Contested local agency in aquaculture: Dominating regime encounters the “Underdog” in a peripheral region
本文研究挪威内陆地区新兴的陆基水产养殖如何挑战以海洋养殖为主导的体制，通过路径追踪揭示地方行动者如何利用创新企业家精神、制度企业家精神和地方领导力来推动变革，尽管面临国家政策的不利支持。
Studying human agency provides a powerful lens for understanding informal relations and power relations because it focuses on the capacity of individuals and groups to act within, respond to, and shape the social structures they are embedded within. Human agency emphasizes the dynamic interplay between actors and their environment, making it well-suited for examining the complexities of informal and power-laden interactions. In this paper, we explore the embryonic Norwegian onshore aquaculture industry in the periphery to explore whether local agency has the capacity to alter the dominant structure, offshore-based aquaculture. Onshore aquaculture has been introduced as an alternative to sea-based activity, as it can reduce the negative ecological impact on the marine environment and ecosystem. Moreover, it offers non-coastal regions the opportunity to benefit from job creation in new sectors. By analyzing the dialectical relationship between structures and actors in Norway's aquaculture using path tracing, we identify controversies between the dominant regime (salmon, sea-based, incumbent firms) and the “underdog” (land-based, arctic char, emerging industries). We demonstrate that the dominant regime benefits heavily on policy-driven decisions and regulations at the national level. The underdog remains marginalized and largely overlooked in terms of regulations and funding. Despite the dominant regime's control, innovative entrepreneurs in the Inland region have established an unrelated regional breeding facility in a region with no prior history of fish farming. We add to the literature on regional development and local agency in peripheral regions by applying path tracing which allows us to tease out informal rules, power relations, and hegemonic versus suppressed standpoints in an embryonic industry. These ‘hidden transcripts’ are made visible to us as they provide insights into how actors integrate three types of human agency (innovative entrepreneurship, institutional entrepreneurship, and place-based leadership) and mobilize for change, even though they lack historical preconditions and need to fight established national structures that have little interest in supporting regional initiatives.