The Local Footprint of Defence Industry: The Natural Experience of Brest

Abstract

In situation of uncertainty, many companies refuse today to bind their destiny to the fate of a specific territory. Nevertheless territories are engaged in trajectories that result from their industrial history and legacies. Companies are significant actors in structuring a given territory. Their territorial footprint is plural: industrial, organisational, psychocultural, environmental and political. It creates trajectories, hysteresis effects and irreversibility. We will mobilise cognitive approaches and more singularly the evolutionary approach to appreciate the territorial print of a given company. We focus on the Defence industry in Brest region (Brittany, France), a singular territory formatted by the naval shipyard industry. This latter has been involved in deep reorganisations since the beginning of the 1990s. This leads to many questions about possible industrial diversification and how to rebuild a cognitive trajectory of such territory by involving local authorities and the civil society.