REGION AND REGIONALISM FROM THE
VIEWPOINT OF GEOGRAPHY
Aiste Zemaityte
Hoon Lee
Alina Kim
CONTENTS
•Aiste Zemaityte
1. History of the terms in regional context
2. Emergence of Area Studies as a discipline
Hoon Lee
1. General definitions
2. Today’s View of the Concept
Alina Kim
1. The rise of regionalism after 1990s
2. The New Regionalism Theory
•Aiste Zemaityte
1. History of the terms in regional context
2. Emergence of Area Studies as a discipline
PRESENCE OF THE TERM
‘Region’ has always been part of IR.
 19th century European phenomena, such as the Zellverein customs union of Germanic
principalities.
 Regional cooperation First World War, and expanded after the Second World
War.
 League of Arab States was the first institutionalized regional cooperation initiative
after WWII.
 Western Europe gave rise to a regionalism linking socio-economic interests across
national boundaries.
PRESENCE OF THE TERM
Two different regionalist perspectives occur during two distinct waves of post-WWII
 First between 1950s and 1970s
 Second during mid-1980s
 “New regionalism”
Isolationist China also engaged in regional activities
 Promotion of cooperation between itself, Russia and four Central Asian states
NAFTA
 Also Central American Common Market in 1960 and later relaunched as open regionalism in the
1990s
REGION
Region can appear in various forms:
 Politically as an administrative unit;
 Culturally as an ethnic or linguistic community;
 Economically as a zones of production and exchange;
 It can have civilization authenticity and nostalgic longings.
RESEARCHERS AND AREA STUDIES
How researches came to have an interest in the particular region
or country they are working on?
 Participation in the war (WWII or Vietnam);
 Travel or residence in particular region;
 Learning language and history of particular region;
 Family (marriage with local person; or marriage with a researcher of particular
region);
 Ex: George Kahim, the founder of Southeast Asian studies in Cornell University.
INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF AREA STUDIES
Institutionalization of area studies is an attempt to ensure against
orientalising risks (V.L. Rafael):
1. It helps to see foreign encounters historically and structurally determined;
2. Institutionalization stresses professional rationality, detached approaches, and
practical effects.
EMERGENCE OF AREA STUDIES (I)
Area studies have emerged in US after WWII:
 “area studies as a mode of knowledge production is, strictly speaking, military in
origins.” (Chow, 2006, 39);
 It was concentrated mostly on former USSR, East and Southeast Asian countries;
 Other area studies programs were also shaped by similar Cold War strategic
considerations (Latin America, Middle East, etc.).
ORIENTALISM
Orientalism (1978) by Edward W. Said is a critical study of
patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and
North African societies.
 Area studies became a direct heirs of classical orientalism (Kolluoglu-Kirla, 2003);
 West became a target of criticism;
 Categories whose separateness anad self-identity have been radically questioned
(Al-Azm 1981; Ahmad 1992; Zia-Ebrahimi 2011).
GEOGRAPHY AND AREA STUDIES
After WWII the field of area studies was dominated by large disciplines such as
political science;
Geographers were insignificant contributor to the transdisciplinary debates;
Many scholars were calling for geography to be fully engaged in area studies.
EMERGENCE OF AREA STUDIES (II)
Decline of the Cold War in the end of the 1980s:
 Undermined the relatively stable sense of geopolitical categories;
 Deprived funding for area studies;
 Attention shifted to Central Asia;
EMERGENCE OF AREA STUDIES (III)
Globalization and area studies:
 New ways of understanting difference, diversity, areas, and connections;
 New programs initiaded by Ford Foundation (since 1997);
EMERGENCE OF AREA STUDIES (TIMOTHY MITCHELL)
The origins of Area Studies are seen in the 1930s:
 Intellectual and political changes shaped a particular set of assumptions about the
local and the global;
 WWII and Cold War postponed development of area studies (two domestic
concerns):
 Unrestricted federal aid to states can be used for sectarian schools and church
separation from state;
 Federal aid would be used for racial integration of schools.
