The Region-Building Approach Revisited: The Continued Othering of Russia in Discourses of Region-Building in the European North

The article locates itself as an extension to the analytical debates of the 1980s and 1990s emphasising the socially constructed nature of regions as 'imagined communities'. In the European north, this analytical turn has inspired academics and politicians to engage in a wide variety of region-building projects aimed at reconstituting the area's geopolitical reality by transcending the negative self-other divisions between East and West of the Cold War. The region builders of the 1990s took on board the postmodern understanding of the constructed nature of social reality. However, the representational practices they have utilised in order to promote change have often only served to re-inscribe the very world they have sought to transform. To the detriment of its stated objectives, the new region building frequently resonates badly with a (Western) European legacy that constitutes Europe as a unified civilisational empire. This offers Russia the option, either of being imperialised within its folds, or alternatively remaining marginalised on the periphery of Europe.