Regional Identities

Regional identity has become significant in academic research, policy circles, and regional development activities throughout the world since the 1980s. The idea has also been significant in terms of politics, since powerful expressions of regionalism and identity, often cutting off affiliations with existing nations, have emerged around the world in the global era, from Europe to Asia and South America.

Regional identity refers to the supposed distinctive natural and cultural qualities of a region, the identification of people with such a region, or both aspects at the same time. Such regions can exist on various spatial scales from sub-state to supra-state. Existing regional affiliations may motivate people into confrontations with their state authorities and, at times, even to violence. Regional identities are therefore among the dynamic platforms for progressive political movements, but they can also be tools for reactionary, exclusionist politics at times. The latter is becoming an increasingly critical issue in a globalizing world characterized by mobility of ideas, capital, things, and people and a mixing of identities. Refugees and immigrants often face the negative side of such politics of distinction, whereas casual tourists rarely face this.

Both the rise of regional identities and their subsequent power are related to the globalization of culture, economics, and consciousness. It has been suggested that people's awareness of the processes of globalization and their insecurity in the face of them generate a search for new points of social orientation in a world that is increasingly mobile. The search for regional identities has also been a consequence of such global political and economic upheavals as the collapse of the Cold War division between the Western democracies and the Eastern socialist bloc, the subsequent expansion and political strengthening of the European Union, and the entry of many former eastern European states into the European Union.

In many states, the rescaling of regional systems of governance and the devolution of power to the regional level have made regional identities topical. This has been especially the case in EU countries. The European Union has gradually established a slogan emphasizing the “Europe of Regions,” which refers to sub-state and cross-border regional units. Sub-state regions are used in particular as statistical units, but a specific identity is also often associated with them. Correspondingly, regional identity, an idea at least implicitly purporting the existence of some degree of cohesiveness or social integration in a region, has become a buzzword in the European Union's policy. It is considered a potential asset for regional development and for the purported international competition between regions that is associated with globalization.

Region has various meanings, from deeply historical contexts of ethnonationalism to the operation of economic institutions and administration, and to the regionalization of ad hoc spatial units for the purposes of governance. Several cross-border regions in various parts of the world are examples of such ad hoc regions that have been established to promote economic activities and cooperation and to create regional identities. Representations of regional identity may also be used as symbolic and material commodities for the purposes of regional marketing. Innumerable regional development agencies have adopted regional identity as an inherently positive idea that may be used in the rhetoric and activities of the business coalitions that constitute new governance frameworks crossing political jurisdictions and even national borders.

...