B/ordering Space

Henk van Houtum, Olivier Kramsch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754637639
• eBook ISBN: 9781351956086
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Geografia

In the wake of globalization, numerous social scientists are turning to concepts of mobility, fluidity and hybridity to characterize a presumed de-territorialization and de-bordering of contemporary social and economic relations. This book brings together a select group of internationally renowned human geographers to explore the use of these concepts in relation to space, place and territory. In doing so, they (re)situate the subject of borders as active socio-spatial processes from a variety of theoretical perspectives. The contributors link debates on borders to discussions within the wider sphere of cultural studies, notably those addressing themes of migration, post-colonialism, the formation of national/regional identities and radical democratic practice. The chapters focus on those discursive practices that constitute 'bordered' geographical entities in the first instance through differentiated regimes of discourse. The book thus transcends the narrower field of borderlands research by building bridges to other domains of enquiry within political and human geography.

PART 1
B/Ordering Practices In A ‘Borderless’ World

1
The Changing Discourses on Political Boundaries

Mapping the Backgrounds, Contexts and Contents

Anssi Paasi

Introduction

Although regional transformation seems to be a perpetually accelerating phenomenon, we have for a long time been used to living with certain large-scale socio-spatial facts in our modem world, prominent among which has been the existence of states and their boundaries, a certainty that has been canonized in international law and in the actions of the United Nations. This fact has dominated international relations, even though it is well-known that most currently existing states are not nation-states, in the sense that several ethno-national groups co-exist within them, either peacefully or in conflict. Some of these groups may be struggling fiercely for autonomy or a state of their own.

Most of the existing political boundaries were originally created by the European nation-states, so that De Vorsey and Biger (1995, see also Burghardt, 1996) are ready to argue that it is difficult to identify any international boundary that has not directly involved a European state at some stage of its evolution. Similarly, it was the peoples from the continent of Europe that imposed a model of the space of states and a specific state-centred structure of political economy on the rest of the planet, beginning in the 17th century – a model that involved boundaries and frontiers (Shapiro, 1999). Boundaries have been a key category in political geography and political science since the 19th century, but it was above all the collapse of the East-West divide at the beginning of the 1990s that gave rise to a new interest in political boundaries.

The 1990s and the first years of the new millennium have witnessed a dramatic increase in boundary studies all over the world, but particularly in Europe. The themes have varied from problems associated with the existing state boundaries to the roles of symbolic borders in the construction of contested social identities. Particularly important topics of research have been the diverging forms of cross-border interaction, emerging new regionalizations and region-building projects. Not only have the roles of concrete state boundaries been evaluated but also the symbolic and metaphorical roles of all kinds of social, political, cultural and historical borders (Newman and Paasi, 1998; Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999; Donnan and Wilson, 1999; van der Velde and van Houtum, 2000). The sociologists Lamont and Molnár (2002) have noted in their review of the boundary literature how the idea of boundaries has been associated with research into such divergent topics as cognition, social and collective identity, commensuration, census categories, cultural capital, cultural membership, racial and ethnic group positioning, hegemonic masculinity, professional jurisdictions, scientific controversies, group rights, immigration or contentious politics, and this list is by no means exhaustive.

Geographers have also expanded their traditional ideas of political boundaries as frozen lines and have begun to map the roles and functions of boundaries as institutions, symbols and discourses that are ‘spread’ everywhere in society, so that they are not confined to the border areas themselves (Paasi, 1996). Attention has been paid to boundary-drawing practices, whether conceptual and cartographic, imaginary and actual, or social and aesthetic (O’Tuathail and Dalby, 1998). These practices are always part of broader social action and have typically been based on the processes of ‘Othering’, i.e. the construction of symbolic/cultural boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘the Other’. Spatializations of identity, nation and danger, for instance, are examples of boundary-drawing practices which are always contested and reflect power relations (Campbell, 1992; Tickner, 1995). These practices, in which national (spatial) socialization and education play a crucial role, manifest themselves in such areas as foreign policy, media discourses and popular culture (Paasi, 2003a).

Another topical example of boundary-producing practices concerns geopolitically challenging spatializations based on supra-national forms of culture, especially those referred to as ‘civilizations’, as suggested by Huntington (1993) in his much debated – and criticized – treatise (O’Tuathail, 1996; Nierop, 2001).

