Jumping Scales and Producing peripheries.pptx

Sania Dzalbe is a PhD student in economic geography at Umeå University in Sweden who studies how people in rural areas adapt to crisis and adversity. Drawing from her upbringing in rural Latvia, she notes the importance of social reproduction in sustaining rural livelihoods, which often goes overlooked in traditional regional economic analysis. She argues that the concept of resilience is connected to the concept of loss, as during moments of crisis and major restructuring, societies lose not only jobs and industries but also the very mechanisms through which they shape their environment, both physically and socially. Current resilience studies in economic geography tend to disregard the role of social reproduction and the losses experienced by individuals by predominantly focusing on firms and economic production. However, to understand the evolution of rural regions and communities amid various challenges they face, one must recognize that social reproduction cannot be separated from economic and knowledge production processes.

1. Jumping scales and producing peripheries Farmers’ adaptation strategies in crises Sania Dzalbe ( [email protected] ) Rikard H. Eriksson Emelie Hane-Weijman

2. Regional Economic Resilience: Resilience for who? And to what end? RER - A conceptual lens to study the effects of economic crises in shaping regional development trajectories ( Simmie and Martin, 2009; Martin, 2012; Bristow and Healy, 2014; Boschma , 2015; Martin and Sunley , 2015; Evenhuis , 2017; David, 2018; Kurikka and Grillitsch , 2020). Macro-perspective on the regional structural features, and a focus on economic growth; Regions as administrative units or containers; Economic production and output at the regional scale through a mostly firm-centric perspective. The role of agency in shaping regional development trajectories? (Bristow and Healy, 2014) Does regional economic growth benefit all? C onfining the individual adaptation objectives and strategies within administrative regional borders. F ocus on economic production yet neglecting to consider social reproduction.

3. Theoretical interventions: placing p eo ple in the centre Social reproduction as everyday practices (Katz, 2004); Relational understanding of regions (Massey, 2005); Politicizing resilience (MacKinnon and Derickson , 2013); Research Question What social structures do individuals seek to preserve and reproduce during crises, and how do they accomplish this?

4. Networks and Social Reproduction Accounting for the cross scalar networks (Cox, 1998) Spaces of dependence (resilience to what end?) - immediate material and localized social relations upon which actors depend for the realization of their needs and interests . Spaces of dependence also highlight the emergence of networks within immediate geographical contexts , highlighting the everyday practices and relations that hold significance for individuals or communities. Spaces of engagement (resilience by what means) S paces of engagement are produced when actors “experiencing a problematic relation to a space of dependence, construct through a network of associations a space of engagement through which to achieve some mitigation” (Cox, 1998: 3–4). They are needed to secure the space of dependence and might be at another scale, which would imply “jumping scales” to more distant geographies.

5. Story of mink farmers in Denmark One of the biggest exporters of mink skin pelts in the world; 798 mink farms in 2020. Most were located on the West coast of Jutland, in the "rotten banana areas ” ( Winther and Svendsen, 2012) 3rd largest animal export in Denmark (24.5 million pelts in 2019) ; Average full-time employment ranged from 1-2 workers ( Kjær , 2020). Cooperative industrial structure. Local, regional, and national Danish Fur Breeders' Associations; N ational Fur Breeders' Association – central advocacy group; Feed production centres. Family business - spouses, parents, and children involved. On November 4, 2020, the Danish government issued an order to cull all the mink in the country (17 million mink). Compensation deal by the government. Only 13 farmers will reassume the business ( Byskov Svendsen and Dam, 2022). https:// www.nytimes.com /2020/11/04/health/covid-mink- mutation.html

6. 13 semi-structured interviews F arm visits 13 male and 1 female respondent Age range (26-62) Snowball sampling Abductive thematic analysis Source: https:// www.dst.dk /da/ Statistik / nyheder -analyser- publ / bagtal /2020/2020-10-28-fakta-om-minkbranchen-i-Danmark

