlements and administrative or organisationally bounded areas. The size and nature of territories have changed from neighbourhoods and parishes to city-regions and beyond (Allen and Cochrane, 2010). Not all scholars automatically imply the existence of fixed and stable boundaries. Two conflicting traditions can be identified. Sack (1986: 1–2) treats ‘territoriality’ as a bounded space and as a spatial strategy approach:

Territoriality in humans is best understood as a spatial strategy to affect, influence or control resources and people, by controlling area; and as a strategy, territoriality can be turned on and off. In geographical terms it is a form of spatial behaviour.

Raffestin and Butler (2012: 121) stress its ‘relational’ dimension and claim for compatibility and sustainability of the system:

Territoriality can be defined as the ensemble of relations that a society maintains with exteriority and alterity for the satisfaction of its needs, towards the end of attaining the greatest possible autonomy compatible with the resources of the system.

Region is a keyword that has dominated geographical discourses since the field became institutionalised (Paasi, 2010). Scholars have reflected on the success factors of regional development (Pike et al., 2006), on regional scales, questions such as how regions are performed, how regional governance is exercised, the issue of open versus bounded regions (Paasi, 2009a), fuzzy boundaries in regional planning (Haughton and Allmendinger, 2010), the relevance of regions for politics/policies of space (Allen and Cochrane, 2007), the significance of regions for food systems (Kneafsey, 2010) and for political ecology (Neumann, 2010). Paasi (2011) has sketched an overview of the historical evolution of the word ‘region’ and has distinguished the following three strata in the geographical thinking on space and region, characterised by partly overlapping meanings associated with these keywords: 1) Regional geographies, considering regions as unique, bounded units, on the basis of natural, cultural or other regional characteristics; 2) Spatial analysis and systematic approaches, categorising regions as formal or functional regions, stressing the need for mathematical and statistical methods for the purposes of generalisation and explanation. Researchers referring to the paradigm of rational mechanics and determinism in geography considered the physical environment as an influential factor in the use of the land; and 3) Space, region and social practice emphasising the relations between the social and the spatial. The new or reconstructed regional geography studies how places can be constructed by and are constitutive of social life, relations and identity (Paasi, 2011).

Place and space have a range of meanings as well, according to the context. Carter et al. (1993: xii) in their collection Space and Place state that ‘place is space to which meaning has been ascribed’. The variety of definitions of place ranges from place as sites, places as subjective experiences to places as the product of social relations. To elaborate on this last approach and building on the rich literature on relational place and space (see, for example, Massey 1991, 1993, 2004, 2005; Cresswell, 2004; Amin, 2004; Jones, 2009; Woods, 2011) places in a relational sense are considered as geographically unbounded, as meeting places which are part of wider networks and relations and connected to other places through social, economic and political relations (Pierce et al., 2011). Places are thus the outcome of networks, points of intersection, that integrate the global and the local (Massey, 2005).

Authors on region, territory and place all agree that complex spatialities or socio-spatialities matter in different ways.

They matter materially. They matter in terms of discourses and representations that are mobilized around various spatial concepts. They matter through the ways in which space is performed. And, critically, they matter in terms of the everyday constructions of space that happen in the real world, as social movements, neighbourhood organizations and other groups make the spaces that we academics try to think. (Merriman et al., 2012: 8).

Conceptualising regional development

In the large body of literature on region, three types of interpretation of region can be distinguished: pre-scientific, discipline-centered and critical interpretations (Paasi, 2011). While in the past regions were often considered as pre-given and stable spatial units (Hudson, 2007) this essentialist view has been criticised (Jonas, 2012; Paasi, 2009b). According to the proponents of the ‘new geography’, the demarcation and the identity of a region cannot be taken for granted as pre-given facts (Messely, 2014; Messely et al., 2014). Regions are fluid (Haughton and Allmendinger, 2010) and are historically contingent constructions, expressed in practices. In the words of Allen et al. (1998: 2): ‘Regions are not “out there” waiting to be discovered; they are our (and others’) constructions.’

