The Complex Adaptive Region Assemblage: Lessons from Cornwall and South West Virginia
Local Economies and Rural Development
Affective Assemblages and Local Economies Rowman and Littlefield (October 2021).
Author: Dr Joanie Willett
Key Findings:
- People haven’t caught up with the changes in their economies so new jobs are either invisible or feel inaccessible.
- There is a really important talent pool that is under-used because of the difficulties that people have accessing information about their localities.
- There are important infrastructural problems that mean that people are not physically able to connect with new opportunities.
- We need to begin looking at regional economies from different starting points, thinking about the experience of people living and working in the region
- We need to explore and understand the spaces where vital connections are not (yet) being made.
Summary
Whether we call it cohesion, levelling up, lagging regions, or place-based policy; and as we know well in Cornwall, regional inequality has been a long-term persistent problem. My starting point is about how places adapt, and I take an evolutionary perspective based on Deleuzian Assemblage and the complex adaptive system.
In my book, I look at Cornwall in the SW of the UK, and the SWVA in the USA. Both are rural regions which have experienced massive economic change in recent years. I interviewed 50 people, both members of the public and policy-makers over an 18 month ethnographic project, and my starting point was to ask members of the public what they thought about living in their regions, and what living in their regions was like for them. There are three interconnected phenomenon which stood out.
Firstly, that people haven’t caught up with the changes in their economies so new jobs are either invisible or feel inaccessible,
Secondly, there is a really important talent pool that is under-used because of the difficulties that people have accessing information about their localities, and
Thirdly, that there are important infrastructural problems that mean that people are not physically able to connect with new opportunities.
The experience of rapid economic change meant that people did not actually know what is emerging in the new economy, and instead were nostalgic for what they felt had been lost. Both regions had a skilled and available labour force. In fact, in SWVA Marsha felt that there was a high under employment rate, and in Cornwall, people reported having to upskill to survive in the labour market. Other problems were infrastructural. In SWVA this was about telecommunications and severe difficulties getting internet outside of the towns. In Cornwall, it was about rural transportation and that if people had no access to a car, it could be impossible to get to the job opportunities.
Why do people put up with this?! Because they love their regions. People in both places had a deep attachment to where they lived – and gained an energy from that.