Following the calls for context-sensitive policy mobility research, I propose to analyze policy mobilities as transformation of dispositives. Michel Foucault's context-sensitive notion of dispositive stresses the context-specific, heterogeneous relations between linguistic and non-linguistic practices, subjectivities and materialities as well as the influence of power/knowledge and sedimented features in policymaking. These sensitivities are valuable contributions to policy mobility research.
I draw on empirical research on “creative city” policies, which are re-embedded in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg, to illustrate that line of argumentation. I reconstruct and compare related (sub-)dispositives: the mobile creative city policies, the historical and current contexts of the policies' re-embedding. Consequently, I use arrangements of networking as an empirical lens to understand the differing logics that shape the re-embedding of creative city policies in the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg and the mutual transformation of policies and their contexts.
To be “creative” has become one of the fastest-moving imperatives in urban development. Policy mobility research addresses the increasing spread and application of such translocal and transscalar policies. Policy mobility approaches evolved from a critical debate on policy diffusion and policy transfer literatures, which are criticized for their methodological nationalism and the assumption of a rational, linear and literal transfer process (McCann and Ward, 2012; Peck and Theodore, 2010). In contrast, policy mobility approaches conceptualize “policymaking as a global-relational, social and spatial process, which interconnects and constitutes actors, institutions and territories” (McCann and Ward, 2012:328).
According to McCann and Ward (2012:328–330) policy mobility approaches have four features in common. Firstly, they draw on a certain set of literatures with different emphases: sociological work on mobilities, materialist political–economic perspectives and assemblage approaches. Secondly, mobility is not understood as a movement from A to B. Instead, Cook (2008), McCann (2011a) and Ward (2006) conceptualize the mobility of policies as contingent, contextualized and power-laden processes of disembedding, mobilizing and re-embedding policies into specific, locally differentiated contexts. Thirdly, these processes of mobility mutually transform the policies, actors, institutions, things and places involved (Cook, 2008:791; McCann, 2011a:111). The local context with its development projects is of paramount importance regarding the transformation of policies (Ward, 2006:56–57). Consequently, there are highly differentiated “creative city” policy geographies around the globe (Prince, 2010). Fourthly, the common methodological set includes ethnographies that follow people, policies and places as well as the study of situations.
Against this background, I am following calls for more context-sensitive policy mobility research. Power–knowledge relations and more extensive temporalities are important dimensions within processes of re-embedding that need to be more explicitly and context-sensitively addressed. I argue in favor of analyzing the re-embedding of mobile policies as transformation of dispositives because a dispositive perspective offers conceptual and empirical tools to address these two dimensions. Consequently, I present a non-presentist dispositive analytical research design drawing on walking interviews, photo interviews and coding. These methods allow for analyzing the powerful interplay of linguistic practices and materialities and are sensitive to more extensive temporalities. I draw on empirical research on the re-embedding of creative city policies in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg (EMN) to illustrate that line of argumentation. Consequently, I reconstruct and compare related (sub-)dispositives: the mobile creative city policies as well as the historical and current contexts of the policies' re-embedding in the EMN. I use arrangements of “networking” as an empirical lens to understand the differing logics that shape the re-embedding of creative city policies in the EMN and the mutual transformation of policies and its contexts. Finally, I discuss the general potential of dispositive approaches for research on policy mobilities.
To begin, I follow two calls for context-sensitive policy mobility research. Firstly, the context-specific “how” of re-embedding mobile policies needs to be investigated in detail, because this process “is inherently selective with certain policies, practices, discourses, actors, institutions and methods being used whilst others are sidelined or silenced” (Cook, 2008:791). The reification of mobility and its close relation to mutation are problematic in this regard. It remains unclear which elements of heterogeneous policies, such as creative cities, are moving, where they mutate and how they become stabilized in the context of their re-embedding. How do “contextual enrolments” and “local articulations” work (Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015:390–391)? Instead of tracing mobile elements of policies, we might ask how cities or metropolitan regions “arrive at” (Robinson, 2015:831) certain policies and make them local. Studies also need time to research elements of policies already in place because they shape possibilities (Temenos and McCann, 2013:351–352). This perspective on the re-embedding of policies resonates with the call to do “slow research” (Kuus, 2015:838) on policymaking, to be sensitive to ambiguities and spatiotemporal contexts. It also meets the calls for more longitudinal and genealogical perspectives on policy processes, which sensitize scholars to the historical embeddedness of policymaking (McCann et al., 2013:587; Temenos and Baker, 2015:841). Policy processes might encompass different temporalities and modes of policymaking like gradual, repetitive and delayed processes. Even formerly “unsuccessful” policy elements may become important in present policymaking (Wood, 2015). Thus, policy mobility research needs to be more attentive to slower transformations and the interconnections of discourses, subjectivities and materialities that are associated with vague and affirmative ideas like creative cities, which might travel without the intentional efforts of policymakers (Künkel, 2015:13–14).
