Challenges and prospects of study of the Greater Mediterranean

The article introduces and substantiates an interdisciplinary evolutionary approach to the study of pulsating and expanding spatiotemporal phenomena of social development or evolving localities (mestorazvitia, месторазвития) in the study of the Greater Mediterranean. The authors analyze the ways to combine spatial and temporal moments of regional studies that after the Braudelean turn developed in world-system analysis, with Rokkanean conceptual mapping and new regionalism in order to consequentially deploy their own mode of regionalistics vis-a-vis the Greater Mediterranean. The authors advance the principles of fractal self-similarity to study regions as a key variety of terrestrial worlds of the Anthropocene epoch, similar on the one hand to planetary spheres, and on the other hand to minor evolving localities. This methodology allows us to study not only the integral evolution of a pulsating and expanding regional space-time, but also its individual layers and parameters. In particular, the authors present three possible analytical projections of an integral space-time phenomenon: a shaft in time, a snapshot, and a tree of events. The article concludes with a review of the possibilities of using the concept of the Greater Mediterranean and the methodology of the new regionalistics in specific political research projects, including the political self-determination of Crimea, state-building in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and post-war reconstruction in Ukraine.