“Creative city” policy mobilities as transformation of dispositives – arrangements of “networking” in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg

Abstract. Following the calls for context-sensitive policy mobility research, I propose to analyze policy mobilities as transformation of dispositives. Michel Foucault's context-sensitive notion of dispositive stresses the context-specific, heterogeneous relations between linguistic and non-linguistic practices, subjectivities and materialities as well as the influence of power/knowledge and sedimented features in policymaking. These sensitivities are valuable contributions to policy mobility research.

I draw on empirical research on creative city policies, which are re-embedded in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg, to illustrate that line of argumentation. I reconstruct and compare related (sub-)dispositives: the mobile creative city policies, the historical and current contexts of the policies' re-embedding. Consequently, I use arrangements of networking as an empirical lens to understand the differing logics that shape the re-embedding of creative city policies in the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg and the mutual transformation of policies and their contexts.