Global ‘Lifeworlds’ Versus Local ‘Systemworlds’: How Flying Winemakers Produce Global Wines In Interconnected Locales

How do culture and the economy relate in a spatial context? Recent work on the economy‐culture relationship has developed the idea of ‘articulation’. Rather than conceiving culture as a separate factor, as an add‐on to economic analysis, culture and the economy represent interlaced dimensions in economic processes. The economy represents a cultural process, but culture, in turn, is influenced by the evolution of economic practices and concepts, including the advances of economic science. This paper will focus on how this articulated interpretation of the culture‐economy relationship bears on our conceptualisation of the territorial dimension of the economy. The starting point of the discussion is the prevalent emphasis on the region or ‘locale’ as a core site of economic development, set against the background of pervasive globalisation. Responding to recent discussions on Habermas's conceptual pair of ‘systemworld’–‘lifeworld’, an ‘articulated’ perspective on space is presented. One of the key messages is that an analysis of economic processes in space should develop a much richer interpretation of the market, which should be perceived as a culturally and territorially‐rooted institution. Such an interpretation may be inspired by the notion of ‘organised markets’, as well as by the conceptualisation of the economy and economics suggested by actor‐network thinking.