Rethinking African-Asian Encounters in Terms of Transregionalisation: An Introduction

Abstract

The introduction outlines the authors’ interpretation of transregionalisation in the Asia-Africa context and fleshes out how it relates to the various chapters in the volume. Theoretically, the chapter emphasises the processual nature of transregionalisation, particularly the way in which it complicates and interrogates fixed territorial notions such as the nation-state, but also the way in which it challenges given global institutional imaginaries, such as the BRICS and South–South cooperation. It also stresses the importance of scale in the analysis, not only in dividing conceptualisation into the global, regional and local, but also in the sense of thinking about transregionalisation as the production of a ‘third space’—a liminal category which emerges in excess of region or locale A and B. The introduction then goes on to apply these considerations to the three sections of the book: “Situating African-Asian Encounters Globally”, “Challenging Asia-Africa Grand Narratives” and “Embedding African-Asian Transregionalisation”.