Anders Underthun

Upgrading the ‘Petropolis’ of the North? Resource peripheries, global production networks, and local access to the Snøhvit natural gas complex

Steen, M. & Underthun, A. 2011. Upgrading the ‘Petropolis’ of the North? Resource peripheries, global production networks and local access to the Snøhvit natural gas complex. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 212–225. ISSN 0029-1951. The article explores and assesses local and regional firms’ access to a natural gas extraction and refining complex located at the northern frontier of the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Controversial in environmental terms, the complex has been largely legitimized by the promise of regional economic development in North Norway, where opportunities for a localized support industry would have to be interpreted as constitutive of such a promise. The article employs a Global Production Network theoretical approach, and the authors pay particular attention to the complex interaction and power struggle between local, national, and global firms and institutions.

Navigation in New Terrain with Familiar Maps: Masterminding Sociospatial Equality through Resource-Oriented Innovation Policy

We explore how political struggles influence innovation policy through a Norwegian case study on the formation of a state-funded research and development program for utilizing natural gas feedstock from the North Sea. Despite the apparent dominance of business, specialized branches of the state, and R&D institutions in the realm of innovation policy, the key argument is that labor unions and regional interests exert considerable influence in shaping national innovation policy, in particular when reflexively exploiting new forms of state accumulation strategies while retaining a defensive stance against deindustrialization. First, we argue that the struggle for state funding to natural-gas-based R&D was particularly effective because appropriate strategic political networks and alliances were mobilized. Second, the construction of strategic arguments to accommodate the social corporatist heritage of state intervention on the one hand and the competition-oriented language of flexible specialization on the other, proved crucial for acceptance as a state strategy. We engage a strategic–relational approach to state theory and argue that this is a useful starting point when studying how particular contexts affect how and why certain innovation policies emerge. In so doing, we also address the lack of political analysis in innovation studies.

The restructuring of the old industrial region of Grenland in Norway: Between lock-in, adjustment, and renewal

While the concept of ‘lock-in’ has been popular as a catch-all concept for explaining negative externalities associated with entrenched institutions in old industrial regions, recent research suggests a more nuanced account centred on path-dependent evolution. More specifically, regional economic development and restructuring might be better understood if lock-in is studied in relation to other potentially co-evolving processes, such as economic adjustment and renewal. The article indicates patterns of structural change and reported innovations, and the authors question how lock-in has co-evolved with various processes of adjustment and renewal in the old industrial area of the Grenland region in Norway, focusing on the period between 2000 and 2011. They pay specific attention to various measures of restructuring in the process manufacturing industry, the related mechanical manufacturing industry, and the emergence of a local information and communications technology (ICT) industry. While the Grenland region displays elements of economic lock-in and a continued dependence on process manufacturing, it has experienced substantial structural shifts that suggest regional renewal.

Weakening adaptive capacity? Effects of organizational and institutional change on the housing sector in Norway

In this paper, we investigate adaptive capacity in a developed country context through a case study of how the housing sector undertakes local adaptation action in Norway. A particular concern is climate adapted solutions in the design and construction of prefabricated houses in response to the large geographic variations in climate. Two main research questions are raised. First, how does organizational structure of prefabricated housing manufacturers affect decision making processes, information flows and local adaptation actions? Second, how does institutional change in terms of regulatory reform of the sector affect adaptive capacity in terms of organizational structure of manufacturers and the co-generation of adaptation knowledge between public and private sector institutions? Findings suggest that the type of development demonstrated by the housing sector, strongly influenced by New Public Management type reforms, may weaken adaptive capacity unless particular measures are taken to strengthen the role of local knowledge and responsibilities for adaptation actions. Addressing the implications of governance and other societal changes for adaptive capacity must form part of any effort to promote adaptation in a developed world context.

Scalar politics and strategic consolidation: The Norwegian Gas Forum's quest for embedding Norwegian gas resources in domestic space

Underthun, A., Kasa, S. & Reitan, M. 2011. Scalar politics and strategic consolidation: The Norwegian Gas Forums quest for embedding Norwegian gas resources in domestic space. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 226–237. ISSN 0029-1951. The article discusses political initiatives and networks that aim to enhance the use of Norwegian natural gas resources in domestic space. Through perspectives on state rescaling and scalar politics, the authors explore the strategies of the Norwegian Gas Forum (NGF). This political network serves as an umbrella organization for regional political initiatives for local distribution and exploitation of natural gas along the Norwegian coast. It is argued that the initiatives demonstrate a scalar politics that counter tendencies of state rescaling in the realm of petroleum politics, where the state is less willing to invest and intervene in domestic natural gas utilization. The article examines the NGFs policy work, organizational composition, and ‘networks of association’ with other organizations. This is framed in the analysis as ‘scalar politics’ aiming to secure the member regions’ current and future dependence on domestic gas supplies. The important networks of association in relation to the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) implied compromise and consolidation among the regional members of NGF, but also empowered NGF on important policy issues.

