Search

This paper focuses on a group of border areas that were subject to joint exploitation by neighbouring communities. Particular attention is paid to the borderlands known as κοιναὶ χῶραι (“common regions”) attested by a handful of inscriptions that preserve some details about their origins and status. The Hellenistic Peloponnese stands out as an area of inquiry of the utmost interest, providing as it does a limited but varied body of evidence.

This paper, by focusing on a secret report delivered by the Ottoman High Commissioner in Egypt—Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha—to the imperial center regarding the Armenian revolutionaries’ movements, aims to examine three important phenomena of the late Ottoman history. The first goal is to reveal the revolutionary mobilities in the late Ottoman Empire by tracking how said revolutionaries took advantage of the borderlands to mobilize themselves. Second, this particular research serves as an indicator of the spatial politics in the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire by exposing how the imperial center governed a multi-layered administrative borderland region of Egypt—a semi-autonomous Khedivate. Finally, this paper seeks to confront traditional historiography on the intelligence activities during the reign of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909). By doing so, this paper demonstrates how the intelligence organization stretched from the administrative center to the frontiers and borderlands of the Ottoman Empire, contrary to the common assumptions in the existing literature.

This paper considers the political, geo-philosophical musings of Deleuze and Guattari on spatialisation, place and movement in relation to the religious nomad (wandering ascetics and reclusive forest monks) inhabiting the borderlands of Thailand. A nomadic science involves improvised ascetic practices between the molar lines striated by modern state apparatuses. The wandering ascetics, inhabiting a frontier political ecology, stand in contrast to the appropriating, sedentary metaphysics and sanctifying arborescence of statism and its corollary place-making, embedded in rootedness and territorialisation. It is argued that the religious nomads, residing on the endo-exteriorities of the state, came to represent a rhizomatic and politico-ontological threat to centre-nation and its apparatus of capture. The paper also theorises transitions and movement at the borderlands in the context of the state’s monastic reforms. These reforms, and its pervasive royal science, problematised the interstitial zones of the early ascetic wanderers in their radical cross-cutting networks and lines, moving within and across demarcated frontiers. Indeed, the ascetic wanderers and their allegorical war machine were seen as a source of wild, free-floating charisma and mystical power, eventually appropriated by the centre-nation in it’s becoming unitary and fixed.

This paper provides a new approach to Othello’s story in Caryl Phillips’ polyphonic novel The Nature of Blood (1997). The fictional Othello finds himself at the crossroads between different cultures and is struggling to define his identity. Making use of Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory as exposed in her work Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), this study explores Phillips’ Othello as a borderlands character. Accordingly, it is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that, as a borderlands character-narrator, Othello succeeds in bringing together the two hitherto conflicting cultures that he knows (Africa and Venice) through storytelling. Indeed, his narrative proves a transborder testimony that contributes to creating a debate forum where cultural hybridity is celebrated.um where cultural hybridity is celebrated.

In Tropic of Orange (1997), Karen Tei Yamashita uses literary imagination to challenge the settler-colonial discourse on space and time in the Americas. The influence of Latin American magical realism on Yamashita is most pronounced in the orange, a nonhuman object imbued with human agency. The orange magically initiates cross-border movements of people that disrupt the binaries of local/global, East/West, and North/South, challenging the unequal distribution of freedom of movement across the globe. In this paper, I engage with Wai-Chee Dimock’s concept of “deep time” to discuss the temporality of such border crossings. I propose that the cyclicality symbolized by the orange provides an alternative to linear settler-colonial management of spacetime.

The article deals with pictures of the Czech borderlands as part of the Czechoslovak cultural memory. It focuses on the Photo Editing Department of the Czechoslovak News Agency ČTK that was the main player in the fields of creating, storing, mediating, and consolidating visual knowledge (not only about the borderlands). It also gives insight into the Photo Editing Department’s practices of categorizing and keywording pictures, which had consequences on further publications of certain photos.

In this paper, I take identity as a characteristic of empire in its periphery, denoting the totality of: 1) the imperial strategies an empire pursues in different regions, 2) the index of empire in each region, and 3) local responses to imperialism. My case study is the Hittite Empire, which dominated parts of what is now modern Turkey and northern Syria between the seventeenth and twelfth centuries BCE, and its borderlands. To investigate the identities of the Hittite imperial system, I explore the totality of the second millennium BCE in two regions. First, I explore imperial dynamics and responses in the Ilgın Plain in inner southwestern Turkey through a study of the material collected by the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project since 2010. Second, I explore the identity of the Hittite Empire in the city of Emar in northern Syria by a thorough study of the textual and archaeological material unearthed by the Emar Expedition. In both cases, I argue that the manifestations of the Hittite Empire were mainly conditioned by the pre-Hittite trajectories of these regions. The strategies that the administration chose to use in different borderlands sought to identify what was important locally, with the Hittite Empire integrating itself into networks that were already established as manifestations of power, instead of replacing them with new ones.

