Peripheral and marginal spaces: interpreting relationships to centers in a global world. – PERIMARGE

The methods starts from an existing graphic model (A. Reynaud 1981), offering to categorize peripheral spaces and their evolution basing itself on a suggested typology of the existing fluxes between centers and peripheries. We offer to update this model taking into account the multiplication of centers and the blurring of their hierarchies and the diversification of material and immaterial flows within the contemporary globalization. The model should also integrate the capacity of the peripheral territories to develop new projects that benefit from those interactions. We based ourselves on a provisory graphic model that was discussed at the kick-off workshop (cf. illustration downloaded below), which has then been enriched through a set of methodological choices. The first of them dwells within the subdivision of each case study into various sub-spaces which relations with the centers differ. The second methodological choice consists in spotting the flows and relations as characterized in the filed on a graphic scheme, leaving the analysis of centers for a posterior stage of the research The third tool consists in the use of an analysis grid offering both quantitative and qualitative criteria to assess the relative importance of each identified flux or relation. The simultaneous elaboration of the graphic scheme and the grid evidences the flows and allows to identify the links between them. The gathering of information on the fluxes has also been the topic of a methodological discussion, based on theoretical and practical aspects. Various tools originating from data modeling, GIS and relational geography have been used, thanks to the diversified competences of the team members. The methodology for the gathering together of all the elements upon which the comparison between the case studies will be built is currently being clarified.

The kick-off workshop followed by the team meeting (coinciding with a conference which organized the Center of Geographic Information of the Catholic University in Lima, CIGA in October 2013, in Peru) and then by a research summer school offered by the CIRAD and the Federal University of Para (UFPA) in June 2014 in Brazil made it possible to implement the various stages of the research. The first result has consisted in the elaboration of a provisory graphic model insisting on the elements to be updated: multiplicity of centers, differentiation of local territories in function of flows and relations, existence of autonomous projects; and also in the establishment of a general grid to be filled with each type of flux or relation. The second result was the description of each case study territory throughout the past 30 years : main physical, economic, social, political evolutions. This description takes into account the internal differentiation within each of the regions chosen for the research. We obtained a qualitative balance of the flows that have appeared, been modified or disappeared, especially over the past 10 years, building upon the expertise of the team on the regional dynamics and stakeholders relations in the varied peripheral spaces concerned by the comparison. The parallel elaboration of a graphic scheme and a grid for each case study has contributed to this preliminary phase. Moreover, the first students who have participated to the project have finished and defended their thesis. At present, we are collecting more precise information on the various flows (quantitative or qualitative according to the nature the flux), for each of the indexed flows or set of flows (capitals, people, products, information, norms). The privileged method to be applied at this stage has been elaborated in order to facilitate the next step consisting in the comparison between the case studies.

In the coming months, we will go on with the field research. The objective is to detail and deepen the knowledge of the different flows that have been identified during the preceding stages and to measure their respective importances, basing on the work to be done by the local teams, the interns, as well as on the last missions to be realized. For some case studies, especially in Chad, the possibility of implementing the enquiries will depend on the bettering of security conditions and the obtaining of authorizations.
We will then have to revisit, for each case study, the analysis of territorial dynamics and stakeholder games identified at the preceding stage. We will then go back to the general model that also included the description and analysis of the centers. Because of time and human constraints, the analysis of distant centers will be limited to a general description based on the available bibliography and enquiries with representatives from these centers.
Putting all of the results from the 8 case studies together will imply both selection and formalization processes, which will progressively be implemented. We will organize during the spring of 2015 a workshop reuniting the team members, in order to set the conditions for the final comparison of flows and relations of the 8 case studies, and to finalize the model that will consist in the main outcome of the research. We will also organize the final conference and the restitution missions of results dissemination within local societies.
In parallel during the coming months we will elaborate the intermediary publications in peer-reviewed journals, which will consider the transversal issues identified during the first phase of research as well as the project methodologies Final publications will be organized during the may 2015 workshop.

The most représentative communications :

Auquier, C., Chaléard, J.-L., Gluski, P., Lortic, B., Marshall, A., Mesclier, É., Piron, M. 2013 “Geografía de Olmos y mundialización”. X° Congreso Nacional y V° Congreso de Geografía de las Américas. Trujillo, Pérou, 3-5 octubre del 2013.

