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| THE DEVELOPMENT OF “NEW REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY” IN WESTERN AND ITS REVELATORIES TO REGIONAL ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY RESEARCH IN CHINA |
| YANG Qing-shan |
| Department of Geography, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China |
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Abstract The development of "New Regional Geography" is the most important symbol with which western regional geography has been changing in recent twenty years. Compared with traditional regional geography, the thought of new regional geography lies in its use of structuralism, realism and post-modernism. The first characteristic of new regional geography is its search for the identity or personality of regions. The second characteristic is its attention to people's capabilities, roles and social structure that influence personality of regions. There are three key words in new regional geography, i.e. "place", "agent" and "system". The scales of the "places" that are the bounded spaces in which organizations perform their functions are very important. "Place"is the geographical expression of the intermediary role of institutions between "agents" and "systems". Institutions are intermediaries by the way they structure time-space trajectories of people belonging to different social categories that make up regional or local populations. The scales of the "agents" are based on the fundamental notions of coexistence and mobility that underlie the analysis of time-space trajectories of "actors" or "agents" in space. Systems, need not necessarily be geog raphical phenomena. They require, however, regional assets for their locations and interactions as a base for their operating on a supra-regional scale. According to thoughts of some geographers such as Joost Hauer, Gerard A. Hoekveld, and R. J. Johnston, the principal research frontiers of new regional geography include:(1) the methodology of regional studies;(2) the studies of world system;(3) the problems of regional development;(4) the study of regions as meaningfully bounded spaces;(5) the study of the cultural identity of regions;(6) the models of regional differentiation. Based on new regional geography's main concepts and frontiers, the author discussed its revelatiories to regional economic geography research in China, and advocated studies of Chinese new regional geography.
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Received: 10 December 2001
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2002, Vol. 17 
