0000000000285226
AUTHOR
Hans Kjetil Lysgård
The assemblage of culture-led policies in small towns and rural communities
Abstract The mobile global discourse on culture’s prominent role in driving development policies is increasingly influencing small cities and rural communities. Global networks of information and ideas flow through space and become reconstructed as place-based and territorial narratives or policy assemblages; meanwhile, communities are increasingly producing local policies within these networks. The policy mobility literature has been occupied with perspectives on how to follow policies; it has only to a limited degree addressed empirical questions about how such policies are constructed from a situated perspective. Therefore, an analytical approach is needed to analyze the empirical constr…
Creating Attractive Places for Whom? A Discourse-Theoretical Approach to Knowledge and Planning
We aim to find a way to produce knowledge of attractiveness of place that is representative of the variety and complexity of what attractiveness entails and the same time productive for place development and planning. On the basis of a study of an INTERREG IV A-project in Norway, we question how and by whom the discourse regarding what is attractive about places is constructed and how the implicit or explicit knowledge is treated in local planning. We find that planning must produce knowledge in which the different narratives about place confront each other, and highlight differences and mutual debate between adversaries. We conclude by arguing the case for applying a model of agonistic plu…
The logic of the construction of rural politics: political discourses on rurality in norway
Two competing discourses emerge from a careful reading of parliamentary debates in Norway on rural development. One regards rural values as intrinsic, while the other regards the rural as an actor ...
The definition of culture in culture-based urban development strategies: antagonisms in the construction of a culture-based development discourse
Implementing culture-based development strategies is a recent trend in large and small cities all over Europe. The definition of culture and the objectives of cultural strategies are highly contested in the public debate. Analysing the newspaper debates on the establishment of the Cultiva foundation in Kristiansand, Norway, this article discusses how and why the discursive debate on the definition of culture creates different discursive positions in the public debate on culture-based development. In the different discourses on what these strategies should be, there are a number of antagonisms that contribute to defining the relationships and interfaces between the different discursive posit…
Urban—Rural Flows and the Meaning of Borders
This article focuses on political and everyday interplay and integration between city and hinterland, investigating borders and boundaries in such interplay. Five Norwegian city-regions served as the empirical basis for analysing two empirical fields. In the first field — everyday mobility and flow — institutionalized interactions between the cities and their hinterlands were analysed as well as objectives and meaning as motivations in everyday mobility in the city-region between city and hinterland. In the second field — urban-regional economic development policy — the questions addressed related to the degree to which governance networks are developed as a tool in local economic developm…
The ‘actually existing’ cultural policy and culture-led strategies of rural places and small towns
Abstract Questions regarding the relevance of culture-based development strategies are even more relevant to ask when such strategies are applied to rural places and small towns. In urban contexts, the number of citizens and the volume and variety of the cultural sector, other industries and services are important success criteria. In small Norwegian rural municipalities, these factors are even more critical because the Norwegian rural context is characterized by low population density and low variety and volume in industries and services. Rural places and small towns are, to a large extent, neglected in the culture-led development studies, and likewise, culture is largely neglected in rura…
What shapes Norwegian wind power policy? Analysing the constructing forces of policymaking and emerging questions of energy justice
Abstract This paper employs an assemblage theoretical approach to analyse how Norwegian land-based wind power policies are constructed over time and what forces dominate and resist wind power policy development. The entanglement of policies, technology deployment and (lack of) social acceptance emphasizes the need to critically question what and who influence the construction of energy transition policies and how and what concerns are left out, especially in relation to the tenets of energy justice. We find that wind power policies are primarily influenced by energy authorities, developers and interest organizations, furthering arguments of climate concerns, energy security and economic opp…
Planning for Sustainability: Between Risks and Lifeworlds
In this chapter, Planning for sustainability: Between risks and lifeworlds, Mikaela Vasstrom and Hans Kjetil Lysgard present ideas of a planning study that takes a critical perspective on planning. What are the alternative planning ideas? Planning is a field where different paradigms meet. How can one approach that? Their suggestion is a combination of participatory and critical planning. There is a strong account of planning and sustainability with better links between planning and Higher Education. Empowerment may provide a connection. For both planning and education, we need an understanding of context. The discussion of universities is thought-provoking.
Creativity, Culture and Urban Strategies: A Fallacy in Cultural Urban Strategies
Two fields of knowledge have been of special importance for the emergence of culture-led urban planning in Norwegian cities: one concerns the understanding of the potential of culture as an economic driving force in urban regeneration, while the other focuses on the emergence of the concept of the “creative class” and has drawn attention to the importance of competence and creativity in urban development. Despite clear connections between the two fields, it may appear that false connections have been made in regeneration strategies in a number of cities. Based on analyses of the culture-led urban strategy of Kristiansand, a small Norwegian city, these knowledge fields are discussed and it i…
Between striated and smooth space: Exploring the topology of transnational student mobility
In this paper, we raise a question regarding how transnational students develop their spaces as mobile, temporary, and at times stable and territorially fixed. We argue that approaching transnational student migration and its relations to place as a Deleuzian assemblage is a fruitful way of highlighting this issue, and we propose the axes of the expressive/material and territorialisation/de-territorialisation as analytical tools for understanding aspects of the temporal and spatial dimensions of transnational student mobility. Our theoretical discussion is informed by the migration experiences of transnational students studying at a Norwegian university. Our core argument is that transnatio…