To be “creative” has become one of the fastest-moving imperatives in urban development. Policy mobility research addresses the increasing spread and application of such translocal and transscalar policies. Policy mobility approaches evolved from a critical debate on policy diffusion and policy transfer literatures, which are criticized for their methodological nationalism and the assumption of a rational, linear and literal transfer process (McCann and Ward, 2012; Peck and Theodore, 2010). In contrast, policy mobility approaches conceptualize “policymaking as a global-relational, social and spatial process, which interconnects and constitutes actors, institutions and territories” (McCann and Ward, 2012:328).

According to McCann and Ward (2012:328–330) policy mobility approaches have four features in common. Firstly, they draw on a certain set of literatures with different emphases: sociological work on mobilities, materialist political–economic perspectives and assemblage approaches. Secondly, mobility is not understood as a movement from A to B. Instead, Cook (2008), McCann (2011a) and Ward (2006) conceptualize the mobility of policies as contingent, contextualized and power-laden processes of disembedding, mobilizing and re-embedding policies into specific, locally differentiated contexts. Thirdly, these processes of mobility mutually transform the policies, actors, institutions, things and places involved (Cook, 2008:791; McCann, 2011a:111). The local context with its development projects is of paramount importance regarding the transformation of policies (Ward, 2006:56–57). Consequently, there are highly differentiated “creative city” policy geographies around the globe (Prince, 2010). Fourthly, the common methodological set includes ethnographies that follow people, policies and places as well as the study of situations.

Against this background, I am following calls for more context-sensitive policy mobility research. Power–knowledge relations and more extensive temporalities are important dimensions within processes of re-embedding that need to be more explicitly and context-sensitively addressed. I argue in favor of analyzing the re-embedding of mobile policies as transformation of dispositives because a dispositive perspective offers conceptual and empirical tools to address these two dimensions. Consequently, I present a non-presentist dispositive analytical research design drawing on walking interviews, photo interviews and coding. These methods allow for analyzing the powerful interplay of linguistic practices and materialities and are sensitive to more extensive temporalities. I draw on empirical research on the re-embedding of creative city policies in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg (EMN) to illustrate that line of argumentation. Consequently, I reconstruct and compare related (sub-)dispositives: the mobile creative city policies as well as the historical and current contexts of the policies' re-embedding in the EMN. 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 EMN and the mutual transformation of policies and its contexts. Finally, I discuss the general potential of dispositive approaches for research on policy mobilities.

To begin, I follow two calls for context-sensitive policy mobility research. Firstly, the context-specific “how” of re-embedding mobile policies needs to be investigated in detail, because this process “is inherently selective with certain policies, practices, discourses, actors, institutions and methods being used whilst others are sidelined or silenced” (Cook, 2008:791). The reification of mobility and its close relation to mutation are problematic in this regard. It remains unclear which elements of heterogeneous policies, such as creative cities, are moving, where they mutate and how they become stabilized in the context of their re-embedding. How do “contextual enrolments” and “local articulations” work (Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015:390–391)? Instead of tracing mobile elements of policies, we might ask how cities or metropolitan regions “arrive at” (Robinson, 2015:831) certain policies and make them local. Studies also need time to research elements of policies already in place because they shape possibilities (Temenos and McCann, 2013:351–352). This perspective on the re-embedding of policies resonates with the call to do “slow research” (Kuus, 2015:838) on policymaking, to be sensitive to ambiguities and spatiotemporal contexts. It also meets the calls for more longitudinal and genealogical perspectives on policy processes, which sensitize scholars to the historical embeddedness of policymaking (McCann et al., 2013:587; Temenos and Baker, 2015:841). Policy processes might encompass different temporalities and modes of policymaking like gradual, repetitive and delayed processes. Even formerly “unsuccessful” policy elements may become important in present policymaking (Wood, 2015). Thus, policy mobility research needs to be more attentive to slower transformations and the interconnections of discourses, subjectivities and materialities that are associated with vague and affirmative ideas like creative cities, which might travel without the intentional efforts of policymakers (Künkel, 2015:13–14).

