| 1. |
- Albrecht, Moritz, et al.
(författare)
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Depopulation and shrinkage in a Northern context: geographical perspectives, spatial processes and policies
- 2022
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Ingår i: Fennia. - : Fennia - International Journal of Geography. - 0015-0010 .- 1798-5617. ; 200:2, s. 91-97
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Depopulation and shrinkage are a common socio-spatial phenomenon in many Northern localities and are frequently accompanied by a stigmatization of the affected localities and their populations. This editorial introduces the special issue on depopulation and shrinkage in a Northern context that takes its point of departure from the Nordic Geographers Meeting 2022 on multiple geographies and its keynote lecture by Josefina Syssner on the question: What can geographers do for shrinking geographies? The special issue displays a range of contributions from Northern context that discuss and evaluate the heterogenous processes of shrinking localities from multiple perspectives within and beyond geography. Through broad, yet empirically detailed and multiscalar focused assessments it stresses that shrinkage as a phenomenon is a fundamental character of Nordic and other societies, which requires a rethinking and should be acknowledged as a 'natural' development trajectory in planning and development.
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| 2. |
- Almstedt, Åsa, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Public spending on rural tourism in Sweden
- 2016
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Ingår i: Fennia. - : Geografiska sällskapet i Finland. - 1798-5617. ; 194:1, s. 18-31
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Tourism is an important part of rural policies in European countries. An increased demand for rural amenities is seen as creating a more diversified labour market and contributing to the restructuring of the economy, from primary sectors and manufacturing to a more service-oriented economy, which has been termed a "new rural economy". As a result, and as often presented in many policy documents, tourism is now seen as a universal tool for rural development. The purpose of this study is to investigate the distribution of public spending on tourism in rural areas in Sweden. It focuses on public spending on the main programme for rural development, the Swedish rural development programme, but also on the regional structural funds programmes, from 2000 to 2013. Another subject of interest is how policy makers understand rural tourism as presented in policy documents since these documents, to a great extent, direct programme spending in terms of projects and their content. This study is based on register data on programme spending, policy documents and programme evaluation reports. Results show that a relatively small amount of total public spending targets tourism – mainly going to accommodation, activities and marketing efforts – indicating that tourism is still not a prioritised area despite policy makers’ understanding of rural tourism as expressed in policy documents. Thus, although public efforts target adequate parts of the tourism industry, they cannot be expected to contribute significantly to the restructuring of the rural economy.
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| 3. |
- Biasillo, Roberta, 1984-
(författare)
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Historical tools and current societal challenges : reflections on a collection of environmental migration cases
- 2020
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Ingår i: Fennia. - : Fennia - International Journal of Geography. - 0015-0010. ; 198:1-2, s. 151-162
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Through considering a "Geo Archive" as a tool of history, this paper explores several conundrums concerning environmental migration in social sciences. It demonstrates how historical perspectives can problematize and unsettle various automatisms that are widely present in journalistic, public, and policy discourses. Through examples from the Geo Archive, the article illustrates how unavoidable historical dimensions can enrich our understandings on the interaction between environmental issues and migration flows. This paper engages with an open access "archive in-the-making". This Geo Archive includes case studies of migration flows and puts those flows in conversation with environmental transformations and climatic changes. The analysed collection presents high-profile stories which are representative samples of different approaches, temporalities, geographies, sources of information, narratives, and scales. This endeavour encompasses different disciplines and fields of expertise: environmental humanities, IT and communication experts, and political ecology. The archive places itself within the realms of public history, environmental history, and history of the present and aims to reach out to wider audiences. This digital humanities project stemmed from a support action funded by the EU initiative Horizon 2020 titled CLISEL whose overarching goal was to analyse and better inform institutional responses and policies addressing climate refugees and migrants.
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| 4. |
- Carson, Dean B., 1970-, et al.
