On Eurasia and Europe (original) (raw)

A Concept of Eurasia

To imagine Europe and Asia as constituting equivalent " continents " has long been recognized as the ethnocentric cornerstone of a Western, or Euro-American, world view. The amalgam Eurasia corrects this bias by highlighting the intensifying interconnectedness of the entire landmass in recent millennia. This article builds on the work of Jack Goody and others to analyze the unity-in-civilizational-diversity of the Old World. It draws on the substan-tivist economic anthropology of Karl Polanyi to postulate continuities between ancient ideals of economic embed-dedness in the agrarian empires and various forms of socialism in the twentieth century. Today, when the human economy everywhere is again exposed to the domination of the market, the Eurasian dialectic has universal relevance. However, recognition and realization of pan-Eurasian affinities continues to be impeded by geopolitics, and sociocultural anthropology has a long way to go to overcome its Atlantic bias.

The anthropology of Eurasia in Eurasia

2003

This paper proposes reinterpretations of the concepts of cosmopolitanism and of Eurasia, both of which are commonly perceived negatively inside and outside anthropology. Cosmopolitanism is here understood as central to the character of anthropology as a comparative discipline, the antithesis of the ‘national ethnography’ (Volkskunde) tradition. It can be practised at various levels. On historical grounds, both short term and long term, it is argued that Eurasia is a highly appropriate level for comparative analysis. Eurasia is defined here as the entire landmass between the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic Oceans. In addition to Asia and Europe, Africa north of the Sahara is included on historical grounds. While some parts of this “mega-continent” are well represented in the anthropological literature, many have been neglected. Recognition of the unity of the whole has been hindered by Eurocentric preoccupations with civilisational differences and by the dominant research method...

"Debating Eurasia: The Search for New Paradigms"

Caucasus International, 2012

"Debating Eurasia: The Search for New Paradigms", Caucasus International, Vol. 2 • No: 3 • Autumn 2012, http://cijournal.az/post/caucasus-international-vol-2-no-3-autumn-2012

Overview of Eurasianism with its Historical Development (Introduction)

The Foreign Policy of Modern Turkey: Power and the Ideology of Eurasianism, 2017

Eurasianism, as its name indicates, refers to the term “Eurasia” that literally means Europe plus Asia. In relation to such a meaning, the main geographical reference point is the territory of Russia and, according to N. S. Trubetskoy, “The territory of Russia . . . constitutes a separate continent . . . which in contrast to Europe and Asia can be called Eurasia . . . Eurasia represents an integral whole, both geographically and anthropologically”. Furthermore, this separate continent was a self-contained geographical entity whose boundaries coincided roughly with those of the Russian Empire in 1914. This way of thinking is called Classical Eurasianism and, by the 1930s, losing all of its ideological forefathers and eminent figures caused this Eurasianism ideology to die down until Lev N. Gumilev led similar ideas and a new kind of Eurasianism ideology around the 1980s. Hence, it was the milestone that gave rise to this revised approach being named Neo-Eurasianism. Gumilev brought the Eurasianist ideas to light and prepared an intellectual background for them. Shortly after his death, the new and dedicated supporters of Neo-Eurasianism became Alexander S. Panarin and Alexander G. Dugin. Panarin was a well-known theorist and the Chair of Political Science at the Department of Philosophy in Moscow State University.

Towards a Maximally Inclusive Concept of Eurasia

Based on a plenary lecture given in Astana in May 2014, the paper outlines the concept of Eurasia which forms the framework for research in the Department 'Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia' at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. It probes the legacies of an interconnected Eurasia for contemporary political economy and social exclusion -both long-term with regard to the embedded economies of pre-industrial civilisations, and short-term with regard to those of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist socialism and Keynesian social democracy in the twentieth century.