regionalism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

regionalism referred

  • striving to create institutions in a geographical region that are empowered to make autonomous decisions or to expand the competencies of existing institutions,
  • the identification of people with a region or the exaggeration of this attitude as well
  • region-specific forms of expression in a language , literature and art .

The term regionalism differs from that of regionalization , which generally describes processes of constituting or changing political, administrative, social or economic areas , regardless of whether these are initiated from within the region itself or from outside.

Political and economic regionalism

Regions within states and on the fringes of several states

Regionalism is the term used to describe the endeavor of people to relocate decision-making powers from the national level or from the level of a federal state to smaller regions , some of which have to be formally created for this purpose. One form of regionalization can be that smaller units (such as rural districts ) are merged and given new tasks. The opposite process to regionalization is called unitarization .

Regions represent areas of medium size: they are smaller than the states to which they belong, but larger than cities or towns. In this context, “states” are not only nation states, but also federal states (in federal states ), which can, however, also be regions of the associated nation state. Regionalization within federal states, for example, represents the introduction of regional teacher training.

Regions can have grown historically and be recognized and strengthened through regionalization (this happened e.g. in the course of the restoration of Saxony as a federal state on the occasion of the reunification of Germany in 1990); however, they can also be created at will (examples: the division of France into departments in the course of the French Revolution or the division of the GDR into 14 districts in 1952).

Regionalism can also take on complicated forms: The state of Baden-Württemberg was founded in 1952 (a new region within Germany) in order to strengthen historically grown smaller regions in southwest Germany.

Regions of the EU in which the demand for regionalization initially met resistance from the respective national state were in the 1980s: Scotland , Wales , Northern Ireland ; the Brittany , Okzitanien and Alsace ; the Basque Country and Catalonia ; and finally South Tyrol . In the meantime, however, the regions mentioned have been granted extensive autonomy rights. The concept of a Europe of Regions is based on the idea that there should be levels of statehood in all states of the European Union that roughly correspond to those of a German federal state .

There are also regions that cross national borders. In a large number of European regions, cooperation between neighboring areas is practiced, which are defined as uniform cross-border areas or are defined as such by the EU. The idea of ​​overcoming historical borders in order to establish cooperation between neighbors is also based on regionalization initiatives such as the city ​​quartet Damme-Diepholz-Lohne-Vechta . This city quartet is also intended to overcome the centuries-old confessional border within Lower Saxony , which was also a state border until 1946 (between Oldenburg and Hanover or Prussia ).

Guy Héraud , supporter of “ ethno- national European federalism ”, predicted in 1968 that in the future, instead of “German, French, Italian, etc. sovereignty [...] there would be only one sovereignty, which in turn would be subject to the The prerequisite for the federalist polity [is] highly diluted: European sovereignty ”. Borders within Europe would therefore have to be redrawn according to ethnic criteria by creating regions like “Tyrol” (which would then also include South Tyrol). Such regions would develop into regional states that would be directly subordinate to the EU and would only be marginally dependent on the decisions of the current nation states to which they now belong.

Bruno Luverà criticizes this radical form of regionalism for the "risk of creating an isolated island of regional egoisms as well as the danger that the Euregio means overcoming the Autonomy Statute of South Tyrol , i.e. the constitutional pact to regulate ethnic conflict."

One form of regionalism is the idea of regional economic cycles . The awareness of the suppliers in their own region as well as the possibility of personally checking whether these suppliers manufacture and market products sustainably should arouse trust in the quality of the products on offer. Traffic flows are also to be minimized, thereby relieving the burden on the environment.

Global regions

In international relations , areas up to the size of continents are considered “regions”. Here, too, the definition of the term “region” as “medium-sized area” can be applied: World regions are smaller than the world, but larger than individual states. In this sense, the term “regionalism” refers to the tendency of nation-states to join forces in international cooperation, which identify by belonging to a certain world region.

Prominent examples of the resulting regional organizations are the EU , ASEAN , NAFTA , Mercosur , etc. In the 1990s in particular, regionalism became so widespread that it served as an important link between the national level on the one hand and the interregional or global level on the other.

Regionalism in Social Psychology

In social psychology, "regionalism" describes the identification with a positively assessed regional ingroup (example: "We Saxony"). Emil Küng interprets the positive assessment of the regional as a “return to the advantages of the small and manageable”. Many people are afraid of moving to an area where a different dialect is spoken.

The downside of the emphasis on regional identity is often the devaluation of those who do not belong to the regional ingroup, i.e. xenophobia . Regionalist xenophobia refers not only to members of another ethnic group , but also to people who were born and raised as citizens of the same real state in another region of this state (example: the negative attitude of many people in occupied Germany after 1945 towards refugees and expellees from East Prussia , Pomerania or Silesia ). Even today, regionalism can still refer to people who feel they belong to the same ethnic group as the xenophobic and who have moved here from abroad (e.g. German repatriates ).

Those regionalists who are not satisfied with more autonomy for their region, i.e. with regionalization in the narrower sense of the word, deny that the state in which the region is located is a nation state and that their own region is declared a “nation” . This attitude, which often leads to separatist aspirations, is also known as regional nationalism .

Xenophobic variants of regionalism or regional nationalism represent a violation of the prohibition of discrimination against people because of their “homeland and origin” (formulation in Article 3, Paragraph 3 of the Basic Law ).

