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regionalism in the Barents Region should be understood as a very limited mode o f governance, as an example o f “neoliberal regionalism” (Larner and Walters 2002). According to Larner and Walters (2002, 415), “neoliberal” regions govern themselves from a distance by interaction, communication and reform within and between authorities, companies and non-governmental organisations. Such regionalism is based on multiple, co-existing spatialisations, the Barents being one instance: it is one o f many regional political bodies promoting cooperation and efforts to govern the component regions o f Northern Europe in their interaction with the global economy (Larner and Walters 2002, 408; see also Adams 2011). Knowledge and expertise on the region was essential for the establishment o f the Barents in the early 1990s. Experts participate in region-building through publications, summitry, networking, conferences, and exchanges with various stakeholders. Such intellectual practices are “integral to the processes o f regionalism” (Larner and Walters 2002, 423). The relationship between scholars and political region- builders in the Barents Region was “intimate” in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Tunander 2008, 171). A popular approach among Nordic scholars and political decision-makers to promote regional integration in Northern Europe has been the use o f political region-building discourses, which have drawn on a common history, for example (Nielsen 2007; Tunander 1994). The material studied in this paper covers the academic literature produced by Nordic scholars from the early 1990s until today. The Russian literature on the Barents Region has not been included. In the field o f international relations, Nordicity has been a source o f regional research cooperation. According to an assessment by Jorg Friedrichs (2004), due to regional research cooperation, the Nordic IR community has evolved from an internally fragmented, marginal academic periphery into a successful ‘Nordic network’ o f multi-level research cooperation. Nordic IR research has been “at the intersection between different disciplines and research traditions” (Friedrichs 2004, 72). However, one sees in the Barents regional studies a strong tradition featuring a geopolitical approach combined with constructivism (Tunander 2008; Moisio and Harle 2010). The idea o f governmentality challenges the separation of the political and the economic. Goede (2003) suggests that the economy should instead be seen as socially and discursively constructed, and closely connected to the political sphere. Most importantly, from this perspective the economy is not an organisation or a process outside o f or at odds with the state and regional cooperation. A region in the neoliberal sense is built both politically and economically as a part o f the global economic space through free mobility o f goods, people and capital and in the frames o f global markets and international competition. (Larner and Williams 2002; Larner 2000; Cotoi 2011) From the point of view o f governmentality, the “economy” appears as “an inextricable, but also very invisible part o f modern political rationalities” (Tellman 2009, 5). At issue is not a particular economic fact, theory or approach by economists, but “the very structure o f association established between political reason and truth” (Tellman 2009, 15). In Foucaultian perspective, making the economy visible and challenging the invisibility of the economy in the sphere o f politics is a critical approach. The invisibility o f the economy is taken too often as a “tool for the criticism o f reality”. However, it should be seen as “a machine for seeing, whose epistemological privileges, lines o f exclusion and technologies o f knowledge need to be dissected” (Tellman 2009, 8). Using a governmentality approach, two main discourses can be identified in Nordic Barents research: the need to be governed and the need to have an identity. These needs identified by the Nordic scholars are indicative o f neoliberal regionalism and governmentalisation o f the region by intellectual technologies. However, the problems of establishing regional governance result in governance through self­ identification. The efforts to govern regionally need to be justified by knowledge, that is, by turning issues into political and governable problems with the help of knowledge and experts. The Barents Region has a relatively strong educational and research basis with many universities and other 46