Tourism and Regional Development Issues - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 144

perspectives on regions focus on social constructivist approaches. These
include political economy approaches, where regions are by-products of glo-
balisation whereby location and linkages with the global economy and trans-
national production structures determine regions (Acharya, 2012; see also
Chapter 14). Other similar approaches focus on conflict and cooperation;
clusters of shared identity perceived by self and others and regions being
conceptualised not in terms of geographic continuity but by purposeful
social, political, cultural and economic interaction among states which are
often, but not always, in the same geographic space (Acharya, 2012). Simil-
arly Katzenstein (2005: 12) states that 'regions are not simply physical con-
stants or ideological constructs they express changing human practices'.
Acharya (2012) makes the argument that a social constructivist approach
needs to be incorporated with the material perspective that stresses variables
including geographic location, power or economic linkages and interdepen-
dencies. 'This view challenges the exclusively materialist conception of
regions defined in terms of geography, geopolitics or market forces' (Acharya,
2012: 25). Likewise, Hettne (2003) suggests that regions are ever evolving
and changing and, therefore, must be understood as a process as well as a
social construction.
The changing trends on the theory of regions discussed by Acharya
(2012) above are a reflection of 'New Regionalism'. While regional policies in
the 1960s and 1970s reinforced 'spacio-industrial [ sic ]' determinism, in the
1980s a growing recognition of the importance of social relations in deter-
mining the capacity for regions to grow meant that regionalism had lost
momentum (Dredge & Jenkins, 2003). In the 1990s, New Regionalism emerged,
stressing the need to 'go beyond spatial configurations of industrial and
economic homogeneity to consider regions as networks of social relations'
(Dredge & Jenkins, 2003: 387). Söderbaum (2003: 1-2) states that 'new region-
alism' is 'characterised by its multidimensionality, complexity, fluidity and
non-conformity, and by the fact that it involves a variety of state and non-
state actors, who often come together in rather informal multi-actor coali-
tions'. As a result, a region is a more elusive and complex phenomenon
(Hettne, 2003; Söderbaum, 2003). Table 5.1 illustrates some of the differ-
ences between old and new regionalism.
Shone and Memon (2008) suggest there has been a shift in public policy
in New Zealand from neoliberal political ideology, which focused on deregu-
lation, to a more proactive role for the local state influenced by 'new regional-
ism' and that has affected tourism development. The shift anticipates a
devolved tourism-planning mandate fostering long-term strategic collabora-
tive planning that will enhance the contribution of tourism to sustainable
community well-being (Shone & Memon, 2008). The shift in 'new regional-
ism' to bottom-up collaboration and a shift from neoliberalism were identi-
fied in Chapter 2 in the changes in development theory. Scott (2001) also
recognises the shift away from neoliberalism under 'new regionalism' in the