Subjects in the Regional Camp_ First draft.doc

subjects in the regional camp?first draftgeographies of transgression symposium, uppsala university with the sponsorship of formas, 8-9 march 2005richard ekthe department of service managementlund university, campus helsingborgbox 882s-251 08 helsingborgswedenrichard.ekmsm.hbg.lu.sechasing rainbows i would like to thank forsk and the centre for european studies, lund university, for financing the research projects two nations for the price of one? and european mega-corridors respectively, from which this paper arises.this summer, the resund region is five years old. the first of july 2000 the bridge between malm and kbenhavn was inaugurated, and the event even got its thirty seconds on cnn. berg et al 2002. the sky was the limit tom petty the actors behind the geographical vision of an integrated resund region, an economic dynamo in northern europe, had gradually raised an atmosphere close to euphoric, at least among themselves: now, a hundred year old dream of a fixed link over the sound was to become reality. now, the scandinavian sister nations could really be united. now, the region could in all seriousness challenge the largest regions in europe. and for some: now, scania could give the finger to the arrogant and inappreciative central state in stockholm and turn towards europe. anyone who in some way had questioned this regional euphoria was either neglected, ridiculed or declared hostile towards the future.then nothing happened. and after that, nothing. the discourse of the resund region seemed to have a serious hangover. after a couple of months, the advocates of the regional idea came alive again. we have a problem! people are not using the bridge to the degree that was anticipated. whats wrong with them!. this was not entirely true, people traveled by train to an extent that exceeded the prognoses made by the local transportation companies. but not as many cars as expected passed over the bridge. 12000 vehicles/day was the goal set for 2001, but the actual rate that year just reached 7000 vehicles/day (sds 01.07.2004). the amount of cars passing over resund became an indicator of the integration rate in the region, in concordance with the causal formula constructed in the discourse: better infrastructure higher mobility and interaction regional integration economic growth. ek 2003: 157. according to illmar reepalu (chairman of the local authority in malm): the day the traffic over the resund bridge between malm and kbenhavn is as intensive as the traffic on the highways between malm and lund and between kbenhavn and helsingr the integration in the resund region is complete (sds 24.12.2004). during a couple of years, more problems revealed themselves. peoples showed little interest in moving to the other side of resund (no visible sign of an integrated housing market). people showed little interest in taking an employment on the other side (no visible sign of an integrated labor market). companies showed little interest in expand their businesses to the other side. attempts to create an integrated mass media market failed. falkheimer 2004. back were we started the kinks explanations had to be created. two main explanations both pointed out the central state in sweden and denmark as the villains of the piece. first, the fee for travelling over the bridge, set by the two national governments, was claimed to be too high (75$ for a separate round-trip ticket). the decision to build the bridge was based on the condition that the users should pay for the construction costs, a stipulation the regional advocates did not objected to when the terms were decided. secondly, the danish and swedish governments had not done enough to harmonize the two national systems of taxation and systems of social insurance. because of these two reasons, it was too complicated and troublesome to for instance work in kbenhavn and live in malm, or expand business over resund. the marginal interest from especially small and medium-sized firms has never been interpreted as lack of interest, but due to the institutional barriers between denmark and sweden. in the neo-liberal discourse of the resund region, firms and business representatives like the chamber of commerce are never to blame for anything. politicians on the other hand, are to blame for everything, and sometimes also the public in general.nevertheless, the societal interaction over resund is increasing. in the end of 2004, about 10 000 people commuted over the sound on an everyday basis, four times as many as before the bridge was opened. sds 07.10.2004. in the year 2003, 2600 individuals moved from sjlland to skne and in the end of 2004 over 5000 danish citizens were staying in malm. skd 29.10.2004, sds 07.10.2004.some more statistics in herethe resund regime of ardent advocates of integration regards, of course, this increased interaction across the national border as an evidence of regional integration instead of for instance intensified trans-localization or increased internationalization. (even if the rate of integration could have been higher, but again, that is the national politicians faults). nothing peculiar about that. the resund region is a dromology project dromology is an often used concept in virilios terminology and philosophy of societal speed and acceleration (see primarily virilio 1986). dromos is greek for race (der derian 1998) or road (howitt 1998). from the beginning, a regional monotopia or maybe more precisely a regional dromotopia. jensen and richardson (2004) in their discourse analysis of european spatial policy and planning philosophy, introduce monotopia as a set of spatial visions of a european uniformed transnational space organized in order to optimize mobility and accessibility for people, goods, services, transactions and so on. it could however be argued