R-01/98 Etterbruk av nedlagte meierianlegg

This study focuses on after-use of shut-down dairies. My intention was to look at the consequences of the structural rationalisation which has taken place within the dairy co-operatives lately. I have concentrated on what consequences the shutting down have on the local community and how the process of creating new work-places in the old dairy-buildings take place. In the theoretical part of this study I discuss the concepts of place, entrepreneurship and local mobilisation and how they have been treated theoretically in the discipline of geography. I further elaborate these concepts in the study. In the analysis I have focused on how the informants understand these concepts. I have chosen to combine quantitative and qualitative data in this study, and I started with a preliminary study where I collected data from all dairies shut down between 1970 and 1995. In addition to this, I collected the empirical material by doing interviews with seven persons (informants) from two different local communities. These informants were active in the local community. Many of them had established their own businesses in the previous dairy-buildings. Through a qualitative approach on the community-level, I illuminated the informants' situation in their local context. The goal of the work with after-use of shut-down dairies was to create new work-places. My study shows that 84 % of the shut-down dairies throughout the country had been used in other contexts. But these were unfortunately not just innovation in the community, but in most of the cases just relocation of other kinds of activity or business. In the two local communities I studied more people were employed than when the dairies were running. Local entrepreneurs were engaged in the after-use of the dairy-buildings. My study shows that the informants had the ability to act when the dairies had to readjust their activity. These peoples were very important for the local community, because they were resourceful and energetic. The informants also met a lot of obstacles when they tried to create new activity in the shut-down dairies. I found that the people I interviewed had a strong wish to do something positive in their own district, not only for themselves and their own business, but for the whole community.