Conceptualizing East Asia: From the Local to the Global

Identifying ‘East Asia’ is more difficult than it might seem at first glance. One of the problems inherent in describing any region is deciding where to draw the boundaries: who’s in and who’s out? Which countries can be considered ‘authentic’, unambiguous members of a region, and which should be excluded? On what basis should inclusion or exclusion occur? Are there differences in the way political and economic regionalism occur? Even more problematically, is it possible that regionally based ‘security communities’ might even overturn some of the most widely held expectations about regional security and the possibilities for co-operation rather than conflict in East Asia as a consequence? This chapter begins the process of answering these questions by providing some conceptual tools for thinking about regions. It also suggests why it makes sense to consider East Asia as potentially constituting a region in the same way we think of Western Europe or Latin America.