that monotopia is the means to an even deeper rationality, dromotopia, a spatial vision expressing a european economic and social high-speed landscape calibrated to be as time-space compressed as possible in order to be competitive in the global economy. mobility and/or interaction across the sound are what count in the discourse of the resund region. the resund bridge has to be used in order to make the integration project credible and realize the institutionalization of the region. the resund bridge has to be used in order to legitimize the regional regime of ardent integration advocates as well. but, even if mobility is the regions raison dtre, any kind of mobility will not do. in this paper i would like to argue that the institutionalization of a region is very much about the orchestration of social and spatial mobility. the orchestration of mobility is, further on, an explicit bio-power technique. in this certain case, the regional institutionalization is about the creation of regional subjects that fits into the vision of an outstanding european cross-border region. at the same time, some existing forms of mobilities and transgressions are not wanted. as a consequence, the resund regime attempts to create the mobile resund subject at the same time as they try to immobilize other subjects and forms of movements. but the resund project contains more than the usual inclusion exclusion discursive mechanism. the valuable mobile regional subject is as excluded from the region as a geographical imagination as the unwanted mobile subject, since the resund citizen is only regarded as a bio-power resource that can help the regional regime to fulfil theirs spatial policy and planning visions. the valuable resund citizen is expected to have a dromocratic rather than a democratic function, that is, frequently travel across the region (work in one city, live in another, buy goods and services where it is cheapest, visit the regions periphery as a tourist and so on), rather than for instance question the regional idea per se or object against the lack of democratic transparency and the transfer of decisions-making power from the public sphere to opaque public-private organizations.this paper is divided in three main sections and a conclusion. firstly, the resund region as a geographical imagination and spatial vision is presented, together with some historic background. in the second section, the contemporary place marketing logic and geo-economic rivalry between regions in europe are shed light upon. in this section, the representations and attempts to create the resund citizen, a mobile and fast subject, are discussed. in the third section, giorgio agambens conclusion that the camp is the new bio-political paradigm is shortly referred to, followed by the attempts to immobilize the non-vikings in the region. in the conclusion, the european region as a dromocratic camp and the construction of cultures of mobility as the dark side of transgression are tentatively discussed.the resund region as an elitist spatial visionas early as the end of the 19th century, plans were drafted for a physical connection over the sound, between kbenhavn and malm in the south as well as between helsingborg and helsingr in the north. these plans were, however, embedded in a national context, as infrastructure between denmark and sweden. the idea of an integrated region first appeared in the late 1950s, as a vision of a future nordic megalopolis, gottman 1961. recity. however, for domestic policy reasons in sweden and denmark together with the oil crisis of 1973-1974, the political will on national level evaporated during the 1970s. local and regional actors continued to advocate a fixed link, but their voices were suppressed in a decade of enhanced environmental consciousness and economic stagflation. in the 1980s changed circumstances on a european level facilitated the comeback of the resund region. tangkjr 2000. the european round table of industrialists presented a set of measures that, in their opinion, should enhance european competitiveness. europe needed to be smaller and different kinds of barriers removed. missing links in infrastructure and was pointed out, and the non-existent link across resund was one of them. inspired by the increased importance of the european level as a strategic framework and geopolitical changes after 1989, the regional actors of integration advocates once again mobilized. especially, through involvement in the integration project, kbenhavn saw an opportunity to advance its geo-economic position in the sudden and unexpectedly opened baltic sea area. ek 2003.the institutionalization of the resund region speeded up and a plethora of organizations were established. parallel to the organizational strategic mobilization, the search for a new regional identity was initiated. the region should be a hub of excellence in the new europe, based on dynamic regions and cross-border co-operation. the marketing project birth of a region was carried out and the region was branded as a human capital, stressing the humane and tolerate social climate of the region as well as centre for a well-educated and diligent workforce.in a more analytical vein, the spatial vision a spatial vision is a set of images of the future, structured into spatial wholes. they express different arrangements of social activities, functionally and spatially, and use absolute, relative and relational conceptions of space in order to emphasize different aspects of the vision. the visions include aspects of infrastructure integration, the territorys relation to surrounding areas, how societal spheres such as business, work, education etc. are organized, how planning systems and urban structures are designed, how political governance and political institutions can be arranged, and how relations to business and other