Vepsäläinen, Mia
Tarjolla saimaan Venetsiat
Savonlinna ja Varkaus esimerkkeinä paikkakuvausten kietoutumisesta ylipaikallisen ja paikallisen historiallisiksi kudelmiksi
Abstract
Mia Vepsäläinen: Textures of place representations. Interaction of the local, national and global in the place promotion of Savonlinna and Varkaus. University of Joensuu. Publications in Social Sciences. N:o 82. Joensuu 2007. 208 p.
Keywords: representations, place promotion, place image, identity of a place, Varkaus, Savonlinna
In modern societies, representations have become a significant means of communicating and constructing place images and identities of places. The importance of place promotion has been especially emphasised and its role in constructing places has become an important theme in regional and social research.
This study explores the representations of two Finnish towns, Savonlinna and Varkaus, located on the shore of lake Saimaa in eastern Finland. The main sources of data used in the study consisted of brochures and regional picture books from the time period of 1900–2005. The study considers what these materials tell about the place, its identity and image, what is represented and why? The focus is on unfolding the representation process to analyse the local, national and global factors embedded in the representations.
Besides the case studies, the study develops new methods for analysis of placespecific representations. The study introduces the idea of texture of place representations woven together with individual loops of representation. Each loop represents a certain theme in which the place is presented from a certain point of view. It consists of selected features of the place and emphasises prevailing cultural expectations and values. In a given historical moment there are competing ways – loops – which represent the place. Some of these exist only temporarily, but many are continuous and form historical layers. These loops, set next to and overlapping each other, form the texture of place representations. The texture illustrates how individual representations exist only in relation to a variety of social factors and are influenced by them and other representations. The structure of texture of place representations can be applied as a methodological tool to analyse different factors and perspectives in different place-specific representations.
In this study the method was applied to the representations of Savonlinna and Varkaus from the past hundred years. In Savonlinna the earliest representations of the town were threefold. In the beginning of the 20th century the town was portrayed either as a national landscape, international spa town or a modern urban centre. Later the themes have merged together and in the beginning of the 21st century Savonlinna is represented as a place of experience orientated tourism and leisure. Varkaus, in turn, for long was presented as a modern Finnish industrial town. Tourism and leisure activities and attractions appeared in the promotional material of the town only after 1950s. Thereby the place promotion of the towns has gradually become to resemble each other over the decades. The starting point and development paths of the representations, however, have been different. In Savonlinna the texture of place representations has evolved towards greater homogenisation and in Varkaus towards greater differentiation.
The study shows that, regardless of the hard competition between places and the need to create unique place images, the representations in contemporary place promotion material are increasingly uniform. They usually focus on experiences and leisure activities that are not place-specific and could be located anywhere with similar surroundings. This is the result of global development that highlights individuality, experiences and leisure. Also the place promotion of Savonlinna and Varkaus is part of the overall development of place representation in Western World. As these case studies indicate, textures of place representations can be seen as reflecting the constantly changing interaction between the local, national and global.
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