7. Results: Spaces of dependence among mink farmers: Resilience to what end? Material and Social investments Homemaking and familiarity Farms, machinery, equipment Family life (schools for kids, jobs for spouses) I built this house here in 2012. I’m a nature guy. I’m living in the middle of the nature. I have a big lake out here and we’re going there swimming every day, so, no, I am never going to move from here. And our children have a really good school here. My wife has a really good work here in the town. [i9] Family Habits Shared conversations Integration of materiality of farming life and social family life Involving children - reproduction and continuation of mink farming. Spouses doing care labour during busier periods at farms When we were in the season when we selected [the mink] and when we were eating dinner, maybe we could talk twenty minutes about one male mink and what quality he had. You know, you can do it with children, you can talk about football, but it is just so special to talk about something that you have on your own farm. [i10] Close bond with nearby mink farmers C ompanionship and routines Information exchange R esource sharing When we had the farms, every Friday at 12:00 o’clock we had the meeting. Maybe five, six, seven mink farmers. We were sitting together and eating every Friday and when we had minks we were, of course, talking about minks. How the breeding was? What were we doing now? How can we do it better? [i9]

8. I. Spaces of Engagement during smaller s cale a dversities: Resilience by w hat means? Sharing information across scales FB groups Personal contacts Exhibitions Courses Working groups Some groups are national, some are only local. Mostly it’s local but also sometimes, you know, the farmers in the other end of the country are perhaps bigger and it’s really good to speak with them to see how they do it, because here locally we nearly all do the same. The same way, but down in Holstebro , maybe they do it differently. [i5] Central advocacy group (the DFBA) Information retrieval on bigger picture issues Resource allocation Dealing with the press Dealing with animal welfare protocols Copenhagen Fur made some estimates. They had the finger on the pulse on how many skins are being produced in the world. And they had an idea of how many minks there are. But China they can make five million or maybe ten million, nobody knows. But Copenhagen Fur they knew, they were traveling a lot and they were talking to people, you know. They made estimates every year. [i9] Local networks Contesting public ideas of mink farming Resource sharing As far as I can remember, we always had schools and kindergartens coming and it was always fun to have them. And we also had all the tourists, that came to look. And some of them thought it was terrible to have mink and they came in their big Mercedes with leather seats and everything. [i9] Informal and institutionalized networks

9. II. Spaces of engagement during shocks. Resilience by what means? Central advocacy group The power of negotiation and the agency to influence decision-making regarding the situation remained within the DFBA, in Copenhagen The informal networks were not as effective during the handling of the crisis, because the crisis affected all the farmers simultaneously Geographical, but also economic and political peripheries A need for a centralized and institutionalized power to deal with the consequences. After the press conference [announcing the governmental decision to cull off all the mink] we had a Zoom meeting with Copenhagen Fur, where the chairman talked about things we have to do and what we could look forward to, also the prices for the skin and what we looked at that time was 199 DKK per skin... Copenhagen Fur they wanted to be sure we know what was going on. [i4] At that time, if you had a big farm or a small farm there were two dates. The first date was the 9th of November for the small farms and for the big farms 16th of November for when you have to be done with killing mink. That was the first big question a lot of breeders called me about if they have a small farm why they should do it faster because, maybe small farmer has one wagon to kill and big farmer has five. Why shouldn’t they get the same time? Then the Copenhagen Fur got it changed. [i4] When everything is closed down, I miss... Of course, I can just call my colleagues, but we don’t have the same things to talk about. So, that I miss today, just to grab the phone and say, “hey how is it going today?” because all of us, we are going different ways now. We don’t have the mink that is holding us together. [i7]

10. Concluding thoughts Resilience to what end? Farms as proxies. Preserving mink farming or preserving the livelihoods of people in left-behind areas. Resilience by what means? In left-behind areas, socio-spatial networks serve as resources for individual adaptation strategies. The materiality and active maintenance of the networks. Social reproduction understood as daily habits and social relations support economic production and increase individual resilience. A central advocacy unit in the capital city provides distant actors with political, financial, and social leverage, reducing their peripheral perception. In resilience studies, a relational approach to regions reveals that network detachment amplifies peripheralization for actors in declining activities in geographically distant areas. Peripherality as produced and a relational position rather than an inherent feature.

11. Thank you!

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