Culture and Place-Based Development: A Socio-Economic Analysis

Abstract

Cultural factors are often absent from analyses of economic change and development, divorcing the nature of social places from the economic spaces within which they are situated. In response to this, the paper seeks to both conceptualise and operationalise a framework of place-based culture. It develops a framework capturing the economic culture and community culture of places, and examines the relationship between the two, as a means of developing a broader understanding of the notion of culture than is usually considered by the extant literature. Empirically, the paper utilises Wales as a reference region, with its culture compared to other regions of the UK, along with an analysis of cultural differences found across its localities. Overall, considerable variability is found in the cultural characteristics across both regions and across localities, with the type of community culture embedded in places often found to be associated with the prevailing economic culture in these places, suggesting a strong symbiotic association.

Location Choices of Chinese Multinationals in Europe: The Role of Overseas Communities

“…Conventional FDI theory is based on the premise that firms internationalize when the expected returns derived from their competitive advantage in foreign markets are sufficient to overcome 1 Particularly worth mentioning in the context of this paper is the work of Huggins and Thompson (2015) on the symbiotic relationship between the economic culture and community culture of places, and the influence of both forms of place-based culture for (economic) development.…”

Culture, entrepreneurship and uneven development: a spatial analysis

“…Culture can be generally considered to form part of the place-based development systems linking economic performance with societal well-being (Tönnies, 1957;Easterlin, 1974;Beugelsdijk et al, 2004;Johnstone and Lionais, 2004;Huggins and Thompson, 2014). It is the cultural attributes of places that act as the glue forming the interdependency between the economic logic and societal logic of places (Knack and Keefer, 1997;Keating et al, 2003;Moulaert and Nussbaumer, 2005;Storper, 2005).…”

“…It should be borne in mind that no particular prevailing community culture across places should necessarily be seen as superior (Miller, 1992;Syssner, 2009;Huggins and Thompson, 2014). It is not necessarily clear that the success of a locality should be entirely based upon economic measures of success, and whilst some place-based cultures may not encourage the development of a complementary thriving economy, they may provide lifestyle benefits captured only by broader well-being measures (Layard, 2005).…”

Cultural impact on regional development: application of a PLS-PM model to Greece

“…The impact of culture on local development has for a long time intrigued economists and is still a largely underexplored issue (see Huggins and Thompson 2015 for a most recent overview). Research on this topic has varied widely through time.…”

“…Therefore, the relevance of cultural factors for local development in this specific context may be expected to be statistically significant as well. Thus far, however, both the established literature and newly emerging contributions such as CBD and alike (Tubadji and Nijkamp 2015;Huggins and Thompson 2015) have not paid attention at all to the possibly interesting case of Greece.…”