The coevolution of culture and industrial paths in regional restructuring and transition: A cultural toolkit approach

How regional industrial paths unfold and what contributes to their evolution and directionality are crucial questions for many regions. While the path development literature has elucidated how paths emerge, grow, and decline and has recently paid more attention to the directionality of paths, the role of intangible factors summarized under the broad notion of “culture” in shaping regional restructuring and transition is far from fully understood. A small but growing literature seeks to disentangle how culture influences regional development but falls short of carving out the coevolutionary relationships between culture and paths. This article examines how culture and paths coevolve with different directionalities and proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing this coevolution, drawing on the approach of cultural toolkits which allows for focusing on the construction and contestation of imaginaries. Empirically, the article draws on qualitative evidence of media reports and interviews from three regions in Israel to unravel coevolution with different economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical directionalities of regional restructuring and transition. • Contributes to the emerging field of ideational economic geography • Examines how regional industrial paths coevolve with elements of culture • Proposes a cultural toolkit approach and focuses on the role of imaginaries as elements in the cultural toolkit • Empirically unravels industrial-institutional coevolution through imaginaries with different economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical directionalities of regional restructuring and transition • Draws on qualitative evidence of media reports and interviews from three regions in Israel