Consequently, the context-specific “how” and the complex and contradictory long-term transformation of relations require more attention in debates on urban policy. How are “creativity” and “networking” actually co-constructed by different communities, in different types of cities and countries? Context-sensitive research on the long-term reproduction and transformation of policies in local contexts, on different scales, in different departments and by different groups and the broader framing contexts is crucial to answer these questions. Therefore, we need to go beyond policy and marketing documents and linear methodologies. Furthermore, we need to go beyond the focus on Anglophone and European capitals or “world cities” to discover the variations and contingencies in urban policymaking in other countries and smaller cities or regions like the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg (Borén and Young, 2013:1801–1806).
Secondly, we need to ask why the context-specific “how” becomes and remains “plausible” in the policy process. What legitimizes the selection and arrangement of policy elements? The discursive construction of “success” and of “appropriate” policy elements that “should” remain or become part of a policy arrangement is important to understand the context-specific “why” of the policy process (Cook, 2008:775–777; McCann, 2011b:144; Temenos and McCann, 2013:350). Consequently, power/knowledge in policymaking and particularly the role of linguistic practices need to be thoroughly addressed. Hence, policy mobility scholars should draw on insights of political science and other social sciences instead of superficial, disciplinary demarcation (Künkel, 2015:12–13). The turn of policy mobility research to post-structuralist approaches such as assemblage thinking indicates a (self-)critical shift to issues of power–knowledge relations, transformation, distributed agencies beyond human actors, contradictions and multiplicity in policymaking (Künkel, 2015:8–9; Pütz et al., 2013:88, 97). This also means not to a priori conceptualize these processes as coherent and exclusively neoliberal (Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015:391; Künkel, 2015:15–18).
Networking and creativity are symbolically and materially complex arrangements. I use arrangements of networking or the interaction of people, firms and institutions as a magnifying glass to understand the differing logics that context-specifically shape the re-embedding of creative city policies in the EMN and the struggles between them. The reconstruction of networking allows for indicating the context-specific multiplicity in the process of re-embedding creative city policies in the EMN and its relation to different power–knowledge relations and their manifestations. Networking is a suitable empirical lens because it is important to the scripts of creative cities, to the former and current policies in the EMN as well as to all groups involved in the process of re-embedding. However, it is co-constructed differently each time. Consequently, the broad notion of networking will be differentiated in Sect. 5.
I draw on the concept of dispositives by Michel Foucault to understand how
networking is actually enacted and what legitimizes the context-specific
modes of networking. This concept allows for analyzing the complexity of
the materially and symbolically heterogeneous arrangements of networking.
Moreover, it is sensitive to power–knowledge relations and especially to the relations
of linguistic practices and material elements that co-produce networking.
Further, the genealogical dispositive perspective is sensitive to change
and the historical embeddedness of policymaking, that plausibilizes certain
modes of networking while sidelining others in the context of the EMN.
According to Foucault (1980:194–195) a dispositive is firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting
of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions,
laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral
and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid.
Such are the elements of the [dispositive]. The [dispositive] itself is the
[network] that can be established between these elements. Secondly, what I
am trying to identify in this [dispositive] is precisely the nature of the
connection that can exist between these heterogeneous elements.
[
Thus, a dispositive approach meets the calls for context and power sensitivity. Furthermore, it offers a coherent perspective on important features of policy mobilities and the context-specific “how” and “why” of the co-construction of networking. Firstly, Deleuze (1992:160) distinguishes two dimensions of the dispositive on a conceptual level: “curves of visibility and curves of enunciation”, which reflect the translocal and transscalar relations of discourses, practices, subjectivities and materialities in short power–knowledge relations of policy mobility. Enunciation refers to the linguistic, discursive practices, whereas visibility points to non-linguistic, discursive and non-discursive practices as well as subjects and objects. The notions of subjectification and objectification point to the discursive construction of a subject or object (e.g., what is regularly said about a building) and subjectivation and objectivation to the non-discursive capabilities of subjects and objects (e.g., what a building is able to do or does). The double terms subjectification/subjectivation and objectification/objectivation reflect that agency is distributed among symbolic and material elements, which therefore cannot be separated (Bührmann and Schneider, 2008:52–74) (Fig. 1). Thus, the dispositive approach emphasizes the material dimension of power and its interplay with discursive practices – linguistic practices in particular (Mattissek and Wiertz, 2014:158–162). This reflects the socio-material co-constructivist Foucaultian notion of power as a relational, immanent and distributed multiplicity of micro-powers (Foucault et al., 2008:1098–1099). However, the discursive dimension is methodologically privileged, because not all interview statements refer to materials and because the agency of materials or non-discursive practices is always discursively mediated. Dispositive approaches draw on well-established Foucaultian discourse-analysis methods to address the important dimension of language, which takes part in the constitution of power–knowledge.