Another debate, often intertwined with the essentialist-constructivist debate, centres on the territorial (understood as geographically bounded) versus relational conceptualisations of regions (Varro and Lagendijk, 2013; Messely, 2014). While some scholars focus on the importance of regions as administrative or governmentally bounded areas, relationally oriented scholars (see above) point to the importance of actors, relations and processes: ‘What gives a place its specificity is not some long internalised history but the fact that it is constructed out of a particular constellation of relations, articulated together at a particular locus’ (Massey, 1993: 66). These notions emphasise the importance of networks and connectivities (MacLeod and Jones, 2007) and have led to conceptualisations of regions as processes that are performed, limited, symbolised and institutionalised through practices, discourses and power relations that are not inevitably bound to a specific scale, but which may be networked in both time and space (Paasi, 2009b, 2009c). Such relations are expressed between the land and the economy, nature and society, rural and urban, as well as at the unique intersection of social, economic, cultural and political relations that are mapped over multiple localities, which results in the distinctiveness of places (Woods, 2011).

We argue here that it is productive to transcend the scientific division between regions as outcomes of social relations or as geographically bounded, administrative areas (see also Allen and Cochrane, 2007; Jessop et al., 2008). Although a region is a relational and networked space, we can also understand regions from a spatial, bounded approach in a concrete context, such as in political debates where power is exercised, or in discussions on the constructing of regional identities (see also Messely et al., 2014). Evidence can be found for the significance of regions and their boundaries as catalysts for regionalist movements, ethno-territorial groups and planning strategies (Agnew, 2001). Similarly, the identity-narratives created by regional activists and advocates and governmental bodies force us to study such ‘politics of distinction’ rather than denying their existence (Paasi, 2010: 171).

As Harvey (1973: 13) suggested, space is ‘neither absolute, relative or relational in itself, but it can become one or all simultaneously depending on circumstances’. In regions the absolute, relative and relational aspects of space become fused in material practices (such as boundary-making), representations (such as mapping) and lived meanings (such as affective loyalities to territorial units) (Harvey, 2009: 174). Some scholars have attempted to bring together the terms territory, space, place and network in a ‘TSPN framework’ (Jessop et al., 2008) or refer to assemblages of actors, representing different administrative scales, but which are still ‘lodged’ within a region and directed to regional aims (Allen and Cochrane, 2007).

In this book, both territorial bounded notions of region and region as relational/networked place are combined and considered relevant: ‘In some cases place or region matters, sometimes boundaries are significant, sometimes not, at times networks and relations matter, while at other times scales and the processes of rescaling are of crucial importance’ (Paasi, 2010: 406).

This book contextualises regions and regional development by analysing how practices and dynamics take place in selected regions. The key agency involved is human intentionality in interaction with the environment (see also Paasi, 2010: 2297; Relph, 1976). In the region identities are constructed as a result of the inter-play between environment and culture. Nature, in its morphological, physical and climatic connotation, influences the practices of use and consumption of the resources in regions (Battaglini and Babović, 2015). A concrete example is the influence of ‘terroir’ on the process of winemaking and the quality of the wine.

Territorialisation as co-production of society and environment

We introduce here the notion of ‘territorialisation’ (see also Brighenti, 2010) to describe the dynamics and processes in the context of regional development, driven by collective human intentionality and stretching beyond localities and geographical or administrative boundaries. Territorialisation thus is the outcome of the multi-scale interaction of structuring processes and agency/social relations, which are expressed in practices. This includes processes of boundary-making in the context of politics of place.

Building on the definition constructed by Turco (1988), when using the term ‘territorialisation’, we refer in this book to a process in which communities (although involved in unbounded networks) perceive the specific nature and characteristics of their place, attribute symbols to resources and to local peculiarities, and reify, structure and organise space. We are referring to a process of co-construction and co-evolution that is started along with a dialogic relationship, in which social configurations and the local environment, in its physical characterisations, both have agency.

Territorialisation can be studied from different methodological perspectives and theoretical starting points, such as practice theory (Schatzki, 2002), micro-sociology, actor-network theory (Callon, 1986; Law and Hassard, 1999; Latour, 2005), a TSPN framework theorising socio-spatial relations (see above; Jessop et al., 2008), governance (Rhodes, 1997) or transition theory (Loorbach and Rotmans, 2006).