Bernex, N. ; Tavera, M. « El modelo Centro-Periferia : caso de cuatro localidades de la carretera Iquitos-Nauta ». X° Congreso Nacional y V° Congreso de Geografía de las Américas. Trujillo, Pérou, 3-5 octubre del 2013.

Chaléard, J.-L., Adjoba Koffi-Didia, M., Mesclier, É., 2013 « Farming and metropolisation in the surroundings of Abidjan (Ivory Coast) ». Présentation au colloque ECAS 2013 ( 5E European Conference on African Studies), Lisbonne, 29 juin 2013.

Huamantinco, A. 2013. « Influencias mundializadas y dinámicas endógenas en la comunidad campesina de Jicamarca ». X° Congreso Nacional y V° Congreso de Geografía de las Américas. Trujillo, Pérou, 3-5 octubre del 2013.

Perrier Bruslé, L., 2013, “Dinámicas territoriales en un margen boliviano. El Norte La Paz en la encrucijada de la integración”, X° Congreso Nacional y V° Congreso de Geografía de las Américas. Trujillo, Pérou, 3-5 octubre del 2013.

Piraux M, Simões A, Tonneau JP. 2013. « Entre el agro-extractivismo y el cultivo de palma. Cambios recientes en las dinámicas de ordenamiento territorial del Baixo Tocantins en la Amazonia brasileira. El caso de la municipalidad de Mocajuba ». X° Congreso Nacional y V° Congreso de Geografía de las Américas. Trujillo, Pérou, 3-5 octubre del 2013.

Publications:
Mesclier, É., Marshall, A., Chaléard, J.-L., Auquier, C., 2013. « L’agriculture entreprenariale d’exportation : un choix politique aux enjeux complexes ». Problèmes d’Amérique latine n°88, 55-76

Perrier Bruslé L, Gozalvez B. 2014, El Norte La Paz en la encrucijida de la integración. PLURAL – IRD éditions.

In the context of the contemporary globalization process, one could hope that growth would lead to reducing spatial inequalities through the integration of peripheral regions to central places’ dynamics. However, a great number of spaces still differ from centers because of bad living conditions of the majority of their population, often aggravated by the violence of clashes between stakeholders, because of the amplitude of spoliations and of environmental damages. These spaces and the conflicts which take place within them sometimes become a threat to the stability of national governments.
How to understand the multiplication of such spaces? We consider the study of their functioning as a necessary first step. For this purpose, the center-periphery model can be mobilized, as long as it is revisited. This center-periphery model, such as formalized by A. Reynaud in the 1980’s and based on an analysis of flows asymmetries, has, in the past decades, opened the way for the understanding of the creation and the reproduction of inequalities between spaces. Within this model, the center is being constituted through a historical process where political and economic dominations mutually reinforce each other. The dependent periphery either provides the center with resources, without benefiting in return from flows of goods or capitals, or losses its inhabitants, all processes occurring under an indifference which is even bigger when peripheral spaces are far from the sight of central locations. One of the strengths of this model was to give account of spatial and regional inequalities at various scales, from urban neighborhoods to regions, countries, or continents. In addition, it enabled Reynaud to differentiate types of peripheries according to the nature, to the intensity and to the combining of flows which connected them to the center.
Over the last thirty years or so, globalization has made more complex this schematic vision, as it reached all points of the planet, taking them out of their invisibility and bringing to them new investments, new actors and new norms. Our hypothesis is that these new flows lead to a reconfiguration of spatial asymmetries between centers and peripheries and enable the emergence of new types of spaces. A graphical interpretative model which would integrate flows between central and peripheral spaces (such as A. Reynaud’s one), while taking into account their larger diversity, would allow a better comprehension of these spaces’ situations. Their originality, compared to the peripheries described during the 1980’s, leads us to provisionally characterize them as “globalised margins”.
We will start our research with a provisional model elaborated from our knowledge about the flows linking margins to centers in a globalized context: the participants to the project will bring in their expertise on the types of flows which they know best. The robustness of the model will be tested by mobilizing and collecting flows related data in territories already studied by project members. Those data will be reassessed through the light of the common methodology and objectives. We will then integrate these data to sources, opening the path for the confrontation of the initial model to the reality of inbound and outbound margins’ flows, in order to adjust and make it better. These results will finally be valorized and disseminated.
If the project can be described as fundamental research before all, its conclusions will enable us to provide advices to local and national societies in order to help them understand their regions ‘ new modes of insertion in the globalization. It will as well offer solutions for the conception of new development strategies, based on better theoretically built territorial diagnosis.