Digital Periphery? A Community Case Study of Digitalization Efforts in Swiss Mountain Regions

Bürgin, Reto; Mayer, Heike

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-37794-6_4

Cited by 21 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Digital developments present new opportunities as well as challenges for rural communities. For example, information and communication technologies (ICT) can assist in rediscovering rural working locations or facilitate home-schooling, but can also increase competition for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) [1]. In order to enable rural citizens to harvest new opportunities and face the challenges a digital society brings about, existing rural-urban digital inequalities should be addressed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging Digital Inequalities in Rural Schools in Germany: A Geographical Lottery?

Rundel

Salemink

2021

Education Sciences

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Repeatedly, it has been argued that advancements in digitalisation could be beneficial for rural areas. However, digital inequalities persist and affect rural communities as well. Schools can play a key role in bridging digital inequalities, but little attention has been paid to the specific conditions rural schools find themselves in when facing continuous digital developments. Therefore, we apply the digital inclusion lens and explore the impact of digital developments on rural schools in the German context. In 2019, we conducted 16 in-depth interviews with heads and teachers from rural elementary and secondary schools in Baden-Wurttemberg and Lower Saxony. We found that smaller rural schools especially can experience difficulties and conclude that the contribution of schools to a digital-included society is subject to a geographical lottery. This could eventually increase existing rural–urban digital inequalities and these findings are also relevant in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing a sudden switch to distance learning.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging Digital Inequalities in Rural Schools in Germany: A Geographical Lottery?

Rundel

Salemink

2021

Education Sciences

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“…economical, demographic, geographical, technological and institutional, among others) place specificity is key in designing and implementing public interventions to foster local economies effectively in face of globalisation and other challenges. The findings of Bürgin and Mayer (2020), who analysed how technological change affects rural economies in the Engiadina Bassa and Val Müstaira region, located in the canton of Graubünden in the North-East of Switzerland, illustrate this. They show that there is a variety of local needs, characteristics and stakeholders within this mountain region which demands differentiated public interventions and flexible local development strategies.…”

Section: Globalisation and Place-based Public Policy In Switzerlandmentioning

confidence: 95%

Globalisation and local economic development: Place-based and bottom-up public policies in Switzerland and Mexico

Palavicini-Corona¹

2021

Local Economy: The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit

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The XXI century has reached the end of its first 20 years. Along the years, it has posed complex challenges to economists and economic geographers. For example, the results of elections and consultations in different countries have shown a strong sympathy with political positions that question the benefits of free international flows of goods, services, labour and capital. By the same token, some academics argue that despite international economics theory clearly acknowledges that free trade causes winners and losers, the expected higher gains have not been effectively used to compensate the losers. This article explores the main challenges of international economic integration in sub-national territories in Switzerland and Mexico to better understand the importance of delivering relevant and competent public policies based on territorial specificity.

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“…It involves the rupture of existing institutional arrangements in order to achieve more efficient organisation of production. This may concern the delivery of public services to peripheral regions or the promotion of regional entrepreneurship, e.g., [17][18][19][20][21]. The French-continental approach is rather impact-oriented in its transformative understanding, aiming at social progress beyond the logics of regional competition to overcome the growth paradigm, and to create a new spatiality beyond the polarizing regime changes of the 1980s, e.g., [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

Section: Adaptive Versus Transformative Simentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of Social Innovation on Spatiality in Mountain–Lowland Relationships — Trajectories of Two Swiss Regional Initiatives in the Context of New Policy Regimes

Perlik

2021

Sustainability

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This article places the topic of “social innovation” in the context of the paradigm shift of the 1980s. This shift from Fordism to post-Fordism has led to a weakening of the model of the European welfare state. Social innovation has become an instrument to promote regional self-responsibility and entrepreneurial activity by local authorities. The concept of social innovation has become widespread among various disciplines and controversially used by them. Referring to regional and corporate success stories based on the commitment of grassroots movements and civil society has its shortcomings, as the new spatiality regimes show increasing disparities. The article shows the different lines of conflict in the discussion about social innovations and makes suggestions for the specification and delimitation of the concept. Using two case studies on social innovations from mountain regions of Switzerland, based on standardized interviews, including the results of a social network analysis, the article distinguishes between adaptive and transformative social innovations. The adaptive social innovations analysed did not result in changing the inferior position of the regions; however, they prevented even greater destabilization by mobilizing the dynamic actors in the valley to work together. This is helpful for ensuring that the urban majority continues to show solidarity with the population in rural and mountain areas. The constructive interaction between public, private, and civil society institutions is seen as the key factor of social innovation in the European peripheral areas to which most mountain areas belong.

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Digital Periphery? A Community Case Study of Digitalization Efforts in Swiss Mountain Regions

Cited by 21 publications

References 60 publications

Bridging Digital Inequalities in Rural Schools in Germany: A Geographical Lottery?

Bridging Digital Inequalities in Rural Schools in Germany: A Geographical Lottery?

Globalisation and local economic development: Place-based and bottom-up public policies in Switzerland and Mexico

Impacts of Social Innovation on Spatiality in Mountain–Lowland Relationships — Trajectories of Two Swiss Regional Initiatives in the Context of New Policy Regimes

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