On Eurasia and Europe

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Published: May 20, 2016
Keywords:
Europe, Eurasia, Asia, Civilization

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Alessandro Testa
University of Vienna

Abstract

This paper sets out to discuss the objects/areas/models/notions of Europe and Eurasia from the standpoint of a critical historical anthropology, in order to assess their intellectual usefulness, heuristic validity, and correspondence to actual social and historical realties. This will be done through reviewing and assessing the concept of Eurasia as it is developed in the recent works of Chris Hann. By confronting his arguments, I will articulate why the notion of Eurasia and its ontological status in this form is not entirely conceptually and historically convincing, even if it is thought-provoking (or even politically desirable). I will explain why considering Europe as a part of a macro-region – instead of as a macro-region itself – is not convincing, and thereby reaffirm the specificities which make Europe a discernible object/area/model/notion of historical-anthropological study; specificities that for the time being prove it heuristically unsuitable and unsustainable to substitute the notion of Europe with that of Eurasia (or “Western Eurasia”), as Chris Hann seems to advocate.

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How to Cite
Testa, A. (2016). On Eurasia and Europe. Anthropology of East Europe Review, 33(2), 60–88. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/21953
Issue
Vol. 33 No. 2 (2015)
Section
Editorial

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