Resilience in the periphery: What an agency perspective can bring to the table

In this chapter, we study the relationship between regional economic resilience and agency. Especially since the 2008 recession, regional resilience has raised a lot of interest in economic geography. However, the resilience research has focused mostly on the structural perspective and the role of agency has gained less attention. Intentional and purposeful human actions can have an effect on regional development trajectories especially in a crisis situation. Economic crises typically are critical junctures where a variety of paths are possible and where the choices, strategies, and actions may have a decisive effect on the future. We are interested in the influence of change agency on different kinds of resilience outputs, especially regional adaptability. Different types of change agency play their own roles in constructing regional resilience. Innovative entrepreneurs are transforming or creating new economic activities through the novel combination of knowledge and resources. Institutional entrepreneurs are actors that challenge and transform existing rules and practices or aim at creating new ones. Finally, place-based leaders are co-ordinating and mobilising different actors and resources for the collective pursuit. Constructing regional resilience calls for this ‘trinity of change agency’. We provide empirical illustrations of our arguments from two peripheral Finish regions that went through similar crises but emerged differently from it. Our findings indicate that the interplay of different types of change agency has a significant role in regional processes of adaptation and adaptability of the region.