Piping the politics of space: the engagement of scale in regional strategies of economic development

I examine the political campaign to bring a state-financed gas pipeline to the Norwegian region of Grenland and its existing manufacturing industry. It is argued that the politics of space for capturing and holding onto investments takes a specifically scalar form within a rescaled state that no longer provides uniform welfare distribution, but still possesses important intervention powers and fiscal capabilities. The campaign asserted that an enhanced regional competitiveness resulting from the pipeline will be in the national economic interest of Norway. I argue that the case study is a good example of broad regional mobilization around a particular policy discourse, as well as an example of how the employment of hegemonic discourses of economic restructuring at the national level may strengthen the thrust of regional strategies of development at the local level.

Liminality at work in Norwegian hotels

ABSTRACT Hotels are spaces of temporary accommodation, but they are also important temporary spaces for an increasingly mobile and segmented workforce with different backgrounds and motives. In this paper we wish to address the temporary and transitional nature of hotel work by employing the term ‘liminality’. More specifically, we analyse the hotel as a liminal space for transient workers that view this work as a temporary endeavour. By drawing upon data from a study of hotel workers in Norway, we discuss how the liminality of hotel work may be understood. Here, we turn to an important debate within tourism studies on the blurring relationships between consumer and producer identities in resorts, often referred to in terms such as ‘working tourist’ or ‘migrant tourist-worker’. For a relatively privileged group of workers, the hotel becomes a space of liminal lifestyle pursuits as well as a space of work. We also contrast this privileged group with a different and less privileged liminal group of ‘expatriate workers’. Transient lifestyles and consumption of recreation among workers can have problematic effects in terms of reducing solidarity, and we wish to develop this further by investigating how worker representation and solidarity develops in liminal spaces of work. While strategies of liminality may have a transformative impact on the individual, their aggregate effects might simultaneously alter the way in which hospitality work is negotiated – from the collective to the individual level. As such, hotels as employers of working tourists pose a great challenge to collective representation, and may undermine effective worker action for less privileged groups of workers. The final section of this paper addresses this challenge, asking what bearings the individualism that dominates liminal work spaces has for trade unionism in the hospitality industry.

‘Going under-employed’: Industrial and regional effects, specialization and part-time work across recession-hit Southern European Union regions:

The paper explores the regional dimensions of under-employment by analysing the uneven dispersion of part-time jobs in Greece. It understands under-employment as an integral dimension of contemporary flexible labour trends, triggered by devaluation and expanding amid crisis, although in diverse geographical and sectoral terms. It follows a methodology that comparatively analyses statistical data, relevant secondary sources and previous case studies, before moving to a theoretical contextualization of the findings. Based on this framework, NUTS-II level total employment and part-time work data are analysed through location quotients, and a new embellishment of shift-share analysis is implemented for 2005–2008 and 2009–2012 across nine sectors. The findings reveal four distinct, although porous, patterns of under-employment that are distinguished according to different regional productive specializations and the impact of structural or regional effects. The reasons why some regional economies, such as the tourist ones, were more resistant to employment losses, and at the same time the most keen on expanding part-time work, are scrutinized. Concluding, three deeper causal mechanisms, namely productive-technological, organizational and institutional, that determine the under-employment patterns revealed, are discussed and contrasted to relevant literature findings.

Regional development and climate change adaptation: a study of the role of legitimacy

Abstract This paper presents results from a study of Czech Local Action Groups (LAGs), focusing on gaining knowledge about their internally perceived legitimacy and their potential role in local adaptation to climate change. Former studies on the role of governance networks in climate change adaptation have suggested that these networks’ legitimacy are crucial for their success. In this article we provide an analytical framework that can be used to address different aspects of local governance networks which are important for their legitimacy and the way they are apt as instruments for climate change adaptation actions. We also present a survey among LAG members that provide empirical data that we discuss in the article. The framework and the data are discussed with reference to existing contributions in the intersection of legitimacy, governance networks and climate change adaptation. A specific aim is to provide research based recommendations for further improving LAGs as an adaptation instrument. In addition, knowledge is generated that will be interesting for further studies of similar local governance initiatives in the climate change adaptation context.

