Geography Matters: Discerning the Importance of Local Context

Abstract

Basic geographical considerations like distance and resource location do influence political and economic processes; yet, focusing on additional geographical concepts such as relative location, relational space, and embedded sociospatial relationships strengthens and deepens analysis to reveal easily overlooked factors and implications of transition. Beth Mitchneck uses the example of survey research on Russia's transition, now prevalent in study of the region, to show that identifying spatial and regional variation is not always a simple or straightforward process and that incorporating nuanced geographical concepts into both the construction and analysis of a survey instrument about local politics reveals regions as settings for social practice. By shifting from a paradigm where regions are containers in physical space to one where regions are settings in which social behavior and action is situated, she suggests that inconsistent experience of transition processes are related to regional or spatial variation.