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HUNGARIAN GEOGRAPHICAL BULLETIN 64 2015 (3) CONTENT Discussing inequalities from the periphery Erika Nagy: Discussing inequalities from the periphery ...................................................................167 Thilo Lang: Socio-economic and political responses to regional polarisation and socio-spatial peripheralisation in Central and Eastern Europe: a research agenda ........ 171 József Benedek and Aura Moldovan: Economic convergence and polarisation: towards a multi-dimensional approach ................................................................................................... 187 Bradley Loewen: Contextualising regional policy for territorial cohesion in Central and Eastern Europe ........................................................................................................................... 205 Péter Balogh: The Land of Storms and the region where the country´s heart beats: changing images of peripherality in Hungary ....................................................................................... 219 Grete Kindel and Garri Raagmaa: Recreational home owners in the leadership and governance of peripheral recreational communities ............................................................233 Literature Hartemink, A.E. and McSweeney, K. (eds.): Soil Carbon (Zoltán Szalai and Gergely Jakab) .............. 247 Viktória Szirmai (ed.): From spatial inequalities to social well-being (Tamás Egedy) ...................... 249 Chronicle Report on the 5th EUGEO Congress (Gyula Nagy) ............................................................................ 252 Nagy E. Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 64 (2015) (3) 167–170. 167 DOI: 10.15201/hungeobull.64.3.1 Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 64 2015 (3) 167–170. Discussing inequalities from the periphery Erika NAGY1 Recently, the Hungarian Geographical Bul- demographic, social, environmental, politi- letin – that had been a forum for introducing cal, etc.) dimensions in Europe and deepened empirically focused papers covering vari- further as a consequence of the recent crisis ous social and physical geographical issues have raised criticism towards the neoliberali- for decades – became engaged increasingly sation of principles and institutional practices in academic discourses on socio-spatial in- of European and national policies, as well as equalities, embracing various approaches towards the scholarly concepts that under- and problems with diff erent scalar foci. The pinned them. A growing body of academic theoretical and methodological diversity that research focused on socio-spatial polarisation ranged from classical spatial analysis through – including East-West diff erences – explain- humanistic geography to critical structural- ing the process in the context of the global ism and post-structuralism represented a shift capital fl ows, European division of labour and not only toward a conceptual openness in of imbalanced power relations (in economy, geographical discourses but also to a (more) politics and knowledge production) driv- socially engaged research agenda. This mul- ing political discourses on development and tiplicity and the ‘internationalisation’ of the cohesion and thus, the social construction of journal – the switch for English language and cores and peripheries (see e.g. Smith, A. and the growing number of international authors Pickles, J. 1998; Smith, A. and Timár, J. 2010; – involved the Bulletin in academic discourses Hajdimichalis, C. 2011; Ehrlich, K. et al. 2012; revolving around the major problems of so- Hirt, S. et al. 2013). Moreover, series of stud- cio-spatial polarisation, marginality, depend- ies focused on daily social practices at local ence and exclusion in European and also in scale in transition societies – revealing, how global context. This special issue is meant to peripherality and marginality is experienced contribute to these ongoing debates on the and responded to – raised a concern with diverse forms, contexts and processes of the agency and socio-cultural (historical) diver- (re)production of socio-spatial polarisation sity in spaces labelled ‘backward’ or ‘periph- – form a Central and East European perspec- eral’ in popular and political discourses (see tive, bringing authors together from various e.g. Hörschelmann, K. 2001; Váradi, M. 2005; institutions and countries working together Stenning, A. et al. 2011; Nagy, E. et al. 2015). in the Marie Curie ITN project ‘Socio-eco- The evolving debates on macrostructural nomic and Political Responses to Regional processes, discourses and daily lives (re-)pro- Polarisation in Central and Eastern Europe’ ducing unevenness stimulated the critical (RegPol2)2. revision of embedded concepts of centrality, Socio-spatial inequalities that manifested peripherality, polarisation and peripheralisa- at multiple scales along various (economic, tion, raising arguments for relational thinking 1 Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences; H-5600 Békéscsaba, Szabó Dezső u. 42. E-mail: [email protected] 2 “Socio-economic and Political Responses to Regional Polarisation in Central and Eastern Europe” (RegPol²), coordinated by the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig, Germany. The project received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–2013/ under REA grant agreement n 607022. 168 Nagy E. Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 64 (2015) (3) 167–170. on power, agency and discursive construc- interpreting the notions of centralisation and tions of space – and against dichotomies-led peripheralisation as processes driven by mul- thinking (Massey, D. 2008; Berndt, M. and tiple social relations, and the refocusing our Colini, L. 2013; Lang, T. 2015 in this issue). research on how centrality and peripheral- This special issue does not endeavour to ity is constructed, performed, reacted to and give an overview of recent debates over the reproduced by interactions and strategies above notions. However, the papers question of social agents linked to various scales. In earlier argumentations, reveal the diversity this way, the paper contributes to avoiding of concepts of polarisation and peripheralisa- the fallacies of dichotomy-biased thinking tion, and contribute to their re-conceptualisa- on the (re)production of inequalities in CEE tion explicitly – by discussing the related the- and beyond – driving academic discourses ories critically – or implicitly – by employing oft en unperceived. relational approach and focusing on agency József Benedek and Aura Moldovan fo- and on the social constructions of space. cuses on a more specifi c aspect of spatial Thus, it is a forum not only for addressing inequalities – yet contributing to the re-con- the shortcomings of earlier research but also ceptualisation of academic research on this for challenging the dominant discourses on major issue. They provide a critical overview peripheralisation and polarisation ‘from the of approaches and concepts discussing eco- periphery’3, contributing to more balanced nomic growth, convergence, and polarisa- – socially and spatially ‘equal’ – relations in tion to reveal their interrelatedness and to academic discussions and in policy making. develop a relevant framework for explain- In his lead-off paper, Thilo Lang focuses ing economic inequalities. Their discussion on the problems and dilemmas related to embraces the conceptualisation of the persistence and (i) the traditional and the new growth theo- the recent, crisis-driven deepening of socio- ries as well as the New Economic Geography spatial inequalities within Europe, stress- that provide a sophisticated yet a limited ing the complexity, interrelatedness and the (hard production factor-focused) explana- multiscalar nature of structural changes, tion of persisting inequalities; discourses and social practices that produce (ii) selected concepts of sociology and uneven social geographies manifesting in history advancing the introduction of new intra-urban, urban/rural, metropolitan/non- (“soft ”) factors and of the time dimension metropolitan, and East–West European into academic discourse, and thus, paving polarities. He highlights the shortcomings the way for new explanations of unequal eco- of the foregoing research that failed to ex- nomic development as a multidimensional cavate the social relations driving peripher- process; alisation and polarisation processes of and (iii) various concepts of polarisation that within Central and Eastern Europe through help to explain inequalities in the context of policy discourses and institutional practices, the global economy defi ned by highly im- moreover, to address the entanglement of balanced power relations. The authors argue manifold core-periphery relations and their for combining various social and economic variegated socio-cultural contexts. A new factors (dimensions) in the convergence stud- analytical concept is proposed in the paper, ies, for the introduction of the micro and the 3 I refer here to the ongoing discussion on global scale into such analyses, moreover, for marginalisation of social groups and spaces understanding convergence/divergence and in academic and public discourses and to the economic growth as strongly interrelated arguments – forwarded by postcolonial theorists processes that have a cumulative eff ect of – for involving such groups in the debates to re- spatial inequalities. construct socio-spatial realities (see e.g. Stenning, A. and Hörschelmann, K. 2008; Kuus,