Book Cover: The New Politics of Regionalism
On 14 December, GovInn senior researcher Frank Mattheis will participate in the launch of the book “The New Politics of Regionalisms” at the Centre for Area Studies at the University of Leipzig (Germany). He co-edited book, which was published in October 2016 by Routledge, with Ulf Engel, Heidrun Zinecker, Antje Dietze and Thomas Plötze, and contributed to several chapters in the volume. Jon Schubert, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Leipzig, will act as discussant for the evening.
Since the end of the Cold War, different forms of territorialization have emerged and we are confronted with an increasing number and variety of actors that are establishing regional projects. How can the study of the emergence and transformation of regionalisms and of different forms of territorialization aid in understanding the dynamics of this post-Cold War world order? This edited volume brings together innovative contributions to the study of this new complexity. It focuses on the role of regional actors, and the making and interplay of regionalisms in the processes of reshaping social spaces within an evolving global order. Analysing these new regionalisms from the perspective of the Global South, the contributions in the volume highlight the struggles that take place between a variety of actors, departing from state-centred perspectives and focusing on the transformations and constructions of regionalisms across varying spatial dimensions.
Organized into three sections, the volume attempts to identify the specific conditions and junctures of different forms of region-making in their external (global) and internal (local /national) dimensions. The volume also places special emphasis on interactions, spatial entanglements and comparisons between regionalisms in different parts of the world. By expanding beyond the perspective of North-South transfers, this book seeks to better understand the dynamics and diversity of interregional interactions. The first section looks at the purposes and logics behind regionalisms beyond their declared objectives, followed by a section on the dynamic relations between regionalisms, going beyond a European Union perspective. The final part looks at the place actors have other than states in the making of regionalisms. Throughout the volume, cases and empirical studies from Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa as well as Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific support these sections and challenge established notions of regionalism by going beyond a Eurocentric approach.
