National identity and regional development: Cornwall and the campaign for Objective 1 funding

Abstract

The politics of identity is important within regional and governance policy debates, becoming a mechanism for ‘filling in’ the democratic gaps left by the hollowing out of the state, with much discourse about constructing identities for governance purposes. This raises questions about the feasibility of processes of identity construction, and whether it starts from new, or builds on existing identities. We use the case study of the Cornish campaign for Objective 1 EU structural funding, engaging directly with modernist versus ethnosymbolist accounts of nationalism, to explore the binary between instrumental, constructed identities and more phenomenological accounts.

Keywords:

• ethnosymbolism
• regional governance
• new regionalism
• national identity
• Cornwall
• structural funding

Notes on contributor

Dr Joanie Willett works on the politics of identity, particularly in relation to economic development and sustainable communities.

Notes

1. Understood as constellations of relationships between private (as opposed to state) individuals and organisations.