Reproductive agencies in regional economic resilience: insights from Covid-19 in Tyrol

Regional economic resilience is a prominent approach for studying global economic disruption and regional development. While few studies have comprehensively explored the role of agency in regional economic resilience, this paper examines the conceptual connections and offers supporting empirical insights from the Covid-19 pandemic in rural Tyrol, Austria. The study investigates the regionally entangled economic path evolution of tourism and agriculture development, provides insights on the impacts of the pandemic, and engages with different actors and agencies. Six distinctive types of reproductive and change agency are being identified, which pertain to the entrepreneurship of firms, the institutional efforts of government bodies, and the place-based leadership and maintenance work of regional associations. Especially the reproductive agencies enacted by different actors show to link to the regional ability to withstand and recover from the economic repercussions of the pandemic and highlight the importance of multi-scalar institutional environments in shaping resilience. Finally, the research articulates the need to advance the conceptual architecture of the agency and resilience framework concerning binary and static classifications of actors towards a more place-based understanding that accounts for heterogeneous and dynamically evolving actor constellations that matter particularly during shock events.