Region

From Geography

One of the core concepts of geography, it is the outcome of academic or everyday practices of regionalisation. Traditionally, it is understood as a form of spatial delimitation of natural and/or sociocultural units. According to the spatial approach, it is the outcome of an academic procedure of formal classification, referring to spatial as well as social, economic, cultural, or political categories, producing meaningful units for different types of spatial politics or geographical analysis. In an action-centered perspective, the region signifies the result of everyday regionalisations as one of the key forms of everyday geography-making.

Four kinds of regions exist:

- Formal or uniform regions are regions defined by specific features of the region. An example is the Dutch province Friesland, where Frisian is spoken. This province can be defined as a region because of the feature 'Frisian language'. However, it can be argued that there is no Frisian region because not every single person of the Frisian population speaks Frisian. This leads to the statement that defining regions is highly interpretative and subjective

- The functional or nodal region is defined by the linkages binding phenomena in that region. Which phenomena are important depends on our interests. A region can be defined by financial transactions, political linkages etc.

- Vernacular regions are defined by peoples vague ideas of a region without clear borders, for example the Middle East

- Forgotten regions: regions which existed once, but have now fallen into oblivion.

The definitions of these kinds of regions are described in the Dictionary of Human Geography, but there is still no consensus about these definitions. Lisa Keys-Mathews defines a formal region as "[a region] defined by governmental or administrative boundaries [i.e. United States, Birmingham, Brazil]. These regions are not open to dispute, therefore phisycal regions fall under this category (i.e. the Rockies, the Great State Lakes)"

References:

Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M. & Whatmore, S. (2009). The dictionary of human geography. Wiley-Blackwell.

Keys-Mathews, L. (n.d.) The five themes of geography. Found on http://www.una.edu/geography/statedepted/themes.html, on 22-10-2011

Werlen, B. (2009) Everyday Regionalisations. Entry in: International Encyclopedia for Human Geography. Elsevier.

Published by:

Fenki Evers & Anton de Hoogh