Renewing The Geography of Regions: Gordon - Macleod@Durham - Ac.Uk
Renewing The Geography of Regions: Gordon - Macleod@Durham - Ac.Uk
Renewing The Geography of Regions: Gordon - Macleod@Durham - Ac.Uk
DOI:10.1068/d217t
Gordon MacLeod
Department of Geography and International Centre for Regional Regeneration and Development
Studies, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE, England;
e-mail: Gordon.MacLeod@durham.ac.uk
Martin Jones
Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth SY23 3DB, Wales;
e-mail: msj@aber.ac.uk
Received 5 July 1999; in revised form 2 February 2000
Abstract. Recent academic discourses pertaining to a `new regionalism' in economic development and
territorial representation, in parallel with the constitutional restructuring of certain nation-states, have
done much to revive a widespread debate about regional change. Although cautiously welcoming this,
the authors raise a concern that much contemporary reasoning has a tendency to conceal fundamental
questions relating to political struggle and the contested social and cultural practices through which
societies assume their regional shape. They contend that the geohistorical approach of Anssi Paasi, a
distinguished proponent of the `new regional geography', can help to unravel the culturally embedded
institutionalisation of regions and thereby advance a meaningful understanding of regional change.
Paasi's reconstructed geography of regions is then deployed to analyse a series of struggles to construct
`the North' as a fully institutionalised territory within the political and cultural landscape of Britain.
The paper concludes with some thoughts on how to practice a renewed geography of regions in the
hope of sparking a more imaginative regional cultural politics.
``... th[e] act of going back [to regional geography] can also point the way forward. ...
grouped around the practice of doing regional geography can be found most of the
important problems that human geography faces today. The invocation of regional
geography cannot solve these problems but it certainly brings them into focus and,
in the act of focusing, it shows us how far we still have to go.''
Thrift (1994, page 200)
``Regions are not simply the unintended outcomes of economic, social and political
processes but are often the deliberate product of actions by those with power in
society, who use space and create places in the pursuit of their goals.''
Johnston (1991, page 68)
restructuring, and changes in territorial government (Keating, 1998). Such themes have
been brought to life in countries like Italy and Spain, where an identity politics
articulated through regional or national movements has often been accompanied by
the rise of regional government.
Paralleling this has been a quite remarkable appeal to the regional scale by bour-
geois interest groups, boosterist politicians, and business gurus (Ohmae, 1995). These
wide-ranging developments have led some commentators to herald a new regionalism
in academic debate and political praxis (Keating, 1998; New Statesman 1998), itself
recently the subject of a biting critique by Lovering (1999). Without wishing to deni-
grate the academic value of certain purported new regionalist contributions, we do
take some inspiration from Lovering's article to raise two points. The first is that many
participants currently engaged in regional analysis appear to invite the scripting of
buoyant policy narratives at the expense of critical theoretical reflection (for example,
Cooke, 1995). Second, one net effect of this is to see much of what now passes for
regional analysis eschewing an appreciation of the complex geometry of power and the
political and cultural struggles through which societies assume their regional shape.
These shortcomings are perhaps most strikingly evident in the disciplinary imperialism
betrayed by influential economists such as Paul Krugman when proclaiming a `new
economic geography' for analysing the spatial economy (Fujita et al, 1999). As argued by
Martin:
``Real communities in real historical, social and cultural settings with real people
going about the `ordinary business of life' ... do not figure in the `new economic
geography' models. [Moreover] The fundamental but highly complex questions of
how regional and local economies are produced and how they can be conceptualized
are not considered'' (1999, page 388).
This quotation from Martin points towards at least three flaws in the emerging
orthodoxy. First, by following a functionalist discourse of globalisation backed up by
neoliberalism, a considerable amount of contemporary regional analysis and political
economic praxis is shrouded in a crude economism exhibiting little imaginative under-
standing of local structures of feeling, place-based identities, and `cultures of hybridity'
(Hall, 1990).(1) Second, in much contemporary academic discourse and political strategy,
the region is often scripted unreflectively and treated as a pregiven boundary. However,
as highlighted in recent perspectives on the politics of scale and boundary formation,
demarcations such as cities and regions are historically constructed, culturally con-
tested, and politically charged rather than existentially given and neutral (Brenner,
2000; Paasi, 1996a; Smith, 1992). Third, to talk of regions as `learning' or as somehow
`holding down the global' invites researchers and practitioners alike to fetishise space
and to reify places as if they themselvesörather than classes or regional alliancesöare
the active agents (MacLeod, 1999).
The impact of this thinking has been graphically illustrated in recent political
praxis in the United Kingdom. As part of a comprehensive UK-wide devolution
agenda (see section 4.1 below), in 1999 the New Labour government established eight
Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) with a remit to enhance sustainable social
and economic development (Jones and MacLeod, 1999). Spurred on by a discourse of
competitiveness, RDAs are expected to provide ``new opportunities in the English
regions to enable them to punch their weight in the global market place'' (DETR,
1997). This reification is buttressed by a crude economism, with the former Minister
for Regions, Richard Caborn MP, describing their rationale and territorial shape as
(1)Hall (1990) deploys this term in order to highlight the ways in which people's identities are not
fixed or permanent but are indeed subject to the continuous play of history, culture, geographical
movement, transfer, and political power.
