Challenging the Concept of the Region: The Indo-Pacific as an Example of an Emerging “Artificial” Region

Vuslat Nur Şahin

EN

Öz

Anahtar Kelimeler

Region , Regionalism , Indo-Pacific , Asia-Pacific , ASEAN

Öz

Anahtar Kelimeler

Region , Regionalism , Indo-Pacific , Asia-Pacific , ASEAN

Öz

Anahtar Kelimeler

Region , Regionalism , Indo-Pacific , Asia-Pacific , ASEAN

Challenging the Concept of the Region: The Indo-Pacific as an Example of an Emerging “Artificial” Region

Abstract

This article demonstrates that the social sciences and humanities have a variety of conceptual tools for deciding questions of regional nomenclature, but that existing theories of world regions do not easily account for the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as an organizing idea in world politics. Indeed, the Indo-Pacific would not be considered a likely candidate for “regionhood” from the perspective of the most prominent schools of thought within regional studies, for this study Old Regionalism, New Regionalism and Comparative Regionalism’s theorical approaches testing in the case of Indo-Pacific. If the Indo-Pacific has a claim to regionhood, then, it is not because dispassionate observers have assessed that there is something empirical about this geographic space that warrants its categorization as a world region. Rather, the Indo-Pacific is a region only because a certain set of political actors have willed it into existence. In this sense, the Indo-Pacific is an artificial region – the product of political interests and manipulation. While all regions are artificial to a certain degree – that is, concepts are human-made by definition, and none are independent from the political world – the Indo-Pacific is perhaps more artificial than other world regions in the sense that the region would likely never have been conjured if not for political purposes. Thus, the Indo-Pacific construct is not just changing world politics – it is also altering the academic study of world politics in some important ways.

Keywords

Region , Regionalism , Indo-Pacific , Asia-Pacific , ASEAN

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Research Article

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Vuslat Nur Şahin
0000-0001-6794-6579
Japan

Publication Date

December 30, 2022

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October 11, 2022

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November 25, 2022

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Year 1970 Volume: 1 Number: 2

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https://izlik.org/JA35KP78LC

APA

Şahin, V. N. (2022). Challenging the Concept of the Region: The Indo-Pacific as an Example of an Emerging “Artificial” Region. Bölge Çalışmaları Dergisi, 1(2), 17-31. https://izlik.org/JA35KP78LC

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Anahtar Kelimeler

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Anahtar Kelimeler

Öz

Anahtar Kelimeler

Challenging the Concept of the Region: The Indo-Pacific as an Example of an Emerging “Artificial” Region

Abstract

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References

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Published in Issue

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