(författare)
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Resource deserts, village hierarchies and de-growth in sparsely populated areas : The case of Southern Lapland, Sweden
- 2022
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Ingår i: Fennia. - : Geographical Society of Finland. - 1798-5617. ; 200:2, s. 210-227
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Small villages in northern Sweden have seen a continuing removal of key services, such as schools, shops and public transport, since the 1970s. Disinvestment in public services has not been strategically planned but has happened in response to population loss and increased costs on a case-by-case basis. More recently, there has been a shift in policy thinking to what might be termed a ‘de-growth’ approach where digitalisation and increased personal mobility are used to provide new ways of delivering services. The purpose of this paper is to examine the existence of ‘resource deserts’ in Southern Lapland and the emergence (or consolidation) of village hierarchies in allocating public services. We map out the distribution of neighbourhood services (grocery stores, pre-/schools and petrol pumps) among villages, and explore the lived experiences in accessing these resources in different villages. Our results show that resource deserts clearly exist in the south and east of the region, while villages in the more sparsely populated western mountain areas were generally in a better position to retain resources. We identify a lack of consistent and transparent service planning at the village level as a key shortcoming in municipal and regional service strategies. There appear to be unofficial settlement hierarchies in the differential treatment of villages that are otherwise similar in population size, population change and distance to central places. We find that political decisions on service allocations are likely influenced by several factors. These include legacy effects relating to historic settlement status, the location of villages in relation to key transport or mobility corridors, as well as ideological factors favouring villages with more ‘exotic’ features and development potential in line with the municipalities’ economic, social and political priorities. We finally argue that a shift to de-growth needs to be more strategically planned if it is to eliminate resource deserts and promote equity of service access across all villages.
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| 5. |
- Cele, Sofia, Docent, 1977-
(författare)
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Communicating back : reflections on IBZM as participatory dissemination
- 2021
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Ingår i: Fennia. - : Fennia - International Journal of Geography. - 1798-5617. ; 199:1, s. 136-138
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper reflects on Interviews-Based-Zine-Making as participatory dissemination as explored by Valli in this issue of Fennia. It discusses three main aspects of the approach. The first aspect relates to IBZM as being dissemination of result or an additional research method. The second focuses on the entanglements between representation and the potential tensions and conflicts that may arise when the workshop participants read interview transcripts from other members of the community. The third aspect focuses on interpretation and how to deal with the thin line between representation of research participants’ understandings of interview transcripts and the researcher’s interpretation and analysis of these.
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| 6. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek
(författare)
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Degradation, restitution and the elusive culture of rural-urban thinking
- 2017
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Ingår i: Fennia – International Journal of Geography. - : Fennia - International Journal of Geography. - 1798-5617. ; 195:1, s. 36-60
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite fierce criticisms, ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ still constitute powerful narratives around which we structure our society. The ‘formal reality’, however, frequently disregards the cultural nature of these concepts, elevating them to the role of objective spaces apt to serve as acceptable guiding perspectives. While the analytical inadequacy of rural-urban ideations is well-documented, the phenomenon of formal-cultural conflation remains much less explored. Acknowledging that ideational space of social representations can only exist through the practices of discursive interaction, this paper’s objective is to lay bare the phenomenon of rural-urban thinking when externalized through the little-known practices of ‘degradation’ and ‘restitution’ in Poland. Using conceptual methods, including discourse analysis and historical deconstruction, this paper assays the hidden architectures of formal-cultural conflation by means of a richly contextualized analysis. The findings, presented in four discursive openings, reveal embedded elements of hierarchy, loss, injustice and self-victimization, which may create a divisive culture spawned by elusive promises of development at the cost of misinterpretations of history, local disappointment and cultural segmentation. In conclusion, formal appropriation of historical concepts is likely to engender a cultural geography of discord spun around a largely insignificant division, especially when development-oriented aspects of urbanization become entwined with emotional issues.
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| 7. |
- Gross, Lena, et al.
