Retrospect: Neighborhoods and Regionalisms: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion in Central Asia

On April 3-4, 2019 the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Science in cooperation with the World International Studies Committee (WISC) convened a workshop “Neighborhoods and Regionalisms: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion in Central Asia” in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The workshop aimed at analyzing the current dynamics of different types and forms of regionalism unfolding in Central Asia where local actors’ policies intersect with interests of major non-Western power holders – China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Discussion at the workshop embraced a rich legacy of studies in region-making that became one of the buzz words after the end of the Cold War, with the EU being widely considered as a pioneer and a locomotive of regional integration in those spaces where EU-centered normative order could be projected. In the meantime, speakers approached Central Asian regionalism as a phenomenon of their own, capable of fostering political changes beyond the West, and in particular in the “global South”. 

Since the workshop’s agenda was explicitly multi-disciplinary, the organizers brought together a team of contributors coming from various academic backgrounds – comparative politics, foreign policy analysis, international law, area studies and sociology. This combination of variegated approaches was instrumental in uncovering different dimensions of regionalism and spatiality in Central Asia and beyond, and thus gave a multidimensional vista to all workshop participants.

Participants:

Dr. Filippo Costa Buranelli, University of St Andrews, UK: “International Society and Central Asia – The Brotherly Republics?”

Dr. Diana T. Kudaibergenova, University of Cambridge, UK: “Routes, Connections and Hubs in the Inter-Asian Context”

Thomas Linsenmaier, University of Tartu, Estonia: "Russia's Revolt against the West: the Central Asian Dimension"

Dr. Andrey Makarychev, University of Tartu, Estonia: “Central Asia: between the post-Soviet and the post-colonial”

Tran Viet Dung, Professor, Ho Chi Minh City University, Vietnam: “Development of ASEAN Economic Community: Experiences for the Central Asia’s regional cooperation”

Dr. Gulnara Dadabayeva, KIMEP University, Kazakhstan: “Eurasian Union: Is It an Attempt to Restore a Soviet Union?”

Dr. Karolina Kluczewska, University of Paris 13, France: “Development aid in Tajikistan 1991-2018 and local perceptions of regional organisations”

Dr. Volkap Ipek, Yeditepe University, Turkey: “Kazakhstan’s foreign policy towards Sub-Saharan African states”