ABSTRACT

The post-hegemonic moment is an opportunity for Southern regionalisms to engage as standard-bearers in the advocacy of social development and equity and rights to reveal the “Southern origins of norms” in international relations. This chapter explores the foundations of International Relations as an Atlanticist discipline that shuns the co-constitutive nature of other parts of the world and their agency. It analyzes the intellectual trajectory of regions and regionalism as an often-trivialized concept. The chapter argues that this is not necessarily due to academic neglect but rather a consequence of how regions in the South were captured by the ideological, political, and geographic constrictions of the Cold War. It focuses on a new research agenda that engages with changes in the global political economy and discusses the classical conception of regions as spheres of influence or regions of transmission belts of global engines. The chapter describes regions as pivotal spaces where politics are thought and happen “from the nation up.”.