Consequently, the context-specific “how” and the complex and contradictory long-term transformation of relations require more attention in debates on urban policy. How are “creativity” and “networking” actually co-constructed by different communities, in different types of cities and countries? Context-sensitive research on the long-term reproduction and transformation of policies in local contexts, on different scales, in different departments and by different groups and the broader framing contexts is crucial to answer these questions. Therefore, we need to go beyond policy and marketing documents and linear methodologies. Furthermore, we need to go beyond the focus on Anglophone and European capitals or “world cities” to discover the variations and contingencies in urban policymaking in other countries and smaller cities or regions like the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg (Borén and Young, 2013:1801–1806).

Secondly, we need to ask why the context-specific “how” becomes and remains “plausible” in the policy process. What legitimizes the selection and arrangement of policy elements? The discursive construction of “success” and of “appropriate” policy elements that “should” remain or become part of a policy arrangement is important to understand the context-specific “why” of the policy process (Cook, 2008:775–777; McCann, 2011b:144; Temenos and McCann, 2013:350). Consequently, power/knowledge in policymaking and particularly the role of linguistic practices need to be thoroughly addressed. Hence, policy mobility scholars should draw on insights of political science and other social sciences instead of superficial, disciplinary demarcation (Künkel, 2015:12–13). The turn of policy mobility research to post-structuralist approaches such as assemblage thinking indicates a (self-)critical shift to issues of power–knowledge relations, transformation, distributed agencies beyond human actors, contradictions and multiplicity in policymaking (Künkel, 2015:8–9; Pütz et al., 2013:88, 97). This also means not to a priori conceptualize these processes as coherent and exclusively neoliberal (Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015:391; Künkel, 2015:15–18).

Networking and creativity are symbolically and materially complex arrangements. I use arrangements of networking or the interaction of people, firms and institutions as a magnifying glass to understand the differing logics that context-specifically shape the re-embedding of creative city policies in the EMN and the struggles between them. The reconstruction of networking allows for indicating the context-specific multiplicity in the process of re-embedding creative city policies in the EMN and its relation to different power–knowledge relations and their manifestations. Networking is a suitable empirical lens because it is important to the scripts of creative cities, to the former and current policies in the EMN as well as to all groups involved in the process of re-embedding. However, it is co-constructed differently each time. Consequently, the broad notion of networking will be differentiated in Sect. 5.

I draw on the concept of dispositives by Michel Foucault to understand how networking is actually enacted and what legitimizes the context-specific modes of networking. This concept allows for analyzing the complexity of the materially and symbolically heterogeneous arrangements of networking. Moreover, it is sensitive to power–knowledge relations and especially to the relations of linguistic practices and material elements that co-produce networking. Further, the genealogical dispositive perspective is sensitive to change and the historical embeddedness of policymaking, that plausibilizes certain modes of networking while sidelining others in the context of the EMN. According to Foucault (1980:194–195) a dispositive is

firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the [dispositive]. The [dispositive] itself is the [network] that can be established between these elements. Secondly, what I am trying to identify in this [dispositive] is precisely the nature of the connection that can exist between these heterogeneous elements. […] Thirdly, I understand by the term [“dispositive”] a sort of – shall we say – formation which has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need. The [dispositive] thus has a dominant strategic function.

Thus, a dispositive approach meets the calls for context and power sensitivity. Furthermore, it offers a coherent perspective on important features of policy mobilities and the context-specific “how” and “why” of the co-construction of networking. Firstly, Deleuze (1992:160) distinguishes two dimensions of the dispositive on a conceptual level: “curves of visibility and curves of enunciation”, which reflect the translocal and transscalar relations of discourses, practices, subjectivities and materialities in short power–knowledge relations of policy mobility. Enunciation refers to the linguistic, discursive practices, whereas visibility points to non-linguistic, discursive and non-discursive practices as well as subjects and objects. The notions of subjectification and objectification point to the discursive construction of a subject or object (e.g., what is regularly said about a building) and subjectivation and objectivation to the non-discursive capabilities of subjects and objects (e.g., what a building is able to do or does). The double terms subjectification/subjectivation and objectification/objectivation reflect that agency is distributed among symbolic and material elements, which therefore cannot be separated (Bührmann and Schneider, 2008:52–74) (Fig. 1). Thus, the dispositive approach emphasizes the material dimension of power and its interplay with discursive practices – linguistic practices in particular (Mattissek and Wiertz, 2014:158–162). This reflects the socio-material co-constructivist Foucaultian notion of power as a relational, immanent and distributed multiplicity of micro-powers (Foucault et al., 2008:1098–1099). However, the discursive dimension is methodologically privileged, because not all interview statements refer to materials and because the agency of materials or non-discursive practices is always discursively mediated. Dispositive approaches draw on well-established Foucaultian discourse-analysis methods to address the important dimension of language, which takes part in the constitution of power–knowledge.

