Region and place: regional identity in question

Identity, a term that was not yet included in Williams’ important Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (1976), has become a major watchword since the 1980s. Traditional territorialized battles over democracy, political status/citizenship and wealth have been complicated by the struggle over ’race’, ethnicity, multiculturalism, gender, sexuality, recognition and a new symbolic economy characterized by the production/marketing of images (Isin & Wood 1999, du Gay et al. 2000, Lash & Featherstone 2002). The identity discourse has emerged concomitantly with such arguments that the world, particularly the Western world, is moving towards a ‘forced’ individualization: people’s lives are increasingly being…