Identities and regions:Exploring spatial narratives, legacies and practices with civic organizations in England and Finland

• Main Author: Vainikka, Joni
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: Assemblage; Civic organizations; Colour; Cornwall; Devon; Focus groups; History of geography; Identity; North karelia; North ostrobothnia; Paijat-hame; Poststructuralism; Reflexivity; Region; Relational space; Social movements; Southwest Finland; Territorial space; Time; karelia*
• Online Access: https://vbn.aau.dk/da/publications/01ff9f94-41ac-4bb4-8b76-8ef2c2ea677f; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84979812561&partnerID=8YFLogxK

We all have our stories to tell. Where we have born, where we have lived and the places we have visited. The spatial history of our lives reveals much about the ways we identify with space and how we narrate our belonging. The way we identify with space is always unique, reflexive and emotional. Space around us can be thought of as scaled, in which the landscapes and communities hold differently scaled spatial meanings. Regions are part of such an identity matrix, but identification with regions is a complicated issue in the late modern world, in which space does not provide a clear and meaningful collective discourse. Regions, however, provide one source of identification. Geography has a rich tradition of regional studies, and it remains important for geographers to understand what regions mean for people today, how individuals use regions in their reflexive identity narratives, how they entitle themselves to regional discourses, how they might feel regions as an obligation or as an inseparable part of the Self-Other dialectic. This dissertation is in short about how reflexive individuals share and narrate their identities and how they understand the spatially and historically defined social. The aim of this dissertation is to understand space as open in relation to different positionalities, life-paths and differently scaled worldviews. People construct their identities throughout their lives. Aside from highlighting the processes that construct identities and the part time plays for individual identities, the research also argues for understanding the role of time in forging the conceptions of regions. The research articles included here explicate the processes of identification with space, the role of identity discourses and belonging for both citizens in civic organizations and regional actors in regional institution, the importance of understanding how regional legacies condition various reflexive identity narratives and how regions form a part of the scalar spatial identities. In addition, the synopsis ...