Exploration of the cultural turn in EU regional policy and its relation to Post Fordism
A region is not a given – not physically, socially or mentally. It is a construct that has been and is repeatedly being remodelled, transformed and created afresh.
In particular, two opposing notions appear relevant here, originating from concepts related to physics. The concept of the ‘container’ space goes back to Newton and forms the spatial model of classical physics. In this notion, ‘space’ exists independently of material bodies, like a box that is filled with objects. In the ‘relational’ space concept, on the other hand, an ‘empty space’ that exists independently of physical objects is unimaginable. ‘Space’ does not exist as a reality in its own right but is a ‘relational scheme of physical objects’.
The classical model of ‘container’ space largely shapes our everyday consciousness, and also forms the basis for classical sociology through landscape geography to neoclassical economics, positing the ‘national territory’, for example, as the predetermined space/container ‘filled’ with people and objects.
More recent and critical concepts of regionality are often akin to the ‘relational’ view of space. Once the idea of a fixed entity created by means of the ‘container’ has been surmounted, the permanent processes of spatial structuring and the intrinsic dynamics of different spatial levels - physico-territorial, politico-institutional, social, functional, linguistic, economic – come into view.
Whatever is now characterised as a ‘region’ by these space-structuring processes is geared to 120scale or more precisely: to the correlation with particular presupposed scales. Region, in this respect, denotes an ‘intermediary space’ vis a vis both larger (the world, a continent, a nation state) and smaller (a city or neighbourhood). Relative to the nation state, the region includes all ‘spatial’ phenomena not assignable to local or national level; for example enterprise clusters and tourist areas.
In terms of political geography the gamut ranges from the constitutionally guaranteed region with its elected government and comprehensive legislative competences through purely administrative units to the commercial region, which is only formally institutionalised.
Until very recently, the political geography of Europe was highly diverse in territorial terms and, particularly from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, governed by the nation-state. With the construction of national economies, ‘cultures’, languages, and all manner of social spaces became part of the educational framework of modern nation states, and regional differences were increasingly levelled.
Following the end of World War II, two political phases in ‘Western’ Europe became distinguishable; in the first phase, which culminated in the 1960s and early 70s, solutions for spatial disparities and economic inequalities were found within the nation state, and the region seemed to be the appropriate setting for this type of intervention. The second phase began in the 1980s and entailed consolidation of the regional in the context of globalisation, a change in the function of the nation state and in European integration.
Between the two phases is a rupture in economic, social and political logic. In respect of the production regime, that breach is often construed as the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism or, in more general terms, as the start of neoliberal globalisation. Part of this sea-change involves local and regional-level developments which form a counterpart to neoliberal globalisation and are referred to as ‘post-Fordist regionalisation’.
Fordism - characterised by industrial mass production, vertical economic integration, and the implementation of national redistributive policies through social legislation and the welfare state - was primarily and aimed at equalisation within the regulatory framework of the nation state. Such regional inequalities as did arise had to be moderated ‘through targeted structural policy, such as the construction of new industrial sites in less developed regions’. The policy was explicitly aimed at equalisation; economic growth potential was diverted from prosperous regions into disadvantaged regions.
The disintegration of this formation, discernible at various levels, fuelled by neoliberal deregulation and marked in its progression also means the accomplishment of a new production geography in which the region is reinvented as a relevant spatial dimension in the post-Fordist production.
The region became the setting for the new economic clusters and networks that arose from the ‘deregulation’ of hierarchic-centralist large-scale enterprises associated with Fordism. At the same time, political-level ‘deregulation’ also took place, resulting in decentralisation in both the geographical and the structural sense. Developing the ‘endogenous potential’ of regional and local entities – that is, processes not determined by externalities, but unfolding from an ‘intrinsic’ scope for development – became the catchphrase of regional policy, and a ‘territorial mobilisation’ was set in motion, which has lasted to this day.
