Imagining Regions

Hegemony and Emancipation in Europe and Asia
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-94-6372-278-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 252 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 540 g

What if regions were not just governed spaces but imagined ones? Imagining Regions: Hegemony and Emancipation in Europe and Asia offers a fresh perspective on regionalism by shifting the focus from institutional structures to regional imagination—the cultural, ideological, and political visions that conceive of transnational spaces beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. While traditional regional studies emphasize formalized entities like the EU, this book explores regions that exist primarily in the realm of ideas: imagined communities bound by shared language, religion, civilization, or political aspiration.

Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies from Europe and Asia, the authors investigate how these ideational projects can serve as tools of both hegemony and emancipation. Whether aiming to dominate a region through cultural-political alignment or to liberate marginalized groups through collective identity, regional imaginations reveal the deep entanglement of territory, power, and meaning in global politics. By including the voices of actors without sovereign states and examining regional identities that remain unrealized or contested, this volume expands the conceptual terrain of regionalism. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of how regions are envisioned, narrated, and potentially realized—not only through governance, but through the persistent human drive to imagine belonging beyond borders.

Zielgruppe

Academic

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lomová, Olga

Hesová, Zora

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Geopolitik
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments vii

List of contributors viii

List of illustrations x

Introduction 1

OLGA LOMOVÁ, ZORA HESOVÁ, AND PAVEL BARŠA

PART I

Proto-national regional imagination 21

1 East or Chinese Turkistan? Pan-Turkism in Uyghur nation-building in Xinjiang, 1912–1949 23

ONDREJ KLIMEŠ, ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE CZECH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

2 Between East and West: Pan-Islamism in the nationalisation of Bosnian Muslims 45

ZORA HESOVÁ, CHARLES UNIVERSITY

3 Residual pan-Slavism in Putin’s Russia: Communitarian geopolitics and populist ideology 70

MIKHAIL SUSLOV

4 Scandinavian: From a political category to a demonym 90

HELENA BREZINOVÁ, CHARLES UNIVERSITY

PART II

Hegemonic constructions of regions in Europe 117

5 East of the EU, west of Eurasia: Central and Eastern Europe adrift between the emerging world-systems 119

MARTIN HÁLA, CHARLES UNIVERSITY

6 Regional imagination between two refugee crises: Emergence and dissolution of Central Europe as the Visegrad Group, 2015–2022 136

PAVEL BARŠA AND ONDREJ SLACÁLEK, CHARLES UNIVERSITY

7 ‘Western Balkans’: Political dimensions and performative functions of the EU-emitted discourses toward the region 161

JASMIN HASIC, SARAJEVO SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, AND AMER KURTOVIC, IBU SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH CENTER

PART III

Imperial geopolitics and regional imagination in Asia 181

8 ‘A lofty Asia and the profound East’: Nehru, India, and the ideas of Asia 183

SHARINEE L. JAGTIANI11, GIGA INSTITUTE FOR ASIAN STUDIES

9 Between China and Japan: The shifting center of Asianist imaginations in Manchukuo, 1932–45 202

MARTIN BLAHOTA, ORIENTAL INSTITUTE, CZECH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

10 “Overseas Chinese” and “Sinophone”: A region in making and breaking 217

OLGA LOMOVÁ, CHARLES UNIVERSITY

Index 233

Über Autor(innen)

Olga Lomová is Professor of Chinese Literature and Director of the International Sinological Center at Charles University in Prague. She is author and co-author of several research monographs and translations from Chinese. She focuses on medieval Chinese poetry, the history of Chinese literature and of sinology, and the intellectual transformation of China under Western influence in the early 20th century.

Zora Hesová is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Charles University, Prague. She works on the Islamic intellectual tradition, modern Islam in Europe, and, more generally, on religion in contemporary politics, with a particular focus on Central and South-Eastern Europe.