Macro- and micro-regionalism in the historical geography of the Pacific Rim

The Pacific Rim macro-regional identity encompasses innumerable meso- and micro-regional identities. These can be conceptualized as nesting, one inside the other. The following study of Pacific Rim Macro- and Micro-Regions works within a flexibility of scale to provide a thick explanation of contemporary processes and patterns of regionalism in the world today. This way of looking at the process of regionalism breaks the boundaries of scale and reveals the ways in which identity and territory are nested into circles of influence. A collage of time frames and spatial scales is presented in the context of the Pacific Ocean as a geographical region through two basic approaches: (1) a theoretical, philosophical approach considering the concept of region in geography in the light of communitarian and cosmopolitan philosophies, shown to parallel the concept of Micro- and Macro-Regions; and (2) a historical geography approach looking at sequential occupance and regional consciousness in selected Pacific Rim regional entities (call them states, nations, or empires), followed by a historical geography of Macro-Pacific regionalization. Regions are not just social constructs (from sociology theory) or just physical objects (to be scientifically mapped and measured); they are also imaginative constructs. Their nature is dynamic, not static, in both time and space. Past and present configurations describe a story of nested regionalisms within a greater Pacific macro-region. There is not an end-state, but rather a series of tendencies and counter-tendencies in regional formation.