REGION AND REGIONALISM FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF

GEOGRAPHY

Aiste ZemaityteHoon LeeAlina 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

3. The rise of regionalism after 1990s

4. 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 regionalismcooperation 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 areathis definition is driven by those processes by non-state, private actors.State-led regional programs – regionalismNon-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

Regionalization

Denotes the process that leads to patterns of cooperation, integration, complementary and convergence within a particular cross-national geographical space

Official or governmen-tal level

Non- governmental level

TODAY’S VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT (CONTD) New regionalismMixture 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 EconomicsOver 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 terminologyE.g. EU is not only a major region, but also a producer of various types of other regions

DefinitionFairly 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. The end of bipolarity removed the significance of Cold War perceptions

and divisions. 2. The US is no longer in opposite position towards regional organizations. 3. The adoption of domestic neoliberal policies has increased. 4. 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 crisesDoubts 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 regionthe 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 regional-ization possible, and the world order that may result from new

regionalism in interaction.

Global social the-ory

Social construc-tivism

Comparative re-gional 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 REGIONNESSRegional space

• Society + territory. • A group of people living in a geographically bounded community and united through a certain

set of cultural values 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 Asia or the Indian subcontinent.

Regional complex

• Isolated groups + social contacts and transactions.• Widening translocal relations between human groups and influences between cultures. If states

become open to external relations the degree of transnational contact will increase.• Ex. The creation of Latin Christendom

Regional society

• States + different types of actors• Micro-regionalism and macro-regionalism integration is very important because globalization

process creates possibilities for smaller regions develop their economy.• Includes non state actors such as markets, private businesses and firms, TNCs, NGOs, social

movements and etc.Regional community

• ‘Formal’ region (community of states) + ‘real’ region (regional civil society)• It implies a convergence and compatibility of ideas, organizations and processes within a particu-

lar region. Emergence of regional collective identity.• Ex. Nordic group of countries, original members of ASEAN, and etc. R

egion-state

• ‘Formal’ region + ‘real’ region = political community• In terms of scope and cultural heterogeneity can be compared to classical empires. It is a volun-

tary evolution of a group of formerly sovereign national communities into a new form of political entity.

• Ex. The Soviet empire and complex African states (based on force), EU (formed in democratic way)

ADLER AND BARNETT’S REGIONNESS VS. HETTNE AND SÖDERBAUM REGIONNESS

1. Emphasis on historical periods

2. Includes non-state actors

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

1. Start from system states

2. State-centric and formal

3. Communities do not have to be tied to geographical space

4. Concerned with non-war communities and negative peace

5. Regions are constructed through inside-out

Uniqueness of the NRT

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.