Region and place: regional identity in question

Abstract

Identity, a term that was not yet included in Williams' important Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (1976), has become a major watchword since the 1980s. Traditional territorialized battles over democracy, political status/citizenship and wealth have been complicated by the struggle over 'race', ethnicity, multiculturalism, gender, sexuality, recognition and a new symbolic economy characterized by the production/marketing of images (Isin and Wood, 1999;du Gay et al., 2000; Lash and Featherstone, 2002). The identity discourse has emerged concomitantly with such arguments that the world, particularly the western world, is moving towards a 'forced' individualization: people's lives are increasingly being left as their own responsibility, so that people shape their lives and environments through personal identities rather than through categorizations such as nationality, class, occupation or home region (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2001). Contrary to previous arguments, however, people's awareness of being part of the global space of flows seems to have generated a search for new points of orientation, efforts to strengthen old boundaries and to create new ones, often based on identities of resistance (Castells, 1997;Meyer and Geschiere, 1999;Kellner, 2002). It is argued that collective action cannot occur without a distinction between 'us' and the 'other' (Della Porta and Diani, 1999) but identity movements do not always base their activities on difference as it may be strategically beneficial to stress similarities (Bernstein, 1997).This report will review one specific part of the complicated identity discourse, the question of regional identity. Along with the tendencies depicted above, this old idea has gained new importance not only in geography but also in such fields as cultural/economic history, literature, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology and musicology. I will first reflect the premises that geographers and others have associated with this mushrooming but rarely analytically discussed category, then map the conceptual gaps, and, finally, suggest some possible avenues for further research.

Environmental Justice and Regional Political Ecology converge in the other California

“…Political ecology and environmental justice scholarship on regions draw on similar insights from critical human geography, and in particular, New Regional Geography that calls out the distinct, but interdependent notions of regions (things), regionalism (ideologies/meanings), and regionalization (processes) (Paasi 1991(Paasi , 2003. Regions can be understood as bounded territories (often, but not always at the sub-state level) that can function as units of governance, zones of economic activity, social networks, and bases of cultural identities.…”

“…Regionalization describes the historically contingent and contested political, economic, and social processes through which regions are continuously produced and reproduced (Jonas 2013, Neumann 2010, Pred 1984, Paasi 1991, Pred 1984. Regions, regionalism, and regionalization must be viewed as expressions of power serving the interests of some social actors over others, and through which state, capital and social movement actors pursue often divergent political and social agendas (Jones and MacLeod 2004, Paasi 2003, Benner and Pastor 2011. Regionalization can occur from both "above", through the re-scaling of formal state institutions, and from "below", through civic discourse, identify formation, and insurgent regionalism movements.…”

Atlant and Slovene national consciousness in the second half of the 19th century

“…^e upo{tevamo humanisti~no dimenzijo identitete, potem gre za dialekti~ni sistem, ki zdru`uje dva vidika, in sicer »mi« in »oni«. V na{em primeru ta dihotomija ne zajema samo dvojnosti na horizontalni ravni, ampak tudi na vertikalni, kjer gre za razmerje med konceptoma »od spodaj« in »od zgoraj« (Paasi 1991(Paasi in 2003. Pri tem je pomembno, da gre v bistvu za razmerje mo~i oziroma za mentalne meje.…”

Assessing the Regionality Degree of Regional Products o The Ustí Region (Czechia)

“…Commodification of local resources can help to build a positive regional image, and increase resistance of such a region to globalization pressures erasing cultural differences among regions (Paasi 2003). From this point of view, regional labelling is perceived as one of the tools shaping the regional image.…”