A structuralist approach of the regional identity

Abstract

In the study the author makes an attempt at give some theoretical reflexion on the definition of region. He sets out from the humanistic geography that tries to understand the region in a subjective way, by means of the regional identification. However, the author’s purpose is to go on towards a more complex approach emerged from English and Frenchspeaking new regional geography from the 1980s. According to this approach, inspired by the socio-structural theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, the simplifications of humanism (i. e. over-emphasizing of the regional identity) can be replaced by a dialectic of the ’subjective’ and ’objective’ factors. After elaborating this structuralist approach the study demonstartes that some practical problems of Hungarian regional discourse (e. g. the absence of an adequate definition of microregions) can be resolved by it, too.