LABELS OF INTEREST GROUPS AS INDICATORS OF A VERNACULAR REGION: A CASE STUDY IN CROATIA BRANIMIR VUKOSAV* & BORNA FUERST-BJELI  S** * Department of Geography, University of Zadar, Croatia. E-mail: bvukosav@unizd.hr ** Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: bornafb@geog.pmf.hr Received: May, 2014; accepted July, 2015 ABSTRACT While not necessarily actual in the contemporary administrative divisions, vernacular regions are an integral part of regional identities. As such, they are a type of perceptual regions based solely on the inhabitants’ inner perception of a region. Vernacular regions are usually articulated through the occurrence of a region’s name in various informal narratives such as labels of interest groups. The aim of the paper is to use the official online databases as a means to identify and extract interest groups such as businesses, companies and public associations with labels containing the name of Zagora region in southern Croatia. The extracted data is used to map the vernacular region and reach conclusions about the applicability of the method and the utilised data sources, as well as to find out how external perception influences regional affiliation in a traditional region without institutional frame. Key words: vernacular region, regional identity, interest groups, databases, Zagora, Croatia INTRODUCTION As one of the central concepts in geography, region has many facets and thus it has been researched, understood and defined in various ways. As Agnew points out (2013, p. 10) ‘argu- ing with regions has been a major feature of social sciences of various genres for many years’. Discussing a number of controversies regarding regional concepts – notably territo- rial and relational concept, Agnew comes up with a pluralistic concept of region: as com- munities, territories, networks and societies. Thus, region may indeed refer to all of that. Regardless of the various approaches, it often implied that a region exists solely as a notion in the people’s consciousness, as a result of their constructed or inherited views of an area. In this context, an idea of ‘regional identity’ is crucial, as it consists of two separate, but com- plementary components – identity of a region and regional consciousness (Paasi 2009). It is the latter component that is crucial when it comes to understanding regions as social constructs. As one of the key elements in the shaping of a region and the formation of identities, regional consciousness is mostly related to a group’s shared history and tradi- tion in an area, causing a sense of distinction from other groups to develop. In essence, it arises through the continuant construction of the collective sense of place. This conscious- ness is usually expressed through the usage of common geographic names and other ele- ments that include social and historical sym- bols, as well as symbolism given to specific natural traits of an area. It may be said that in every type of region there is a perceptual sub- stance since, as mentioned, there are no regions without human consciousness. Most of Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie – 2015, DOI:10.1111/tesg.12168, Vol. 00, No. 00, pp. 00–00. V C 2015 Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG