Regions in context: spatiality, periodicity, and the historical geography of the reWP3

Abstract. The regional question has emerged as an important theoretical and political issue over the past twenty years. Contemporaneously, established regional theories and planning doctrines have been seriously challenged and new approaches offered in their place. This paper is an examination of the recent development of regional political economy in four contexts: (1) the transformative retheorization of space and time currently taking place in social theory and philosophy, (2) the related reconceptualization of the nature and necessity of geographically uneven development, (3) the interpretation of uneven regional development within the historical geography of capitalism, and (4) the contemporary restructuring of spatial divisions of labor. These interrelated contexts form the basis for a reinterpretation of the regional question and an analysis of regional crisis and restructuring in the past and present. Over the past twenty years, significant changes have been occurring in the patterns of uneven regional development that had become so firmly established within countries during the preceding century. In much the same way that concurrent developments within the global economy seem to be shattering the neat compartmentalization of First, Second, and Third Worlds and inducing claims for an emerging 'new internationa