Dispositive of power.
Secondly, two different dispositive lines of forces come to the fore, which context-specifically shape the re-embedding of policies and the enactment of networking: “lines of stratification or sedimentation, and lines leading to the present day or creativity” (Deleuze, 1992:165). Lines of sedimentation point to context-specific stable constructions of power–knowledge relations related to materiality, unquestioned, routinized and embodied knowledge, institutions and practices. Especially these taken-for-granted lines of sedimentation shape policymaking and emerging modes of networking in the EMN. Nevertheless, sedimentation is not about determinism but about a “dispositional logic” (Raffnsøe et al., 2011:199) that opens up certain spaces of possibilities. Sedimentation is powerful, but these lines are fragile, have fissures and can be realigned or opened up by lines of creativity. Lines of creativity refer to transformation via subjectivation and related practices that take part in the production of alternative modes of networking, for instance (see Bussolini, 2010:88–93).
Thus, the dispositive concept offers a perspective on change that sensitizes for the breaks and fissures, while at the same time accounting for the historical embeddedness of policymaking in a genealogical perspective. This means, the “already-assembled” (sub-)dispositives shape the processes of mobilizing, translating and re-embedding policies and the enactment of networking in EMN. Therefore, dispositives – such as creative cities and established “cluster policies” and the related arrangements of networking in the EMN – do not succeed each other, they co-exist and transform each other. These struggles are moments of actualization and make some of the logics that shape policymaking visible. Consequently, I conceptualize these processes as transformation of dispositives.
The European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg is an interesting case, on which only scattered research exists because the region is not typically associated with creativity. The neighborhood of Muggenhof in the west of Nuremberg has been labeled “problematic” due to more than 9000 job losses, increased unemployment rates and vacancies after the bankruptcies of the mail-order business Quelle, the electronics manufacturer AEG and other traditional industrial companies along the Fürther Straße (Weber et al., 2013:111). The Fürther Straße is an emotionally and symbolically meaningful and powerful place for many citizens because it represents the “traditional industrial” Nuremberg and its decline (PI 1). It is a central part of an important line of sedimentation that represents the dominant understanding of how economic development should be like in the EMN and especially in Nuremberg: industrial and technology oriented.
The subsequent and continuing problematization of negative effects on the
image of the neighborhood and the metropolitan region legitimized political
measures drawing on creative city policies. Areas like the former AEG-site
could then be re-imagined as spaces with much potential, especially for
the “creative class” (Weber et al., 2013:111). Consequently, the
creative city script turned out to be performative as it was efficiently
translated into projects like Second Chance (KUF, 2017), part of
Second Chance was a 3.5-year, interurban regeneration project
for brownfields in Nuremberg, Leipzig, Ljubljana, Krakow and Venice. The
EU's European Regional Development Fund financed the total budget of
EUR 2 882 700 with EUR 2 269 080. The EUR 650 000 project
budget of the project partners MIB and the municipality of Nuremberg was
funded with EUR 485 000 by the European Regional Development Fund.
Second Chance is part of the revitalization of the 168 000 m
All projects represent responses to an “urgent need” for mainly economic urban and regional development in the west of Nuremberg and the EMN and the connection of translocal and transscalar processes of re-embedding. These responses largely fit the responses of the broader framing contexts represented by the EMN. The EMN wants to become a Home for Creatives by systematically fostering cultural and creative industries based on the first metropolitan report on cultural and creative industries. The report and the vision were developed by the metropolitan forums on Economy and Infrastructure and Culture (EMN, 2010). The case study investigates these creativity-based responses using the co-existence of different arrangements of networking as an empirical lens and asks: (1) How is networking actually enacted? (2) Which networking-related elements of creative cities are used, transformed or ignored and why? (3) How does this reflect the multiplicity of creative city thinking and doing in the EMN?
Comparative research design and context-sensitive methods.
