Asia Annual 2007: Envisaging Regions

In Asia Annual 2007, contributors have engaged with the notion of ‘regions’ in Asia from the standpoint of various disciplines of social sciences. In their choice of regions under discussion, the contributors have tackled Asiatic Russia, Central Asia, West Asia and South Asia–which, interestingly, comprise the very regions that have attracted the greatest attention in the realm of Area studies since the Cold War. The articles in this volume have approached the question of ‘regions’ from the standpoint of history, international relations and economics, which bring out the interdisciplinary character of the imagination of any region. All the contributors have emphasized the amorphous character of the category of the ‘region’ itself. They have argued that the process of conceptualization of an ‘area’ or a ‘region’ is strongly rooted in the historical conjuncture when the concept develops. A logical conclusion which could follow from such an understanding of the category of ‘region’ is that there is little or nothing in the features of a ‘region’ (barring its geography) that is immutable. This calls for an interrogation of the very discipline of Area Studies itself