Schematically, the process can be summarised as follows: the regional policy of the Fordist nation state, which aimed to equalise regional disparities, faded into the background in favour of an approach committed to the development of specific regional opportunities and hence heightened the inequalities and rivalry between regions. The intensity with which the adverse effects of neoliberal capitalism make themselves felt depends on the regional structure in question and, of course, on political interventions at various territorial levels (regional, nation-state and European levels).
Susanne Heeg has argued that in Britain the ‘transition’ from Fordist to post-Fordist regionalisation was especially abrupt: ‘When the Thatcher government came into power, with the declared aim of
deregulation, privatisation and consolidation of competitiveness, it spelt a dramatic change in regional policy. [It] was assumed that spatial disparities would even themselves out by the free play of market forces… yet on balance, the neoliberal regime in labour-market, industrial and regional policy reinforced spatial inequalities, forcing them in the direction of social, economic and political divergences. In this sense, post-Fordist state regulation of the neo-Taylorian kind is not only instrumental in polarising and segmenting spaces, but also in producing social polarisation within these spaces.’
As regards the EU/EC level, regional-policy measures have existed since the 1970s but in the past 20 years this policy field has been undergoing much more intensive development, putting the regions at the heart of economic strategy.
Initially, regional policy, like that at nation-state level, was geared to equalisation, but reforms at the end of the 1980s foregrounded the development of ‘endogenous potential’. EU regional policy may not follow neoliberal ideologies directly. On the contrary, the promotion of greater equality between regions remains an explicit objective of EU policy, and assistance continues to be concentrated on regions that are disadvantaged and undergoing sectoral restructuring.
However, there is a contradiction that needs to be acknowledged. The neoliberal dimension of EU regional policy is based on the way in which regional interests are legitimated; the aim is to enhance the regions’ competitiveness as part of its integration into a deregulated European economic space. Culture, or rather cultural policy is central to this ‘post-Fordist’ turn in European regionalisation.
There are two settings in which the cultural field and constructions of ‘culture’ are being integrated into the spatial logic of ‘post-Fordism’. Firstly in constructing ‘regional identity’ as a site for marketing and promotion in the global ‘space of flows’, and secondly as a principle of commercial agglomeration linked to a strategy of economic growth based around creative industries and cultural tourism.
The catchphrase about exploiting the endogenous developmental potential of a region - which derive, as it were, from its ‘inherent structures’ - always and already entails a cultural politics. The definition and promotion of distinctive regional identifications lies at the heart of the post-Fordist project. This may involve constituting an identity for a newly created apparatus of regional governance, or adapting an existing identity to new competition conditions. For example, a region whose heritage was traditionally characterised by the presence of hinterland farmers is re-branded as a ‘coastal region’, because tourism is developing much greater economic potential than agriculture.
All identity processes relating to spaces suppose both outer limits, determining who is inside and who is outside, and a certain homogeneity of the convictions and behavioural patterns intrinsic to the space. Out of this double articulation the inner stranger is born: the Other who is in the space but not part of it.
In order to stabilise these inner and outer delimitations, regional spatial identity ceases to be a purely communicative process, articulating a scalar geography but increasingly takes on a life of its own. ‘Regional awareness’ begins to display a structure of feeling analogous to nationalism, and in some parts of Europe at least it has also developed as a surrogate form of statehood. Cultural politics again play a prominent role is constructing the region as a territory of quasi-autonomous ethnic and/or civic identification, often by mobilising pre- and/or anti-modern aesthetic forms.
So although regional policy in Europe has played a vanguard role in directly instrumentalising the cultural sphere for economic purposes, this has often been done in the name of affirming the integrity of the ‘local’ against the homogenising effect of neoliberal globalisation.
The thing that is new is the direct political implementation of these principles in regional policy and regional development.
For instance the European Commission’s 1996 statement on ‘Cohesion Policy and Culture’ argues that culture has to be a much more integral part of regional and local development strategies, especially in respect of employment. It says: ‘Cultural activities are most effective when they profit from the region’s endogenous potential for economic growth. Conversely, assistance to cultural products and industries contributes to the strengthening of regional growth.’
