Peripheralization and economic development: a multi-causal approach

The concept of peripheralization explores the agency of peripheries to address uneven development, considering the power dynamics and material and discursive processes which underpin how peripheries become more (or less) peripheralized in relation to economic cores, over time. This paper adds that peripheralization is multi-causal. In other words, the paper claims that the agency of actors in peripheral areas needs to be understood as being comprised of a range of different factors, each of which contribute to the processes of peripheralization. Following a case study of Cornwall in the South West of the UK, this paper draws on the insights of complex adaptive systems research and evolutionary economic geography to examine the interactions between how the policy areas of housing, labour market skills and good work amplify each other, contributing to both economic inequalities, and the ways in which peripheries are discursively produced. This helps us to address persistent regional inequalities in ways which move beyond binaries of the power-full and the power-less.