identities (such as states, civil societies or regional communities) by using different
narratives, including regional ones.
On the one hand, competing regional narratives prove that ‘regions are not only
geographically given but also politically made’,
whilst on the other hand, the constructivist
investigation of regionalism focuses attention on the idea of community and insists on the
importance of social processes that ‘generate changes in normative beliefs’
highlight the potential together with the reality.
Consequently, security, both as a real
situation and as a prerequisite for action, discourse and practice, turns out to be a test case on
the regional level for potential regional collectivities.
In the case of Asia such collective identity building without any clear attempt at regionalism
(notwithstanding, of course, the short term and unsuccessful attempts of Japanese militarism
in the 1930’s) formed an incomplete narrative during the late 19
th
and early 20
th
It remains incomplete because this collective identity (calls for Asian unity or for Asian
emancipation) was almost totally an intellectual product and its relation to other political
projects (such as state, nation and empire building) was unclear, explaining why the imagined
(but-yet- constructed) Asian community was built on cultural and moral claims
common security understandings and/or common threat perceptions.
near inevitability of such a failure due to the geographical and ethnic plurality of the Asian
continent. Although Asia was no more than a geographical entity divided among various
imperial systems and colonial powers, the intellectual imagination and political discourse on
Asian collectivity formulated some myths – even if not norms – related to regional
community on the continent which can be summarized under two general headings. The first
myth, related to the idea of symbiosis, indicates the mutual recognition and respect of specific
cultural, social and moral values within a framework of interdependency and is based on the
acceptance – as opposed to rejection – of the international (political) system.
and related myth is related to the idea of the region. Korean, Chinese and Indian thinkers
formulated a notion of historical and cultural values from the idea of geographic space,
although the main impetus came from Japanese intellectuals. Thus, Asia emerged as a natural
geographical area for interrelation between nations and states. Even though the myth of the
region seemed to pave the way for a kind of regional formation, attempts such as the Greater
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were not only futile and stagnant but also had a negative
impact on future regional attempts. Hence, one can conclude that these early efforts at an
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Convention