Bulletin n. 1/2013 | ||
June 2013 | ||
Rune Dahl Fitjar |
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Region building in the Artic periphery: the discursive construction of a petroleum region | ||
in Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography , volume 95 n.1 , 2013 , 71-88 | ||
As social communities, regions are built through discourses that convey images of what the region is. Regions are built for a variety of reasons, including political and economic ones. This implies that changing economic circumstances have the potential to change the discourses on regional identities. Petroleum discoveries represent such a potential change in the economic circumstances of a region. This study of an emerging petroleum region in the north of Norway shows that a regional identity discourse is used to claim ownership over the petroleum resources in the Barents Sea in order to justify the need for a production plan that maximizes regional economic benefits. In this way, the discovery of petroleum represents an opportunity to reinforce regional identities around a set of common interests. However, “the region” is vaguely defined in this discourse, being used in reference to two different scales: Finnmark and Northern Norway. | ||