Developing a New Area Study Methodology Suitable to the Globalization Era : With Revision of the Regional Geography of World-Systems.

세계화시대에 적실한 지역연구방법론 모색 -세계체제론적 지역지리학의 보완을 중심으로-

We now live in the new era of globalization which implies the functional integration or increase of inter-dependency between internationally dispersed economic activities. As globalization impacts our various activities and daily lives, social sciences, including, geography, attempt to approach social phenomena from a global perspective. From this point of view. new regional geography, which has been articulated in recent social theory since the 1980s, also must adjust to these new world realities. This paper aims to search for a suitable methodology or approach to area study or regional geography in the era of globalization and to suggest the field of area study that Korean geographers should be concerned with in the future. This paper has reviewed the existing various methodologies of regional geography such as the ecological approach, the landscape approach. the areal differentiation approach, the system approach, the structuration theory, the spatial division of labour, and the world-system, which have deviced in the traditional and new regional geography. Peter Taylor's regional geography of world systems among them has an appropriate rationale of area study in the globalization era, because world-systems theory explains well globalization. However the regional geography of world-systems must be revised to become more suitable to the area-study approach in the globalization era. Firstly, the regional geography of world-systems explains that regions(historical regions) are made by general mechanisms of the capitalist world-economy that operate through social, economic, and political agents within regions such as individuals, households, social classes, economic enterprises, states, political movements, and many other organizations. But these mechanisms can also act through other regional agents of geographical location, natural conditions, and cultural characteristics. Therefore, the generating process of regions needs to be explained by locational, natural, and cultural elements in addition to social, economic, and political elements within regions. Secondly, Taylor's world-systems approach does not express composite characteristics of regions, because it focuses on the economic characteristics or position of regions within the world-economy. Regions incorporated into world-economy systems are not only changed economically, but also changed spatially, socially, culturally, and politically. Hence the world-systems approach must try to analyze these composite characteristics and their change of regions. Thirdly, The world-system approach proposed that the geography of regions within world-systems could be divided and analyzed as three regional types at the geographical scale such as international regions, state regions, and intra-state regions. However such a regionalization is usually not identified distinctly, because the geographical range of regions in world-systems shaped by economic boundaries of the general mechanisms of the world-economy is fluid and also occasionally overlaps with other political regions. Hence I propose that the world-systems approach should choose political boundaries of states and local autonomies in addition to economic boundaries for objective regionalization and systematic areal study. The revised regional geography of world-systems that I have suggested in this paper can be more effectively and properly applied to regional geography or area study in the globalization era. Globalization intensifies competition between states and also between local autonomies in the world. Therefore we must make efforts to study such areas or regions through the revised regional geography of world-system.

본 연구는 세계화시대에 적실한 지역연구방법론을 새롭게 모색하기 위하여, 지리학에서 개발된 다양한 지역연구방법론을 검토하고, 그 가운데 세계화 현상을 이론적으로 설명해주는 세계체제론에 기초한 세계체제론적 지역지리학의 내용을 자세히 살펴보았으며, 아울러 그것이 세계화시대에 보다 적실한 지역연구방법론이 될 수 있도록 그 문제점을 보완하여 수정된 세제체제론적 지역지리학을 제시하여 보았다. 수정된 세계체제론적 지역지리학에서는, 지역(역사지역)은 세제경제체제의 재생산적인 일반 메커니즘이 지역의 정치적, 경제적, 사회적 요소 또는 동인 이외에 위치적, 자연적, 문화적 요소와도 함께 작용하여 형성된다고 보았으며, 지역성은 경제적 특성에만 치중할 것이 아니라 공간적, 사회적, 문화적, 정치적 등의 특성도 분석하여 보다 종합적으로 규명될 필요가 있으며, 지역구분에서는 세계경제의 일반메커니즘에 의한 경제적 경계와 함께 정치적 경계도 동시에 고려할 필요가 있으며, 아울러 국가단위지역도 중요한 연구대상 지역으로 다루어져야 한다고 수정 제안하였다.