The emergence of concerned partnerships in the ethical marketization of place: A narrative lens

This study adopts a narrative lens to investigate how place shapes the emergence and work of cross-sector partnerships (CSPs). Based on a qualitative inquiry of the marketization of Lapland, Finland, as the home of Santa Claus, four matters of concern around the ethicality of marketizing Lapland are followed: revitalization, commerciality, distortion, and imbalance. The findings show how CSPs emerge in the marketization of place through the mechanisms of narrative contestations and misalignment of marketized place and place-identity, and their (re)alignment at the nexus of marketization. The contestations and misalignment generate matters of concern from place, which in turn mobilize CSPs via two interrelated narrative practices: i) problematizing and ii) reimagining the marketized place to realign it with place identity.The paper contributes the construct of concerned partnerships to the literature of CSPs, a place-based form of CSPs which, consist of both market and non-market actors, including the place and its social and material resources. They are formed through matters of concernt hat emerge through misalignments of marketized place and place-identity, to realign them andsustain a place at a nexus of marketization.