Regional assemblage in the postwar Czechoslovakia: Another piece to the puzzle of other geographical traditions?

Abstract

The paper adds to the concept of other geographical traditions through linking the study of the history of geographical knowledge to the regional assemblage concept, and post-war Czechoslovakia is taken as the example. The paper expands discussion on the inclusiveness of the history of geography with the geographical traditions practised in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century during the period of state socialism. The analysis of regional assemblage allows me to reconstruct the process of conceptualisation and role of a ‘good’ region. I claim that a ‘good’ region was closely connected to the post-war project of transformation of the society on the discursive level, and that a region was considered a solely practical tool to serve this purpose. The most important part of the whole process of conceptualisation of the region was the map representation depicting the borders of the defined regions. The concept of assemblage enabled me to analyse the limits of the possible, that is, to analyse the way limits of geographical knowledge were set in concrete time and space. Thus, the concept of assemblage has a potential to add to, so far very fragmented, state of knowledge of the history of global geography.