European Women in Defence of Place: Resource centres in Finland
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development. Copyright © 2002 Society for International Development. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), 1011-6370 (200203) 45:1; 137–142; 022383. NB When citing this article please use both volume and issue numbers.
SID On-line Dialogue
European Women in Defence of Place: Resource centres in Finland LIISA HORELLI
ABSTRACT Liisa Horelli describes the ‘politics of place’ conducted by the Nordic women’s movement around the ‘new everyday life’ and its successor, the EuroFEM – gender and human settlement network. It also analyses through the conceptual framework developed by the project a case study on women’s resource centres in the rural areas of Finnish North-Karelia. She suggests that the framework for a viable politics of place would, however, profit from the concepts of holistic economics and dynamic embedded power, which both need further elaboration and careful integration into the framework. KEYWORDS embedded glocality; embedded power; holistic economics; meshworks; networks; women’s resource centres
Introduction European and especially Nordic women have been conducting for the past 20 years a variation of place-based politics which has many similarities with the politics of place described in the introduction to this issue (Harcourt, Escobar and Osterweil). These women have used a set of ‘subaltern strategies’ and conceptual tools to solve place-related issues, such as the approach of holistic economics as an embedded glocality (a place which transcends its borders through meshworks and networks). Conceptual tools European women interested in planning issues had the opportunity to meet one another in several international conferences, in 1994, which led to the founding of the EuroFEM – Gender and Human Settlements network. Supported both by the European Commission and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, it held the first international conference in Hämeenlinna, Finland, in 1998. The event gathered 300 grassroots women entrepreneurs, researchers, administrators, and politicians from all over the world (Horelli, 1998).
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development 45(1): SID On-line Dialogue Although the participants came from diverse backgrounds and cultures, women shared a common interest, namely the collaborative creation of an infrastructure for everyday life. The latter comprises the planning and development of supportive networks of environmentally friendly housing, local services, transport systems and job opportunities in the localities and the region. EuroFEM grew into a network of projects and policy providing a transnational arena for finding new solutions and forms of action in the field of human settlements. The original model of the infrastructure for everyday life was expanded from local settings to the regional, national and even transnational levels. The negative effects of globalization, which are reflected all over the world in the constraints that prevent effective social reproduction, raised new issues around ‘gloc
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