Usually researchers analyze these complex arrangements and the “how” and “why” of policy mobility drawing on a standard set of qualitative methods: interviews, textual analysis or observations. The methodology of following facilitates a presentism that reproduces fast policy and does not explore histories and effects of re-embedding policies in detail. Although discourse analysis offers means to thoroughly analyze histories, we need to go beyond these predictable and prefiguring methodologies that focus on texts and sometimes visual data (Temenos and McCann, 2013:351–352). Dispositive analysis aims to overcome the presentism and the linear methodologies and allows a flexible and experimental research design, which is sensitive to power–knowledge relations, materiality and more extensive temporalities.
The methodological operationalization of a dispositive analysis is reconstructive (Bührmann and Schneider, 2008:110). I conceptualize the policies and the contexts of re-embedding as (sub-)dispositives. A comparison of the reconstructed subdispositives shows the context-specific variations and the tension between sedimentation and transformation. To understand these processes, I compare the arrangements of networking in four related (sub-)dispositives that make up, what I call, the emerging heterogeneous dispositive “Creative European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg”. (1) I reviewed academic literatures on “creatives” and networking, which represent the discursive, translocal and transscalar scripts of the mobile creative city policies. The literature review represents possible points of reference for re-embedding and (re-)arranging networking in the metropolitan area and On AEG in particular. The re-embedding of creative city policies connects the scripts to the EMN (see Sects. 5.1 and 5.2.1). The comparison of the scripts with the data gathered in the EMN allows for reconstructing the context-specific accents and omissions, thus the making the scripts “local” within the dispositive Creative Metropolitan Region Nuremberg. (2) The wider framing contexts represented by the policy document on the metropolitan development vision Home for Creatives reflect metropolitan political measures and shape the re-embedding On AEG. I consider Home for Creatives as a comprehensive subdispositive of the Creative European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg. Moreover, lines of sedimentation influence these policy processes. (3) I reconstruct these lines from the policy document “Development model for the Economic Region of Nuremberg” (IHK Nürnberg für Mittelfranken et al., 2005), which represents the influential already-assembled context: “the cluster-based ideas before creative cities”, where creative cities became re-embedded (see Sect. 5.2.2). I conceptualize it as a well-established comprehensive subdispositive that becomes realigned within the emerging dispositive and influences the process of re-embedding. (4) Furthermore, creative city policies are re-embedded into the regeneration project Second Chance On AEG, which is considered as a less comprehensive, specific and localized subdispositive that represents further variations of (not-)networking (see Sect. 5.2.3) (Fig. 2).
Empirically, I draw on a literature review and three slow and intensive qualitative methods to grasp these complex arrangements and their transformation. Slow and intensive also means to visit and observe the field during the preparation, conduction and postprocessing of the interviews at On AEG. Firstly, I draw on three walking interviews with four participants. One walking interview was a “real” tour including a group of Instagram users and three guest artists (WI 1–3, ca. 6 h 15 min). Walking interviews are more attentive to materialities and situated practices. In comparison to the usual qualitative stakeholder interviews, they allow one to be present on the site, to make observations and to reconstruct not only dominant linguistic practices but also the role of situated practices, spatiality and materiality on site. At the same time, walking interviews have the advantage of reconstructing histories and wider framing contexts in contrast to presentist ethnographic research (Evans and Jones, 2011). The interviewees work at On AEG from a rather conceptual or developmental perspective. They represent the most important players regarding different powerful imaginations of creativity and networking: the investor, the KUF and the Zentrifuge e.V., a networking platform for cultural and creative industries and an exhibition space representing the “free art and subcultural scene” (WI 1). All interviewees designed the routes of the walk themselves and consequently had an important say on the topics. Secondly, I draw on three participatory photo interviews with “creatives”, four artists from building 74 of On AEG (PI 1–3, ca. 4 h 32 min). Photo interviews offer privileged access to materialities, memories and atmospheres. In contrast to usual qualitative interviews, the visual material encourages one to talk freely on topics that might have not been mentioned otherwise. The interviewees took 52 photos to which they hold the rights. This is an empowering moment in interviewing that helps to create joint knowledge (Kolb, 2008). Thus, both interview formats empower the participants and facilitate gathering a different kind of qualitative data compared to usual qualitative interviews. The data include and make visible the context-specific interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic practices, subjectivities and things. All interviews were conducted in German from 2013 to 2015 and mainly represent subdispositive (4). I analyzed the transcripts to reconstruct notions of networking and used the dispositive vocabulary as a second layer of analysis. Thirdly, I coded 226 pages in the two policy documents of the EMN representing the subdispositives (2) and (3) with ATLAS.ti to reconstruct the linguistic, discursive rules of networking (Glasze et al., 2009). I started to thematically code networking as defined above. Then, I coded the heterogeneous elements that make up networking using the dispositive vocabulary as a second layer of analysis. Finally, I coded the connectivity patterns. As opposed to a policy review, this process allows for systematically reconstructing the powerful linguistic practices that constitute different notions of creativity and networking as well as the transformation of these practices. Codes and code relations that are stable over time represent lines of sedimentation, whereas new ones represent lines of creativity. The subsequent comparison of the patterns of the (sub-)dispositives is important to explain how creative cities are actually re-embedded, which transformations took place and why. This mix of methods allows for the “slow”, “deep and sustained” research, which is called for to understand the “prevailing modes of production and legitimation” (Temenos and Baker, 2015:842) in policymaking.
