Panel presentation :

China's One Belt, One Road project, Turkey's neo-Ottomanism, Iran's Shi'a Crescent, Russia's Eurasian Economic Union, Gulf states' sectarian outreach, and India's diaspora re-connected: together, they evince increasing regionalism within Asia. As states and societies interact beyond national borders, their interactions transform them from without. This panel contends that the social basis of this mutual transformation is not to be found in one country but in many, spread out through networks of trade, religion, kinship, and labor. Rather than seeing regionalisms as being conceived and emanating outwards from the center, this panel highlights the role of transnational networks in constituting order beyond borders.

The three papers in this panel showcase this approach through different examples. Serkan Yolacan analyzes Turkey's neo-Ottomanism from the perspective of a religious network that made its fortune across the crumbling Soviet space. His paper uses the emic category of mahdism to conceptualize the form of sovereignty which, though diffused through networks of business and education, can bring a state to life or hit it at its heart. Nisha Matthew analyzes India's global outreach through its diasporas and problematizes the discursive prevalence of civilizational Hinduism in this outreach. Her paper brings to fore the economic networks in the Indian Ocean and their dark sides as the workshop where Modi's dream is actually made. Ameem Lutfi analyzes Gulf regionalism from the perspective of an informal military network across the Arabian Sea. His paper problematizes the role of sectarian attachments endorsed from Gulf states as the primary motive in Gulf regionalism and centers the analysis instead on the pragmatic politics of the Baloch diaspora. Together, these three papers emphasize the constitutive role of networks in contemporary regionalisms.