Writing regions, undertaking a regional study, was once a standard form of geographic communication and critique. This was until the quantitative revolution in the middle of the previous century and more definitively the critical turn in human geography towards the end of the twentieth century. From then on writing regions as they were experienced phenomenologically, or arguing culturally, historically, and politically with regions, was deemed to be old-fashioned. Yet the region is, and always will be, a central geographical concept, and thinking about regions can tell us a lot about the history of the discipline called geography.
Despite taking up an identifiable place within the geographical imagination in scholarship and beyond, region remains a relatively forgotten, under-used, and in part under-theorised term. Reanimating Regions marks the continued reinvigoration of a set of disciplinary debates surrounding regions, the regional, and regional geography. Across 18 chapters from international, interdisciplinary scholars, this book writes and performs region as a temporary permanence, something held stable, not fixed and absolute, at different points in time, for different purposes. There is, as this expansive volume outlines, no single reading of a region.
Reanimating Regions collectively rebalances the region within geography and geographical thought. In renewing the geography of regions as not only a site of investigation but also as an analytical framework through which to write the world, what emerges is a powerful reworking of the geographic imagination. Read against one another, the chapters weave together timely commentaries on region and regions across the globe, with a particular emphasis upon the regional as played out in the United Kingdom, and regional worlds both within and beyond Europe, offering chapters from Africa and South America. Addressing both the political and the cultural, this volume responds to the need for a consolidated and considered reflection on region, the regional, and regional geography, speaking directly to broader intellectual concerns with performance, aesthetics, identity, mobilities, the environment, and the body.
Edited by:
James Riding,
Martin Jones
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781138931534
ISBN 10: 1138931535
Series: Regions and Cities
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 10 May 2017
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Figures List of Tables Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction: A New New Regional Geography Martin Jones Part I: Culture 1 Writing Regional Cultural Landscape: Cultural Geography on the Norfolk Broads David Matless 2 Regions Rock: Heavy Metal and the Role of Music in the Construction of Regional Identity for the British Midlands Jesse Heley and Marc Welsh 3 On Parochialism John Tomaney 4 Mapping Cultures of Regional Perception and Conception: A Cultural Cartography from Northeast Brazil Jörn Seemann 5 Regionalists and Excursionistes: Catalan ‘Regions’ and National Identity Venetia Congdon Part II: Politics 6 A Radical New Regional Geography: Notes on a Revolution James Riding 7 The Crisis at the Centre of the United Kingdom: Exploring Scottish Independence and Democratically Disruptive Regions Philip Johnstone 8 From ‘Fly Frontier’ to ‘Cotton Country’: Social Change and Agrarian Transformation in the Northwest of Zimbabwe Nicholas James 9 Intertwined Spatialities: Discursive Construction(s) of Central Germany Roger Baars and Antje Schlottmann 10 Regions, Regionalisms and Identities: Towards a Regional Mess Kaj Zimmerbauer 11 City-Region Building and Geohistorical Matters David Beel, Martin Jones and Ian Rees Jones Part III: Performance 12 Radiant Copenhagen: Reimagining Regions through Digital Fiction Rune Graulund, Kristoffer Ørum and Anders Bojen 13 Tracktivist Topographies: Mapping in the Marches and Marching on the Map in Rural Activist Walking Performance Jess Allen 14 Animating Terroir in the French Alps Rory Hill 15 Performing Landscape Using a Locative Media Deep Map App: A Cornish Case Study Lucy Frears, Erik Geelhoed and Misha Myers 16 Extractive Geographies, Immersive Lives: Performative Explorations of Labour and Materialities in the Southern Peak District George Jaramillo Afterword: What’s Next for Regional Geography? John Agnew Index
James Riding is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Space and Political Agency Research Group/RELATE Centre of Excellence at the University of Tampere, Finland. Martin Jones is Professor of Human Geography and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Staffordshire University, UK.
Reviews for Reanimating Regions: Culture, Politics, and Performance
'This is a welcome and provocative collection which reveals a resurgence of regional geography, from a spectrum of perspectives. Drawing on a range of detailed case studies, the authors show why regions matter, on the ground, and in the mind, as a locus of social and economic life, a lens on prevailing geographical processes and patterns, and as a resource for imagining alternative, possible worlds.' - Stephen Daniels, Professor of Cultural Geography, University of Nottingham and editor of Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds: Geography and the Humanities, and The Iconography of Landscape 'Through a refreshingly-diverse and contemporary set of chapters, this book fully delivers on its title and its promise. Reanimating Regions gathers a distinctive and international set of voices and perspectives. If the fortunes of 'the region' as a conceptual frame and substantive topic have risen and fallen through time, then here we see a strong and fresh case made for regionality as cultural form, political crucible and performative inspiration.' - John Wylie, Professor of Cultural Geography, University of Exeter and author of Landscape 'Region - both as a generic idea and a tool used in governance, classification and distribution - has become increasingly significant during the last few decades. At the same time regional identities and political regionalism have gained popularity at and across various spatial scales, displaying the meaning of regions for economic and cultural life, social reproduction and related struggles. This exciting book brings together an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars and artists who open novel perspectives on what regions are and do, and how we should understand their functions and power in the contemporary globalizing world.' - Anssi Paasi, Professor of Geography, University of Oulu and author of Territories, b