Renewing the geography of regions 671
alternative perspectives (Agnew, 1999; Allen et al, 1998; Keating, 1998), it seems to us
that Paasi's work is especially effective in sketching out the multifarious properties
of a region's institutionalisation and in advancing the intellectual pursuit and the
political understanding of regional transformation.
To demonstrate this, Paasi's approach is deployed to investigate a series of social
struggles undertaken in recent decades to construct `the North' as a fully instutional-
ised territory within Britain's political and cultural landscape. Here, we acknowledge
the partiality of our empirical inquiry. Indeed our various takes on the North should be
seen as merely a taster for a grander study of regional formation, particularly as the
United Kingdom undergoes a widespread restructuring of its sociospatial representa-
tion. And at this stage we ought to make it clear that our paper will probably frustrate
those who seek a blueprint for regional representation in England. The intent of our
paper is, rather, to inform critique and to spark further debate: something of which,
sadly, political actors appear to be increasingly fearful. It is with these factors in mind
that we conclude with some thoughts on how to practise a renewed geography of
regions in the hope of sparking a more imaginative regional politics.
(4)Interestingly, however, it is very much this regional scientific tradition, characterised by central-
place theory and multiplier models, that forms the `geographical' inputs to the so-called `new
economic geography' (Martin, 1999).
674 G MacLeod, M Jones
(5)
For an excellent set of sustained discussions on this see Cloke et al (1991). See also Kobayashi
and Mackenzie (1989) on what was to become a dialogue between humanistic geography and
Marxist historical materialism.
Renewing the geography of regions 675
exciting avenues for qualitative research. However, the extent to which they can be seen
to contribute to a reconstructed regional geography is open to question as these
authors' explicit objects of inquiry are often the interpretative understandings of
people, place, and meaning per se.(6)
Gilbert's final conceptualisation sees the region as a medium for social interaction
synchronising people, nature, and social relations in time ^ space settings. The most
notable English-speaking work in this has emanated from geographers informed by the
structuration theory of the British sociologist, Anthony Giddens (1981; 1984; 1985b)
and its association with the time geography of Ha«gerstrand (1982) (Gregory, 1994b;
Gregson, 1986; Pred, 1981; Thrift and Pred, 1981). Drawing on structurationist think-
ing, for instance, Thrift has interpreted the region ``as the `actively passive' ... meeting
place of social structure and human agency'' to the effect that a region is `lived through,
not in' (1983, page 38; compare Amin and Thrift, 1994, page 9). Although these ideas
have waned somewhat during the 1990s, we would argue that this diffusion of structu-
ration theory into regional geographical analysis has been analytically liberating in that
it helps to uncover the extent to which:
``Regions develop from regional social interaction while being both the condition
and the outcome of the social relations between individuals, groups and institutions
in regional space. They are [thus] structured in the process of being transformed
through these relations of which they are the medium'' (Gilbert, 1988, page 217;
emphasis added).
Moreover, the themes inherent in Gilbert's assessment are central to a series of
`skirmishes' that, for Thrift (1990; 1994), were won by the emerging new regional
geography. Here Thrift detects a growing awareness of (1) the contested production
of meaning within regions; (2) the changing forms of the `spaces of regions', most
especially their transformation into simulations of other spaces (Sorkin, 1992); (3) the
relations between people and nature and the deconstruction of landscape; and
(4) the problem of `writing' regions, most especially the chronic problems of descrip-
tion at the nexus between the analytic and the narrative forms (compare Sayer, 1989).
In a subsequent paper Thrift (1991) explicitly places the subject at the heart of the new
regional geography. In this he calls for a more serious consideration of: (1) the
constitution of self and identity; (2) autobiography and memory; (3) the multifarious
emotional repertoires available to actors; (4) the forms of knowledge made available
through discourse and the shaping of these knowledges; and (5) the importance of
context in the becoming of identity, memory (re)construction and regional emotions
or structures of feeling (compare Williams, 1961).
There is little doubt that a deeper appreciation of these contested representations
and subjectivities can help to advance a thorough reconsideration of how regions are
formed and are subsequently to develop unevenly. Nonetheless, we also contend that,
in seeking to make sense of the contemporary era of sociospatial complexity, we
suspend any epistemological search to assemble the definitive cast for a new or
reconstructed regional geography (Thrift, 1990; 1991; 1993). Indeed, conscious of this
problematic, our position supports Johnston's call for:
``an approach in which we do not give privilege to one sub-discipline (presumably
called regional geography) but rather insist on the study of regions in all geogra-
phy: we [thus] do not need regional geography, but we do need regions in geog-
raphy'' (1991, page 67).
One implication of Johnston's plea is that, as researchers interested in analysing
regional formations, our parameters should be fittingly modest and of necessity
(6)
This is not in any way intended as a criticism of such works, only to indicate that different
authors engage in different research strategies with particular research objects in mind.
676 G MacLeod, M Jones
(7)As argued by Sayer (1989, page 267), although contextualisation is ``reminiscent of a concern
with uniqueness, it is a much richer concept, suggesting a more explicit notion of determination
and interdependence.''