CONTINUE
Changes in the regions whose history and culture are being
studied:
 Establishment of modern history and society studies research centres
“the social science transformed themselves into, as it were, a kind
of area studies”.
POSTORIENTALIST GEOGRAPHIES
Considerations “how areas are imagined and how are knowledge is structured to
construct are “heartlands” as well as area “borderlands”. (van Schendel, 2002).
The intellectual partition of Zomia:
Hoon Lee
1. General definitions
2. Today’s View of the Concept
TODAY’S VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT (CONTD)
Use of regionalism
 cooperation and coordination among actors “within a given region”
 This coordination can itself further define a region
“Regionalization” – growth of economic interdependence within a given
geographical area
 this definition is driven by those processes by non-state, private actors.
 State-led regional programs – regionalism
 Non-state/private actors – regionalization
“Regionness” – a region exists when actors, including governmental, define and
promulgate to others a specific identity.
DEFINITION
Regionalism
Associated with a programme
and strategy and may lead to
formal institution buildings
Official or governmental
level
Regionalization
Denotes the process that leads to patterns of
cooperation, integration, complementary
and convergence within a particular crossnational geographical space
Non- governmental level
TODAY’S VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT (CONTD)
New regionalism
 Mixture of local, regional, and global forces, simultaneously involving states
as well as non-state, market and societal actors
 Trade patterns are now seen to involve ‘globally diffused network regions’,
rather small self-contained units unlike bloc idea of prevalent in the 1990s.
 Regions have also been characterized in a broad security thinking as
generating different forms of security stretching from political-power
competition to integration
TODAY’S VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT (CONTD)
Geography
 Cultural connections and specially language have been argued to provide far stronger
bonds than geography
 British commonwealth
 Organization international de la francophone
 Thematic analysis of regionalism are sympathetic to these cultural, religious, or economic
groupings that are not geographically contiguous
TODAY’S VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT
Economics
 Over fifty percent of the total volume of world trade is occurring within preferential
trade agreements (RTAs)
Regionalism has been a consistent feature of the global security and economic
architecture since WWII
TODAY’S VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT (CONTD)
Regional trade initiatives of the 80s and 90s ceased the old regionalism that
concentrated on import-substituting collapse
 Open regionalism initiated by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
 Open member’s economies to each other while also opening economies to third parties
Expansion of regional activities has led to ‘new’ regionalism
 New regionalism has moved beyond trade and functionalism
TODAY’S VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT (CONTD)
Problems with terminology
 E.g. EU is not only a major region, but also a producer of various types of other
regions
Definition
 Fairly open: besides proximity, cultural, economic, linguistic or political ties
 Region itself employs geographical, historical or cultural, and how it ties to the
identification of region.
TODAY’S VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT (CONTD)
Trade is a major and common activity of regions
 The absence of trade is said to be an indicator and an explanatory tool for the absence of deeper
regional cooperation.
Institutionalization
 Many see institutionalization as a later stage of a region’s progression
 regional grouping can assert control over a territory
 On a larger scale, some regional institutions, may have been created, to reinforce state
sovereignty rather than to modify or transcend it
 Middle east
 NAFTA is considered a successful institution
 Not only in trade, but I has developed institutions
 At economic level, very successful
Alina Kim
1. The rise of regionalism after 1990s
2. The New Regionalism Theory
THE RISE OF REGIONALISM AFTER 1990S
Sheer number of new formal regional arrangements due to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
The end of bipolarity removed the significance of Cold War perceptions and divisions.
The US is no longer in opposite position towards regional organizations.
The adoption of domestic neoliberal policies has increased.
The Westphalian system declined and the significance of state borders decreased.
The new regionalism includes larger interactions with interstate and global institutions
and incorporates the role of non-state actors.
New communication technologies and the development of transportation have also
encouraged the formation of new regional networks.
THE IMPACT OF 1997 FINANCIAL CRISES ON REGIONALISM
Both APEC and ASEAN despite their development prior to 1997, proved incapable of making
immediate responses to the regional financial crises posed questions about their efficacy.