‘Culture-related businesses generally depend to a large extent on local or regional supplier-and customer-networks and, therefore, are attached more closely to regions or locations than other forms of productive investment. Moreover, most cultural industries are relatively labour-intensive and thus contribute significantly to employment. Cultural investment (cultural industries as well as cultural infrastructure including heritage) improves the region’s competitive situation against other rival locations and constitutes a particularly valuable investment in regional or local performance.’
This is the classic statement of the pivotal role accorded to cultural industries within the framework of post-Fordist regionalisation. First there is a restatement of ‘classical’ cultural policy at regional level (promoted through the agency of the regions themselves or the nation states), which had already assimilated neoliberal economic arguments many times over but continued to define its jurisdiction in more comprehensive terms.
On top of this is superimposed a level of cultural action driven exclusively by the desire to improve the competitiveness of regions vis a vis the global cultural economy.
On the more positive side, it has to be recognised that the regional promotion of the cultural field opens up a plurality of public spheres. Therese Kaufmann and Gerald Raunig argue:
‘A singular European public sphere is not only impossible, but would also be in no way productive. What counts is a multiplicity of public spheres, not imagined statically, but rather as an emergent space of emancipatory practices.’
This multiplicity of public spheres, thrown up by a plethora of cultural and media initiatives, provides the wherewithal for giving people access to small-scale decision-making. Within a multitude of public spheres, they are able to actively express and exchange their needs. Above all, it promotes ‘the positions and the participation of minorities against all forms of majoritarian homogenization’.
Regional public spheres develop their own spatial structure. They are not ‘the public sphere of region X’ for one thing, because the region is not predetermined entity and public spheres also unfold their own spatial dynamics.
Equally regional culture and media initiatives develop a new range of identity constructs and in the process ‘regional history’ becomes subject to new and more multiple readings chipping away at homogenized social convictions and behavioural patterns. We see emerging a critical on-the-spot knowledge, which blows open processes that have congealed into ‘identities’ and ‘systems’. Can we, for example, see here the potential space of a new kind of excursionism in which the agenda and aims of the early Soviet experiments in regional studies can be reanimated?
(A brief note on excursionism: Projects undertaken in the early Soviet Union under the name of ‘excursionism’ (‘ekskursionistika’) aimed to decipher the cultural topography of cities and landscapes. The point of doing so was to establish a new strategy of conscious appropriation of the cultural world, landscaped as it was up by myths and legends, constructed histories. The Russian regional and urban studies that developed the theory and practice of excursionism, in the work of figures like Nikolaj P. Anziferow and Iwan M. Grews, were among the first victims of Stalinist gleichschaltung and were cruelly smashed long before the country came under the cloak of the Great Terror in 1937. (Karl Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik [“In Space we Read Time. On the History of Civilization and Geopolitics”], Munich, Vienna, Hanser, 2003.))
Yet despite the promise of the new regionalism to create ‘cross- border cultures’ – that is, cultures which open up new spaces of networking and artistic exchange across national boundaries, what condenses down in these new spaces is a microphysics of globalisation and its economic cross-linkages. This context is reflected in methods that aim to constitute regions as identitary constructs:
‘What is striking about local strategies at the present is just how unlocal they are. Workforce training, the erosion of social protection, the construction of science and business parks, the vigorous marketing of place and the ritual incantation of the virtues of international competitiveness and public-private partnership seem now to have become almost universal features of so-called “local” strategies. In this sense, the local really has gone global. The explanation for the staggering lack of originality in local strategies does not lie in these localities themselves, with some shortfall in wit and imagination on the part of local actors. Rather, it is a reflection of the global context within which these strategies are being formulated.’ (Jamie Peck, Adam Tickell, ‘Searching for a New Institutional Fix: the After-Fordist Crisis and the Global-local Disorder’, in Post-Fordism. A Reader, Blackwell, 1994.)
