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  • About RSIS
      • Introduction
      • Building the Foundations
      • Welcome Message
      • Board of Governors
      • Staff Profiles
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        • Dean’s Office
        • Management
        • Distinguished Fellows
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        • Visiting Fellows
        • Adjunct Fellows
        • Administrative Staff
      • Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
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      • Getting to RSIS
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        • Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
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        • International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
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        • National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
        • Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
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      • [email protected] Newsletter
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        • Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
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    • WP009 | Framing “South Asia”: Whose Imagined Region?
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    WP009 | Framing “South Asia”: Whose Imagined Region?
    Sinderpal Singh

    01 May 2001

    download pdf

    Abstract

    The framing of regions, and in this case ‘South Asia’, has often been done in ostensibly objective terms. This article argues that far from being an objective exercise, framing regions in general and ‘South Asia’ in particular, is actually a normative and inherently normative political exercise designed to serve the interests of the ‘framers’. The proposition, more specifically, is that the act of framing, in this particular context of ‘South Asia’, is the imposition of a particular kind of knowledge-as-power in which various peoples and complex ways of life are reduced to essentialist categories and meanings in order that they can be more easily managed and controlled by major regional and global actors. To demonstrate this, the bases of region framing used in the literature are discussed briefly and the manner in which these bases have been utilised in the framing of an ‘objective’ South Asian region is illustrated. The historical record is examined and a continuity is shown between the way the British colonial ‘mapping’ of South Asia was carried out to demonstrate the ‘naturalness’ of British imperial domination and the manner in which the independent Indian state has sought to frame ‘South Asia’ to ‘prove’ its ‘natural hegemony’ within South Asia. The conclusion suggests that there may be greater need to fuse theory and the analysis of the ‘region’ in order to come to a more profound understanding of the salience of the regional level of inquiry in international relations today.

    Categories: Working Papers /

    Last updated on 01/07/2014

    Abstract

    The framing of regions, and in this case ‘South Asia’, has often been done in ostensibly objective terms. This article argues that far from being an objective exercise, framing regions in general and ‘South Asia’ in particular, is actually a normative and inherently normative political exercise designed to serve the interests of the ‘framers’. The proposition, more specifically, is that the act of framing, in this particular context of ‘South Asia’, is the imposition of a particular kind of knowledge-as-power in which various peoples and complex ways of life are reduced to essentialist categories and meanings in order that they can be more easily managed and controlled by major regional and global actors. To demonstrate this, the bases of region framing used in the literature are discussed briefly and the manner in which these bases have been utilised in the framing of an ‘objective’ South Asian region is illustrated. The historical record is examined and a continuity is shown between the way the British colonial ‘mapping’ of South Asia was carried out to demonstrate the ‘naturalness’ of British imperial domination and the manner in which the independent Indian state has sought to frame ‘South Asia’ to ‘prove’ its ‘natural hegemony’ within South Asia. The conclusion suggests that there may be greater need to fuse theory and the analysis of the ‘region’ in order to come to a more profound understanding of the salience of the regional level of inquiry in international relations today.

    Categories: Working Papers

    Last updated on 01/07/2014

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    Latest Book
    WP009 | Framing “South Asia”: Whose Imagined Region?

    Abstract

    The framing of regions, and in this case ‘South Asia’, has often been done in ostensibly objective terms. This article argues that far from being an o ...

    more info