Critically Exploring the Production of Oceanic Regional Space: The Case of the Indo-Pacific

The Indo-Pacific has been defined in various and often conflicting ways. Referring to the conceptual and political merging of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, this concept has gained prominence in both policy and scholarly discourse since 2018, overshadowing previous conceptualisations of Asia. Despite the region’s diverse socio-historical and epistemological backgrounds, proponents of the Indo-Pacific framework have predominantly defined it in terms of its potential for conflict, primarily framing it as a theatre of competition between the United States and China. However, as the term transcends its geopolitical origins and gains traction as a regional reference, its implications for the study of regionalism across the Indian and Pacific Oceans require critical examination. This paper combines International Relations and Political Theory to reflect on the significance of the Indo-Pacific for conceptualising space and regions, incorporating the perspectives of actors embedded within the Indo-Pacific. It asks: What does the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as both a geopolitical and regional framework reveal about the theorisation of regional space production? Drawing particularly on the work of Arif Dirlik (1998) and a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted in South Korea and Indonesia during six months of fieldwork in 2024, this paper offers an alternative reading of the Indo-Pacific. Its argument regarding the naturalisation of the Indo-Pacific is threefold. First, it contends that despite the recent pluralisation of Cold War historiography, the Indo-Pacific—often framed as a post-Cold War concept—has been imbued with a misleading sense of temporal novelty that obscures its deeper historical roots. Second, it challenges the reification of natural elements in interpretations of the Indo-Pacific, arguing against readings that treat it as a naturally occurring phenomenon. Third, it critiques justifications of the Indo-Pacific's natural connectivity, suggesting that they are reinforcing exploitative and extractivist approaches to the ‘usefulness’ of oceans. By framing the oceans—and the merging of oceans—as a critical site of contestation, this paper introduces an epistemological study of the Indo-Pacific as both a geopolitical and regional space, integrating land-based and oceanic dimensions. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to the ‘blue turn’ in political science, enriching debates on the (re)production of both oceanic and regional spaces.