Introduction

In a world in which international politics is increasingly defined by scrambling for answers amidst tectonic changes, the challenges relate not only to the re-negotiation of regional narratives and their associated scopes but, once again, raise the more fundamental question of “what counts” as a region today. The study of regions in world politics is no exception in this regard. Within the past decade, numerous “crises” have emerged that challenge, overlap with or dilute regional imaginaries to an unprecedented degree. When actors talk with each other about geography and space, regions are often intentionally vague or polysemic conceptual proxies that facilitate processes of complex (political) communication. Regions as concepts often serve as communicative meeting places.