Marginal Regions

Ways of looking at Marginality

Walter Leimgruber's attempt to understand marginal regions identified four different types of marginality: geometrical, ecological, economic, and social. Other possible approaches (political, cultural, risks/hazards, and perception) also exist, thus demonstrating the diversity of the concept and the various disciplines that would be involved in marginality research.

A purely materialistic perspective would define marginality by some threshold value of the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. This restricted view is static and overlooks other manifestations. Social marginality cannot be reduced to the GDP. Marginality is not the end-stage of a process, but it may be of limited duration. A dynamic approach is therefore required. A suggestion could lie in the comparison of market integration and the level of productive forces. A region where both are low can be classified as marginal, and a change in one or in both parameters would lift the region out of marginality (Figure 1).

Another approach is based on the diversity of human societies, which “are not necessarily unified collectivities” (Giddens, 1984, p. 24). This diversity manifests itself in highly varied human behaviors, which define a social mainstream within which all individuals oscillate (Figure 2). Certain individuals’ behavior, however, is located at the [Page 1852]extremes of a society's range and may even reach considerably beyond it. Such persons no longer belong to the society's “mainstream” but are marginal persons. While the mainstream is relatively stable over time, marginal individuals can nevertheless have a long-term impact on the society in that they may bring about transformations; they are in fact essential elements of every society. “While the continued existence of large collectivities or societies evidently does not depend upon the activities of any particular individual, such collectivities or societies manifestly would cease to be if all the agents involved disappeared” (Giddens, 1984, p. 24). The sum of such marginal individuals can be called a marginal group or community.

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