1st Edition
The Geopolitics of Region Building in the Black Sea A Critical Examination
Offering theoretical insights on region building, this book explores the attempts to formulate a political and institutional vision for the Black Sea region in the post-9/11 era and in the context of the enlargements of the EU and NATO.
It investigates in depth these attempts, viewed as a failure by the key actors involved, in order to understand how regions emerge in international politics as well as how and why they may fail to come into being. To this end, the book explores a range of factors that impacted region building in the Black Sea, considering the role of region builders involved, their practices and the context of their actions, and the spatial representations and security discourses that were integral to the region building process. Hence, attention is paid to how these factors both enabled and constrained the discursive construction of the Black Sea region, thus identifying the elements that distinguish the Black Sea from other successful cases of region building.
Based on critical approaches towards international relations and political geography, this book both expands and deepens the scope and understanding of regions and will thus appeal to academics and students in the fields of International Relations, Security Studies, Political Geography, and Regional Integration.
1. Regions and Their Study: A Critical Reading 2. The Theoretical Framework: Towards a Genealogy 3. The Narrative(s) of a "Black Sea Region" 4. Region Builders: Unravelling the BSEN 5. Practices As Tools of Region Building 6. Writing Space: The Cartography of the Black Sea 7. Different Logics of Security, Clashing Region Building Visions
Biography
Yannis Tsantoulis studied Political Science, Political Economy and International Relations at the University of Athens (BA, MA) and the University of Bonn (MA). In 2016, he was awarded a PhD in International Relations from University College London. He has worked in both the academic and the policy sectors and his research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.
