The Project
Space, Place and the Historical and contemporary articulations of regional, national and European identities through work and community in areas undergoing economic REstructuring and regeneration: SPHERE
SPHERE is a three-year European Union project that investigates the formation and evolution of European cultures and identities rooted historically in specific occupational contexts with a distinct regional base. It aims to assess the consequences of transformatory economic restructuring for the workplace, family and locality, and to show how such changes impact upon individual and collective identities, traditions and customs.
The project examines how:
- ‘new’ identities might emerge, and older ones survive;
- processes of economic change and regeneration impact on the significance of place as central to people’s sense of history and feelings of belonging;
- the arts, literature and media have functioned to establish understandings of place;
- communal and collective organisations affect the preservation or renewal of historical identities;
- associative collective action and political participation within these regions and localities have survived.
SPHERE’s broad objectives are as follows:
- To deepen understanding of concepts and definitions with regard to cultural identities in the context of rapid and widespread socio-economic change.
- To identify the types of work and economic life that have replaced former industries and to examine the impact of these transformations and transitions on traditions, alignments and cultural formations.
- To explore how the political and social identities forged under an industrial order of a certain sort operating in a certain place may survive the collapse or radical transformation of that order.
- To examine the role of a range of cultural practices in representing ideas of place.
- To analyse the effects specific regeneration processes have in changing cultural landscapes through reshaping ideas of place, identity and belonging.
- To provide the means of constructive and critical dialogue about the nature and extent of cultural change across Europe as a whole.
The Locations:
In Britain, the former South Yorkshire coalfield - In Poland the mining region of Upper Silesia - In Germany, the Northern Bavarian metalworking region - In France, the metalworking and paper manufacturing area to the South East of Paris, Essonnes - In Spain the Levante region of textile, tailoring and shoe manufacturing - In Turkey the Black Sea coal mining province of Zonguldak.
The SPHERE associates are:
The Middle Eastern Technical University in Turkey; the Working Lives Research Institute of London Metropolitan University; the Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung which is the Institute for Employment Research of the German Federal Labour Office (Bundesagentur für Arbeit), attached to the German Ministery of Labour (Bundesarbeitsministerium); the University of Silesia, established in Katowice, Poland, in 1968; the University Complutense of Madrid, the largest, oldest and most important university in Spain.