Regionalism in Linguistics

In linguistics, “regionalisms” are terms that are only widespread in certain regions of a language area. For example, only a few northern Germans know that " cauliflower" is the Austrian-South German name for cauliflower.

The three national standard varieties of Standard German have their own names: Teutonism (Germany), Austriazism (Austria) and Helvetism (Switzerland). For different dialects or dialect groups, similar terms such as Alemannism , Bavarism , Suebism or Saxonism are formed if necessary , but these are not generally established. Some of these terms are also applied to the other meanings of regionalism presented in this article .

Regionalism in Literature

In American literature, regionalism denotes a literary perspective that became popular in America during the Civil War. Local ( local-color - see also: Lokalkolorit ) authors described nearly every region of the United States . Descriptions of customs and dialects increased the realism of these works. It served realism.

Regionalism in Art

In American art , the term regionalism is used to denote a realistic style that loathed the city and the technology developing there and focused on scenes of rural life. Regionalist styles peaked in popularity from 1930 to 1935, and artists Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton were their best-known exponents. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, regionalist art was highly valued as America assured itself with these images.

→ see also: American regionalism

In Europe, in the mid-modern period, around the 1960s / 70s, critical regionalism developed , which placed the central concerns of modernity - clarity of expression, appropriateness of means - in a context of quotations, but which was free from historical aspects , but sees itself as an organic continuation of the customary local treasure trove of forms, and thus distinguishes itself from the strict modernist currents, which are based on a comprehensive generality of their expression.

See also

literature

  • Regionality as a category of linguistics and literary studies. Edited by Instytut Filologii Germanskiej of the Uniwersytet Opolski. Frankfurt am Main 2002.
  • JN Adams: The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC - AD 600. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007.
  • Dirk Gerdes among others: Regions and regionalism in Western Europe. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1987.
  • Axel Borrmann, Bernhard Fischer, Rolf Jungnickel, Georg Koopmann, Hans-Eckart Scharrer: Regionalism tendencies in world trade. Forms, causes and meaning for the direction and structure of international trade . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1995.
  • Holger Ihle: National and regional identity of television programs: an analysis of the program content of ZDF, ORF 2, BR and MDR , Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen 2012, DNB 1043515739 (Dissertation Georg-August University Göttingen 2011, reviewer: Jörg Aufermann, Wilfried Scharf , Helmut Volpers full text online PDF, free of charge, 339 pages, 4.6 MB).
  • Stefan Keppler: Literary regionality and secret literary history (= Stuttgart works on German studies , No. 423). Hans-Dieter Heinz, Akademischer Verlag, Stuttgart 2004 [2005], ISBN 3-88099-428-5 , pp. 375-391.
  • Michael Mäs: Regionalism, Nationalism and Xenophobia. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2005. ISBN 3-531-14655-6 .
  • Marcus Mey: Regionalism in Great Britain - viewed from a cultural and scientific perspective. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003.
  • Armin von Ungern-Sternberg: Narrative Regions. Reflections on literary spaces with a view to the German literature of the Baltic States, the Baltic States and German literature. Bielefeld 2003.
  • Jochen Blaschke (Ed.): Handbook of the West European regional movements. Syndicate, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-8108-0149-6 .
  • Lutz Bergner: The Italian regionalism. A legal comparison with decentralized and federal systems, especially with the German federal system. Kovac, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8300-3997-6 .
  • Winfried Böttcher (Ed.): Subsidiarity - Regionalism - Federalism . Munster 2004.

Web links

Wiktionary: Regionalism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arthur Benz , Dietrich Fürst, Heiderose Kilper, Dieter Rehfeld: Regionalization: Theory - Practice - Perspectives . Leske and Budrich, Opladen 1999, ISBN 3-8100-2517-8 , pp. 23 .
  2. ↑ Example: Gerhard Cassing: Regionalization in Lower Saxony. Concepts for reforming the district level (PDF; 11.5 MB). 2008
  3. ^ Regions in Baden-Württemberg . Politics & teaching. Edition 1/2001
  4. ↑ Bruno Luverà: From a democratic Europe of the regions to ethnonational federalism . S. 1. First publication in German in: Kommune. Politics forum. Economy.Culture . Issue 6/1996, ISSN  0723-7669
  5. ↑ Bruno Luverà: From a democratic Europe of the regions to ethnonational federalism . P. 7, ISSN  0723-7669
  6. ↑ Bruno Luverà: From a democratic Europe of the regions to ethnonational federalism . P. 16, ISSN  0723-7669
  7. ↑ http://www.oeko-fair.de/clever-konsumieren/essen-trinken/regional-einkaufen/regionale-wirtschaftskreislaeufe/regionale-wirtschaftskreislaeufe2
  8. ^ Emil Küng: The large-scale mergers and the opposite developments . In: Universitas. 36th vol. (1981), No. 4, p. 405.
  9. ↑ Dialect speakers are persistent. Linguists and economists study mobility . Philipps University of Marburg. Research Center for the German Language Atlas. February 15, 2010
  10. ↑ Michael Mäs: Regionalism, Nationalism and Xenophobia . Wiesbaden 2006. p. 78
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Kaschuba: German We-Images after 1945: Ethnic patriotism as collective memory? (PDF; 184 kB).