Local development from relational perspectives

We have just seen that the significance of the analytical distinction between “near” and

“far” as bearers of different knowledge content (codified and tacit) is theoretically and empirically questionable. It follows that also the ontological differentiation between “local” and

“global” in terms of their relational specification (cooperative and competitive) and of their spatial effects (differentiation and homogenisation) can be challenged.

Drawing also on these considerations, approaches adopting a relational perspective have in particular suggested changing the analytical lens, to observe how space is constantly (re-)constituted in an ever-changing fashion through the relations agents develop among each other (Massey 2005), and to focus on the means (linguistic, technological, organisational, physical) which enable or hamper such relations.

Therefore, according to Amin and Cohendet (2004, p. 84) this approach calls for an

“expanded definition of space”, which recognises its varied composition (in terms of mobility, communication, nodality, etc.), beyond the importance of territorial ties. But it also suggests a new geographical map, topological rather than territorial, where “near” and “far” are no more (or not only) a matter of scale gradients or physical distance, but they come to indicate the connectivity and extension of relational networks (Amin and Thrift 2007).

This vision clearly entails also a different interpretation of the space of knowledge creation and diffusion. All the empirical works reported in the previous section point at the importance of networks, for their double-edged capacity to connect and exclude from knowledge flows.

They also stress the centrality of firms and, more in general, organisations for network structuring, thus questioning the alleged subjectivity of local environment in shaping knowledge relations (Giuliani 2007; Oinas 1999). In this sense, Amin and Cohendet (2005, p.

467) argue that, although knowledge work in global connection is not the same as it is in local ones, corporate-, community-, and other forms of distanciated networks “replicate more of the

‘‘buzz’’ normally assigned to local networks than we think, and that the differences between the local and the global may be more a matter of differences in the organizational architecture and topology of the learning networks, than in the nature of the learning that is going on”.

Such a reframing of the space of learning and knowledge creation has two important implications. Firstly, it indicates that there is no more a privileged scale for learning and innovation, since networks are “spatialized but not confined to certain scales” (Lagendijk 2002, p. 85) and display a varying spatial composition and reach. Secondly, and distinguishing relational perspectives from other approaches similarly focusing on networks, attention is directed not only towards the way in which knowledge circulates across networks, but also - and more importantly - on circulation itself, as “a core element of the ontology of knowledge formation and accumulationthat is, of the build up of competence and expertise as well as their mobilization in learning” (Amin and Cohendet 2005, p. 481).

Consequently, this perspective leads to reformulating the sense of the term “local”, in the

“local development” diade. Indeed, locales and regions are not more conceived as bounded and coherent units but, on the contrary, they are re-imagined as places of overlapping networks of varying extension and heterogeneous morphology (Amin 2004; Uyarra 2007).

Accordingly, the extent and duration of local development processes are seen as the result of the “position and profitability of individual firms in their respective wider circuits” (Amin et al.

2003, p. 25), rather than as the effect of the upgrading of local interconnections. In this perspective, some human, natural and cultural resources are still understood as embedded in local contexts, but their value and meaning is now “contingent upon how and by whom they are enrolled” (Lagendijk 2002, p. 88). More generally, the relational nature of space always entails “situations of mutual implications” in the various development trajectories of places, so

that the uneven geographies of development cannot be really comprehended without carefully considering the asymmetries and power geometries which characterise spatial relations (Massey 2005).

Therefore, from a relational stance it is suggested that local development policies should focus less on bridging local sources of knowledge and production - which, as seen above, have not necessarily a local dimension - and more on “making sense of knowledge - in all its forms - as an immanent and circulating force” (Amin and Cohendet 2005, p. 481). In other words, the challenge for regional policy-makers becomes to understand where local organisations, enterprises and communities fit into chains of value creation connecting different places (Lawton Smith et al. 2003). Consequently, especially in less favoured and peripheral regions, policies should aim at improving the density and quality of integration of individuals and collective entities in relevant relational systems, by favouring their access into this geography of circulation (Lagendik and Lorentzen 2007; Bathelt 2006). This means targeting primarily the infrastructures - material and immaterial - which strengthen connectivity: for instance, development policies could promote the integration of the regional economy into logistics networks, by financing the creation of infrastructure for intermodal goods exchange; but this would also entail supporting firms to acquire the technologies and know-how needed to exploit logistics potentialities (as regards tracking devices, GPS technologies, etc.). Enhancing connectivity may also involve assisting firms in taking part in international fairs, expos, and more generally in all those settings which, as Lagendijk (2004) has shown, are an essential element in the emergence of market trends, codes, interpretative frameworks, etc. Assisting firms in this field, then, means providing financial support schemes, but also helping them develop the competences (linguistic, technical, formal) to make sense of this participation. Furthermore, if networks are organisationally rather than territorially constituted (Amin et al. 2003), policies should facilitate firms to find suppliers, knowledge providers or financing partner by enhancing their “projection capacity” in the external environment, regardless if the supplier/partner is localised or not in the same region.

These are just some examples of an alternative local development policy based on a relational perspective, and they remain strictly indicative. Indeed, a relationally-imagined development policy is still “context-sensitive”, not in the sense that it looks at local connections, but rather because it points at identifying the varying articulation of the geography of circulation and of its accessibility conditions (in terms of enabling infrastructures, codes, competences, culture, etc.) across industries, social groups, economic stratifications, etc. As Gibbons et al. (1994, p. 164) have observed, if knowledge production is increasingly socially distributed and spatially dispersed, this does not entail that it is distributed and dispersed in an equal manner; consequently, the economic benefits stemming from the growth in knowledge interconnections will be disproportionately absorbed by those actors and those places which are better equipped and located to participate in the economy of flows.

Finally, this also involves recognising that networks may be asymmetrical in terms of power relations. It follows that local development policies are also a matter of exercising

“nodal power” (Amin 2004), which means considering the importance of other dimensions - apart from the market forces - in the production of territorial inequalities. Concretely, this perspective has two main consequences. Firstly, it calls for a greater attention to the unequal spatial effects generated by sectoral policies (Héraud 2003; Perry and May 2007; Uyarra 2007). Secondly and accordingly, it points out the significance (and the difficulty) of influencing those nodes, whose decisions may have an immense - but again spatially differentiated - impact over long distances. In this sense, the most typical examples are represented by the decisions over interest exchange rates taken by central banks, or the investment decisions by important financial institutions and governments; but these decisions can be also less evident and the organisations less well-known, such as for example the committees which, on the behalf of the European Commission, set the technical specifications⁹ for industrial productions and which can constitute important entry-barriers for many SMEs both inside and outside the EU.

To conclude, a radical critique is derived from previous arguments about the possibility that territorial imbalances can be tackled only through strategies aiming at boosting endogenous potential, as they neglect important dimensions (and spatialites) of modern economy.

Accordingly, relational approaches also call for policies which, besides the attention to local specificities, solicit a substantial distribution of economic resources and dispersion of decisional power, as an essential strategy to address the sources of inequalities.

In the next and last section, it remains to explore in which way this approach necessarily leads also to a radically different conception of local governance.