The Dialectics of Community and Government

Not so “smart”? An Australian experiment in smart specialisation

“…When applied to an artificial territory, notions of regional-scale leadership and vision are rendered equally artificial. Combining this fabrication with an externally managed process has invited a repeat of the perennial problem in Gippsland: a lack of local ownership of strategic regional plans (Weller, 2020).…”

“…Yet, by focusing on agriculture, the smart specialisation strategy in practice focused on rural Gippsland, and not on the industrial Latrobe Valley. This approach avoided confrontation with politically charged debates about regional development in the Valley (see Weller, 2020) and excluded engagement with the Valley’s displaced and disadvantaged communities (despite them having providing the initial justification for intervention). As it turned out, the agricultural focus met with limited success, an outcome that Veldhuizen (2020) attributes to underdeveloped communicative learning and a local fixation on creating employment in the short term.…”

“…The new evidence presented in this section is principally empirical, drawing on publicly available data sources to illustrate arguments that arise from both authors’ long‐standing research programs in the Latrobe Valley. Weller’s work on the local transition from a coal‐dependent economy spanned the years 2011–2016 and involved two sets of interviews (in 2010 and 2014) with key local informants and policymakers at federal, state, and local scales (see Weller, 2012, 2017a, 2017b, 2019, 2020; Weller et al, 2011; Weller & Tierney, 2018). Rainnie’s work in the Valley in the mid‐2000s focused on community and labour issues (see Rainnie et al, 2004; Rainnie & Paulet, 2003).…”