Perspectives on Regionalism in (Southern) Africa
This review essay uses the works of Nana Poku (2001), James Sidaway (2002) and Andrew Grant and Fredrik Soderbaum (2003) as principal texts for the discussion on regionalism in Africa. Together, the works of both authors create an elaborate text on regionalism in the continent and provide the intellectual space for re-assessing regionalisation in (southern) Africa against the backdrop of discourses of regionalism elsewhere. The essay is not intended to offer book reviews. Rather, the aim is to tease out salient points in the texts in order to bring them into a coherent discussion. The intensive re-conceptualisation of regions, place, space and scale has yielded a quite different appreciation of regions and their formation than what the areal differentiation school of thought once offered. The result has been to conceive spatial differentiation in terms of practices and processes rather than some given or preconceived qualities. Accordingly, 'it has become typical to understand regions as historically contingent social processes emerging as a constellation of institutionalised practices, power relations and discourse' (Paasi, 2004, p. 540). In this sense, spatial differentiation cannot be reduced to a single scale (Duncan and Savage, 1989). Agents of regionalism are not necessarily limited to the regional scale, but are part of a constellation of practices and a mix of actors. As Beauregard (1995, p. 239) has correctly noted, 'once we focus our attention on the agents who literally make scale, the partitioning of space into global-national-regional-local seems simplistic . . . In fact, it is the mix of those actors, and the distribution of influence among them, that results in such places becoming regional, national or international nodes in the world-system'. It can be argued that the ramification of power relations, together with changes in the nature and scales at which regions are formed, render the notion of the region unstable. Indeed, calls for new regionalisms have become a familiar feature of the debate
The resurgence of the ‘Region’ and ‘Regional Identity’: theoretical perspectives and empirical observations on regional dynamics in Europe
Abstract ‘New regionalism’, ‘region’, ‘city-region’, ‘cross-border region’, ‘border’ and ‘identity’ have become important catchphrases on the global geo-economic and geopolitical scene. The resurgence of these terms has been part of the transformation of both political economy and governance at supra-state, state and sub-state scales. Regions have been particularly significant in the EU where both the making of the Union itself and the ‘Europe of regions’ are concrete manifestations of the re-scaling of state spaces and the assignment of new meanings to territory. Such re-scaling has also led to increased competition between regions; a tendency that results from both the neo-liberalisation of the global economy and from a regionalist response. Regional identity, an idea at least implicitly indicating some cohesiveness or social integration in a region, has become a major buzzword. It has been particularly identified in the EU’s cohesion policy as an important element for regional development. In spite of their increasing importance in social life and academic debates, regions, borders and identities are often studied separately, but this paper aims at theorising and illustrating their meanings in an integrated conceptual framework and uses the sub-state regions in Europe, and particularly in Finland, as concrete examples. Regions are conceptualised here as processes that gain their boundaries, symbolisms and institutions in the process of institutionalisation. Through this process a region becomes established, gains its status in the broader regional structure and may become a significant unit for regional identification or for a purported regional identity. This process is based on a division of labour, which accentuates the power of regional elites in the institutionalisation processes.
Uneven development and the difference that space makes
Abstract It is now generally accepted by social scientists that where an event takes place can make a considerable difference to how it takes place. However, social science has been less successful at explaining what causes this spatial variation, and in incorporating this variation in accounts of social change and process. This vagueness is one reason why social science answers to policy problems often appear ill-aimed. Fortunately, there has recently been a thorough debate in geography and sociology about the difference that space makes, complemented by a largely independent debate on uneven development. This paper draws together these two bodies of material in an attempt to discern how we might more adequately deal with spatial variation.