With the role of the state having changed, new styles of policymaking have also evolved with post-Fordism; these are often described as the transition from government to governance – that is, the regulation of political processes through policy networks. This involves widening policymaking to include commercial or industrial federations, civil stakeholder groups, NGOs etc. and is often glossed as a transition from the paternalistic to the empowering state’. Nevertheless the public accountability of the political class or governing elite, for all the talk of transparency, is more occluded through institutional mediation than ever before.
This development is significant for the regional project in several respects: the decentralization of decision-making, whether regional levels are configured as political entities or merely as administrative or statistical ones opens up a diversity of arrangements. New and smaller entities emerge: a territory around a city joins up to form a metropolitan region; new regionalities emerge in the context of economic assistance and development programmes; economic clusters become institutionalized as regions in order to develop a location policy of their own etc. As a result of this fluidity regionalism offers better scope for new social movements to take root than the nation state.
It also creates a framework in which new forms of transversal co-operation can emerge especially in the cultural sphere. The forms of collaboration in which many art projects are nowadays realized offers great potential for the migration of ideas, styles and practices across territorial and linguistic boundaries associated with the nation state. In this context, artists and cultural operators are allotted what, to a certain extent, is an involuntary avant-garde role - working in a laboratory of precarious working conditions.
Or to put it the other way around, in their own practices they offer an aesthetically distanced correlate of the changes in working conditions which post Fordism has introduced into social production: flexibilisation, precariousness, informalisation, intensified capitalisation of effective work, etc. This connection may remain at a purely rhetorical level – the precariousness of the artists’ life and working conditions is to an extent chosen, and many have resource for self sustaining support (for example, through teaching or working in the creative industries) denied immigrants and the poor.
Yet sometimes it can lead to the emergence of genuinely resistant practices as for instance in the work of the Madrid research/activism initiative Precarias a la deriva. In mid-2002 a group of women had responded to the fact that their precarious jobs played no part whatsoever in the Spanish general strike - neither the legal authorities nor the trade-unions could be bothered. They resolved to adapt the situationist practice of the ‘derive’ to these new urban post industrial conditions and ‘to spend the day of the strike together, to proceed through the city together, to transform the classic picket chain into a picket survey and speak to women about their work and their life’36. In the months to follow, similar excursions took place almost weekly: ‘We chose a method that led us along different paths through the urban circuits of largely feminized precarious work, showing one another our everyday surroundings, talking in the first person, swapping experiences and reflecting collectively.’ These derivas through the city were opposed to the segregation of work and life, production and reproduction, public and private, in favour of a multitudinous existence (see Hardt and Negri).
We have to abandon the idea that cultural politics could or should mediate social contradictions, in order to resolve/dissolve them into harmless ‘artistic controversies’. Instead the role of cultural politics is to create a public sphere in which the immediacy of social contradiction is disseminated beyond the limited groups who experience them directly. Given this shift in perspective we can perhaps appreciate why the Post Fordist region, as just such a site of contradictions, also offers the possibility of a cultural politics capable of engaging creatively with it.
Raimund Minichbauer is a cultural policy advisor to the European Commission.
