Theorizing Borders in a ‘Borderless World’: Globalization, Territory and Identity

Abstract

Although declarations or predictions of a borderless world have become somewhat ubiquitous over the last twenty years, state borders remain one of the most basic and visible features of the international system. While it is true that a range of issues, like environmental change, migration, or international trade, highlight the growing interaction and interdependence between different places around the world, borders continue to play a central role in shaping, dividing, and uniting the world's societies, economies, and ecosystems. Reflecting their significance for scholars across the social sciences, a growing body of multidisciplinary research has investigated the continuing power of borders in our supposedly borderless world. This article examines some of the main lines of inquiry, research, and theory in this emerging field of border studies.

Torched Earth: Dimensions of extraterritorial nationalism in the Chinese and Russian Olympic torch relays

“…The association between nationalism and a distinctly bounded spatial territory is rooted in the emergence of the Westphalian system, in which the modern state and nationalism hold a close relationship (Breuilly, 1993). The modern nationstate also strives for the ''teleological bonding of sovereignty and territory" (Diener andHagen, 2009, p. 1207). Groups of elites in national capitals and diasporas scattered abroad engage in what Agnew calls ''the task of defining and defending what they understand as the nation-state's borders, the better to imagine the shape of geo-body of their nation," (2007, p. 401), borrowing a concept developed by Winichakul. In his study of Thailand, Winichakul articulates how the imagining of the state's territory -its geobody -emerged from nineteenth-century state discourses and mapping practices (1994).…”

Space and Social Theory in Geography

“…Globalization has had important repercussions for political geography, including the continued viability of the nation-state and the rapidly changing significance of borders (Diener and Hagen, 2009;Popescu, 2011). Viewed through the telescope of social constructivism, territory too is a product of political relations (Forsberg, 2003).…”

Unravelling identities on archaeological borderlands: Late Woodland Western Basin and Ontario Iroquoian Traditions in the Lower Great Lakes region

“…Since the 1960s, scholars from a broad range of disciplines have begun to recognize borders are not simply a passive phenomenon but rather a human process worthy of deeper consideration (Diener and Hagan 2012). This perspective has emerged from a renaissance in border studies and theory over the past two decades (Newman 2006(Newman , 2011Diener and Hagan 2009;Donnan and Wilson 2010;Mullin 2011a;Paasi 2011).…”

“…Since the 1960s, scholars from a broad range of disciplines have begun to recognize borders are not simply a passive phenomenon but rather a human process worthy of deeper consideration (Diener and Hagan 2012). This perspective has emerged from a renaissance in border studies and theory over the past two decades (Newman 2006(Newman , 2011Diener and Hagan 2009;Donnan and Wilson 2010;Mullin 2011a;Paasi 2011). In the 1990s, much of the study of borders and frontiers was focused on increased permeability and the possibility that globalization was making borders redundant (Anderson 1996;Anderson and O'Dowd 1999;Newman 2006Newman , 2011Paasi 2011).…”

“…An impermeable barrier to some is a "colourful local detail" to others (Rumford 2006, 159). Borders are not "natural" but exist because people give them meaning (Anderson 1996;Diener and Hagan 2012). Similarly, cultural differences and the separateness of places are not a "natural given" but are produced and maintained (Gupta and Ferguson 1992).…”