Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
almost instantaneously, and virtual reality will
allow people to co-locate even when they are
physically apart, nevertheless many constraints to
human movement limit the areas within which
regular journeys—such as the journey to work
and the journey to shop—can be made. Severe
limits to where a person can move to from a set
base within a defined period will remain crucial
for many years, imposing important constraints
on the organisation of economic, cultural, social
and political activity: functional regions,
however much they overlap, are a key
component of the spatial structures within
which lives are necessarily organised.
communities and nation-states are structured.
People want to live in communities with similar
others—hence the processes of separation that
mark the creation of distinct residential districts in
urban areas. Their residents (often identified as
communities) also want to be represented
separately in relevant democratic forums and
decision-making arenas: they want to ensure not
only that their separate points of view are heard
but also that they are allocated sufficient
representation to ensure that they are influential.
Thus regions, or communities of interest, are
central elements to the structuring of daily
lifeworlds and their political representation, at a
variety of scales.
Regions are also important to the state's
internal structuring. Territoriality is a key strategy
in the exercise of state power and is as important
to their internal as it is to their external relations.
Most states are too extensive for all aspects of
administration to be undertaken from a single
point. Central control needs to be allied with local
application, allowing easier surveillance at local
scales (whether in the maintenance of law and
order, as with policing, or in the implementation
of policies, such as tax collection); easier
appreciation of local needs and requirements,
which can be catered for separately from that
undertaken in other areas; and the ability to
involve local people in the governance of their
home areas by making it locally accountable. Thus
all states have a local state apparatus, with various
degrees of independence from the central state;
most local state apparatus comprises a complex,
overlapping system of administrative and
governmental areas, including all-purpose (within
constitutional limits) local governments, for
example single-purpose local governments, and
ad
hoc
quangos serving areas defined for that purpose
alone.
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Territoriality is a key strategy for programmes
of control (Sack 1986). Bounded spaces can be
defined physically, and power over people
exercised within them relatively easily—
compared with the alternative of exerting
power and influence over people, wherever
they are. Such areas provide both refuges and
prospects —safe havens, retreats from which
unwanted potential trespassers can be excluded,
and yet also outlooks on the 'world outside'.
Surveillance is feasible, allowing control to be
exercised. For these and a range of other
reasons, states, which are institutionalised
apparatus for the exercise of power, influence
and control, are all associated with bounded
territories —and since it is widely accepted
that states are necessary to the operation of
complex societies, it follows that a division of
the world into bounded territories within
which their power strategies can be exercised
is a necessary component of spatial structure.
Regions, both formal and functional, are thus key
elements in the organisation of many aspects of
society, therefore, from the individual right up to
the nation-state and its emerging successor, the
international regime.
The political impulse
Regions, broadly defined as separate territorial
segments of space, are crucial elements in the
structuration of many aspects of social
organisation. It should follow that as the study of
REGIONS IN CONTEMPORARY
SOCIETY
Given this general argument, regional definition
is clearly a necessary component of how people,
