Regional Worlds ─ Advancing the Geography of Regions

A key concern in the debate and empirical research on the geography of regions is the evolution of the conceptualizations and practical uses of the idea of ‘region’. This idea prioritises both the intellectual and the practical development of regional studies. This book drives the discussion further. It stresses the complex forms of agency/advocacy involved in the production and reproduction of regional spaces and space of regionalism as well as the importance of geohistory and context. The book moves beyond the territorial/relational divide that has characterized debates on regions and regional borders since the 1990s.

The contributors answer key questions from different conceptual and concrete-contextual angles and to motivate readers to reflect on the perpetual significance of regional concepts and how they are mobilized by various actors to maintain or transform the contested spatialities of societal power relations.

This book was based on a special issue of Regional Studies.

Martin Jones is Professor of Urban and Regional Political Economy and Director of the White Rose Doctoral Centre, at the University of Sheffield, UK. Martin is an interdisciplinary researcher, interested in the geographies of state and government intervention through economic and social policy in cities and regions, and subnational political economies therein.

Anssi Paasi is a Professor at the Department of Geography at the University of Oulu. Anssi’s research fields are social construction of regions and territorial identities; theories of region, place and regionalism; the links between territories, boundaries and individual/social consciousness; the rhetoric of globalization and geopolitical imagination; the Europe of regions/ regional planning and development.