Secondly, two different dispositive lines of forces come to the fore, which context-specifically shape the re-embedding of policies and the enactment of networking: “lines of stratification or sedimentation, and lines leading to the present day or creativity” (Deleuze, 1992:165). Lines of sedimentation point to context-specific stable constructions of power–knowledge relations related to materiality, unquestioned, routinized and embodied knowledge, institutions and practices. Especially these taken-for-granted lines of sedimentation shape policymaking and emerging modes of networking in the EMN. Nevertheless, sedimentation is not about determinism but about a “dispositional logic” (Raffnsøe et al., 2011:199) that opens up certain spaces of possibilities. Sedimentation is powerful, but these lines are fragile, have fissures and can be realigned or opened up by lines of creativity. Lines of creativity refer to transformation via subjectivation and related practices that take part in the production of alternative modes of networking, for instance (see Bussolini, 2010:88–93).

Thus, the dispositive concept offers a perspective on change that sensitizes for the breaks and fissures, while at the same time accounting for the historical embeddedness of policymaking in a genealogical perspective. This means, the “already-assembled” (sub-)dispositives shape the processes of mobilizing, translating and re-embedding policies and the enactment of networking in EMN. Therefore, dispositives – such as creative cities and established “cluster policies” and the related arrangements of networking in the EMN – do not succeed each other, they co-exist and transform each other. These struggles are moments of actualization and make some of the logics that shape policymaking visible. Consequently, I conceptualize these processes as transformation of dispositives.

Overall, I reconstructed multiple arrangements of networking: networking as an informal, small-scale arrangement at On AEG, networking as a formal, large-scale arrangement in past and current policies of the EMN, and arrangements that hinder networking at On AEG. While the literature on creative cities and parts of the interview data highlight smaller and informal activities on street level, the dominant logic of the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg's past and current policy arrangements emphasizes formal and large-scale practices of networking, like fairs and symposia. The sedimented logics of the metropolitan policies aim at connecting firms and institutions rather than “diverse, creative individuals”. Architectural arrangements, spatial and interior design play an active role when it comes to networking at On AEG or not. At the same time, interviewees describe these material aspects as “hindering interaction” between (creative) tenants and the neighborhood of Muggenhof. This also applies to the powerful identities of a “secretive site”, a “northern” and a “southern” part as well as of the “autonomous and lonely artist subject”, which are effects of linguistic and non-linguistic practices and related materialities. The context-specific relations of these elements transform or even impede networking at On AEG. Nevertheless, more informal and appreciated networking practices like co-working or the events Open On AEG and Creative Monday have been introduced to the dispositive policy arrangement of the metropolitan region representing lines of creativity.

The innovative and slow dispositive analytical research design offered detailed insights into how networking is actually enacted and made reasonable in the context of the EMN. The reconstructions of networking showed how different co-existing arrangements of histories, discourses, practices, subjectivities and materialities co-construct different and complex processes of re-embedding creative city policies. The comparison also demonstrated the influences of sedimented local arrangements on policymaking. Consequently, mutual transformations became traceable. Moreover, the reconstruction of networking illustrated how talent and technology are actually enacted and embraced. Moreover, it showed why this is a “reasonable” re-embedding of creative city policies in the context of the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg.

The dispositive analysis provided analytical terms like objectification/objectivation to grasp how material and symbolic elements inseparably co-produce variations of networking and creativity. The power- and knowledge-sensitive perspective allowed for analyzing the tension between continuity, fluid change and ruptures in policy processes. Powerful lines of sedimentation and dispositional logics of networking integrate and transform the two dispositives of a cluster-based high-tech region and the Creative European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg and legitimize the political foci. This illustrates the sensitivity of the dispositive perspective for the relational and transformational effects of well-established arrangements, their legitimization through linguistic practices and their influence on processes of re-embedding.

Consequently, a dispositive perspective not only offers valuable tools to reconstruct the relation of material and symbolic elements and their powerful effects, it also allows for mutually analyzing forces of stabilization and destabilization as two important dimensions in processes of re-embedding. This combination of sensitivities makes the dispositive perspective a valuable contribution to the analysis of policy mobilities.