Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance

Abstract

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...

Where Is Wales? Narrating the Territories and Borders of the Welsh Linguistic Nation

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