Europe and the Asia-Pacific: Culture, identity and representations of region

Book abstract:

This book provides an interdisciplinary study of culture, identity, and what is described as the 'politics of representation' in terms of the complex and often tense relationship between Europe and Asia-Pacific. Although the 'West' and the 'East', broadly speaking, have traditionally defined themselves against each other, over matters of the economy, democracy, human rights, values, identity, culture, even finance etc., the notion of Europe and the idea of assembling a European identity has become increasingly complicated by what this book further refers to as a process of 'regionalisation', especially with respect to the steady enlargement of the European Union (EU) itself.

The various contributors to the book write from a range of humanities and social science disciplines. Over fifteen chapters, there is work on many subjects and issues, a sample of which includes the following: culture, identity, representations of region; the idea of Europe as part of Asia's 'imaginary'; post-colonial perspectives on the EU-Australian relationship and Europe in the Asia-Pacific; the politics of alliance between Germany and Japan; questions of property rights, translation, national identity and culture in China; Britain's Orientalist attitude to 'collecting' East Asia in the nineteenth century, stereotypes of Islam in Western writings, and finally the politics of cultural identity in both Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.