The crises pushed states to think again about how best to build regional order that can
prevent crises
Doubts about Western-led financial institutions…
The emergence of East-Asian collective regional responses to an exogenous shock…
Proposal to establish Asian Monetary Fund; widening of the membership of East Asian Economic
Caucus…
Developing states enhance their regional voice in the wider global economic dialogue.
So, the new regionalism takes a more offensive response to the global economy.
THEORIZING ABOUT REGIONAL INTEGRATION
Shift from European to Asian regionalism studies.
Two important variables:
the idea of the region
the catalytic importance of external challenge.
The importance of comparative regional analysis!
The main drawback – the dominance of the EU in regional studies (Asian regionalism and the EU are
different and difficult to compare).
The advantage – the process of policy learning ( region-builders have the opportunity to learn from
the EU’s experience in order to avoid replicating the mistakes).
The research about regionalism in other parts of the world (not Europe) is needed.
“THEORISING THE RISE OF REGIONESS.”
BY BJÖRN HETTNE AND FREDRIK SÖDERBAUM
The New Regionalism Theory
THE NEW REGIONALISM THEORY (NRT)
The NRT
has to explain the world order that makes process of regionalization possible, and the
world order that may result from new regionalism in interaction.
Global social theory
Social constructivism
Comparative regional
studies
THE NEW REGIONALISM THEORY (NRT)
The NRT seeks to describe the process of regionalization in terms of levels of ‘regionness’, i.e.
the process whereby a geographical area is transformed from a passive object to an active
subject, capable of articulating the transnational interests of the emerging region.
• ‘Region in the making’ – process of becoming rather than being.
THE FIVE LEVELS OF REGIONNESS
• Society + territory.
• A group of people living in a geographically bounded community and united through a certain set of cultural values
Regional and common bonds of social order forged by history.
• Ex. Europe from the Atlantic to Ural, North America, The Southern cone of South America, Africa South of Sahara, Central
space
Asia or the Indian subcontinent.
• Isolated groups + social contacts and transactions.
• Widening translocal relations between human groups and influences between cultures. If states become open to external
Regional relations the degree of transnational contact will increase.
complex • Ex. The creation of Latin Christendom
• States + different types of actors
• Micro-regionalism and macro-regionalism integration is very important because globalization process creates possibilities
Regional for smaller regions develop their economy.
society • Includes non state actors such as markets, private businesses and firms, TNCs, NGOs, social movements and etc.
• ‘Formal’ region (community of states) + ‘real’ region (regional civil society)
• It implies a convergence and compatibility of ideas, organizations and processes within a particular region. Emergence of
Regional
regional collective identity.
community • Ex. Nordic group of countries, original members of ASEAN, and etc.
• ‘Formal’ region + ‘real’ region = political community
Region- • In terms of scope and cultural heterogeneity can be compared to classical empires. It is a voluntary evolution of a group
of formerly sovereign national communities into a new form of political entity.
state • Ex. The Soviet empire and complex African states (based on force), EU (formed in democratic way)
Uniqueness of the NRT
ADLER AND BARNETT’S REGIONNESS
VS.
HETTNE AND SÖDERBAUM REGIONNESS
1.
Start from system states
1.
Emphasis on historical periods
2.
State-centric and formal
2.
Includes non-state actors
3.
Communities do not have to be tied to
geographical space
3.
Territoriality is the basis for community
4.
Security, peace, the political economy of
development and culture should be
integrated
5.
Regionalization is taking shape within the
overall context of globalization
4.
Concerned with non-war communities and
negative peace
5.
Regions are constructed through inside-out
CONCLUSION
Theoretical building block for the construction of the NRT: global social theory,
constructivism and comparative approach
The five levels of regionness – regional space, regional complex, regional society,
regional community and region-state – express a certain evolutionary logic.
Actors behind regionalist project are not states only, but a large number of different
types of institutions.