The Dictionary of Human Geography (171 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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which these scalar distinctions have been historically produced. It is through these pro ductions, at once material and discursive, that regional structures have become sedimented in imaginative geographies, in material land scapes, and in pubLic poLicy. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The theorization of regional formations as partial, porous, hybrid condensations of entangled networks between human and non human actants, each of different spans and with inconstant geometries, raises difficult questions of representation. How are these ideas and concepts to be redeemed in the fabrication of regional accounts? Part of the problem concerns the need to find ways of conveying these theoretical constructs in empirical solution: as Pudup (1988) observed, ?Anyone trying to mesh theory with empirical description [in regional geography] soon learns that movement among abstract concepts and empirical description is like performing ballet on a bed of quicksand? (see also Sayer, 1989). To some writers, the metaphor of dance subse quently seemed peculiarly appropriate: one implication of non representationaL theory is that all human geographies need to become much more physically sensuous, much more expressive in their poetics. In the specific case of regional geography, there is clearly much to learn from careful, critical readings of imagina tive Literature, fiLm and video, and from con temporary travel accounts that have tried to find the terms for the complex interpenetrations of cultures: what Iyer (1989) epigrammatically described as ?Video night in Kathmandu? (cf. trAnscuururAtion). In doing so, authors have wrestled with some of the same demons that haunted traditional regional geography, and above all with a sense of ?belatedness? a sort of elegy for the world we have lost that, on occasion, too readily modulates into what Rosaldo (1989) calls ?imperial nostalgia? whereby ?people mourn the passing of what they themselves have transformed?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) These issues are thus not confined to regional geography, and they admit of no easy solution. They also indicate the importance of developing an ethics of regional description and analysis capable of addressing both the subjects and the audiences of such accounts. The authors of regional geographies have an obligation to respond to questions of adequacy, accountability and authorization: What are their responsibilities to the people whose lives they write about? And they also have an obligation to convey places, regions and landscapes as something more than the lifeless parade of categories or the endless tabulations of statistics that loom so large in many textbooks of regional geography. There is a need to represent places and their inhab itants in ways that compel their audiences to care about them: which is why the ?openness? of regions the sense of trans local and trans regional engagement and interconnection is important not only intellectually but also pol itically. Whatever else regional geography is about, it surely ought to be about disclosing our involvement with the lives and needs of distant strangers. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnes and Farish (2006); Paasi (2002); Thrift (1994). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
regional policy
Policy concerned both with the regional (normally thought of as sub national) constitution and effectivity of econ omy, society, cuLture and polity, and with the economic, social and cultural constitution and effectivity of regions. These two aspects of policy are not binaries: they are mutually con stitutive of regional policy. However, although always influentially co present in policy initi ation, design and implementation, their rela tive significance varies across space and time. (NEW PARAGRAPH) As objects of policy, regions are subjected to attempted policy led transformations designed to ameliorate uneven deveLopment for reasons of sociaL justice, welfare and economic efficiency. Whilst contemporary emphases in regional policy are increasingly preoccupied with a singular concern for economic growth, these motives are not mutually exclusive. Regional policy is rarely purely redistributive. It is intended to be transformative. Thus it may, for example, involve bringing work to (unemployed/low productivity) workers or attempt to address the uneven distribution of cultural facilities (e.g. symphony orchestras, art galleries and theatres) or the regional availability of educa tional facilities (such as university disciplines, for example). Such policies are usually driven and financed from outside the region albeit often with regional participation by national or supra national state bodies. In terms of policies attempting to address issues of welfare and social justice, what is inescapable here is fiscal redistribution and effort to direct the geographical trajectories of the circuits of value that make up economic geographies. And, in addition, national macro economic policies are rarely region neutral as may be illustrated, for example, in claims for and against public expenditure in south east England and in debates around the political and fiscal separation of the north from the south of Italy whilst a range of policies (e.g. labour market policy, transport policy and welfare policies) have pronounced regional consequences even if articulated at the level of the nation or supra national state. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Alternatively, regional policy may stress regional responsibilities for addressing uneven development through regionally induced supply side transformations involving (NEW PARAGRAPH) regional training, learning and innovation, for example designed to increase regional economic efficiency, productivity and dyna mism. It thereby places responsibility for these transformations on local workers and firms albeit with some support and encouragement (both positive and negative) of various kinds. Local responsibilities may also be emphasized through competitive bidding processes for major international events such as the Olympic Games, for licences to open and run casinos, or for resources to finance cultural renovation or the upgrading of institutions of higher education, or for investment in new or upgraded infrastructure to encourage regional capacities such as public transport or cycling for a post carbon age. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The claimed economic, political and social formative role of regions underlies their roles as subjects of policy. Economically, claims for the significance of regional context and prox imity in enabling the intense development of a range of traded and untraded interdependencies and the emergent role of trust in cutting the transaction costs of economic activity, as well as notions of ?buzz? based around per sonal and face to face contact in enhancing the effectiveness of circuits of value and the incorporation of a wide range of local influ ences including local institutions enabling dynamic processes of learning and innovation, reveal the significance of regions in constitut ing productive circuits of value and hence in constituting economic geographies (cf. cLuster). Here, policy is based on the assumption of the critical significance of the regions in forming economic geographies and of creating the conditions of existence for the enhancement of regionally based processes of economic growth. (NEW PARAGRAPH) However, whilst such contextuaL effects are doubtless formatively important, it is easy to downplay the critical and inescapable and hence deeply formative material imperatives of economies and, more especially, the dis tinctive material objectives and dynamic geog raphies of capitaList circuits of value in shaping regional economic geographies. Accounts of regional development focused on the geographies of global production networks held down in place by various contextual forces including regional policy begin to capture the essential diaLectic between these two sets of forces (material and contextual) that shape the economic fortune of regions. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Politically, strongly developed notions of cultural and political identity as revealed, for example in contested relations between Macedonia and the Greek provinces of Makedonia, or in Basque and Catalonian claims for independence in Spain, and in Brittany or Corsica in France and the Chiapas in Mexico point again to the forma tive significance of regions as the subjects of regional policy in wider political and cultural relations. Policy here is devoted primarily to the containment and regulation of regional aspirations. However, the geography of regional awareness, identity and imagination is itself unevenly developed. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A number of overarching issues surround the design and conduct of regional policy. First, what is the region? Territories are often contrasted to relational notions of regions. Territorial notions view regions in absolute terms as containers or in relative terms as formatively interacting containers. Proponents of the latter, relational view argue that regions are porous, open and fluid. They are shaped by relations of all sorts operating in a multi scalar universe in which scaLes themselves are socially constructed, if often powerfully defended in political terms. In this view, regions are as much a product of external relations (like flows of capital and ideas) as of those internal relations (such as the relations between people and nature that were the focus of classical regionaL geography). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In fact, however, both notions of region are mutually constitutive. Territories are them selves made up of a variety of networks, and the ?internal? characteristics of territories are simply the outcome of the historical geograph ies of relational links within and beyond the region. In this way, time and path depend ency (but not determinancy) comes to arbi trate between territory and relationality in regional formation. At the same time, territor ies and regions are constructed by boundary marking (often involving powerful relations of domination and inducement) and by influ ential centres of calculation operating within and beyond the state (e.g. in academia) con structing statistical definitions and accounts of them. In such ways, regions may be invented in much the same way that national economies are invented through the technologies of their description and analysis. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Thus the question of who speaks for the region who has voice in identifying the region and regional policy becomes critically important. Given the widespread interest in the region as a long constituted expression of distinctive and integrative social identity, it is all too easy (or convenient) in policy formula tion and assessment to assume a unity of pur pose and a homogeneity in regions in which diversity and contestation may be inherent. Politico religious and class based regional conflicts such as those in Northern Ireland during the ?troubles?, or class based conflicts of interests in regions such as the North East of England, with a long historical geography of social development based on deeply held and long standing cLass divisions, reveal how simplistic such assumptions may be. And, of course, speaking for the region may emanate from outside the region (e.g. from national or supra national interests) at least as much as from within. Voice and who has it becomes even more significant in regions with clear aspirations to autonomy or independence. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Related to such questions around the con struction of regional policy is the whole complex of issues surrounding notions of governmentaLity and the ongoing (or not) legitimacy of the authority to govern. With the spread of devoLution around the world, the region and regional policy are deeply implicated in the emergence and negotiation of multi level patterns of governance. This involves the legitimacy of different levels of government, and the distribution of resources and responsibilities between them. Such changes and the debates around them are closely related to changing notions of govern ment including the move from the political representation of individuals and places to the economic, social, cultural and political responsibility of individuals and places as the distinctions between the state, civiL soci Ety and economy are dissolved and recom bined in the attempt to maintain political legitimacy in the face of such changes and the globalizing geographies (see gLObALiza tion) that shape them. But beyond this, questions of governance open up the ques tions of how who gets to speak for regions and how regional policy gets to take place. Central here is the issue of expertise and the establishment of policy norms and target setting, which enables governmental action on regions and the possibility of the emergence of creative capacity within regions. However, just as such capacities (or the lack of them) do not guarantee ?success? whoever may define it neither does it enhance the possibilities of more participatory forms of democracy. This is, perhaps, especially true of regions long suffering from economic decline and the with ering of circuits of value. Hence the political issue of the relations and modalities of power between regional and national/supra national governance becomes central if the question of uneven development is to be addressed head on in policy formulation. But, of course, this does not mean that regional economic policies, for example, will be based on the pursuit of social justice rather than of eco nomic effectivity. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Such norms and targets raise a fourth overarching issue concerning the objectives of regional policies. For example, econo mic policies are increasingly narrowly for matted around issues of competitiveness and Productivity as measured through profitabil ity. Not only does this framing ignore a range of issues such as the work that takes place and goes largely unmeasured beyond the capitalist economy, as well as the diverse norms and social relations involved in materi ally effective circuits of value, including but not reducible to the social economy lying outside the mainstream, but it also tends towards reductive notions of processes such as iNNovation defined in terms merely of contributions to profitability. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Finally, the long standing significance of the region as a focus of distinctive identities and even loyalties and this not least as a (NEW PARAGRAPH) consequence of the crucial role of historical economic geographies in shaping a sense of belonging, albeit contested and conflicting belonging combines in a potentially prob lematic fashion with the notion of the region as a formative economic, social and political entity and a constructed object of policy in which regional responsibility for development is stressed. Under these circumstances, in which the region is perceived as a representa tion of meaning and practice, blame is all too readily attached to the victim. However, this tendency may be countered from the perspec tive of geographical POLiticaL economy. This way of understanding is capable of recognizing not only the role of people in making their own geographies (if not necessarily under the conditions and constraints that they would choose) and the genuine material constraints on regional development (which mark the economic, political, cultural and geographical limits of regional responsibilities for the con struction of geographies), but the political possibilities in the pursuit of policies capable of sustaining locally distinctive as well as materially, socially, politically and culturally effective regions. rL (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Amin, Massey and Thrift (2003); Coe, Hess, Yeung, Dicken and Henderson (2004); Hudson (2007); Lovering (1999); Macleod and Jones (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Regional Studies Association (2007); Rodriguez Pose and Gill (2004); Scott (1998); Scott and Storper (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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