non-governmental interests are arranged. in abstract terms, spatial visions can be characterized as representations of space produced by doctors of space (lefebvre 1991). spatial visions are usually expressed in written texts, but the visualization of a vision plays a crucial part in its manifestation and circulation. visions are made tangible through different visualization technologies, such as drawings, computerized photographs, maps (both traditional and gis), and computer animation (ek 2003, ek & hallin, forthcoming). of the resund region can be said to rest on three geographical imaginations. here, geographical imaginations (following gregory 1994 and sparke 2000) are hypotheses or presumptions of how space and relations in space start and shape different societal processes, tendencies and changes, and determine the shapes that these processes, tendencies and changes are expected to take. these geographical imaginations are abstractions, based on available but subjectively chosen expert knowledge, normative ideas, ideological convictions and taken-for-granted basic knowledge that is articulated and canalised through discourses. the first is the view on the nation state as antiquated, that the nation state as a political organization of space is poorly equipped to handle the circumstances that has followed with the rise of the borderless world economy. that this is a too simplistic geographical imagination has been brought forward by several scholars, for instance hirst & thompson (1999), dicken (2003), neil brenner (2004). the second is that economic competition between regions in europe is increasing, and that this fact necessitates regional mobilization. storper 1997, scott 1998, hirotada et al 2000. the third geographical imagination is that europe more and more is becoming a network state. this notion regards both the institutional and organizational fabric and the european transport- and communications apparatuses. cooke & morgan 1993, barry 1996, hajer 2000, scott 2002, leitner et al 2003, jensen & richardson 2004. the spatial vision of the resund region can per se, be broken down in three story-lines. for hajer (1995), story-lines are a kind of generative sort of narrative which makes it possible for social agents and actors to use different discursive categories in order to give meaning to a physical and/or social phenomena. the story-line offer an understanding for a set of confusing discursive components, and at the same time it reduces (seemingly) the discursive complexity:story-lines are narratives on social reality through which elements from many different domains are combined and that provide actors with a set of symbolic references that suggest a common understanding. story-lines are essential political devices that allow the overcoming of fragmentation and the achievement of discursive closure (hajer 1995: 62). the first story-line is the evolution of regional organisms, that address the imperative to create or increase economic growth through an institutional co-ordination of regional assets as innovation capacities, spatial proximity, learning capabilities, new forms of governance, entrepreneurial approaches, the cultural sector, creativity and so on. florida (1995), amin (1999), asheim & isaksen (2002), hudson (2002), dunford (2003). the underlying world hypothesis buttimer (1993). here is organicism, and regions are by its advocates regarded as organisms that either evolve or perish in the increased competition. in order to survive, regions need to secure theirs economic lebensraum, even on behalf of other regions (see next section). ek (2003).the second story-line is the high-speed region, stressing the necessity of creating a time-space compressed region, that is regional monotopia. jensen & richardson (2004), see also footnote above. this story-line supports the first one as better infrastructure; faster transportation- and communication systems and accessibility are means to create regional growth and increased competitiveness. ek (2003), see also richardson & jensen (2000). the underlying world hypothesis here is mechanism, as the region is imagined as a traffic machine, functionally linked to a larger machine, the european network. ek (2003).the third story-line also supports the first one and expresses the need for a societal integration. the story goes as following: the societies around resund were separated socially and culturally during the era of the territorial state. now, in the era of european regions, a social and cultural integration will be beneficial for everyone, as the labor market, the higher education, culture and entertainment supply and the consumer goods market will magnify. ek (2003). finally, the underlying world hypothesis here is formism and the societies around the resund is described as a mosaic with a set of similarities (similar language and culture, a common history before 1658 and after 2000) that makes a societal integration realistic. ek (2003). the social and cultural differences that do exist are interpreted as complementing resources that will create synergy effects and economies of scale (if only the institutional barriers could be dismantled, something the national politicians should have done by now).the spatial vision of the resund region is in its essence an elite vision, since it has been developed in obscure policy spaces away from the public gaze. jensen & richardson (2004: 5). even if politicians, indirectly representing the public have been engaged in the process, theirs part are nevertheless limited. preparatory work, the production of specific knowledge and material and the writing of policy documents, visions and place marketing materials have mainly been done in quasi-official organizations, by external consult firms and the local chamber of commerce. for example, wolff-ohlins, stationed in lon