ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines two different socio-economic regional strategies to meet with the challenges that have arisen from market and political forces over the last 20-30 years. The rise of globalization as a concept and process in development policies goes hand in hand with the economic liberalization and deregulation policies of the 1980s and 1990s. The inland region of Roros in mid-Norway was formerly based on mining and mountain farming, while the resource base in the island region of Hitra-Froya was fishing and coastal farming. Tourists are flocking to the coastal region. The actor-network theory originates in an attempt to unite a micro-sociological perspective with a structural perspective. The theory of industrial districts has its origins in the literature about flexible specialization and institutional economy. In order to study the balance between the local and the global, theories of 'embeddedness', civil society, and social capital also have explanatory possibilities.
