The Dictionary of Human Geography

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the effectiveness of circuits of value and the

incorporation of a wide range of local influ-

ences – including local institutions – enabling

dynamic processes of learning and innovation,

reveal the significance of regions in constitut-

ing productive circuits of value and hence

in constituting economic geographies (cf.

cluster). Here, policy is based on the

assumption of the critical significance of the

regions in forming economic geographies and

of creating the conditions of existence for the

enhancement of regionally based processes of

economic growth.

However, whilst suchcontextual effects

are doubtless formatively important, it is easy

to downplay the critical and inescapable – and

hence deeply formative – material imperatives

of economies and, more especially, the dis-

tinctive material objectives and dynamic geog-

raphies of capitalist circuits of value in

shaping regional economic geographies.

Accounts of regional development focused on

the geographies of global production networks

held down in place by various contextual

forces – including regional policy – begin to

capture the essentialdialecticbetween these

two sets of forces (material and contextual)

that shape the economic fortune of regions.

Politically, strongly developed notions of

cultural and political identity – as revealed,

for example in contested relations between

Macedonia and the Greek provinces of

Makedonia, or in Basque and Catalonian

claims for independence in Spain, and in

Brittany or Corsica in France and the

Chiapas in Mexico – point again to the forma-

tive significance of regions as the subjects of

regional policy in wider political and cultural

relations. Policy here is devoted primarily to

the containment and regulation of regional

aspirations. However, the geography of

regional awareness,identityand imagination

is itself unevenly developed.

A number of overarching issues surround

the design and conduct of regional policy.

First, what is the region? Territories are often

contrasted to relational notions of regions.

Territorial notions view regions in absolute

terms – as containers – or in relative terms –

as formatively interacting containers.

Proponents of the latter, relational view argue

that regions are porous, open and fluid. They

are shaped by relations of all sorts operating

in a multi-scalar universe in whichscales

themselves are socially constructed, if often

powerfully defended in political terms. In this

view, regions are as much a product of external

relations (like flows of capital and ideas) as of

those internal relations (such as the relations

between people and nature that were the

focus of classicalregional geography).

In fact, however, both notions of region are

mutually constitutive. Territories are them-

selves made up of a variety ofnetworks, and

the ‘internal’ characteristics of territories are

simply the outcome of the historical geograph-

ies of relational links within and beyond

the region. In this way, time and path depend-

ency (but not determinancy) comes to arbi-

trate betweenterritoryand relationality in

regional formation. At the same time, territor-

ies and regions are constructed byboundary

marking (often involving powerful relations of

domination and inducement) and by influ-

ential centres of calculation operating within

and beyond the state (e.g. in academia) con-

structing statistical definitions and accounts of

them. In such ways, regions may be invented

in much the same way that national economies

are invented through the technologies of their

description and analysis.

Thus the question of who speaks for the

region – who has voice in identifying the

region and regional policy – becomes critically

important. Given the widespread interest in

the region as a long-constituted expression of

distinctive and integrative social identity, it is

all too easy (or convenient) in policy formula-

tion and assessment to assume a unity of pur-

pose and a homogeneity in regions in which

diversity and contestation may be inherent.

Politico-religious and class-based regional

conflicts such as those in Northern Ireland

during the ‘troubles’, or class-based conflicts

of interests in regions such as the North

East of England, with a long historical

geography of social development based on

deeply held and long-standingclassdivisions,

reveal how simplistic such assumptions may

be. And, of course, speaking for the region

may emanate from outside the region (e.g.

from national or supra-national interests) at

least as much as from within. Voice – and

who has it – becomes even more significant

in regions with clear aspirations to autonomy

or independence.

Related to such questions around the con-

struction of regional policy is the whole

complex of issues surrounding notions of

governmentalityand the ongoing (or not)

legitimacy of the authority to govern. With

the spread ofdevolutionaround the world,

the region and regional policy are deeply

implicated in the emergence and negotiation

of multi-level patterns ofgovernance. This

involves the legitimacy of different levels of

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_R-new Final Proof page 637 2.4.2009 9:12pm

REGIONAL POLICY