Reflexive Identity Narratives and Regional Legacies

Regions frame cultural traditions, meanings and performances but in relation to national imaginaries regions have asynchronous legacies that nourish their distinctiveness. While regions are a part of place-based, cultural vocabularies and patterns of everyday life, scholars have increasingly emphasised reflexive perceptions and challenged comprehensive and overarching regional identities. Drawing on 15 focus-group interviews with locally or universally-orientated civic organisation groups in two English counties (Cornwall and Devon) and two Finnish provinces (North Karelia and Southwest Finland), I analyse reflexive, stable and eclectic identifications with regional spaces and provide a typology for understanding archetypal and absorbed regional legacies and differently positioned ways of thinking. The results indicate that the social negotiation of identity discourses can contribute to a dialogue of inclusion, the formation of multiple identities and qualified senses of belonging. The paper highlights the importance of respecting different worldviews and life-paths in the analysis of culturally situated regional identities.