This paper discusses the issue of analyzing the development of cross-border tourism infrastructure in the borderlands of countries with diversified administrative divisions and spatial databases, which hinders the use of national statistical units for comparative research. As an example, the ability to use the square grid and kernel density estimation methods for the analysis and spatial visualization of the level of tourism infrastructure development is studied for the Orlickie and Bystrzyckie Mountains, located in the Polish–Czech border area. To synthetically assess and compare the level of diversity, the methodology used in the Human Development Index was adapted using selected component indicators calculated for a square grid clipped to the boundaries of the area under study. This analysis enabled us to quantify the asymmetry in the development of tourism infrastructure in the borderlands via the calculation of the synthetic infrastructure development index. This index is 1.29 times higher in the Czech than in the Polish border area. However, the spatial concentration analysis of infrastructure shows that the diversity in the study area can be assessed as higher than the results using the average density indicators. This paper also discusses the benefits and problems associated with using the square grid method for the representation and analysis of heterogeneous data on tourism infrastructure in two neighboring national states.

Paper considers the process of theoretical conceptualization of sociological and psychological models of communication as a substantial scientific basis for sociological study of intercultural interaction of adolescent borderland youth. This analysis highlights the dynamics and key semantic milestones of the formation process of intercultural communication in modern interpretation. This research traces the transformation of ideas about structural elements of intercultural communication models, their functions and tasks. Author analyses the genesis of ideas about the elements of models of intercultural communication with the needs and features of a specific period of their emergence and development. The vector of the dynamics of intercultural communication interpretation has been determined considering the peculiarities of the present: from its technocratic to interactionist vision. Emphasis is placed on the common and distinct communication models of G. Lasswell, Shannon-Weaver, T. Newcomb, Osgood-Schramm, J. Gerbner, Westley-MacLean, D. Berlo, M. de Fleur, and G. Melatzke Melatzke in the context of the logic of transformation, a shift can be made in the understanding of the communication process from a linear to a cyclic interpretation. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of communication barriers, conceptualized in the models of aforementioned authors within the concept of “noise”. This research places emphasis on the importance and relevance of the feedback factor in communication processes, especially in the context of intercultural interaction. Understanding the role of the personality structure of the sender and the recipient of the communication in the processes of communicative interaction, reveals its significance. Furthermore, this study analyzes culturally determined factors of pressure and restrictions caused by the public nature of the communication processes. The approaches to explaining the essence of communication in the plane of its scientific interpretations are distinguished: structural and procedural. It is emphasized that structural models are focused, first of all, on the analysis of the constituent elements of communication, whereas procedural models mainly describe the dynamics of communication, the processes of meaning transformation within the limits of communicative interaction. It is concluded that the most suitable models of intercultural communication that can be applied in the analysis of intercultural interaction of adolescent borderland youth are M. de Fleur model and G. Melatzke model.

The paper is devoted to ethno-cultural landscapes of the Republic of Tuva. Ethnocultural landscapes (ECLs) are specific socio-environmental systems that developed as a result of the interaction of ethnic groups with their natural and social environments and are in a constant process of transformation. An attempt is made to identify the mechanisms of the formation, functioning and dynamics of ethnocultural landscapes in the specific conditions of the intracontinental cross-border mountain region, as well as to establish the main factors-catalysts of their modern changes. For the first time an attempt is made to delimit and map the ethnocultural landscapes of Tuva. For this, literary sources, statistical data and thematic maps of different times are analyzed using geoinformation methods. The results of 2014-2018 field studies are also used, during which interviews with representatives of different ethno-territorial, gender, age and social groups were taken. It is revealed that the key factors of Tuva’s ethnocultural landscape genesis are the natural isolation of its territory; the features of its landscape structure; the role of government; population migrations from other regions and the cultural diffusion provoked by them. 13 ethnocultural landscapes are identified at the regional level. Their modern transformation is determined by the shift of climatic cycles, aridisation, globalisation of sociocultural processes, changes in economic specialisation and ethnopsychological stereotypes.

