Oranskaia T. Territory and belonging. Notes on the third volume in the project “Under the Skies of South Asia”

T. Oranskaia - University of Hamburg Hamburg, Germany ORCID: 0000-0001-7207-9190
E‑mail: tatiana.oranskaia@uni-hamburg.de

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ABSTRACT. The article presents the third volume in the series “Under the Skies of South Asia” (USSA) Territory and belonging: geopolitical construction, human agency and the perception of places, which was published in 2016. It discusses the contents of the book dealing with one of the research topics addressed by the large interdisciplinary project USSA, which is run by the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. The book contains research articles, literary texts, essays, archival documents and images. The diversity of forms and genres in it results from the innovative principle of “experimental hybrid style” used in the concluding publications on all the subprojects. ‘Territory’ and ‘belonging’ are conceived from geopolitical and socio-psychological perspectives as closely interconnected concepts definable through each other. The essence of their interconnection is division of space in relation to its population and political structure. The basic research questions include the ways of defining country borders, juridical and ethical aspects of belonging, cultural, linguistic and religious relations between the political power, space and population, etc. The volume contains data on six of eight South Asian countries, with India featuring most prominently in the majority of the contributions. The time scope is from the third century BC up to 2015. The book is of interest to scholars in various fields and also accessible to non-specialists. The variety of data, a substantial part of which have never been used in research before, and their analyses can help in broadening our theoretical understanding of the interconnections between humans and space.

DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2020-4(10)-118-128
УДК [327+314.1](5 4)

KEYWORDS: territory, belonging, identity, political power, population, frontiers, cartography, landscape, South Asia, India, religion, culture

REFERENCES 

• Pod nebom Iuzhnoi Azii. Territoriia i prinadlezhnost’: geopoliticheskoe konstruirovanie i sub”ektivnost’ vospriiatiia obitaemykh prostranstv [Under the skies of South Asia. Territory and affiliation: geopolitical construction and subjectivity of perception of habitable spaces]. Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura Publ., 2016. (In Russian).