Fighting against or hiding behind an image of peripherality? Response strategies to discursive peripheralization in rural Estonia

ABSTRACT

Recently, regional development research and policies have paid ever-increasing attention to the importance of regional images. Following the breakthrough of the neoliberal regional policy paradigm that embraces place marketing as its central development strategy, rural areas have also turned to measures of image-making in order to boost their development and fight peripheralization. In the case of two controversies over the ‘right’ kind of response strategy to the peripheralization of Valga County in southern Estonia, this article will show how this new focus on regional images is deeply embedded in the old policy controversy on the question of responsibility for dealing with regional development.

KEYWORDS:

• Peripheralization discourses
• rural Estonia
• regional development
• response strategies

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article as well as Aet Annist and Andres Kuusik for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. The research presented here was conducted in the framework of the project “Socio-economic and Political Responses to Regional Polarization in Central and Eastern Europe” (RegPol²), coordinated by the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, Germany. The project received funding from the People Program (Marie Curie Actions) of the EU’s Seventh Framework Program FP7/2007-2013/under REA grant agreement no. 607022.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the purpose of this article, the English term ‘Valga County’ and the Estonian term ‘Valgamaa’ will be used interchangeably.

2. Although the author is aware of the conceptual differences, for the purpose of this article the terms place, region, and area are used interchangeably.

3. For an overview of the media landscape in Mulgimaa and Valgamaa, see the official Valga County website (http://www.valgamaa.ee). Valgamaalane is a regional newspaper owned by the highest-circulation Estonian newspaper Postimees (now known as Lõuna-Eesti Postimees). Üitsainus Mulgimaa is a local newspaper published by the Mulgi Culture Institute.

4. Two interviews were held as group interviews upon request of the interviewees.

5. For the purpose of this article, interview quotes were translated into English by the author.

6. For deeper insight into the post-socialist privatization process on the Estonian countryside, see Alanen et al. (2001).

7. To preserve the anonymity of the interviewees, the exact authors and articles will not be quoted.

8. For more information, see Eichenbaum and Koreinik (2008).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the project ‘Socio-economic and Political Responses to Regional Polarisation in Central and Eastern Europe’ (RegPol²) that received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013/ under REA grant agreement n° 607022. More information on the project: http://www.regpol2.eu/.

Notes on contributors

Bianka Plüschke-Altof

Bianka Plüschke-Altof is a Researcher in Environmental Sociology at Tallinn University, Estonia. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences (Economics) from the University of Tartu in Estonia and an MA in Social Sciences (Sociology and Political Sciences) from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Germany. Her current research focus on socio-spatial and environmental inequalities in times of an increasing urbanization.