Asian Dynamics Initiative > About ADI > Research themes > Borders, territorialis...

Borders, territorialisation and regionalisation

Asia, China and the Himalayas are not regions in their own right but are made to appear as regions to scholars, indigenous people and external actors alike through historical, economic, religious, political, and cultural processes. The imagination of regions and frontiers based on national identity, language, literature, religious affiliations or economic security is the ground from which more established cultural identities and political relations across regions materialise. It is thus vital to investigate the processes through which borders and territories within Asia emerge and are voiced in order both to re-envision Asia as a dynamic part of the world without fixed regions and clear-cut boundaries and as a region where the virtual (re)definition of territories, boundaries and relations have real effects on people’s lives. Processes internal to Asia interact with global level dynamics where inclusion/exclusion of external actors, notably the USA and occasionally Europe, are a central feature of the definition among Asian actors of regionality in areas like regional security, economics and culture.

Research into these questions will require dialogue on a number of levels. At the interdisciplinary level, social sciences will have to meet the humanities: Macro perspectives (e.g. political science) will have to be combined with on-the-ground fieldwork based perspectives (e.g. anthropology) as well as with historical analyses of how perceptions of regions and borders are reflected in cultural artefacts (literature, film, art, etc.). Moreover, emerging indigenous conceptualisations of borders and territories often do not respect the boundaries of nation states and scholarly discourse. This highlights the importance of thinking of regionalisation in terms of regions emerging through relations – and in contrast – to other regions, and it also points to the importance of rethinking the conventional version of ‘regional studies’.