ANDERSON J. and O'DOWD L. (1999) Borders, border regions and territoriality: contradictory meanings, changing significance, Reg. Studies 33 , 593-604. The meaning and significance of state borders, as well as their geographical location, can change drastically over space and time. Along with their associated regions, they have competing and contradictory meanings, both material and symbolic. Their particularities require localized study but also wider contextualization. As a general response to peripherality, borders tend to generate questionable arbitrage activities, and their significance ultimately derives from territoriality as a general organizing principle of political and social life, one which changes over time. Borders and border regions are thus particularly revealing places for social research, especially in the present era of accelerated globalization, the end of the 'Cold War' and the growth of supra-state regions such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). Much of the research literature suggests that bounded territorial units are declining in significance given the increased flows of capital, commodities, information and people across state borders. The key claims of states to control exit and entry and to monopolize the means of violence within fixed borders seem to be under threat. Social and communal boundaries are seen to be increasingly de-linked from territorial borders. Such propositions raise a series of questions concerning how and to what extent state borders and border regions are being re-made, re-negotiated and managed or mismanaged. The paper sketches this changing context for studies and comparisons of particular borders and border regions. ANDERSON J. et O'DOWD L. (1999) Les frontieres, les regions frontalieres et la notion de territoire: des significations contradictoires et une importance en pleine evolution, Reg. Studies 33 , 593-604. La signification et l'importance des frontieres d'Etat, aussi bien que leur situation geographique, peuvent evoluer sensiblement sur l'espace et avec le temps. Conjointement avec leurs regions annexes, les frontieres ont des significations a la fois opposees et contradictoires, et materielles et symboliques. Leurs particularites necessitent non seulement que l'on les etudie sur le plan local, mais aussi que l'on les relativise a plus grande echelle. Pour repondre de facon generale a la notion de peripherie, les frontieres ont tendance a engendrer des activites d'arbitrage douteuses, et, au bout du compte, leur importance provient de la notion de territoire comme un fondement de la vie politique et sociale qui evolue avec le temps. Il s'ensuit que les frontieres et les regions frontalieres sont revelatrices dans le domaine de la recherche sociale, notamment a l'heure de la mondialisation, de la fin de la guerre froide et de l'essor des regions supranationales, telles l'Union europeenne (l'Ue) et la zone de libre-echange nord-americaine (la NAFTA). Une grande partie de la recherche laisse supposer que l'importance d...

With intensified globalization, and more specifically European integration, the ground is shifting under established political institutions, practices, and concepts. The European Union (EU), however, is usually conceived in traditional ‘realist’ or ‘functionalist’ terms which obscure the possibility that distinctly new political forms arc emerging; or, alternatively, some self-styled ‘postmodernists’ speculate implausably about a ‘Europe of the regions’ replacing the ‘Europe of states’. In contrast, I argue for ‘new medieval’ and ‘postmodern’ conceptualizations of territoriality and sovereignty, which recognize that geographic space is becoming more complex and ‘relative’: Conventional political concepts based on ‘absolute’ space are increasingly problematic for understanding the political complexities of contemporary globalization. Here ‘postmodernity’ may mean something different from what some postmodernists think it means: not, for instance, a federalized ‘United States of Europe’ where regions and regionalism replace nations and nationalism, nor simply an intergovernmental arrangement of sovereign states, but something quite distinct—‘arrested federalization’ and an ‘intermediate’ arrangement distinct in its own right rather than ‘transitional’. In this paper I sketch transformations of sovereignty from ‘medieval to modern’, and from the ‘modern’ to the allegedly ‘postmodern’. I focus on the ‘unbundling’ of territorial sovereignty, which has reputedly gone furthest in the EU. However, even here the process is partial and selective, with globalization affecting different state activities unevenly. Contemporary configurations of political space are a complex mixture of new and old forms, the latter continuing to exist rather than being tidily removed to clear the ground for new politics. The EU itself is still territorial, and in many respects traditional conceptions of sovereignty remain dominant, whether exercised by the member states or by the EU as a whole. Moreover there are problems both with the elusive notion of postmodern, and with the historical analogies of new medievalism. Nevertheless, despite problems and qualifications, these concepts are useful for exploring the possibility of radical transformations, not just with respect to the ‘actors’ of global and local politics, but to the space–time of the ‘stage’ on which they operate.

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Although considered rare, airborne pollen can be deposited far from its place of origin under a confluence of favorable conditions. Temporally anomalous records of Cupressacean pollen collected from January air samples in London, Ontario, Canada have been cited as a new case of long-distance transport. Data on pollination season implicated Juniperus ashei (mountain cedar), with populations in central Texas and south central Oklahoma, as the nearest source of the Cupressacean pollen in the Canadian air samples. This finding is of special significance given the allergenicity of mountain cedar pollen. While microscopy is used extensively to identify particles in the air spora, pollen from all members of the Cupressaceae, including Juniperus, are morphologically indistinguishable. Consequently, we implemented a molecular approach to characterize Juniperus pollen using PCR in order to test the long-distance transport hypothesis. Our PCR results using species-specific primers confirmed that the anomalous Cupressacean pollen collected in Canada was from J. ashei. Forward trajectory analysis from source areas in Texas and the Arbuckle Mountains in Oklahoma and backward trajectory analysis from the destination area near London, Ontario were completed using models implemented in HYSPLIT4 (Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory). Results from these trajectory analyses strongly supported the conclusion that the J. ashei pollen detected in Canada had its origins in Texas or Oklahoma. The results from the molecular findings are significant as they provide a new method to confirm the long-distance transport of pollen that bears allergenic importance.