Paper short abstract:

In this paper, the peripheral is explored both empirically and analytically: As a geographical site, Tønder, DK, and as an analytical position that thrives on edginess, transformation, elusiveness and blind angles.

Paper long abstract:

'Being in the periphery' focuses on Tønder as the empirical site. Over a couple of decades, Tønder has been under transformation from being a borough in the province of Denmark towards becoming a place in the outskirts. This change is connected to a restructuring of welfare institutions moving them from province towns to larger cities. The change is also connected to a shift in the discourse about places situated remote from large cities.

'Thinking from the periphery' as an analytical position allows for exploring ambiguity as implicit in anthropological thinking, thereby it offers a method to reach otherwise disguised sides of empirical settings. The impact of an analytical focus on the edgy, deserted, ambiguous and disguised will be explored and discussed through the case study of Tønder.

Though this double strategy, the paper questions how to decide on the difference and the interdependency between center and periphery, geographically as well as analytically. Also, the ways periphery and center folds into each other is discussed. Furthermore, periphery as a an analytical position is explored as a way to focus on places in transformation, on practices and thinking by inhabitants of edgy sites, and on the fringy sides of the relationships between spatial and social relations.

The paper is based on fieldwork in progress conducted in Tønder as part of the research project Spaces of Danish Welfare.