Renewing the geography of regions 677
to certain proponents of the latter, Paasi is not proposing a new epistemology for
regional geography per se. Indeed his project is more modest, consisting largely of a
methodological search to establish some principles for a better understanding of the
emergence of regions ``not as static frameworks for social relations but as concrete,
dynamic manifestations of the development of a society'' (Paasi, 1986a, page 110). The
flip side of this is that a once-and-for-all definition of the region, featuring a delimited
or modelled `areal extent', represents a misnomer. Instead, particular regions are to be
analysed reflexively within the context of their very cultural, political, and academic
conception(8) (Paasi, 1991; 1996b).
Through a process of conceptualisation,(9) Paasi creates a series of abstractions to
make visible how such regions come to exist (imaginatively and materially), how they
may be transformed, and, at times, eventually disappear in the course of social trans-
formation. It is in this sense that Paasi wishes to unravel the institutionalisation of
regions. Crucially, this is not reducible to the presence and/or role of `institutions'
per se [see section 3.2 and footnote (13)] but is defined as:
``a socio-spatial process during which some territorial unit emerges as a part of the
spatial structure of a society and becomes established and clearly identified in
different spheres of social action and social consciousness'' (Paasi, 1986a, page 121).
According to this line of reasoning, the region represents a geohistorical process
manifesting out of the time ^ space sedimentation of individual and institutional prac-
tices (section 3.2). This emphasis on the inseparability of time ^ space, institutions,
and society compels Paasi to draw variously on Giddens's (1981; 1984) thesis of struc-
turation; Ha«gerstrand's (1982) time geography; Pred's (1984) analysis of place as a
`historically contingent process'; Sack (1986), Smith (1990; 1992), and Taylor (1982) on
territoriality and the scaling of boundaries; the sociology of nation-building (Anderson,
1991; Smith, 1991); Williams's cultural Marxism and its Gramscian stress on the
importance of civil society (1961); and Mannheim's (1952) writings on the sociology
of knowledge. This analytical breadth has encouraged Paasi to integrate structural and
ethnographic approaches to make connections between both the local and the global
scales and the micro and macro spheres. In addition, his methodological approach
draws on an array of qualitative techniques including documentary sources, archives,
depth interviews, autobiographical data, and official documentation such as that
produced by educational institutions (Paasi, 1996a; Paasi et al, 1994).
In undertaking this, Paasi makes the call for ``abstractions that contribute to
conceptualizing the role of agents and individual and collective life-histories in the
continual transformation of society and its regional structure'' (1996a, page 204). It is
in this respect that the concepts of place and region are most significant, although
many scholars appear to deploy them interchangeably (compare Johnston, 1991;
Massey, 1994; Pred, 1984). In contrast, Paasi is keen to draw a distinction between
place and region, with the former being ``composed of situated episodes of life history
(8) In many regards, these ideas resonate with recent claims made by Allen et al, who conclude that
`` `regions' only exist in relation to particular criteria. They are not `out there' waiting to be
discovered; they are our (and others') constructions'' (1998, page 2). The analysis of Allen et al
certainly raises some very interesting research questions. Nonetheless, their work sheds little light
onto the question of how significant `others' may, in effect, construct regions. We contend that it is
in this context that Paasi's work is more valuable in taking forward a new geography of regional
change.
(9) Here Paasi is influenced by the realist methodology of Sayer (1992) where, rather than reducing
the importance of empirical and/or concrete research, conceptualisation can ``lead to a genuine
dialogue between `theory' and `observation' in concrete empirical research, a dialogue which is
based on a conceptual foundation derived from a specific research topic and which is not divorced
from concrete, theory-laden observations'' (Paasi, 1986b, page 17).
678 G MacLeod, M Jones
which unavoidably have geographical dimensions, whether they are real, imagined or
utopian'' (1996b, page 103).(10) Instructive here are certain humanistic inquiries such as
Tuan's (1977) treatment of place as `humanised space' and related arguments that the
essence of place lies in a `sense of place' and a deep feeling of belonging (Relph, 1976).
Further, and drawing on time-geography, Paasi (1986a) claims that the concept of place
is useful in depicting the context through which the paths and projects of the everyday
lives of individuals are enacted.
However, it is Paasi's contention that such interpretations are nonetheless limited in
alerting us to the broader contexts and social conditions around which such emotional
attachments may be enacted and out of which society assumes its `bigger' geographical
form. It is in this sense that region can provide an abstraction to consider the media-
tion between agency and structure (see also Thrift, 1983). For Paasi, region represents a
sociospatial unit with a longer historical duration than place and ``a representation of
`higher-scale history' into which inhabitants are socialised as part of the reproduction
of the society'' (Paasi, 1991, page 249). A region thus symbolises an explicit collective
representation of institutional practices such that it cannot be reduced to the history of
an individual or a sense of place. In other words:
``... though the regions of a society obtain their ultimate personal meanings in the
practices of everyday life, these meanings cannot be totally reduced to experiences
that constitute everyday life, since a region bears with it institutionally mediated
practices and relations, the most significant being the history of the region as a part
of the spatial structure of the society in question'' (Paasi, 1986a, page 114; emphasis
added).
A significant number of scholars would contest associations of place with this focus
on individual subjectivity. Entrikin (1997), for instance, views place as primarily con-
cerned with connecting a particular milieu to any subject whether individual or
collective. Agnew (1987) too has offered a refined multidimensional reading of place.
