Challenges and opportunities of a revived regional engagement

Abstract

In response to the commentaries on the paper on geographic engagement with grand regional narratives (Murphy, 2013), the author makes four basic points. The audiences for grand regional narratives should not be seen solely as policy elites; by extension, a variety of types of geographic scholarship can contribute to shaping large-scale regional narratives. Second, grand regional narratives necessarily have theoretical underpinnings, and there is no necessary opposition between them and microlevel studies. Third, geographically informed grand regional narratives can be produced that do not fall into essentialist traps, and they have much to contribute to public debate. Finally, there are significant constraints on efforts to shape grand regional narratives, but some effort to challenge those constraints is possible and important.