Identities and Life Worlds : with Examples from Östmark and Ostmark

This report is a collection of various texts on projects related to identities and life worlds. It consists of three papers: one theoretical and two dealing with special geographical study areas. The terminology ‘Local and Regional Identities’ has been used and is still frequently used by geographers and regional planners, but what is its relevance today? In the first paper both personal experiences and ongoing trends in the world are used in an attempt to theoretically discuss what it refers to, or what it could refer to. The focus is on the term ‘relational’, frequently used by other authors relating to space in different ways. The definition here is delimited to people and identities based on their relations to different regions, since this is mainly humanistic geography. Three different kinds of identities are defined: person identities, region (or landscape or place) identities and relational identities. The second paper is based on a field trip to a study area in Sweden, Östmark in the province of Värmland. Here life worlds and identities are communicated within the region and between two geographers from different parts of the world (Sweden and India). The third paper is based on a field trip to ‘Ostmark region’ in Meeker County in the US with a pilot study on identities. This region represents a region with inhabitants with ancestors from Östmark in Sweden. Many people from Östmark migrated to the US, beginning in the 1860s and continuing to the 1920s