Suchergebnisse

In the decades around 1900 the northern territories between Sweden-Norway and Finland-Russia were created and enforced as significant borderlands. In the article I situate the making of these borderlands in what was known as "the Defence Question." Taking my point of departure in this heated political debate, I discuss the various cultural meanings that were ascribed to the Swedish-Russian borderlands. I argue that at the time the discourse about the Swedish-Russian relationships stretched out and made the northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia into a vast frontier between the west and the east, the occident and the orient and civilisation versus barbarism. In making borders culturally significant, material culture plays a vital role. In the article I analyze flags, border stones and the fortifications in Boden, Sweden. Through the discourse about the fortifications, the borderlands between Sweden and the Grand Duchy of Finland took on a new strategic meaning. In the political and public debate they served as a means to bring together trade, industry, communication and defence politics into one overarching narrative. The general argument of my article is that the historical study of borderlands can benefit from analyzing significant political debates, and from exploring the material culture of past borderlands.

This Working Paper presents a case study of sugar smuggling along the trade corridor between Kismayu in Somalia and Nairobi in Kenya. The trading and smuggling of sugar in the Kenya – Somalia borderlands is a dangerous, lucrative, and highly political business. The paper explores the involvement of militants, Kenyan defence forces, bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, and truck drivers to highlight the multiplicity of vested interests in the sugar trade. Sugar smuggling in northern Kenya is informed by decades of political marginalisation of the northern territories by the Kenyan central government. Corruption and structural neglect of domestic sugar production in western Kenya is also influenced by struggles over political power in Nairobi. By analysing the cross-border sugar trade this paper draws our attention to the relation between illicit trade and current state formation dynamics in northern Kenya.

Though often remote and underdeveloped, borderlands are contested territories. The incorporation of borderlands into the post-conflict state highlights many important land-related paradigms, including the conversion of natural resources for economic, political, and civic purposes. This article explores the relationship between the natural resources of borderlands and their post-conflict development, management, and sustainability. Based on case study data and secondary material drawn from Croatia and Cyprus, the paper seeks to establish how the interplay of cross-border, national, and sub-national interests in post-conflict settings may contribute to the creation of new opportunities for economic development and the reconstruction of borderlands. It considers how the exploitation of natural resources may advance the agendas for the political development and incorporation of previous sites of contestation; and equally how their incorporation may constrain policies of sustainability, potentially giving rise to new conflicts. The paper sheds light on issues such as: the conversion of borderland natural capital to political capital as post-conflict states assert sovereignty claims and consolidate territorial identity; the ways in which the non-monetary value of natural capital is reconceived as commercial use value in post-conflict reconstruction; and the involvement of non-state actors and civil society in promoting environmental agendas, often as a counterbalance to state power.

Thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans settle in communities along the borderlands between Mexico and the United States. Many live and work in rural communities characterized by poverty and limited access to basic resources. Drawing on qualitative research, this article reports on inequalities and health among foreign-born Latinos in rural borderland communities. From 2015 to 2016, the study team conducted research in Inland Southern California's Eastern Coachella Valley with Mexican farmworkers, farmworker advocates, community leaders, healthcare service providers, and local political leaders. The analysis of field notes and interviews demonstrates how situational and temporal factors position this foreign-born population as vulnerable to inequalities across multiple social systems resulting in low social status, lack of employment and housing stability, and limited access to healthcare services. Over time, the experience of both situational life events and persistent and daily chronic strain infringes on self-concept, including mastery or control over life and self-worth, and contributes to stress and subsequent poor mental health outcomes (e.g., depression). The research calls for local community action, healthcare policy change, and further in-depth research on structural inequalities in health among foreign-born Latinos.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how flood management practitioners rationalise the emergence of sustainable flood management. Key to this analysis are differences rooted in assumptions over what flood management is and should do. Design/methodology/approach: The popularity of natural flood management offers a case with which to explore how a dominant framing persists and how individuals at the government-public interface negotiate different visions of future flood management. The authors draw on the perceptions of flood experts, elucidating a deep hold amongst a professional community "grounded" in science and economics, but also their desire to innovate and become more open to innovative practices. Findings : The authors show how the idea of "sustainable" and "natural" flood management are understood by those doing flood management, which is with reference to pre-existing technical practices. Research limitations/implications: This paper explores the views of expert decision making, which suffers from challenges associated with small sample size. As such, the findings must be tempered, but with recognition for the influence of a small group of individuals who determine the nature of flood management in Scotland. Practical implications: The authors conclude that, in the context of this study, a technical framing persists by predetermining the criteria by which innovative techniques are judged. Originality/value: Broadly, these findings contribute to debates over the evolution of flood management regimes. This recognises the importance of events while also emphasising the preparations that shape the context and norms of the flood management community between events.

Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. In Land of Necessity, historians and anthropologists unravel the interplay of the national and transnational and of scarcity and abundance in the region split by the 1,969-mile boundary line dividing Mexico and the United States. This richly illustrated volume, with more than 100 images including maps, photographs, and advertisements, explores the convergence of broad demographic, economic, political, cultural, and transnational developments resulting in various forms of consumer culture in the borderlands. Though its importance is uncontestable, the role of necessity in consumer culture has rarely been explored. Indeed, it has been argued that where necessity reigns, consumer culture is anemic. This volume demonstrates otherwise. In doing so, it sheds new light on the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, while also opening up similar terrain for scholarly inquiry into consumer culture. The volume opens with two chapters that detail the historical trajectories of consumer culture and the borderlands. In the subsequent chapters, contributors take up subjects including smuggling, tourist districts and resorts, purchasing power, and living standards. Others address home décor, housing, urban development, and commercial real estate, while still others consider the circulation of cinematic images, contraband, used cars, and clothing. Several contributors discuss the movement of people across borders, within cities, and in retail spaces. In the two afterwords, scholars reflect on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a particular site of trade in labor, land, leisure, and commodities, while also musing about consumer culture as a place of complex political and economic negotiations. Through its focus on the borderlands, this volume provides valuable insight into the historical and contemporary aspects of the big "isms" shaping modern life: capitalism, nationalism, transnationalism, globalism, and, without a doubt, consumerism. Contributors. Josef Barton, Peter S. Cahn, Howard Campbell, Lawrence Culver, Amy S. Greenberg, Josiah McC. Heyman, Sarah Hill, Alexis McCrossen, Robert Perez, Laura Isabel Serna, Rachel St. John, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Evan R. Ward

How did ethnic Azeris in the Marneuli, Bolnisi and Dmanisi districts, located inside Georgia but bordering Azerbaijan, react to the reorganisation of political space along national lines after the Soviet Union's dissolution? 'Beached' in foreign states bent on nationalising their domains, minorities throughout Eurasia sometimes rejected and sometimes accepted their alien rulers. This essay examines reactions to this predicament among Georgia's Azeris. Drawing on elite interviews and data from a matched-guise experiment, it concludes that locals have come to accept their host state after its state-building nationalism took an inclusive turn and the distinction between aliens and natives faded.

My research addresses how embodying the border informs contemporary dance around the Tijuana-San Diego region. I explore what we can learn about choreography, collaboration, nation-states, and citizenship by using the border as both a critical lens and a frame of reference. I have been interested in how (im)migration, racism, smuggling, narcotrafficking, and identity on both sides of the border inform and interfere with binational dance collaborations and choreographies to produce a genre of dance I call danzas fronterizas (border dances). An analysis of danzas fronterizas contributes to border studies from a choreographic perspective, foregrounding the body as a site of politics and economics along the U.S.-Mexican border.This dissertation first studies the influential artistic work of José Limón and Anna Sokolow during the 1930s and 1950s as choreographers who laid the foundation for what later became danzas fronterizas. Chapters two and three analyze today's Tijuana-San Diego dance scene, looking first at the artists´ experiences of border crossing and collaboration, and presenting movement/choreographic analyses of selected danzas fronterizas. I have applied archival, auto-ethnographic, and ethnographic work (participant observation and interviews) as well as movement and choreographic analysis to this research. My project seeks to contemplate scholarly and artistic perspectives from both sides of the border. I interviewed choreographers, dancers, and directors of binational dance festivals; I analyze writings from both Mexican and U.S. sources; and my self-reflections connect my own work as a choreographer of danzas fronterizas to those dancers and choreographers who learn about the border by experiencing it.

This article discusses the relations and some of the mutual Buryat-attitudes of three countries, namely Russia, Mongolia and China. The mass migrations which took place in the first half of the twentieth century divided state borders and the way these countries political contexts affected their identity and mutual opinions. This article also explores some relational aspects of Buryats with the rest of Mongols in these countries and the role of Buryats in the development of culture. ; Artykuł omawia relacje i wzajemne postawy Buriatów z trzech krajów: Rosji, Mongolii i Chin. Masowa migracja w pierwszej połowie XX wieku podzieliła Buriatów granicami państwowymi. W tekście ukazujemy sposób, w jaki kontekst polityczny tych krajów wpłynął na tożsamość Buriatów i wzajemne opinie. Omawiamy także niektóre aspekty stosunków Buriatów z resztą Mongołów oraz ich rolę w rozwoju kultury.

Miniony wiek przyniósł ludzkości wiele przemian politycznych. W dzisiej­szych czasach jesteśmy świadkami nowych wyzwań dla bezpieczeństwa i stabilności na świecie. Dodatkowo istotną rolę w politycznych procesach czasów nowożytnych odgrywa­ją tereny pogranicza. Niektórzy aktorzy sceny politycznej, jak Federacja Rosyjska, starają się utrzymać i wzmocnić swoje wpływy kosztem innych państw, w tym Ukrainy. Dlatego też transformacja agresywnej polityki takich graczy, z militarnej na hybrydową, skłania obserwujący świat do zadawania pytań: co dalej? ; The previous century brought to humanity many political trials. Nowadays, we witness new challenges to world security and stability. Besides, borderlands play a com­pelling role in the political processes of modernity. Some political actors, like the Russian Federation, try to keep and strengthen their influence at the expense of other states, in­cluding Ukraine. Therefore, a transformation of an aggressive policy of such players, from military to hybrid, provoke the surrounding world to think: what's next?