The interaction between humans and environment can be considered as co-production rooted in human intentionality and expressed in practices. This co-production is acknowledged in the theory on ‘coupled’ social-ecological systems which consider human society as dependent on natural systems (Gunderson et al., 1995; Folke, 2006). Governance can enhance resilience and adaptive capacity in such coupled social-ecological systems (Janssen and Ostrom, 2006), influenced by learning capacity, social and ecological diversity, diverse knowledge and the self-organisation of these social-ecological systems (Folke et al., 2005).

The concept of co-production used here, inspired by actor-oriented debates in rural sociology (Van der Ploeg and Marsden, 2008; Long, 2001), refers to the mutual constitution of the social and the natural, between society and environment and between man and living nature. Not only people but also the physical nature of territories have ‘agency’ (Ingold, 1992; Latour, 1993) with regard to the perceptions, meanings and values attributed by communities to resources. Environment and society, in dynamic interaction, are the protagonists of a process that is configured in time, conditioning the relationship between community and land, with a specific location, resources and climate. Both act and orient the quality and the direction of regional development, which we understand in this book as a process of territorialisation.

We argue here that territorialisation as a dynamic process has the following characteristics. First, territorialisation creates differentiated outcomes as a result of the intertwinement of globalisation and localisation. A key notion is that influences of globalisation and modernisation are not merely adopted but transformed into spatial varied outcomes, leading to ‘territories of difference’ (Escobar, 2001, 2008). Furthermore, the global does not only construct the local, but the global is co-constructed by the local (Massey, 1994), which is referred to in terms like glocalisation (Bauman, 1978) and hybridity (Woods, 2007).

Second, territorialisation is the result of balancing endogenous and exogenous factors (Ray, 2006). This refers to the debate on (neo-)endogenous development. The importance of endogenous actors has been acknowledged in regional development, for example in economic growth theory (Stimson et al., 2011). In rural sociology, (neo-)endogenous development has been defined as the utilisation and celebration of local and regional characteristics as the basis of its economic activity and livelihood (Oostindie et al., 2008). The emphasis here is on understanding the characteristics (natural, human and cultural) of a place that makes it special and/or distinctive (different from other regions), and how these may become the focus of sustainable economic activity (Vanclay, 2011: 59). This does not mean that regional development is considered merely from a perspective ‘from within’ because the significance and influence of unbounded factors are also acknowledged. Such unbounded factors can, however, be transformed into a self-constructed development model, creating autonomous capacity.

Third, territorialisation includes the urban and rural and all blurred mixtures in between. The rural-urban dichotomy has eroded in the context of metropolitan landscapes (Wiskerke, 2007), where urban and rural activities are becoming increasingly intermingled. These areas have become network societies, where local and international production an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Series introduction
• COST statement
• 1 Introduction: the role of culture in territorialisation
• 2 ‘Sustainable places’: place as a vector of culture. Two cases from Mexico
• 3 Territorialisation and the assemblage of rural place: examples from Canada and New Zealand
• 4 The worldview and symbolic dimension in territorialisation: how human values play a role in a Dutch neighbourhood
• 5 Nature and culture in territorialisation processes: challenges and insights from a case study in Serbia
• 6 Territoriality as appropriation of space: how ‘engaging with space’ frames sociality
• 7 Exploring culture and sustainability in rural Finland
• 8 Territorialisation in practice: the case of saffron cultivation in Morocco
• 9 Is there a place for place? How spaces and places are included in the measures of sustainable development and well-being
• 10 Making territory through cultural mapping and co-design: how community practices promote territorialisation
• 11 How to scale a territory: experiences from the United States
• 12 Culture matters. Planning processes and approaches towards urban resilience in European cities and urban regions: two examples from Brussels and Ljubljana
• 13 Re-creating and celebrating place(s) in designated space(s): the case of Wales
• 14 Local maize practices and the culture of seed in Luoland, West Kenya
• 15 Les jardins partagés in Paris: cultivating space, community and sustainable way of life
• 16 A ‘European Valley’ in South America: regionalisation, colonisation and environmental inequalities in Santa Catarina, Brazil
• 17 Conclusions: territorialisation, a challenging concept for framing regional development
• Index