Narratives in context of cluster globalization

This article is inspired by recent concerns that history and context has not been taken into proper account in evolutionary economic geography, and by a call for narrative approaches to assess processes of path development, in our case more broadly processes of cluster evolution. We conduct a narrative study of globalization in the maritime cluster in Møre and Romsdal in Western Norway and ask how narratives and antenarratives are voiced to make sense of, and merge, regional and global considerations (processes in phenomenological time). By using a historical approach, we show that the dialogue between materiality and narratives is not a linear process but developed in historical time and reflects contextual changes in historical time. By drawing upon the distinction between narratives and antenarratives, defined as fragments of discourse that are articulated to make sense of things or give sense to them in a chaotic organizational reality, the study contributes to our understanding of regional development.