Others point to the vigour of place-based collective movements and territorial strategies
of resistance and transgression (compare Cresswell, 1996; Massey, 1994; Tuan, 1982).
And on the distinction between place and region, some scholars prefer to see it as
largely one of scale, with the region representing the larger areal context (Entrikin, 1991,
pages 1, 137). Although sensitive to the intricacies of these arguments, we contend that
the key advance Paasi offers over these and other perspectives concerns his relational
analysis of the tensions and dialectics between place and region. This is most evident in
the scope he provides to unravel the many-sided processes through which place biog-
raphies (both individual and collective) are institutionalised and actively determinate in
the regionalisation of society and in the shaping and scaling of political geographies.
One useful example of this is reflected in the political influence of language and dialect
in binding collective identities while at the same time enforcing social demarcations and
further institutionalising the geometry of political and cultural hegemony (see also
Murphy, 1991; Pred, 1989; Taylor, 1991).
In order to provide a thicker cultural ambit to a structurationist perspective on
regional change, Paasi introduces two abstractions: structures of expectations and
generation. The former reflect ``the ways in which people organise their knowledge of
the world, and use it in the interpretation of new information, events, and experiences''
(Paasi, 1991, page 249). Although drawing some parallels with Bourdieu's (1977) con-
cept of habitus as well as Williams's (1961) structures of feeling and their respective
(10) Beynon and Hudson (1993, page 182) also usefully capture the essence of place in their argu-
ment that ``a place is where [people] have networks of friends, relatives and acquaintances, where
they have learned about life and acquired a cultural frame of reference through which to interpret
the social world around them.''
Renewing the geography of regions 679
power-holding elites referred to above will endeavour to press that such negotiations
and translations manifest in a hegemonic `territorial grid of meaning' (Bhabha, 1990),
whereby only a selection of invented traditions, histories, and remembrances are
established and ``creatively implicated in the constitution of [a territory's] social
relations'' (Paasi, 1996a, page 29). A region's symbolic shape is thus often reflected in
power-laden symbols such as flags, cartographies, monuments, memorabilia, and other
symbolic orderings of space and abstract expression (also Johnson, 1995; Murphy,
1993). Of particular significance in the construction of region's conception is its very
naming, which helps to connect its image with the place consciousness both of insiders
and of outsiders (compare Jenson, 1995). For example, it could be worth examining the
significance that agents located in a region like Baden-Wu«rttemberg may now place on
its now reputable name and image in terms of framing a regional identity and as a
resource in further entrenching what Amin and Thrift (1994) term a common agenda.
These processes are constituted in part through particular structures of expect-
ation, themselves critical in facilitating the third stage, the emergence of institutions.
Extending the ideas of Giddens (1984, page 24), who views them to represent quite
simply ``the more enduring features of social life'', Paasi sees institutions as consisting
of (1) formal identity-framing vehicles such as education, the law, and local politics; (2)
organisations rooted in civil society such as the local media, working clubs, various
clubs and societies,(12) regional arts and literature organisations, as well as football
and sports clubs; and (3) informal conventions such as economic ties of proximity and
social mores.(13) The entrenchment of these processes into the spatial matrix of society
can also foster additional symbolic shape. For example, as more regional-scale organ-
isations are instituted into an activity such as economic development, the very
consciousness of some place-based regional agenda may be intensified (MacLeod,
1998a). All of which helps in providing an ``effective means of reproducing the material
and mental existence of the territories'' in question (Paasi, 1991, page 246). Here Paasi
points to the role played by key activistsöjournalists, teachers,(14) academics, politi-
cians, and regional protagonistsöin colouring a territorial consciousness and at the
same time reproducing the very power assigned to such institutional roles. Indeed for
Paasi (1986a), it is the institutions of a territory that eventually become the most
important factors in the macro-reproduction of the region.
One critical site of institutional sedimentation concerns the nation-state, which for
Paasi normally possesses a more ``obligatory power relation over its inhabitants than
the institutions of subregions'' (1991, page 246). It is worth stressing that this nation-
state infrastructural power (Mann, 1984) is intricately bound up with advance of
modernity. This was particularly the case as the spatial `reality' of individuals extended
beyond local regions, often becoming situated within the state apparatus, expert sys-
tems, the mass media, and other national systems of communication (Anderson, 1991;
Habermas, 1984). In turn, of course, these movements have been further reconfigured
(12) These could relate to a diverse set of practices ranging from insurance to debating and
drinking. Langton (1984) usefully discusses some examples of their ``inestimable importance in
blending and articulating a coherent regional consciousness'' within England's regions in the late
18th century during the industrial revolution.
(13) Here, Paasi's approach strikes some chords with the recent work of Storper on `regional worlds
of production' where ``Institutions consist of `persistent and connected sets of rules, formal and
informal, that prescribe behavioral roles, constrain activity, and shape expectations' ... . For this
reason, institutions cannot be reduced to specific organizations, although the latter may be
important in the generation of expectations, preferences, and rules'' (1997, page 268).
(14) What Paasi has in mind here is the way in which subjects such as history and geography can
often be presented in an ethnocentric fashion within the secondary school curriculum, and thereby
provide the ``production and reproduction of socio-spatial consciousness'' (1996a, page 21).