The literature review represents possible points of reference for re-embedding creative city policies and networking. It showed that creative city policies have been quite mobile and performative since the 1990s (Borén and Young, 2013; Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015; Lange et al., 2009; Peck, 2012; Prince, 2010; Sailer and Papenheim, 2007). A multiplicity of translocal and transscalar policy assemblages has emerged emphasizing different elements of “the creative-economy script as a point of reference for new policy practices”, as Dzudzek and Lindner put it (2015:389–390). The script problematizes the structural transformation of industrial towards knowledge societies, deindustrialization and the rise of a new economic sector called creative industries. The same applies to altered norms, values, social structures, patterns and rhythms of everyday life changing the ways of working and living (Florida, 2004; Weber et al., 2013:112). Based on this interpretation of economic and societal transformation, creativity is introduced as a problem-solving capacity and has become a locational factor for cities and regions in global competition almost without being questioned (Weber et al., 2013:112–114).
This powerful problematization legitimizes the move towards creative city policies. The heterogeneous political interventions mostly target creative individuals or creative milieus or infrastructure for the creative industries or place-branding (Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015:393). The context-specific reading and performance of the creative city script is part of the power play that I want to analyze. Richard Florida, for instance, argues in his (in the EMN) much-discussed account of the “creative class” that the 3Ts – talent, technology and tolerance – are the vital factors for regional development. Soft locational factors should be promoted, because the talented “creative class” favors “tolerant”, “open-minded” and “diverse” places to live, work and innovate. From this perspective, innovation, technology and talent finally foster a “successful” development of cities and regions, generate economic growth and new jobs (Florida, 2004; see also Weber et al., 2013:113).
The EMN case study revealed a differing understanding that context-specifically transforms creative city thinking and consequently the arrangements of networking. Technology and talent are much more naturally understood and intensely embraced and translated than tolerance in the context of the EMN due to sedimented “high-tech-cluster” dispositive patterns of urban and regional development (EMN, 2010; IHK Nürnberg für Mittelfranken et al., 2005; WI 1). This sedimented dispositive arrangement of power–knowledge promotes a technology-oriented reading of creativity that targets creative milieus and infrastructure rather than individuals.
The literature review revealed a dominant understanding of “creatives” as spontaneous, networking-oriented people. I will first reconstruct this notion and afterwards problematize it by pointing out different, co-existing practices of (not-)networking. According to the literature review, creativity is about experimentally (re-)arranging “old” and “new” cultural materialities. It involves “scenes”, “shared stories” (Schwanhäusser, 2008:114–115), ideas of spaces as well as their material exploration and appropriation. Practices of networking, space and place are constituted as essential resources for creativity (Florida, 2004:5–6). “Creatives” use rapidly emerging project-based and experimental cultures, symbolically charged places and self-made open spaces. This new economy operates in small, dynamic and short-term networks and scenes, which are informal and non-binding yet supporting (Lange, 2008; Lange et al., 2009:21–22; Sailer and Papenheim, 2007:121–123). These networking practices often take place on neighborhood or street level in heterogeneous places, “in which we find less formal acquaintances” (Florida, 2004:226).
Processes of policy mobility discursively, linguistically in particular, connect these imaginations of project-oriented, small and informal networks to the contexts of the EMN and On AEG. Accordingly, these imaginations have also been reconstructed in the EMN data. The local free art and subcultural scene locally articulates similar imaginations and translates these arrangements into special places and situations like exhibition openings, artist bars, open workshops or the networking event Creative Monday (PI 1; PI 2; PI 3, WI 1).
Overall, the analysis of the case study showed three complementary and contradictory notions of culture and creativity: (a) as free art and subcultural scene as also discussed in the literature, (b) as technological innovation or (c) as sociocultural activities (PI 1 – WI 3). Thus, networking is also embedded in relations beyond “creative to creative”. The three notions support different arrangements of networking and create different publics and subjects. The analysis shows that lines of sedimentation in discourses, subjectivities and materialities context-specifically shape these multiple, co-existing arrangements of “(not-)networking”. Subsequently, I reconstruct these transformational processes zooming in from the current and the long-established policy arrangements of the EMN over the whole site of ON AEG into the buildings 74 and 75, where most of the artists live and work.
