GLOBALISATION AND REGIONAL STUDIES FOR THE 21 ST CENTURY (original) (raw)
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2016
By examining regionalism from historical, spatial, comparative and global perspectives, Rethinking Regionalism transcends the deep intellectual and disciplinary rivalries that have limited our knowledge about the subject. This broad-ranging approach enables new and challenging answers to emerge as to why and how regionalism evolves and consolidates, how it can be compared, and what its ongoing significance is for a host of issues within global politics, from security and trade to development and the environment. Retaining a balanced and authoritative style throughout, this text will be welcomed for its uniquely comprehensive examination of regionalism in the contemporary global age.
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.
Review essay on Sassen, S (ed.): Global networks, linked cities, and Lahiri, S (ed.): Regionalism and globalization] International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies vol. 26:4 (2003), pp. 958-961. Saskia, Sassen, editor, 2002, Global Networks -Linked Cities. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 368. ISBN 0-415-93162-2 (cloth). ISBN 0-415-93613-0 (paper) Lahiri, Sajal, editor, 2001 Regionalism and Globalization. Theory and Practice. London, Routledge. 332 p. ISBN 0-415-22075-0 (cloth) The last ten years or so have witnessed the mushrooming of literature and discourse on globalization, accompanied with such topics as 'regions'/regionalism, global city regions, integration, cross-border activities, networks, all kinds of flows, governance, resistance, changing links between various spatial scales, the very constitution of these scales, etc. Perhaps more than the state of affairs condensed in the previous academic buzzword 'postmodernity', globalization as a process penetrates the economic, social and political spheres round the world. Still, it is at times difficult to say what aspects of 'globalization' are under scrutiny in academic research and what makes these specific aspects as examples of 'globalization'. Anyhow, these tendencies imply
Rethinking Regions and Regionalism
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. 01/2013; 14(2):9-18. , 2013
There is a long tradition in both research and policy to focus on formal and inter-state regional organizations in the discussion about regions and regionalism. This is a consequence of the dominance of Europe as the main case and paradigm, and of rationalist and problem-solving theoretical perspectives, which privilege state-centric perspectives and pre-given conceptualizations of regions. The problem is that both Eurocentrism and static understandings of regional space negatively impact theoretical development, empirical analysis as well as policy. The view offered emphasizes the social construction of regions and the various ways in which state, market, and civil society actors relate and come together in different formal and informal patterns of regionalism. It is also argued that the next step in the study of regionalism is to develop its comparative element, which will be crucial in overcoming Eurocentrism and other forms of parochialism.
An Intellectual History of Regionalism
Regionalism. Edited by Philippe De Lombaerde and Fredrik Söderbaum, 2013
Regionalism is a collection that has been created to capture and organize 60 years of research and policy discourse on regional integration and regionalism since the 1940s until today. The ambition of the collection is to contribute to the consolidation of a fragmented field of study, which is characterized by a lack of dialogue among academic disciplines, area specializations, as well as theoretical traditions and approaches. Progress in the field requires a better understanding of the intellectual roots of the field; it also requires that academics engage increasingly with other texts and theorists across time periods, discourses and disciplines, which is rather rare in the current debate. Regionalism provides the academic community of scholars with a collection of seminal articles that have contributed to shaping the thinking about regional integration, regionalism and regionalization during the past six decades. The four volumes are structured chronologically, reflecting the evolution of the subject. This organization shows historical dynamisms, the various lines of influence, cross-fertilization and descendence: Volume One: 1945-1970 Classical Regional Integration Volume Two: 1970-1990 Revisions of Classical Regional Integration Volume Three: 1990-2000 New Regionalism Volume Four: 2000-2010 Comparative Regionalism The collection includes three Nobel prize winners — Jan Tinbergen, Robert Mundell and Paul Krugman — next to pioneers such as Ernst Haas, Karl Deutsch, Joseph Nye, Raul Prebisch, Bela Balassa and more recent leading theorists such as Amitav Acharya, Jagdish Bhagwati, Björn Hettne, Peter Katzenstein, Andrew Moravcsik, Walter Mattli, and Iver Neumann. This Introduction gives an overview of the field and situates the four volumes. It elaborates some of the key issues shaping the development of the field and which have been essential for the selection of articles to the four volumes and which have been central to the intellectual history of the field: (i) the ontology of regionalism and regional integration; (ii) the role of European integration theory/practice and comparison; and (iii) the role of theory.
The Future of Regionalism: Old Divides, New Frontiers
In: Andrew Cooper, Chris Hughes and Philippe De Lombaerde (eds), Regionalization and Global Governance: The Taming of Globalization. London: Routledge, pp. 61-79, 2008
Over the last decade regionalism, or what has become known as ‘new regionalism’, has become a hot issue in a number of social science specialisations: European studies, comparative politics, international economics, international relations and international political economy. The approach of these different academic specialisations varies considerably, which means that regionalism means different things to different people. In fact, we are facing an intriguing ontological problem. There has been little agreement about what we study when we study regionalism. This implies that there also is a lack of agreement about how we should study it; in other words, we are facing an epistemological problem as well. The great divide, albeit an exaggerated one, is between what has been termed ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism. We propose its dissolution. Part 1 thus describes the first generation of regionalism studies, focused on regional integration in Europe, and the subsequent ‘big leap’ from the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ regionalism, which really was the study of regionalisms in the context of globalisation. The ‘old’ regionalism has been well documented before, so our purpose is rather to look for continuities. The discontinuities are of course also acknowledged. Part 2 goes into the various dimensions of the more recent regionalism, the actors driving it and the societal levels at which it manifests itself.