Renewing the geography of regions 681
as part and parcel of contemporary globalisation (Castells, 1996). Here, amidst a rapid
speed-up in communication and the transnational flow of economic transactions,
migration, political governance, and imagery, so structures of expectation, translations
of identity, and symbolic and territorial attachments are being further redefined. These
processes are occurring in a highly uneven fashion with some classes and groups
aspiring to a more `global sense of place' (Massey, 1994) whereas others appear to be
articulating a more pronounced local and/or traditional vernacular (Hall, 1992).
These fundamental changesönamely the shifting functional and scalar architecture
of the state and the tremendous impact of globalisation on the regional shape of
societyöare factors that remain rather silent in Paasi's framework and would surely
require to be firmly integrated into any theory of regional change (compare Agnew,
1987; 1999). However, every theory has its limitations and we think it only fair to
acknowledge that Paasi's chief research objective is to uncover the more localised or
bottom-up articulations involved in the reproduction of sociospatial consciousness and
the regional shaping of society. The final stage in this latter process concerns the
establishment of a region in the spatial structure and popular consciousness, where it
assumes the form of an institutionalised `territorial unit' and as an identifiable con-
stituent in the regional division of society. In practical terms, the region is ready to be
mobilised for such purposes as place marketing or as a weapon in an ideological
struggle over resources and power. Further, if provided with an administrative status,
it comes to assume ``the material expression of the ends to which state power is applied''
(Paasi, 1991, page 247).
Paasi's `deconstruction and reconstruction' of the regionalisation process integrates
many of the concerns that were originally raised by the 1980s new regional geography
(Johnston, 1991; MacLeod, 1998a; Reynolds, 1994). For example, his obvious debt to
structuration theory is evident in a concern to uncover ``the process through which
individual actors and collectivities are socialised as members of specific territorially
bounded spatial entities and through which they more or less actively internalize
collective identities and shared traditions'' (Paasi, 1996a, page 8). Much of this reso-
nates with Lefebvre's (1991) thinking on the trialectical relations between the physical/
material spatial practices of everyday life, the codes and signifiers or representations
of space that provide conceptual and official understandings of practices, and spaces of
representation, which relate to the spatial discourses and imaginary landscapes through
which subversive meanings and possibilities for transgressive spatial practices are
imagined (Harvey, 1989; Soja, 1996). However, Paasi's focus on the multiple agencies
and structures through which regional formations are institutionalised provides a
methodological route to progress these modes of inquiry and to transcend the current
crop of `new regionalist' analysis. Not least in that his theoretical framework offers
many insights into the active moments `behind' the configuration of hegemonic terri-
torial units and can, moreover, point the way towards locating and disentangling the
often transgressive movements through which regional units stand or fall. In the
remaining sections, we seek to demonstrate this through a study of English territor-
iality, and more specifically some recent efforts to construct `the North' as a fully
institutionalised territorial unit.
English Regional Development Agencies, and an elected Mayor and Assembly for
London. These proposals illustrate quite palpably the uneven nature of the emerging
politics of representation across the United Kingdom. Perhaps the most striking feature
is that with the exception of the London city-region, England is the only UK country
not in receipt of any additional elected political representation and, some might argue,
significant cultural recognition (Lloyd and Thomas, 1998; Marr, 2000; Paxman, 1998).
Peter Taylor offers some interesting insights as to why this might be so. Taylor
contends that England is characterised by a `territorial enigma' and alleges a ``lack of
territorial emphasis in English sensibility'' (Osmond, 1988; quoted in Taylor, 1991,
page 157). For Taylor, such structures of expectation are rooted in the way that, for
much of England's population, sociospatial identity exhibits a `self-ascribed patriotism'.
Significantly, he defines this as `an individual sentiment' [or place biography (Paasi,
1991)], which can be contrasted with the collective and populist emotions that charac-
terise nationalism or other such territorialising endeavours. The conclusion that Taylor
(1993, page 139) infers from this is that ``people are written out of the script'': a claim
drawing resonance with GK Chesterton's (1939, page 176) famous poem (``The Secret
People'') referring to the people of England as those who `have not spoken yet'.
None of this should imply that political and cultural hegemony in England has no
geography. Indeed Taylor coins the term Upper England as the territory that plays host
to many official and deeply symbolic UK-wide institutions and organisations, many of
which give licence to this territorial shape (Paasi, 1991). These include the core of the
British state, the monarchy, the City of London, alongside many other symbols of social
hierarchy (such as received pronunciation) underlying the regionalisation of England
and Britain (Taylor, 1991). Not least in this regard is the way that much of the hegemonic
symbolic shape of `real' England is inextricably bound up with the Home Counties öthe
very naming is significant(15) öand its tranquil landscape of thatched cottages and lush
rural idylls (see Matless, 1998). This is often seen to contrast with the territorial and
symbolic shaping of `the North' as an alien Other made up of austere provincial
industrial towns forever rooted in 19th-century industrialisation (Shields, 1991).
