Event Title
Importance of place: addressing community-company relationships within the global economy.
Description
The process of economic restructuring within the forestry sector has had dramatic impacts on BC's forest-dependent communities. As a result, the involvement of communities in resource extraction and processing activities has changed. As the forestry sector changed, the nature of the relationship between the resource company and the community changed. While literature on forestry sector restructuring and the resulting community impacts has grown since the 1980s, there has been little focus on community-company relationships and on resource peripheries in geographic theory. To gain a better understanding of these relationships, geographers must account for the uniqueness of resource peripheries while accounting for both global and local forces. The objective of this paper is to outline a conceptual framework for understanding forestry-dependent communities within the global economy. The framework is constructed by drawing upon contributions from locality studies and new regional geography, globalization, global-local connectivity, and institutional economics. This framework highlights the importance of place when addressing economic activity, the connectivity of global and local institutions, and the importance of both social and economic institutions in shaping the evolution of local economies and community-company relationships. This paper is part of a larger research project focusing on contemporary community-company dynamics in forestry-dependent communities in northern BC.
Document Type
Event
Start Date
8-3-2008 8:00 AM
Subject - LCSH
Forestry and community--British Columbia; Forests and forestry--Social aspects--British Columbia; Forests and forestry--Economic aspects--British Columbia; Lumber trade--British Columbia;
End Date
8-3-2008 5:00 PM
Session
Place, Community, Nature
Genre/Form
conference proceedings
Type
event
Geographic Coverage
British Columbia
Rights
Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author's written permission.
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Keywords
British Columbia, forest-dependent communities, global-local perspective, community-company relationships
Included in
Importance of place: addressing community-company relationships within the global economy.
The process of economic restructuring within the forestry sector has had dramatic impacts on BC's forest-dependent communities. As a result, the involvement of communities in resource extraction and processing activities has changed. As the forestry sector changed, the nature of the relationship between the resource company and the community changed. While literature on forestry sector restructuring and the resulting community impacts has grown since the 1980s, there has been little focus on community-company relationships and on resource peripheries in geographic theory. To gain a better understanding of these relationships, geographers must account for the uniqueness of resource peripheries while accounting for both global and local forces. The objective of this paper is to outline a conceptual framework for understanding forestry-dependent communities within the global economy. The framework is constructed by drawing upon contributions from locality studies and new regional geography, globalization, global-local connectivity, and institutional economics. This framework highlights the importance of place when addressing economic activity, the connectivity of global and local institutions, and the importance of both social and economic institutions in shaping the evolution of local economies and community-company relationships. This paper is part of a larger research project focusing on contemporary community-company dynamics in forestry-dependent communities in northern BC.