The break-up of the Cold War order, the eastwards expansion of the European Union into former socialist countries and the more recent economic and humanitarian crises have led to the emergence of new symbolic borders and the reconfiguration of spatial hierarchies within Europe. The article shows how metageographical categories of "Europe", "East" and "West" and underlying classificatory logics are not only circulated in geopolitical discourses but can be appropriated by ordinary citizens in their everyday life. Using the Russian-Estonian border as a case study, the article examines the recursive negotiations of Europe's East-West border by people living in the borderland as a response to the geopolitical changes. It highlights three border narratives – the narrative of becoming peripheral/Eastern, the narrative of becoming European, and a narrative contesting the East-West hierarchy by associating the East and one's own identity with positive things. On both sides of the border, the status as a new periphery does not create unity across the border but rather results in multiple and competing border narratives, in which "Europe" functions as an unstable referent in relation to which one's position is marked out. This "nested peripherialisation" at Europe's new margins reflects power relations and uneven local experiences of transformation.

Spatial data is the fundamental of borderland analysis of the geography, natural resources, demography, politics, economy, and culture. As the spatial region used in borderland researching usually covers several neighboring countries' borderland regions, the data is difficult to achieve by one research institution or government. VGI has been proven to be a very successful means of acquiring timely and detailed global spatial data at very low cost. Therefore VGI will be one reasonable source of borderland spatial data. OpenStreetMap (OSM) has been known as the most successful VGI resource. But OSM data model is far different from the traditional authoritative geographic information. Thus the OSM data needs to be converted to the scientist customized data model. With the real world changing fast, the converted data needs to be updated. Therefore, a dynamic integration method for borderland data is presented in this paper. In this method, a machine study mechanism is used to convert the OSM data model to the user data model; a method used to select the changed objects in the researching area over a given period from OSM whole world daily diff file is presented, the change-only information file with designed form is produced automatically. Based on the rules and algorithms mentioned above, we enabled the automatic (or semiautomatic) integration and updating of the borderland database by programming. The developed system was intensively tested.

Spatial data is the fundamental of borderland analysis of the geography, natural resources, demography, politics, economy, and culture. As the spatial region used in borderland researching usually covers several neighboring countries' borderland regions, the data is difficult to achieve by one research institution or government. VGI has been proven to be a very successful means of acquiring timely and detailed global spatial data at very low cost. Therefore VGI will be one reasonable source of borderland spatial data. OpenStreetMap (OSM) has been known as the most successful VGI resource. But OSM data model is far different from the traditional authoritative geographic information. Thus the OSM data needs to be converted to the scientist customized data model. With the real world changing fast, the converted data needs to be updated. Therefore, a dynamic integration method for borderland data is presented in this paper. In this method, a machine study mechanism is used to convert the OSM data model to the user data model; a method used to select the changed objects in the researching area over a given period from OSM whole world daily diff file is presented, the change-only information file with designed form is produced automatically. Based on the rules and algorithms mentioned above, we enabled the automatic (or semiautomatic) integration and updating of the borderland database by programming. The developed system was intensively tested.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Nationalities Papers on 19th April 2013, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2013.774341 ; The Russian-Estonian border has undergone radical changes in the past two decades - from an integrated borderland between two Soviet republics to a border between nation-states and the new EU external border. Until the present day, it is a discursive battlefield that reflects the difficult relations between Russia and Estonia after the restoration of Estonia's independence. While much research has concentrated on antagonistic projects of identity politics and state-building from a top-down perspective, this paper asks how people living in the borderland make sense of the place they live in and negotiate shifts in the symbolic landscapes. Based on life-story narratives of Russian-speakers, it analyzes different ways of narrating and framing place and argues for a consideration of the plurality and ambivalences of place-making projects on the ground. Furthermore, it argues for a more balanced account of continuity and discontinuity in memory narratives by taking into account how the socialist past continues to be meaningful in the present. As the interviews show, memories of the socialist past are used for constructing belonging in the present both by countering and by reproducing national narratives of boundedness.

The Mozambique-Zimbabwe border is one of longest boundaries in Southern Africa. Running for about 1,231 km, it divides eastern Zimbabwe and central Mozambique. At the same time, it is one of the least researched borders in Southern Africa. While some research has been carried out along this border focusing on refugees (Hughes 1999), on labour and migration (Tornimbeni 2005, Newitt & Tornimbeni 2008), on agriculture and environmental conservation (Tornimbeni 2007, Hughes 2009), and on land politics and traditional authorities (Tornimbeni 2010, Florêncio 2005), very little is known about how the borderland communities perceive and relate to the boundary.