Reading Ruptures: A Reconstruction of Time-Spatial Rural Innovation Processes and the Negotiation of Value

In recent years, and particularly in reflecting on research conducted at the IRS, research on rural innovation has found its place on the research agenda in both rural studies and economic geography. This new focalization is not least due to a more fundamental 'relational turn,' which implies an epistemological reconsideration of rural areas as a whole, as it emphasizes their construction through relationships, interactions, and processes (Christmann, 2015; Woods, 2007). In the case of spatial innovation research, the subsequent transcendence of territorial concepts is reflected in a shift toward the investigation of tempo spatially dynamic innovation processes (Ibert et al., 2015; Schmidt et al., 2018).

Understanding rural areas as relationally constructed inevitably implies the question of the impacts that time-spatial innovation processes unfold in them. While impact assessments have significantly advanced research into these impacts, they also face several problems as they attempt to establish an objective concept of value. Moreover, they operate with an outcome-oriented logic that obscures the complex social processes that contribute to the creation of value (or lack thereof) in the first place.

In response to such concerns, a valuation perspective is proposed that examines how value is constructed iteratively during the innovation process. The dissertation project draws on approaches from the sociology of valuation (Lamont, 2012; Vatin, 2013) to conceptualize the sometimes-conflictual negotiation of valuations and their interaction concerning the construction of innovation processes in the first place. In this sense, a conceptual perspective for understanding rural innovation processes is developed that emphasizes the importance of 'experienced' added value and the performative power of valuations (Barinaga, 2023). This approach makes it possible to take into account the different actors, objects, and directionalities of rural innovation processes and emphasize their inherently political character. In addition, it sensitizes us to the complex social dynamics and processes that underlie the creation of added value and offers explanations for often non-linear trajectories of innovation processes (or even their failure).

The work is based on the third-party funded project "SOIR—Strong through Open Innovation Regions." Prof. Dr. Suntje Schmidt supervises the cumulative dissertation project, which is based in the Applied Economic Geography department at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.