Socio-Spatial Multiplicity in World Politics: Non-Western Regional Imaginations of the Indo-Pacific.

Abstract: In the post-Cold War era, the Indo-Pacific has become one of the most controversial regions in the world, significantly influencing international politics. This development signals a power shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific, as even countries outside this region seek to intensify their involvement. Although the Japanese government claims that universal values exist in the region, the term was originally introduced by the Japanophile German geopolitician Karl Haushofer in the first half of the twentieth century and was used by Japanese geopoliticians to express the area of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a region that aimed to create a world order that differed from the Western one. In my talk, I discuss the political implications of this contradiction.