In the following paragraphs, I analyze lines of sedimentation, which connect the logics of the subdispositive Home for Creatives (2010) to the cluster-based high-tech region (2005). These lines transform the re-embedding of creative cities in the EMN. These powerful discursively and institutionally sedimented patterns also shape the development possibilities of On AEG, because informal, small-scale networking activities become invisible in official documents and for funding projects of the EMN. Moreover, these lines amplify the understanding of culture and creativity as technological innovation.
Spatialization of networking-related places and spaces of On AEG. Adapted from Google Earth Pro 2016.
The reconstruction of the dominant linguistic practices and the related objectifications in the policy papers showed that networking is highly relevant to the new and established metropolitan policy arrangements. Networking is discursively constructed as a crucial strategy for development. Networking activities and spaces are considered as essential to strengthen the promising cultural and creative industries. Established institutions like the Creative Monday initiated by Zentrifuge e.V. or the cultural center Z-Bau and new forms of networking like “co-working spaces” represent innovative and suited ways of networking according to the EMN. Trade fairs, “creative centers” and symposia with round tables provide the material and symbolic infrastructures to create awareness and to facilitate communication and networking (EMN, 2010:52, 130–135). The combination of measures such as fairs, symposia and festivals indicates that the preferred activities, spaces and ways of networking are institutionalized, formal and of large scale (see EMN, 2010:127–130).
Why is that so convincing in the context of the EMN? As Peck pointed out creative city policies are made to travel. They can be easily mapped onto existing arrangements by policy actors without demanding too much change and financial resources while being able to claim to be innovative (Peck, 2012:472–476, 479–482). The reconstruction of the Creative Metropolitan Region Nuremberg and its arrangements of networking shows similarities. Networking between firms, research and education has been constructed as an important strategy in Nuremberg's policy arrangements long before the re-embedding of creative city policies. One of the most prominent examples is the cluster Medical Valley, in which successful networking between local companies and R&D institutions has been politically supported along the whole value chain for more than a decade (EMN, 2010:93–135; IHK Nürnberg für Mittelfranken et al., 2005:44–45, 51–52). This rather formal and large-scale dispositional logic of connecting middle-sized and global companies and institutions of the high-tech-region Nuremberg also shapes the development vision Home for Creatives. The sedimented focus on formal, large-scale arrangements of networking is plausible, because technology and talent as well as the related practices of networking have been “verified” as “successful” by the “already-assembled” cluster policies. This reflects the dominant understanding of culture and creativity as technological innovation and a focus on industries, not people (see IHK Nürnberg für Mittelfranken et al., 2005:91–97). Moreover, the knowledge-intense and innovative service providers, which have been crucial to the cluster policies, can be interpreted as “discursive ancestors” of the cultural and creative industries. A dispositional logic of connecting “established” and “new, innovative” companies along established value chains makes that reasonable. Consequently, the corresponding and sedimented formal, large-scale arrangements of networking with innovative service providers seem to be suited for “creatives” today as well and reinforce an understanding of creativity and culture as technological innovation.
A “depressing” hallway in building 74 – the co-construction of a barrier to interaction. Source: artist from a participatory photo interview.
We need to go beyond the policy level to reconstruct the variations and
contingencies of networking and policymaking. Therefore, the case study
also analyzes how networking is or is not arranged in the “creative
spaces” of On AEG. Figure 3 offers a spatialization of the networking-related
places and spaces referred to by the interviewees. Interviewees describe On
AEG as a place with a good mixture of networking, collaboration, inspiration
and retreat. Circles of friends spread the opportunity to rent an atelier on
the site by word of mouth. One artist in particular, who was recommended to
the investor by the “creative community” in Leipzig, influenced the
selection of artists in the beginning. Networking is mostly project-based
like the planning and execution of the annual trans-regional event
The reconstruction indicated discursive, material and atmospheric co-obstructions to interaction in the atelier buildings 74 and 75, which transform arrangements of “(not-)networking”. There are just a few straightforward professional networks. Much of the interaction, networking and collaboration in the buildings 74 and 75 depends on the artists' circles of friends in the immediate vicinity. Moreover, co-presence, informal and spontaneous networking is rare due to family reasons or projects elsewhere. At the same time, the barrier to informal and spontaneous networking is co-constructed by the interior building structures and artists' practices. There are still no windows between the ateliers and hallways and only a few artists slightly transformed the former office architecture of AEG. In addition, only a few artists keep their doors open deliberately. Both aspects co-produce a feel of being closed (PI 1; PI 2; WI 2b).
