Imagining Regions

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.