Petroleum-related regional development in Norway: The possibilities and paradoxes of internationalization

Norway has undergone many changes during its 40-year period of growth in petroleum activities. Today, it ranks as the world’s sixth biggest producer of oil and second biggest producer of gas (NPD 2010). The outward flow of oil and gas has ensured a comfortable economic rent for the Norwegian state and a handsome profit for the companies that extract and sell petroleum. The history reflects Norway’s efforts to balance between periods of internationalization and nationalization, when the government took a protectionist line in favour of the Norwegian offshore supply industry until the 1990s (Ryggvik 2001). This has been one of the many strategies in which Norway, unlike many resource-endowed states, does not seem to have experienced a ‘Dutch disease’, where the focus on petroleum extraction and export has crowded out other economic activities (Sachs & Warner 2001). The petroleum extraction and export sector has rather seemed to add opportunities and co-evolved with existing and new industries (Sæther et al. 2011). Combining the aspect of infant industry protection with the influx of international competence implied that Norwegian suppliers had a particular advantage in the internationalization of the industry as this helped to build robustness and competitiveness when these suppliers later opted for international expansion (Cappelen & Mjøset 2009). As Carlsson & Dale (2011, this issue) note, Norwegian suppliers are increasingly serving international customers at home, and Norwegian customers abroad. Even if Norway’s focus has not crowded out other industries, it is fair to say that the overall influence of the petroleum extraction and exporting industry has increased in pace with revenues. Central to this is the various roles that the state tries to balance in the management of hydrocarbon production, from the Keynesian form of its historical roots as a ‘developmental state’ making large national investments and harnessing the pre-conditions for domestic industrial growth to the ‘competition state’ (Brenner 2004), where Norwegian state support is as much about supporting the global activities of Norwegian oil and gas firms as it is about promoting industrial developments at home. The petroleum adventure has thus also implied paradoxes, both in terms of the local and global environmental impact of extraction and use, and the state’s attempt to secure social and ecological contracts, and in terms of the increasingly global scaling of petroleum flows and economic activities. Striking a balance between regional economic development, supranational institutional obligations, environmental concerns, and the support of domestic corporations in increasingly global strategies is a complex task for the Norwegian state, in all its guises. In this sense, Norwegian petroleum resources can be associated with an ongoing sociospatial struggle to define the priorities of the state (Jessop 2002; Kasa & Underthun 2010; Kristoffersen & Young 2010). This special issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift Norwegian Journal of Geography is devoted to geographical aspects of the Norwegian petroleum adventure, not least in terms of analysing the multi-scalar tensions and opportunities that have accompanied internationalization. In the first article, Carlsson & Dale (2011) comment upon the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises in the petroleum-related supply industry, in this way pointing to the windows of opportunity for Norwegian firms in an expansionary phase after building robustness in domestic space. The authors pay specific attention to the processes of internationalization, and contend that this has been done through a combination of conscious strategies, pathdependent turns, and coincidences, in this way adhering to a relational approach to economic geography. Empirically, the article suggests that the internationalization of Norwegian supply firms has tended to follow the movements of customers, yet these firms have also carried out strategies to locate in specific market hubs and hot spots as they see fit. However, the authors contend that many of the internationalization strategies stem from what they call a moment of serendipity, where a particular encounter in a given context has provided the push towards internationalization. Karlsen & Nordhus’s (2011) contribution is closely related to the first article, as it explores the strategies of a particular regional cluster in the petroleum-related subsea industry located in Bergen. The authors address how the nature of firms’ networks and the institutional context in which they operate affect the particular strategies of internationalization. They assert that the small and late-starting firms in their study seem more reliant on local and/or regional networks for these strategies, while the larger and mature firms regard international networks as vital. The article discusses theoretically the possible cross-fertilization of perspectives on regional clusters, different kinds of proximity, and global (production) networks. Along with Carlsson & Dale’s (2011) article, this contribution underlines the enhanced importance of internationalization of petroleum-related economic activities in Norway. The article in this issue by Steen & Underthun (2011) has a different point of departure, namely discussing the Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 189 190. ISSN 0029-1951