Anchoring, embeddedness, footprint: A metaphorical triptych about the relationship between places and societies. Reflections based on the relations between art, culture, and places

This article aims to contribute conceptually to the understanding of the relationships of individuals and collective groups to places through a theoretical proposal structured on a metaphorical triptych anchoring (the boat and its anchor), embeddedness (the interlinking of two entities), footprint (the influences and traces left). In order to embody this triptych, each of the metaphors will be defined and then empirically applied to the field of art and culture in a spatial perspective. The analysis is based on field investigations conducted on the relationship between art, culture, and places in various contexts (Île-de-France, Nantes, Shanghai, etc.) and using different tools (interviews, observation, network analysis, etc.). It highlights three main results: first, the spatial agglomeration of cultural venues in some specific urban areas and the interplay of local resources and international circulations that occurs there (anchoring), then the diversity of forms and degrees of insertion of cultural venues in the local environment (embeddedness), and finally the ambivalence of the traces and effects of cultural actors and projects on local territories and their evolutions (footprint), effects that can contribute to the local cultural vitality, but also to the production of phenomena of disanchoring/disembeddedness of artistic creation. Beyond the artistic and cultural field, this triptych opens research perspectives on the relationship between societies and places by proposing a transversal and dynamic conceptual grid to analyze the spatial dimension of social realities.