Parcs

Remarks
Dissertation

The thesis has the overall objective of contributing to an improved understanding of how the ecological dimension becomes manifest in the negotiation of sustainable regional development, how meanings about an issue under negotiation are constructed, and whose ascribed meanings are decisive in concretising a way forward.
The research adopts an actor oriented perspective that places the actors, their actions, and their way of making the world meaningful in the centre of scientific interest. Related to this, it refers to social constructivism and thus advances the view that meaning is not inherent to objects but ascribed to them. The research approach is iterative, which means that the results obtained in one step are used as a basis for devising the research questions of the next step. As a consequence of this, the aim of gaining a deepened understanding of ongoing negotiation processes led to the selection of two case studies, the Jungfrau-Aletsch-Bietschhorn World Heritage Site region in Switzerland and the Sokuluk region in the Kyrgyz Republic. Since the research questions focus on social realities, processes, and meanings, the empirical work is to a large extent based on qualitative data.
Entry no. 36637

Negotiating sustainable regional development - the relevance of meaningful spaces in times of change
