KNOWLEDGE CREATION ASSEMBLAGES FOR RURAL AREAS
Ilkka PYY
University of Eastern Finland, Finland, ilkka.pyy@uef.fi
Higher education, R&D, triple/quadruple helix, new technological infrastructures and
financial instruments as well as cultural embeddedness, institutional thickness and
localized learning are some of the fundamentals for national and regional innovation
system. NIS/RIS models have strong orientation towards agglomerations and
clusters and for competitive economic growth, and respectively, relatively little
interest in either rural areas or small towns which just lack potential for knowledge
creation. Against that fundamentalism we need radical imagination, capabilities to put
our souls into positions of the others. The paper will discuss whether the theory of
assemblage would provide tools for geographically broader evaluation of knowledge
creation and sharing.
With the help of assemblage I will stretch beyond the spheres of action (global-local,
centre-periphery, urban-rural), division of actors (business, government, academia,
civil society, laymen), modes of knowledge (analytical, scientific, pragmatic,
synthetic) and types of innovation (technical/social, incremental/radical). The analysis
is based upon materials managed through projects with university–government–
local/regional stakeholders in years 1990-2014 in the frameworks of Northern
Periphery Programme, Nordic Council of Ministries, European Social Fund and the
Finnish Regional Development Fund. This analysis inspired by assemblage and
radical imagination force to ask who/what and how could be important actors,
actants, affects, artefacts and arteries of knowledge creation for rural development.
Special attention will be paid to interchangeability of social and material roles and
positions in cooperation. I expect results which follow principles like less knowledge
is more knowledge or solutions