The net outcome of this territorial enigma is that, in contrast to the peoples of
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, who have the cultural and institutional resources with
which to mobilise against UK state hegemony, the English are unlikely to rebel against
their own national identity, even if it does, in effect, exclude them (Taylor, 1993). This
has proved to be crucial for the North of England particularly in view of the fact that:
``Most radical politics were northern in origin and strength but were never able to
call on the `people' to confront the state. Instead, they negotiated their own passive
political incorporation leaving no radical popular tradition for mobilising the
`people' in the 20th century. ... Not only is there no people, there is also no
territory, no homeland, that could define the people; rather the region is deemed
to be outside its own national ideal land'' (Taylor, 1993, pages 139, 141).
Corresponding to this is the feeling that, although the boundaries of administrative
regions in England have been in use for much of this century, they have limited meaning
for most people (a theme, of course, that has punctuated debate on RDA boundaries).
Understood from Paasi's perspective, it would appear that England's regional map
represents a politico-administrative construction whose territorial shape and establish-
ment have not, in general, articulated with the conceptual shape and symbolic orderings
of space that can infuse place-based inhabitants with a region-specific consciousness
and related structures of expectation.
(15)
While other countries tend to have `homelands' that encompass their whole territory, for the
Anglo-British, `Home' denotes only a few counties in one corner of the country (Taylor, 1991,
page 150).
Renewing the geography of regions 683
late 19th century and indeed was seen by some as setting the modern notion of `the North' into the
popular imagination (Pocock and Hudson, 1978; cited in Shields, 1991, page 209).
(17) We caution against any definitive argument here in that, as Shields (1991) has pointed out, there
is little knowledge as to how exactly such films were `encoded' and `decoded' within the North of
England.
684 G MacLeod, M Jones
and its practical endeavour to deploy many of the political and cultural resources
highlighted in Paasi's thesis so as to institutionalise a deeper symbolic, conceptual,
and institutional shape around the North East territorial unitöitself originally created
by London's power bloc.
However, notwithstanding the new-found confidence of Northern popular culture,
in terms of Paasi's key stages, the political, cultural, and symbolic orderings of
space prevalent within the region had not, as yet, condensed in alignment with the
institutional practices being promoted by Chetwynd. The North East region remained
symbolically and institutionally `thin', exemplifying an administrative outpost through
which to channel the UK government's infrastructural power (Mann, 1984). We con-
tend that it is in analysing these features that Paasi's framework provides the most
innovative method for understanding the region-building process. And in the section
below, we venture forward several years to provide a theoretically informed discussion
of the Campaign for the North as a political and cultural endeavour to build a more
significant territorial unit.(17) In doing this we are also seeking to respond to Agnew's
recent call for the need to explore the intersections between geographical scale, politi-
cal action, and representation. For Agnew, these connections can, among other things,
be the outcome of struggle by ``movements producing in their manifestoes and other
rhetorical pronouncements various claims about region'' (1997, page 102).
4.3 The Campaign for the North: institutionalising the discourse and practice of region?
The Campaign for the North (CFN)öoriginally named the Committee for Demo-
cratic Regional Government in the North of England öwas officially inaugurated in
April 1977 as a cross-party initiative to secure some form of institutionally devolved
status comparable with that being proposed for Scotland and Wales. Initially funded by
the Joseph Rowntree Trust, the CFN was lodged in Hebden Bridge (Yorkshire) and
employed a full-time organiser, Paul Temperton, who was also central in producing its
magazine, Northern Democrat. The CFN's president was Lord Crowther-Hunt, who
had been a member of the Royal (Kilbrandon) Commission on the Constitution.(18)
And some of the key figures behind the CFN included the academic, Michael Steed
(Chair), and prominent Westminster MPs, Richard Wainwright and Austin Mitchell ö
`regional actors' in accordance with Paasi's framework.
At its height in 1978, the CFN had several hundred members and for some it ``made
a major step in recognising, publicising, and enhancing Northern participation in
regional consciousness'' (Bennett, 1985, page 89, emphasis added). It engaged in a range
of symbolic and institutional tactics (de Certeau, 1984) to raise regional consciousness,
often depicting the North as a territory shackled and padlocked to a South East
regional power base. The aim was to break these political, economic, and cultural
chains as indicated in figure 1. This clearly shows the endeavour to marry an aspirant
territorial shape (the light-shaded area on the map) with the symbolic expression of a
region free from the reins of the City of London. And as argued in the text accom-
panying figure 1:
``The North's interests and concerns are often quite different from those of other
parts of Britain and certainly not the same as those of the South East. We want to
reassert the traditional distinctiveness of the North öin sports and language and
(17) Although our analysis is restricted to the Campaign for the North (CFN), it is worth mention-
ing the existence of several other movements affiliated to the `Regionalist Seminar' established
under the Declaration of Oxford in 1980. These movements include: the Wessex Regionalists,
the Movement for Middle England, Mebyon Kernow (Sons of Cornwall), Cowethas Flamank
(Flamank Group), the Orkney Group, and the Shetland Movement (see Banks, 1997; Bennett, 1985).
(18) This is argued to have sparked a flurry of interest in the implications for England of Scottish
the arts and so many other ways, but most of all in lifestyle and attitudes. We want
to take a stand against being encouraged to think uniformly and against the rising
tide of grey London mediocrity with which the establishment hopes to make us all
the same as they are. Let's be proud of our Northern identity, and take steps to
develop it'' (CFN, 1977).