As far as the changing roles of political boundaries, and state boundaries in particular, are concerned, Anderson (1996) reminds us that current (political, A.P.) boundaries are not merely lines on maps, forming unproblematic backgrounds and limits to political life, but crucial elements in achieving an understanding of political life. He notes how any examination of the justifications for boundaries will normally raise dramatic questions on such themes as citizenship, identity, political loyalty, exclusion, inclusion and the ends of the state. These questions are increasingly important in the present world, characterized as it is by the flows of economic assets, information, refugees and immigrants. Inspired by these seemingly border-eroding processes, some authors have claimed that boundaries, and even states, will vanish or at least lose their role in the contemporary world. However, the simultaneous strengthening of old ideologies such as (ethno-)regio-nalism and nationalism seems to make a mockery of the most utopian visions of the borderless world.

The future role of boundaries is not, of course, an either-or question, and we certainly will not be able to write boundaries off in our academic discussions. What is needed is a deeper scrutiny of the social practices and discourses in which boundaries are produced and reproduced. I will argue in this paper that state power and the ideas of sovereignty, citizenship and identity still provide the social, political and cultural framework for ‘reading’ the contextual but simultaneously rescaling meanings of boundaries and the power relations that are involved in the very constitution of them. The constantly advancing process of constructing the European Union, for instance, is transforming the existing geopolitical ideas on political boundaries and will inevitably fuse the spatial scales in this specific context, but this does not detract from the fact that the state still remains important (Paasi, 2001).

New approaches to border research suggest that political boundaries – as well as territories and their inherent symbolisms and institutions – are social constructs and processes rather than stable entities. A historical perspective is therefore inevitable in any account on the meanings of political boundaries. This paper will therefore begin with a brief analysis of the history of state territoriality, before reflecting on different boundary drawing practices and the meanings of boundaries as ideologies, forms of symbolism and markers of identity. A critical analysis will then be made of the contrasting boundary narratives that are currently emerging in the globalizing world. This will be followed by some methodological suggestions for future border research.

Boundaries, Meaning and the Space of States

Political boundaries are part of the historically contingent processes of territory building. Political geographers remind us that boundaries are key elements in the maintenance of territoriality, the principle through which people and resources are controlled and governed by the establishment of specific territories (Sack, 1986; Paasi, 2003b). Territories and their boundaries are in a perpetual state of transformation, and the attention currently being paid to boundaries is only the latest example of a long interest in the social production of space and territoriality. The links between boundaries, power and the state are of particular significance in this process. Maps of state boundaries are hence also maps of meanings – and vice versa. To provide a historical context for the current debates, I will discuss briefly the emergence of the space of states and political boundaries.

The answer to the question of when meaningful territorial boundaries emerged in the past is a contested one. Anderson (1996), for instance, depicts how the Roman Empire developed important notions of territoriality, and how the Middle Ages produced the ‘universalist’ doctrines that offered an alternative project to the hardened frontiers of the states which developed in Europe from the 15th century onwards (note: Anderson systematically uses the word ‘frontier’ rather than boundary). He further argues that the development of the frontiers of France prefigured those of the other European nation-states. These frontiers were finally challenged in the post-World War II international system. Anderson (1996, p. 12) argues that these landmarks in the history of frontiers point to an evolution in terms of the stability of boundaries and the complexity of their functions. On the other hand, Isaac (1990) presents a more sceptical view of the ‘spatial logic’ of past societies and argues that the rulers of the ancient empires (such as Rome) were not interested in defining the frontiers of their territories in terms of fixed boundaries and that those in power were more interested in controlling people and cities than territory as such. In any case, the modem state system that has emerged gradually since the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) helped to establish the dominance of a horizontal, geostrategic view of the space of states.

