ABSTRACT
The relative decline of regional geography began in the English-speaking world in the 1950s, with the expansion of interest first in topical specialisms and then in the methodological developments that were widely represented as the 'quantitative and theoretical revolution'. The need for regional geography, then, is a need to understand the contexts within which the capitalist mode of production has expanded and is practised today. The last two decades have seen geographers actively searching for a theoretical framework that will allow them to develop a general understanding of the processes of uneven development, with which they can situate their empirical materials. The regional geography of the period prior to 1960 has been rejected by many as an unsatisfactory approach to the discipline. But increasingly geographers have realized that this rejection of a particular approach should not be taken to imply a rejection of the need to study regions such as regions matter; places matter; locales matter.