(författare)
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Refusal - opening otherwise forms of research
- 2023
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Ingår i: Fennia. - : Geographical Society of Finland. - 0015-0010 .- 1798-5617. ; 201:2, s. 154-168
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- An increasing interest towards researching other forms of knowledges is taking place, expanding the boundaries of knowledge to include forms that have been historically marginalised, negated, and neglected by the Western academy. Parallel to this, we have identified a rising critique of how voices marginalized by colonial modes of academic knowledge production are included, through a single-sided focus on pain and suffering (Tuck & Yang 2014). Yet there are less discussions around the process of research itself and what it entails. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to challenge the concept of 'discovery' and the unproblematic and inherent right of knowing granted to the Western academy, to argue for a kind of research that refuses. Interrogating instances of refusal in different contexts of Indigenous sovereignty and migration studies, this collective work creates a dialogue across different disciplines and reveals that refusal turns the gaze at colonial modalities of knowing. The empirical analysis of our work also demonstrates that refusal is a generative process that redirects the attention to ideas otherwise unacknowledged, thus making space for relationality, reciprocity, solidarity, community, and care.
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| 8. |
- Haugen, Katarina, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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From pragmatism to meritocracy? Views on in- house family ties on the Swedish labour market
- 2019
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Ingår i: Fennia-International Journal of Geography. - : Fennia - International Journal of Geography. - 0015-0010 .- 1798-5617. ; 197:2, s. 268-279
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In-house family ties within workplaces are a non-negligible phenomenon on the labour market. Drawing on organizational and geographical perspectives and based on thematic analysis of 40 interviews with human resource managers, we analyse how family ties are viewed and managed in organizations on the Swedish labour market. Based on the empirical analysis, we suggest that there are two different logics of human resource management concerning in-house family ties: a traditional, pragmatic and informal logic which expresses an accepting view; and a modern, meritocratic and formal logic associated with a disapproving view. Moreover, the informal logic seems to be increasingly challenged by formalization of human resource processes in both urban and rural settings. However, the analysis indicates that in smaller labour markets this shift is somewhat restrained by the limited supply of labour and socially tight knit local communities. Also, it seems that the change often meets resistance from supporters of the informal logic, and there is dissonance across different professional groups across and within organizations.
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| 9. |
- Haugen, Katarina, 1980-, et al.
(författare)
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On the importance of forest assets for micro-firm performance
- 2013
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Ingår i: Fennia. - : Suomen Maantieteellinen Seura. - 1798-5617. ; 191:2, s. 122-142
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Business start-ups are on the increase, a development which is accompanied by hopes that these new firms will generate a potential for, e.g., local and regional development and a strengthening of local labour markets as well as the national economy. However, the long-term performance and viability of new firms are often rather poor. This research aims to analyse the importance of ownership of areal resources in the form of forest holdings for the performance of Swedish micro-firms. The analyses are based on official register data and fixed-effects panel regression modelling. A hypothesis is that a firm whose owner also possesses forest holdings is more viable thanks to the different resources (in the form of capital from logging or mortgaging, or non-pecuniary other values) the forest holdings may provide, and which possibly contribute to the firm’s economic stability and resilience to economic fluctuations. From a general point of view, we find support for the hypothesis that forest ownership positively and significantly influences firm performance in terms of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), but not in terms of value added. Forest ownership is never detrimental to firm performance, although it does not have a significant effect in all sub-categories of entrepreneurs based on different combinations of age, gender and firm type. Particularly, the economic performance of private firms run by older men benefits from resources stemming from their forest holdings. No significant effects were found for female entrepreneurs or for limited companies. As regards regional variations, firms located outside the metropolitan regions – as compared to those at the top of the urban hierarchy – are likely to perform better, thus indicating that local development may benefit from resource transfers from the forest sector to micro-firms engaged in non-primary activities.
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| 10. |
- Hedlund, Martin, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
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Rural restructuring and gendered micro-dynamics of the agricultural labour market
- 2017
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Ingår i: Fennia. - : Fennia - International Journal of Geography. - 0015-0010. ; 195:1, s. 25-35
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Based on a comparison of the employment trajectories of two cohorts of men and women in the agricultural sector in Sweden, this article gives an account of the past 50 years’ decline in employment in agriculture. The findings show that the decline of employment in agriculture was the result of fewer entries into the sector and more exits out of the sector. The findings also suggest that the restructuring of the agricultural sector has had greater effects on women than men, with women exiting the sector to a greater degree or never entering it to begin with.
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