Introduction: Locating the Mediterranean

In recent years, the Mediterranean region has reasserted itself in the world: popular uprisings have unsettled long-standing political regimes, economic crises have generated precarity, and nationalist movements have reified some borders while condemning others. The circulation and stagnation of people, ideas, and objects provoked by these events draw attention to regional connections and separations that, in turn, challenge strict geopolitical renderings of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. In considering this resurgence of interest in the Mediterranean, this introduction asks: what role does ‘location’ play in our conception of region and region-formations? What kinds of locations are generated in the contemporary Mediterranean? How do historical, legal, political, and social connections and separations shape the experience of being located somewhere in particular? Furthermore, the introduction explores how, by placing in dialogue diverse approaches and traditions, this collective volume works on two levels at once. First, each contribution posits its own Mediterranean ‘constellation’. Second, the collective volume presents a wider understanding of what historically inclined anthropologists might conceive of as a Mediterranean ‘constellation’. In doing this, the introduction proposes a theoretical apparatus through which we can understand cultural and historical values of region and region-making in and beyond the Mediterranean.