The dominant geopolitical maps have always been imposed on the world by power, and have not emerged as an evolutionary historical inevitability (Shapiro 1997). The conventional wisdom of political geography suggests that it was only at the turn of the last century that exclusive boundary lines were generally established instead of the former more or less loose frontiers (Taylor and Flint 2000). This is a crude generalization, of course, since boundaries still vary from relatively open zones to strictly defined lines. Also, the space comprising our territorial states is in a perpetual condition of flux, so that where the number of states was about 55 at the beginning of the 20th century and some 80 around 1960, their current number is about 200. This is much less than the existing 400-600 ‘nations’, many of which are seeking states of their own. Particularly significant has been the post-World War II period, during which almost 120 new states have emerged on the world map as a result of processes of decolonization (95 states), federal disintegration (20) and secessionism (2) (Christopher, 1999). Only a few conflicts between states have taken place each year since the mid-1990s, whereas the number of internal conflicts has been 26-28 per year (Paasi, 2003a). Although forecasting is a complicated matter, Christopher (1999) suggests that the current potential for placing new states on the world political map is perhaps of the order of 10-20 units.

The present 194 states are divided by more than 300 land boundaries, each of which has a unique history. These histories are used in the construction of – usually contested – national identity narratives on both sides of the boundary. The construction of the social and political meanings of borders occurs particularly through spatial socialization and the territorialization of meaning, which take place in numerous ways within education, politics, administration and governance (Paasi, 1996). It is through these practices and discourses that people become identified with bounded spaces and their (historical) symbolism. Boundaries and their locations are often crucial elements in representations and narratives regarding the past successes and defeats of states and nations, on account of the fact that during the 19th and 20th centuries boundaries and territories became political symbols over which ‘nations went to war and for which citizens fought and died’ (Sahlins, 1989). Narratives of the past are typically highly selective and are constructed from the perspective of the existing states and projected to the past in a presentist manner. Dominant ideologies also tend to transform the narratives regarding the past as part of their own representations of the present and the future.

Hence boundaries are an important part of the spatial practice and discourse by which social groupings and distinctions between them are created and maintained, in which the exercise of territoriality becomes possible. Boundaries are therefore also part of the practice and narratives by which social groups and their identities are constituted and the members of these groups are governed. Since identity formation and social boundaries seem to belong together, boundaries are often understood as exclusive constituents of identity that are taken for granted. States are in a crucial position in the production and reproduction of expressions of territoriality and various forms of inclusion/exclusion, and social and cultural boundaries are usually important in this. Yuval-Davis (1997) provides one explanation by remarking how ‘borders and boundaries, identities and difference construct and determine to a large extent the space of agency, the mode of participation in which we act as citizens in the multilayered polities to which we belong’.

Academic scholars have been in a key position in the production of the border-centred outlook on the world and in shaping the practices and discourses through which the current system of territories is perpetually represented, reproduced and transformed. Authors writing on the nation and state typically construct narratives that depict how the ideas of sovereignty and the system of states have emerged gradually in relation to the changing physical-material, economic and technological circumstances, how the ideologies of nationalism and the ideas of the nation as a manifestation of this ideology gradually emerged and spread to replace absolutist rule, and how the rise of the modern world system of (‘nation’-)states finally transformed the network of more or less diffuse, permeable frontiers into a grid of exclusive territorial boundaries (Paasi, 2003a). These elements are effectively represented and circulated in school atlases and other media, which concomitantly become instruments of popular geopolitics.

Agnew (1998) has labelled the acceptance of the state and the nation as categories that are taken for granted as ‘methodological nationalism’, which manifests itself in numerous ways. Most bodies of comparative data on human societies are gathered from statistics created by nation-states and are interpreted at the state level, often using maps depicting boundaries, which effectively reify the existence of bounded territorial spaces (Anderson, 1991; Murphy, 1996; Paasi, 1996). And this phenomenon is not limited only to statistics or maps. The historian Hobsbawm (1996, p. 255), for instance, writes that what justifies the existence of one nation in contrast to others is the past, and historians are the people who produce this. Similarly political and regional geographers, anthropologists and scholars of international relations have been involved in the production of ‘cartographies of power’ – representational practices aimed at inscribing exclusive territorial entities with a content, history, meaning and trajectory (Krishna, 1994). Political theorists continually reproduce definitions of the state which are based on an idea of a clearly demarcated territory in which the state exercises power, and this vision is canonized in international relations theory, whether realist, neo-realist or idealist. The state’s ‘essential’ territoriality has been taken for granted as part of the ‘...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• PART 1 B/Ordering Practices In A ‘Borderless’ World
• PART 2 Strategic Constructions: Claiming And Fixing Places
• PART 3 Situating and Extending Spaces of Orientation
• PART 4 Re-Imagining Bounded Routes and Discourses