Smartification and digitalization processes mark an ongoing societal change with important geographical implications. By ideally contributing to a more sustainable, innovative and healthier life, smartification is attributed many potentials for the future development of places. Mainly developed in urban context, we focus on the question if these promises hold true for rural areas?
The session critically engages with the prospects of smartification and digitalization in rural contexts. Moving beyond dominant readings of smartification as rather technology-, market- and urban-based, the session turns to interpretations of ‘smart’ in rural realities, paying particular attention to impacts on inequalities and processes of exclusion. Despite recently receiving more academic attention, smart rurality has often been under-recognized and subjected to an urban smartification blueprint that does not necessarily fit rural realities or undermines their agency in locally (re)interpreting smartification. Our session thus proposes to focus on the possible socio-spatial divides smartification strategies are embedded in and questions to what extend smartification strategies incl. “smart specialization”, “smart social innovations”, or “smart village/countryside” initiatives can overcome or are further perpetuating these.
We welcome both theoretical and inspiring empirical studies that contribute to a new conceptualization of smartification in non-urban contexts. The panel is meant as a discussion forum as well as a platform to bring together recent research in the field and open opportunities for future collaborations. In particular, we invite:
-critical reflections on dominant readings of smart rurality concepts and their impacts on rural areas, including proposals for new interpretations of ‘smart’, ‘development’ and ‘innovation’
-empirical studies exploring aspects of rural power, agency and exclusion in ‘smart’ regional initiatives or local digitalization projects
-empirical studies on current uses of ‘smart’ in rural areas, including uses of and interactions with particular digital technologies
-case studies that shed light on questions of inclusion, participation and under-recognized examples of rural smartification and innovation
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Rural transformation through digitalisation?: Understanding the digital in the context of rural change
Adwoa Serwaa Ofori, Karen Keaveney, Ainhoa Gonzalez Del Campo, Dominic Robinson
University College Dublin, Ireland
The refraction of digitalisation through the lens of rural space recasts the meaning ascribed to rural digitalisation to extend beyond broadband and high-speed connectivity. This paper explores the challenges and potential of digitalisation in rural areas, particularly in the post-analogue era, where the digital divide is starkly evident and the global push for digitalisation has highlighted the tensions inherent in rural decline and degrowth. The paper aims to understand how rural communities perceive and adopt digitalisation by interviewing experts and practitioners in rural development and digital data. In such exploration, Halfacree’s (2006) threefold framework of rural space is applied, considering digitalisation through rural localities, formal representations and everyday lives. The case study is the Irish context which exemplifies the state of the rural in terms of decline on the one hand and the emerging focus on and incorporation of the digital as the way forward on the other. The research finds that while digitalisation offers transformative potential, its success depends on community needs, capacity, and a co-produced approach. The research also underscores the importance of local involvement and tailoring digital solutions to specific rural contexts.
How telemedicine fits to the rural – Potentials and hurdles from a doctors’ perspective
Tobias Mettenberger
Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute, Germany
Telemedicine is seen as having particular potential in rural regions. Where daily journeys are long for doctors and patients, it seems close at hand to overcome spatial distances using digital information and communication technologies. However, this is not the only reason why it is worth looking at telemedicine in the light of specific rural conditions. In line with other studies, my exploratory expert interviews conducted in 2022-2024 (Mettenberger 2024) showed socio-spatial divides between urban and rural regions when it comes to the hurdles and limits of telemedicine. Those divides are not only result of diverging infrastructural pre-conditions (e.g., regarding broadband or mobile coverage), but may also be constituted through the agency of doctors and other health professionals, using or not using telemedical opportunities. Especially rural general practitioners are often said to be comparatively sceptic of digital technologies, having a strong preference for face-to-face interactions. Hence, the professional self-image of being a rural doctor can be at odds with the digitalisation of everyday communication.
This is where my current empirical analysis comes in. I am interested in doctors practising in rural areas, who came into contact with video consultations or teleconsultations several years ago through initial projects or pilot schemes, having continued to use or having discarded these solutions in the subsequent period. Taking a retrospective view, I question, how these doctors assess the added value and limitations of telemedical solutions in view of the specific contextual conditions of rural surroundings. Therefore, I currently realize regional case studies in rural Germany, doing qualitative Interviews, which will be the empirical base of my conference presentation.
Based on my empirical findings, I want to argue, how the attitudes and everyday experiences of doctors at place contribute to the spread or stagnation of rural telemedicine. Thereby I relate to the theoretical backgrounds of technology acceptance research and constructivist rurality approaches on a micro level as well as work on digital divides, spatial justice and symbolic peripheralization on a macro level.
Mettenberger, Tobias (2024): Telemedizin in der ländlichen Gesundheitsversorgung - Potenziale und Hürden aus Expert:innensicht. Z'GuG 47(2):180-198, DOI:10.5771/2701-4193-2024-2-180
Digital transformations in an e-country: Alternative meanings of “smart development” at the rural margins
Bianka Plüschke-Altof1,2, Mariia Bochkova1, Ingmar Pastak1, Kadri Leetmaa1
1University of Tartu, Estonia; 2Tallinn University, Estonia
“What is smart development supposed to mean anyway?” was a central question phrased by participants of our interview study conducted among decision-makers and community-developers in four Estonian rural and small-town municipalities. As part of an ongoing digital transformation, the smartification debate has exponentially expanded in recent decades – with an imperative evolving around „smart development”, which is dominated by rather technology-, market- and urban-based understandings of smartness. This is particularly relevant in the context of Estonia’s rapid e-country development which strives towards the establishment of a post-digital nation. Situated at the boundaries of peripheralization, digital social innovation and smart rurality research, the results of the interview study discuss (1) how relevant and meaningful the concept of smart development is locally, (2) the alternative meanings attached to it, and (3) the needs to tailor it to the rural and small town context. As a result, we will outline alternative „edgy” discourses in rural localities that question hegemonic meanings of smart development and have hitherto remained rather invisible under the digital nation umbrella known as “e-Estonia”. This has implications not only for the ways ‘digital’ peripheries are imagined and governed in smart development processes, but also for the way we imagine smart development itself.
Smart(er) rural areas – Framing ‘smart villages’ for conceptual development and policy in the EU
Bradley Loewen1, Thomas Streifeneder2
1Norwegian University of Science and Technology; 2Eurac Research
This article considers smart rurality within wider European debates and policies addressing innovation in peripheries, exploring the meaning of ‘smart’ through a critical reading of the smart villages concept in official communications including webpages and linked documents. In doing so, we ask how smart village is defined and differentiated amongst EU sources. The content and structure of key EU websites on smart villages are analysed, followed by a framing of the EU discourse on smart villages that seeks to characterize the problem(s) that smart rural development aims to address, its causes, effects and prescribed solutions. Partly due to the early-stage formation of the concept, a lack of richness in the discourse is found. The sources indicate a range of problem definitions and limited treatment solutions, while the causal interpretation and moral evaluation behind smart villages are both lacking. To gain a better understanding of the potentials for smartness, implementation challenges and recommendations for smart villages are discussed, drawing lessons from experiences with similar innovation and smart specialization initiatives. Finally, an outlook for conceptual development is proposed – considering distinctions between smartness as a system characteristic and as a community value – which can be used as a framework to stimulate wider thinking around the meaning of smartness. To underpin notions of weak or strong smartness in smart village strategies and projects, we point again to aspects of the framing analysis that warrant further development to better legitimize smart villages as a policy concept.
Smart(er) rural areas – Framing ‘smart villages’ for improved conceptual development and policy in the EU
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