Further related elements that influence “(not-)networking” are the hallways of the atelier building. The photo interviews (PI 1–3) pointed to the objectivation, the material capabilities and affective qualities of the dark and narrow hallway and its relation to the linguistic and non-linguistic objectification of its interior design as “depressing” and “non-communicative” as expressed in the statements of the artists (see Fig. 4).
Adapted routes of the walking interviews. Adapted from Google Earth Pro 2016.
That atmosphere today is still an obstacle to interaction. Consequently, artists only go to their ateliers or the place close to the staircase with its indoor plants and a round table, where all the organizational meetings take place. Temporarily there used to be an “open kitchen”, a “regular lunch table” run by new tenants that served as a community place, but it does not exist anymore due to a lack of time. Thus, there is no actual meeting place. A couple of artists annotated this, but fire protection and escape plans limit the improvement of the corridor (PI 1, PI 3, WI 2b). On the one hand, the context-specific relations of objectifications and objectivations hinder interaction. They are not to be analytically separated and point to different aspects of how and why networking is or is not arranged.
On the other hand, the analysis of the interviews also identified newly created places for spontaneous, informal, small-scale networking at On AEG. New venues like the coffee roasting house Rösterei and dynamic ateliers represent lines of creativity, which make this place livelier, give it a more welcoming atmosphere and allow informal interaction. The café Pforte, the former gate, was transformed from a barrier into a “networking location” for all groups on the site including visitors. It also was an important meeting place for the “creative community” in the beginning. Nevertheless, the “creative community” lost pioneering spirit in developing creative spaces on the site and in the EMN after a decrease in open spaces at On AEG due to ongoing renovations and met less at the Pforte (PI 1; PI 2; PI 3; WI 3). Additionally, the Zentrifuge association struggled with hosting economically successful events due to legal issues on noise protection with residents on the site. Meanwhile, the Zentrifuge has left the site (WI 1).
Furthermore, the artists are depicted as “autonomously thinking and acting beings” (WI 1) that “tick differently” (WI 2a). Artists identify themselves as “mavericks” (PI 1), working all “alone” (PI 3; WI 2b) most of the time, concentrated on his/her work. This subjectification/subjectivation is another discursively produced barrier to interaction. Moreover, some firms and institutions are reluctant to interact with artists because they focus on their own work or cannot imagine any connections. The translational effort would have to be supported by a coordinating position (WI 1; WI 2a). The fragmentation is an effect of the dispositive arrangement, especially architectonic lines of sedimentation, missing spaces and institutions and the powerful identities (re-)produced by discourses of belonging to a different community without overlaps to other communities. These linguistic and non-linguistic practices, subjectifications/subjectivations and objectifications/objectivations have an influence on the co-construction of “(not-)networking” at On AEG. They impede communication and spontaneous, informal, small-scale networking between all tenants. Hence, creating and connecting communities “is not here” (WI 1).
Furthermore, the architectonic arrangement and related practices co-produce identities of a “northern” and a “southern” part of the site. This objectification is related to the material division of the site in a northern and a southern area by the Muggenhofer Straße. Most of the ateliers are on the separated northern part. Thus, it feels like visiting the “big brother” on the other side of the street (PI 1). The differing structure of the two parts reinforces that division. The southern part is more compact and vibrant. It has courtyards, more tenants, shops, restaurants and cafes, which support networking. The northern part has a big parking lot and no meeting points. Therefore, there are no occasional customers. “We are isolated from all the fun on the other side” (PI 1). Consequently, some artists construe the buildings 74 and 75 as “our buildings”, while the ones on the other side are “alien” (PI 1). The everyday contact between the KUF, which is located on the south side, and the northern part of the site is rare. There have not been any events of the municipal office on the north side, for instance (WI 3). This arrangement of practices and objectifications/objectivations has disruptive effects and reinforces the division. The northern area of the site “really feels like kilometers away anyway” (WI 1). This division has been reflected in the routes of two of three walking interviews (Fig. 5). The few interactions also reflect the KUF's understanding of culture and creativity as sociocultural activities, which aims at interaction with citizens rather than with artists. In summary, this means that different audiences, arrangements of networking and creative city policies are enacted at On AEG.