These endeavours are clearly indicative of an emergent strategy to reconfigure
erstwhile structures of expectation and to influence official institutionsöespecially in
the arts and cultureöso as to remould the territorial, conceptual, and symbolic
shaping of society. Perhaps the key institution in this regard was the national media,
as the CFN developed a forthright critique of several proposed changes in television
and radio broadcasting during the late 1970s. Concern was voiced on three fronts: (1)
the proposal to close the Manchester end of Radio 4's Today programme; (2) the
``cavalier treatment `English regions' have received at the hands of the BBC'' (CFN,
1978, page 1); and (3) the existing boundaries of the Independent TV Broadcasting
Corporation. In a submission to the latter, CFN recommended pan-Northern pro-
grammes and for ``regional boundaries [to] be drawn in such a way as to reinforce,
rather than dilute, regional consciousness, both for the North as a whole and for
sub-regions within the North'' (CFN, 1978, page 1; emphasis added). These manoeuvres
have considerable resonance with Ha«gerstrand's insightful thesis on the media as an
active agent in shaping consciousness and ``territorial integration'' (1986, page 25).
CFN was also increasingly frustrated by the way in which the London-based media
regularly represented the North as a marginal space occupied by an alien Other (see
Shields, 1991). Through the publication of the Northern Democrat, however, CFN sought
686 G MacLeod, M Jones
to turn these images back on their head with features and cartoons reflecting `Southern
preconceptions' of flat-cap manufacturing machines and `typical' Northern industrial
landscapes. Such images were reinforced by a `Northern consciousness-raising' prize,
usually awarded to local and national journalists sympathetic to the Northern cause. In a
clear sense, CFN was striving to define and ennoble a regional symbolic shape. And
following the election of the Thatcher government in 1979 this symbolic stage of the
region-building process was further intensified by:
``... a clear agreement that we should shift our emphasis slightly away from the
political towards the cultural/social/economic aspects of `Northerness', but we
have been less clear about what this means in practical terms'' (CFN, 1979, page 1).
These concerns to promote region-specific structures of expectation and an asso-
ciated ideology of regionalism were debated at length within the CFN membership.
Similarly, a profound dissatisfaction with the existing administrative regional map
threw onto centre stage the controversial question of boundaries. Indeed certain
CFN members wished to reenact the original territories dating back to the King's
Council in the Northern Parts which existed between 1483 and 1641 (compare Banks,
1999).(20) Other CFN members were less prescriptive:
``Whereas Scotland and Wales are usually seen as nations with historic immutable
boundaries and hence are ready-made units to which power can be devolved,
the question of decentralisation within England has always been bedevilled by the
problem of what shape and size the regional units ought to be. Indeed `Where are
you going to draw the boundaries?' is the question which always comes up first
whenever the subject of regional government is discussed ... . But ... as far as the
North Country is concerned, it isn't quite the right question. The real issue is
whether the North should consist of one, two, three of four units for regional
government purposes. Once that is decided, the actual boundaries pretty well
draw themselves'' (Temperton, 1978, page 40).
It seems to us that the tensions outlined above illustrate the genuine difficulty CFN
was experiencing in defining a meaningful scale through which to assume a regional
territorial awareness and shape, surely a critical factor in the successful institutionalisa-
tion of regional consciousness. And these struggles over territorial shape, scale, hybrid
identities, representations, and narratives of place left the CFN in an enfeebled con-
dition. The implications of this for England's regions were to become critical during
1978/79, when the Labour government failed to secure support for Scottish and Welsh
devolution. After this, throughout the 1980s, Britain's political landscape was to
become dominated by Thatcherism: a centralising political project exhibiting little
sympathy for regional problems and even less tolerance of regional expression outside
of the South East (MacLeod, 1998b). This dramatically restricted the scope for effective
regional mobilisation. Nonetheless, by the mid to late 1980s, concerns had surfaced
over a growing North ^ South divide in relation to jobs and wealth creation (Lewis and
Townsend, 1988). This was fuelled variously by the media and academics, as well as
through popular cultural representations such as the comedian Harry Enfield's work-
ing-class Southerner, ``Loadsamoney''. As for the North, in the view of one eminent
historian, it had been ``turned from an avatar of modernization into a byword for
backwardness'' (Samuel, 1998, page 166). Concern over these economic geographies
helped to reignite the whole question of meaningful political representation for
Britain's deindustrialised provincial regions. And of course, Mrs Thatcher was to
resign in 1990.
(20)This was originally concerned to assist the King's governance of the northern territories but its
effect, during breakdown of the feudalistic regime of the 16th century, was to bring the north ``into
line with the south'' (Jewell, 1994, page 66).
Renewing the geography of regions 687
It was amid this political atmosphere that, after a long period of inactivity, CFN
reconvened in 1991 in the King's Manor at York (Robins, 1992). A key debate at this
gathering concerned the suppression of the `true history of England's regions' by the
historical domination of a Southern ruling elite (compare Jewell, 1994; Taylor, 1993).
Those attending also cautioned against the CFN becoming party political on the basis
that `regionalism must appeal to those of all parties and of none'. This, in itself, could
also be interpreted as a venture to foster a political consciousness transcending the
polarities of class traditionally associated with many Northern regions. But the key
theme at this meeting was ``a discussion of the prospects for placing CFN on a more
active footing in the Nineties'' (CFN, 1991). As if responding to this regional call-to-
arms, the 1990s saw a number of Northern regional activistsösome previously affiliated
with CFNöassuming a renewed and more instrumental role in convening a Northern
regional territory.
