Regional Transformation, Everyday Life, and Pacific Northwest Lumber Production

Abstract

I am integrating a theory of the political economy of regional change with the literature on structuration theory, focusing on the labor process. Employing Massey's "geological" metaphor, I argue that the spatial division of labor i s reproduced through business cycles that successively change the comparative advantage of individual areas and restructure local social relations. The precise form of such a process is contingent upon the ideologies of local actors. The lumber industry of the Pacific Northwest illustrates this theme empirically. Several "rounds of production" are identified statistically. The turbulent past of the region's lumber industry i s then recreated, upholding the ideology and actions of labor unions as necessary analytical moments in its territorial reproduction within each wave of production. Finally, I explore the nature of a renewed regional geography sensitive t o local uniqueness.

Empirical applications of structuration theory

“…Their structuration process was in people's behaviours reproducing virtual structures as a source of the negative consequences for them or for others. For example, the labour market structures were both the medium shaping the everyday behaviours of the unemployed and the employed, and the partly unintended outcome of those behaviours (Burman, 1988;Warf, 1988). Alternatively, a school board implemented and amended its procedures for closing schools, and a municipality did likewise with its zoning bylaw for group homes in order to constrain the actions of community representatives who were involved in the closures or the openings (Dear and Moos, 1986;Phipps, 1993Phipps, , 2000.…”

“…For example, a structuration theory about the transformation of social, political and economic institutions through time and space synthesized the modernization and dependency theories for understanding a nation's social change (Spybey, 1992). Alternatively, a structuration between the changing actions of the traditional classes and their relative powers since the early nineteenth century altered the definitions of the rules and meanings of sport in Canada (Gruneau, 1983), and the resolutions of wage-profit conflicts in the Pacific North West lumber industry (Warf, 1988). One of the exceptional applications was Cash's (1996) structuration of unconscious processes within culture and ideology after critical events in Northern Ireland, in which he expanded the theory to behaviours below the discursive surface.…”

“…Layder et al 1991;Dupuis and Thorns, 1998;Sarre, 1986. Dyck, 1990Farrall and Bowling, 1999;Hagan, 1990;Jones et al 2000;Phipps, 2000;Poole and Desanctis, 1993;Pred, 1984a;Robben, 1989;Smith, 1983;Staeheli, 1994. 2 With collectivities Gruneau, 1983;Warf, 1988. Barley and Tolbert, 1997;Bastien et al 1995;Carlsnaes, 1992;Browning, 1994;Dear andMoos, 1986.…”

“…Examples of the collectivities were the working-class people either fighting plant closures in old industrial regions during the 1980s, or living through wage-profit cycles in the lumber industry since the 1840s (Hudson and Sadler, 1986;Warf, 1988). An example of a nation-state acting as an individual was Sweden with its foreign policy actions towards neutrality and membership in the European Community, which were explained by the structural differences in politics from 1971 to 1991 (Carlsnaes, 1992).…”

Landscape and Politics on the Olympic Peninsula: Social Agendas and Contested Practices in Scientific Forestry

“…Warf 1988). As early as 1900, companies operating in the Great Lakes region exhausted the available supply of timber and relocated to the Pacific Northwest, with San Francisco, South America, and Asia providing ready markets (M.Williams 1989:289).…”