Sixth Cycle in the Periphery, CYPER

The present time is an auspicious one to examine resource peripheries and development progress in between the regressing structures and renewing actors, which are vulnerable to changes in regional policies and prone to the impacts of the nascent long economic cycle. The revolution caused by this new economic wave and the megatrend of sustainability will most likely transform current industries and livelihoods, ways of acting, values, and policies. Losses and renewal can be expected, but the consequences are not alike everywhere. To begin with, the diffusion and its side effects tend to follow a different path in the centres than in the peripheries. According to presupposition, development also varies between peripheries as the evolution of different localities is highly dependent on the co-evolution of multicausal mechanisms and actors in different spatial scales.

In this research, alternative scenarios will be constructed by analysing how the alleged revolution might transform the development of various forested peripheries. The question is approached through case studies focussing on meso and micro-level analysis that are supported by the background analysis of macro and meso-level. In this qualitatively driven mixed-method research, the main data consist of interviews that are supported or complemented with statistics and documents such as different strategies. The results of the case studies will be scrutinised in comparison to supranational (1) mainstream economic geography, (2) other northern peripheries and (3) Scandinavian development, and to national (1) macro-level development, and (2) other resource peripheries in Finland.

The notion of the peripheries as only being places that lag behind and the sites of natural resources is questioned. The focus is on the future instead of the past. The theories of evolutionary geography and the mechanisms behind the future development of societies are studied using a marginal approach which is, however, a significant part of the particularity of the resource-rich countries.

In the course of this four-year project, collaboration with other researchers and projects related to similar issues is more than welcome. For instance, comparative case study approaches from different peripheries in and outside Finland, or the settings that enable comparisons between development of centres and peripheries, would enrich the understanding of different kinds of places under the possible revolution.