Moreover, the former gate (
Entanglements of lines of sedimentation and creativity also support the co-construction of an identity that separates On AEG and citizens. The high threshold of the site is an effect of the linguistic and material protection of “trade secrets” in facilities of the Technical Faculty and industrial enterprises, which represent culture and creativity as technological innovation. The material cameras and signs signify not to enter the buildings. The sedimented image of the private former factory site is still in place (PI 1; PI 3; WI 1; WI 2a). Moreover, citizens construe the site as an artists' site today. Consequently, some residents say, “I still haven't internalized that this now might be a part of the district for me as well” (WI 3). There are almost no casual costumers on the site without events because of the high material and symbolic barriers (WI 3). The site and the buildings 74 and 75 seem rather inaccessible for average citizens apart from the event Open On AEG. The event is a moment of rupture, a line of creativity that opens the site for people that usually do not feel welcome here. It is an opportunity to visit the site once a year and experience the developments of the artists and the site. Visitors can ask questions without reservations and artists can better show and explain their work in the informal setting of their ateliers with all props on site (PI 1; PI 2; WI 2b). The reconstruction revealed that these sedimented objectivations of the former industrial use by AEG, the spatial design and their objectification by current linguistic and non-linguistic practices constitute a “secretive site”. Thus, there are intertwined material and symbolic barriers to interacting with the neighborhood of Muggenhof with the exception of event-based ruptures.
Overall, I reconstructed multiple arrangements of networking: networking as an informal, small-scale arrangement at On AEG, networking as a formal, large-scale arrangement in past and current policies of the EMN, and arrangements that hinder networking at On AEG. While the literature on creative cities and parts of the interview data highlight smaller and informal activities on street level, the dominant logic of the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg's past and current policy arrangements emphasizes formal and large-scale practices of networking, like fairs and symposia. The sedimented logics of the metropolitan policies aim at connecting firms and institutions rather than “diverse, creative individuals”. Architectural arrangements, spatial and interior design play an active role when it comes to networking at On AEG or not. At the same time, interviewees describe these material aspects as “hindering interaction” between (creative) tenants and the neighborhood of Muggenhof. This also applies to the powerful identities of a “secretive site”, a “northern” and a “southern” part as well as of the “autonomous and lonely artist subject”, which are effects of linguistic and non-linguistic practices and related materialities. The context-specific relations of these elements transform or even impede networking at On AEG. Nevertheless, more informal and appreciated networking practices like co-working or the events Open On AEG and Creative Monday have been introduced to the dispositive policy arrangement of the metropolitan region representing lines of creativity.
The innovative and slow dispositive analytical research design offered detailed insights into how networking is actually enacted and made reasonable in the context of the EMN. The reconstructions of networking showed how different co-existing arrangements of histories, discourses, practices, subjectivities and materialities co-construct different and complex processes of re-embedding creative city policies. The comparison also demonstrated the influences of sedimented local arrangements on policymaking. Consequently, mutual transformations became traceable. Moreover, the reconstruction of networking illustrated how talent and technology are actually enacted and embraced. Moreover, it showed why this is a “reasonable” re-embedding of creative city policies in the context of the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg.
The dispositive analysis provided analytical terms like objectification/objectivation to grasp how material and symbolic elements inseparably co-produce variations of networking and creativity. The power- and knowledge-sensitive perspective allowed for analyzing the tension between continuity, fluid change and ruptures in policy processes. Powerful lines of sedimentation and dispositional logics of networking integrate and transform the two dispositives of a cluster-based high-tech region and the Creative European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg and legitimize the political foci. This illustrates the sensitivity of the dispositive perspective for the relational and transformational effects of well-established arrangements, their legitimization through linguistic practices and their influence on processes of re-embedding.
Consequently, a dispositive perspective not only offers valuable tools to reconstruct the relation of material and symbolic elements and their powerful effects, it also allows for mutually analyzing forces of stabilization and destabilization as two important dimensions in processes of re-embedding. This combination of sensitivities makes the dispositive perspective a valuable contribution to the analysis of policy mobilities.
The data are not available due to the confidential nature of the interviews. In case of inquiries, please contact the author.
The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.
I want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Moreover, I would like to thank the Staedtler Foundation for the funding of the project “„Heimat für Kreative!“: Übersetzungen der Idee „kreative Stadt“ in den spezifisch lokalen Kontext der Europäischen Metropolregion Nürnberg”, which provided important resources for the paper. Furthermore, I would like to thank my PhD and project supervisor Georg Glasze and the “Workgroup Glasze” for the continuous and fruitful discussions. I would like to thank Christoph Baumann, Tim Elrick and Jan Winkler, in particular. Last but not least, I want to thank Andrea Tony Hermann for her continuing support, her insightful comments and her patience. Edited by: M. Houssay-Holzschuch Reviewed by: two anonymous referees