4.4 Convening the North East: renewed opportunities for regional institutionalisation?
``We declare that the massive potential of the people of this region has long been
hindered by neglect and isolation from over-centralised government in London.
Our ability to develop our political, economic and cultural agenda has historically
been restrained by the absence of meaningful local power.''
``A Declaration for the North'' (New Statesman 14 November 1997)
The declaration above, issued shortly after the election of a New Labour government in
May 1997, can be seen as a logical extension of CFN's activities. Indeed, according
to Simms (1998, page 69), the CFN was a predecessor organisation for what was to
become the Campaign for a Northern Assembly (CNA). The latter was launched in 1992
after the Labour Party had failed, for a fourth successive time, to secure electoral power:
a result that was to frustrate the majority of people in Northern Britain, few of whom
had voted for a Conservative government increasingly predisposed to the interests of the
Southern shires (Marr, 1995). The CNA (at this stage, an organisation not replicated
in any other English region) sought to provide a civic, cross-party platform promoting
the cause of regional autonomy as a necessary means of social and economic recovery
(Tomaney, 1996). It was successful in mobilising support from a range of Westminster
MPs in Northern constituencies, the North of England Assembly of Local Authorities,
and much of the local and regional print media.
Moreover, with the North boasting a ``tradition of building and defending its own
regional institutions'' (Tomaney, 1996, page 3), CNA could also point to the presence
of a range of economic development institutions such as the Northern Development
Company and to the fact that local chambers of commerce had recently merged to
form a North East Chamber of Commerce. For John Tomaney, a key regional activist
throughout the 1990s, ``these developments alone give the lie to the argument that there
is no regional identity in England''. This invocation of a Northern conceptual and
symbolic shape is supported in Price's analysis of Northern culture:
``No one should argue that the culture of the region is a static icon ... . We can start
to meet this challenge by learning to value ourselves as northerners. We must
realise that the confidence that will be generated by rebuilding a strong regional
cultural identity is an essential part of our campaign for constitutional, social and
economic change in the region'' (1992, page 8).
Price's comments on the interaction between the economic, political, and cultural in
the translation and becoming of regional identity are reminiscent of Chetwynd back
in the early 1960s as well as the CFN's proclamations of the late 1970s. Furthermoreö
and while Price appears to accept the continuous translation and hybridity of cultural
expressionöhis call also looks to mobilise regional institutions, symbolic orders, and
688 G MacLeod, M Jones
structures of expectation (Paasi, 1991) and to address people as `Northern citizens' first
and foremost, in the hope of successfully institutionalising a Northern region.
The CNA was to continue its quiet manoeuvres throughout the mid-1990s. However,
following the election of the 1997 Labour government, political and cultural structures
of expectation were revised and a renewed war of position emerged (Tomaney, 1997).
The rationale behind this was that, when in opposition, Labour had supported regions
moving at their own pace towards directly elected assemblies (Milne, 1997). Nonetheless
the summer of 1997 was to see Labourönow unashamedly reinvented as New
Labouröadopt a more lukewarm position. For instance, when visiting Newcastle in
June, Richard Caborn told the North East to ``forget about an Assembly until after the
next election'' (Milne, 1997, page 18). It was this atmosphere that did much to precipitate
``A Declaration for the North''. Signed by 52 organisations and 238 individuals, and in
receipt of substantial media attention, this called for an Assembly ``within the lifetime of
this Parliament'' (New Statesman 1997).
Amid all these processes, and drawing on Paasi's analysis, several important ques-
tions emerge, not least those relating to the name, the boundary, and the territorial
shape of the region that was indeed being scripted. For despite being a Campaign for a
Northern Assembly, its organisational axis appeared to gravitate towards the urban
centres of the North East administrative region (only two of the signatories for the
Declaration were from Cumbria in England's North West region). All of which illus-
trates some interesting ways in which power-holding actors within and/or outside a
territory (albeit in this case proposing a counterpolitical strategy to the state) can
`define and symbolise the spatial and social limits of membership' thereby establishing
the discourses and practices for inclusion and exclusion (Paasi, 1997). In short, as
with the CFN before it, the CNA was unsure about defining a clear territorial shape.
However, this position was to change as the political economic reality of RDAs
loomed. Provoked by this, and fuelled by the widespread support A Declaration had
garnered, in October 1998 CNA assumed the territorial shape of the Northern RDA
(covering the boundary of the North East) and mutated into the North East Constitu-
tional Convention (NECC, 1999). Claiming to be ``an apolitical organisation formed by
a diverse group of people including leading church figures'' (NECC, 1998), the NECC
is unashamedly inspired by the Scottish Constitutional Convention whose broad social
base was viewed to be so critical in establishing the appetite for an elected parliament
(MacLeod, 1998b). Indeed the NECC's proposal to establish the `settled will of the
region' is a direct reference to the political discourse that permeated Scotland's own
experience. In the concluding discussion below, we revisit and assess the strategy of the
NECC in the light of these recent developments and in the context of Paasi's approach
more generally.
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