Ash Amin (ed.), Post-Fordism: a reader, Blackwell 1994
Franco Berardi Bifo, “What is the Meaning of Autonomy Today?” http://republicart.net/disc/realpublicspaces/berardi01_en.htm (EIPCP multilingual webjournal)
Neil Brenner, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, Gordon Macleod (ed.), State/Space: a reader, Blackwell 2003
Gerhard Brunn: “Regionalismus in Europa”, in: Nitschke (Hg.), Die Europäische Union der Regionen, leske+budrich 1999, p. 19-38
Commission of the European Communities, “Cohesion Policy and Culture,” Brussels 1996, com 96 (512) http://europa.eu.int/comm/regional_policy/sources/docoffic/official/communic/pdf/culture/cult_en.pdf
Commission of the European Communities, Proposals for the new structural funds regulations for the period 2007-2013 http://europa.eu.int/comm/regional_policy/sources/docoffic/official/regulation/newregl0713_en.htm
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Culture and Regions, study commissioned by the Region Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, for the “International Days, Culture and Regions of Europe”, 27th-30th October 2004
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David Harvey, Spaces of Capital. Towards a Critical Geography, Routledge 2001
Susanne Heeg, “Endogene Potentiale oder footlose capitalism? Einige Anmerkungen zur sozialen Regulation des Raums”, in: Michael Bruch, Hans-Peter Krebs (Hg.), Unternehmen Globus, Westfälisches Dampfboot 1996, p. 199-223
Martin Heidenreich, “Regional Inequalities in the Enlarged Europe” http://www.idhe.ens-cachan.fr/Eurocap/regionalinequalities.pdf
Serena Junker, “Regionalisierung als Antwort auf Steuerungs- und Entwicklungsprobleme moderner Gesellschaften?”, in: Sabine Feiner, Karl G. Kick, Stefan Krauß (Hg.), Raumdeutungen: ein interdisziplinärer Blick auf das Phänomen Raum, Hamburg: Lit 2001, p. 151-193
Therese Kaufmann, Gerald Raunig, Anticipating European Cultural Policies / Europäische Kulturpolitiken vorausdenken, Wien 2003, http://www.eipcp.net/policies/index.html
Michael Keating, The New Regionalism in Western Europe, Cheltenham, Northhampton: Edward Elgar Publishing 1998
Dragan Klaic, “The Emerging European Public Spheres”, in: European Cultural Foundation (Ed.), “Sharing Cultures: a Contribution to Cultural Policies for Europe”, conference, 11-13 july 2004, p. 63/64
Dieter Läpple, “Essay über den Raum”, in: Hartmut Häussermann (Hg.), Stadt und Raum: soziologische Analysen, Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus Verlag 21991, p. 157-207, http://www.tu-harburg.de/stadtplanung/html/ab/ab_106/ag_1/publikationen/laepple/essay.pdf
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell 1991
Oliver Marchart: “Für eine radikal-demokratische Kulturpolitik/Politikkultur. Warum und wie Kultur neu legitimiert werden muss”, in: Gerald Raunig (Hg.): Klimawechsel. Für eine neue Politik kultureller Differenz, Wien 1999, p. 8-20
Pyrrhus Mercouris, “Structural Funds, Enlargement and the Cultural Sector”, Brussels 2002, http://www.efah.org/en/policy_development/structural_funds/structural.pdf
Chantal Mouffe, “Exodus oder Stellungskrieg? Zum Verhältnis von Bewegung und Institution”, in: kulturrisse 01/04 http://igkultur.at/igkultur/kulturrisse/1076864118/1076864674
Stefan Nowotny: “Ethnos or Demos? Ideological Implications Within the Discourse on ‘European Culture’ “, http://www.eipcp.net/diskurs/d01/text/sn02.html
Precarias a la deriva, “Adrift Through the Circuits of Feminized Precarious Work” http://republicart.net/disc/precariat/precarias01_en.pdf
Gerald Raunig (hg.): Klimawechsel. Für eine neue Politik kultureller Differenz, Wien 1999
Vanessa Redak, “Endogene Entwicklungspotentiale? Lokale Handlungsspielräume im Postfordismus” http://www.beigewum.at/redak.htm
Undine Ruge, Die Erfindung des ‘Europa der Regionen’. Kritische Ideengeschichte eines konservativen Konzepts, Frankfurt am Main: Campus 2003
Karl Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik, München, Wien: Hanser 2003
© 2004·05
“There are two settings in which the cultural field and constructions of ‘culture’ are being integrated into the spatial logic of ‘post-Fordism’. Firstly in constructing ‘regional identity’ as a site for marketing and promotion in the global ‘space of flows’, and secondly as a principle of commercial agglomeration linked to a strategy of economic growth based around creative industries and cultural tourism”
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Contents of this issue
Editorial
Features 
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Interviews
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Captain Nemesis Calling
Feedback
Hopeful or worried but not yet jumping for joy…
The spatial logic of European Cultural Policy
A new orientalism? The Anglo-Gothic imagination in East London
Rich Mix in Brick Lane
About a pair of shoes and other stories along the river
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