A Spatial Approach to Regionalisms in the Global Economy


Book Description

The author challenges the traditional manner in which regionalization has been approached and suggests that the failure to come to grips with this phenomenon is the result of the modernist regulation of space to margins of analysis. He advances instead a spatially orientated approach which views states as one of multiple layers of a global social space. Regionalization represents the construction of new layers in an effort to search for an institutional fix to the challenges of globalization.







Theories of New Regionalism


Book Description

Theories of New Regionalism represents the first systematic attempt to bring together leading theories of new regionalism. Major theorists from around the world develop their own distinctive theoretical perspectives, spanning new regionalism & world order approaches along with regional governance, liberal institutionalism & neoclassical development regionalism, to regional security complex theory (RSCT) and the region-building approach.




The Political Economy of Regionalism


Book Description

The Political Economy of Regionalism: The Case of Southern Africa challenges prevailing wisdom, showing how ruling political elites and 'big business' join forces with certain external actors in order to promote market integration and economic globalization, boost regimes, and to satisfy group-specific and even personal interests. Only rarely do these forms of regionalism contribute to the poor and disadvantaged, who instead opt out, and survive through informal economic regionalisms or seek to create regionalisms rooted in civil society.




The New Regionalism in Africa


Book Description

This edited volume transcends conventional state-centric and formalistic notions of regionalism and theorizes, conceptualizes and analyzes the complexities and contradictions of regionalization processes in contemporary Africa. The collection not only unpacks and theorizes the African state-society complex with regard to new regionalism, but also explicitly integrates the often neglected discourse of human security and human development. In so doing, the book moves the discussion of new regionalism forward at the same time as it adds important insights to security and development. It is organized into three parts. Part I theorizes, conceptualizes and analyzes the new regionalism in Africa from the point of view of the region (e.g. West, East, Central and Southern Africa). The national perspectives in Part II focus on the new regionalism in Africa from the point of view of particular countries or specific state-society complexes, such as Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the enclave of Cabinda, Angola and Zambia. Part III contains two concluding chapters that tie the main threads of the volume together, theoretically and empirically, and discuss the contribution of the analytical framework, the new regionalism approach (NRA) to the larger study of regionalism.




Rethinking Regionalism


Book Description

Since the late 1980s, there has been a global upsurge of various forms of regionalist projects. The widening and deepening of the European Union (EU) is the most prominent example, but there has also been a revitalization or expansion of many other regionalist projects as well, such as the African Union (AU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). More or less every government in the world is engaged in regionalism, which also involves a rich variety of business and civil society actors, resulting in a multitude of regional processes in most fields of contemporary politics. In this new text, Fredrik Söderbaum draws on decades of scholarship to provide a major reassessment of regionalism and to address questions about its origins, logic and consequences. By examining regionalism from historical, spatial, comparative and global perspectives, Rethinking Regionalism transcends the deep intellectual and disciplinary rivalries that have limited our knowledge about the subject. This broad-ranging approach enables new and challenging answers to emerge as to why and how regionalism evolves and consolidates, how it can be compared, and what its ongoing significance is for a host of issues within global politics, from security and trade to development and the environment. Retaining a balanced and authoritative style throughout, this text will be welcomed for its uniquely comprehensive examination of regionalism in the contemporary global age.




Critical Geopolitics and Regional (Re)Configurations


Book Description

This book seeks to develop our understanding of the contemporary geopolitical reconfigurations of two regions of the world system with high cultural affinity and traditional close relations: Latin America and Europe. Relations between Latin America and Europe have been interpreted generally in the social sciences as synonyms of interstate relations. However, although States remain the most important actor in the geopolitical scene, they have been deeply reconfigured in recent decades, impacted by transnational dynamics, politics and spaces. This book highlights interregional relations and transnational dynamics between Latin America and Europe from a critical geopolitics perspective, promoting a new look for interregional relations which encompasses international cooperation and development, global policies, borders, inequalities and social movements. It brings attention to the relevance of interregionalism in the current geopolitical reconfiguration of the world system, but also argues for systematic inclusion of relevant new social actors and imaginaries in this traditional sphere of states. These social actors, particularly social movements and practices of contestation, are developing not only "international" bonds but a new "transnational" field, where networks defy traditional territorial orders. This volume seeks to generate a new discussion among scholars of geopolitics, international relations, social theory and social movement studies by encouraging a development of an interregional and transnational perspective of the two regions.




Collaborative Regional Development in Northeast Asia


Book Description

Against the background of accelerating globalization and growing economic interdependence in Northeast Asia over the past two decades, including the recent global economic crisis, this book sets out to examine the status and prospect of cross-border cooperation. It has synthesized diverse strands of discussion and different country perspectives to highlight the challenges and opportunities of collaborative regional development in Northeast Asia. Distinct from previous studies, this book attempts to capture international, national, and local viewpoints in regional development. Practical experience across countries has been analyzed and consolidated to form the basis of a policy agenda for cross-border cooperation. Combining an intimate knowledge of the region and different disciplinary perspectives, this book offers a wealth of information, statistical and illustrative materials, and analyses across topics and countries of the region. Editors include Won Bae Kim, Research Advisor of the Gyeonggi Research Institute and former Senior Fellow at the Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements, Yue-man Yeung, Emeritus Professor of Geography and Honorary Fellow of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Sang- Chuel Choe, former Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Regional Development in South Korea and Professor Emeritus of Seoul National University.




Respacing Africa


Book Description

Space has been reintroduced as an analytical category to the humanities and social sciences in the early 1990s. African Studies is one of the fields of knowledge production where the so-called spatial turn has proved to be extremely fruitful. The continent provides ample evidence for complex processes of deterritorialisation (migration, globalisation, sub-nationalisms) and reterritorialisation (new regionalisms, processes of bordering, etc.). These dialectical processes are driven by a variety of actors: political elites, multinational companies, warlords, donor governments, local traders, international NGOs, etc. As a result substantial parts of Africa witness the emergence of new regimes of territoriality: re-ordered states, transnational and sub-national entities, new localities and transborder formations. This volume brings together contributions from anthropology, history, geography and political science.




Fringe Regionalism


Book Description

This book introduces the novel concept of fringe regionalism to the field of international studies. It examines how regions are practiced by peripheral borderlands rather than centrally planned, thus offering new avenues for researching regionalism beyond the conventional focus on formal intergovernmental organisations. Two in depth case studies, the Sahara and the Caucasus, provide the real-life application of the concept and the authors use the tensions between competing demarcations of the region, the regional nature of extra-legal economies and the narratives of cross-border identities to steer their empirical approach. Through thorough analysis, the volume applies the concept of fringe regionalism to regions previously neglected by conventional approaches.