This paper takes us into the Writing Borderlands, an ambiguous in-between space borrowed from Anzaldúa's concept of Borderlands, where we as PhD students are in a constant state of transition. We argue that theorising from a decolonial position consists of not merely using concepts around coloniality/decoloniality, but also putting its core ideas into practice in the ‘doing’ aspect of research. The writing is a major part of this doing. We enact epistemic disobedience by challenging taken-for-granted conventions of what ‘proper’ academic writing looks like. Writing from a universal standpoint — the type of writing prescribed in theses formats, positivist research methods and ‘proper’ academic writing — has been instrumental in promoting the zero-point epistemologies that prevail through Northern artefacts of knowledge. In other words, we write to de-link from the epistemological assumption of a neutral and detached observational location from which the world is interpreted. In this paper, we discuss the journey we take as PhD students as we attempt to delink and decolonise our writing. Traversing the landscape of the Writing Borderlands, different features arise and fall. Along the way, we come across forks in the road between academic training and the new way we imagine writing decolonially.

For the first half-century of settlement by Europeans, the colonies of Carolina and Louisiana were imperial borderlands. Looking west, Carolinians were among the first settlers to highlight and experience the threat that the French posed once they had traversed and mapped the length of the Mississippi. Although during this period the efforts to claim, survey and document landownership were flourishing, the reality of struggling to clear and use tracts of many hundreds of acres meant that much of the region remained ‘wilderness’ despite being nominally owned by Europeans.This paper compares British and French printed accounts that symbolically brought this land under control. I argue that European efforts to bring the landscape, flora and fauna of the southeast under control were problematic even in areas not previously understood as ‘borderlands’, such as parts of Charles Town and New Orleans themselves. While the accounts do reflect a feeling of increasing imperial confidence on the part of the British and the French, during this period neither was able to fully control the landscape they professed to have mastered. This paper shows that it was the vulnerability, not the strength, of these powers that struck the authors whose work is surveyed here.

Borders are permanent and enduring concepts in political geography and play an important role in the socio-economic life of residents around them. The border between Iran and Iraq has always played a key role in shaping the political, economic, social and cultural relations of the frontier people. This border has sometimes provided the tense and temporal ground for cooperation between the two countries. Kermanshah Province with more than 3km of international border in common with Iraq, having six border cities with high natural and human resources (mineral resources, oil, agriculture, border differences and religious and ethnic diversity ...) is of particular geopolitical importance. This paper examines the boundaries of Kermanshah province by using a descriptive-analytical method and as a documentary and library study with a strategic geopolitical perspective. The results show that although the current geopolitics is peace-based in the current situation, but some of the threats remain in place and will probably be eroded in the future due to the nature of the border; Therefore, increasing attention to intelligence, wall-building and reinforcement of structures across the border between the two countries is in line with the growing trend of social military threats, including the main needs of the country's official institutions.

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.

Anglophone Arab writings have come of age after years of ethnic, religious and gender-based invisibility. This literature has carved out a niche for itself as a literature of minority, of womanhood and of borderlands. Recent theorizations on borderland zone(s) have endeavored to understand journeys of displacement and dislocation that immigrants may experience. The present paper offers an investigation of how the border zone, be it geographical or psychological, is fictionalized in Arab Anglophone women narratives. The novel of the Arab American Mohja Kahf, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), highlights the borderland zone occupied by Arabs in the diaspora and represented by Khadra, the novel’s protagonist. Kahf’s novel serves here as a case study that shows how women characters have to negotiate their Arabness, Americanness and Islamness. The question is how.

Borderlands modeling and understanding depend on both spatial and non-spatial data, which were difficult to obtain in the past. This has limited the progress of borderland-related research. In recent years, data collection technologies have developed greatly, especially geospatial Web 2.0 technologies including blogs, publish/subscribe, mashups, and GeoRSS, which provide opportunities for data acquisition in borderland areas. This paper introduces the design and development of a Geoweb-based tagging system that enables users to tag and edit geographical information. We first establish the GeoBlog model, which consists of a set of geospatial components, posts, indicators, and comments, as the foundation of the tagging system. GeoBlog is implemented such that blogs are mashed up with OpenStreetMap. Moreover, we present an improvement to existing publish/subscribe systems with support for spatio-temporal events and subscriptions, called Spatial Publish/Subscribe, as well as the event agency network for routing messages from the publishers to the subscribers. A prototype system based on this approach is implemented in experiments. The results of this study provide an approach for asynchronous interaction and message-ordered transfer in the tagging system.

Borderland regions are special areas and deserve more attention in global sustainable development. Reliable geo-information and effective analysis tools are requested to support borderlands studies through the integrated utilization of geospatial analysis, web service, as well as the other domain-specific expertise. This paper has reviewed the state-of-the-art of geospatial information sciences, (GIS)-based borderlands modeling, and understanding. From the perspective of GIS, integrated data modeling, comprehensive analysis, and collaborative information service are identified as the three major challenges in this filed. A research agenda is further proposed with four topics, i.e., classification and representation of borderland information, derivation of neighborhood information, development of synergetic analysis, and design and development of a geo-portal for borderlands studies. This interdisciplinary study requires a closer and in-depth collaboration of geopolitics, international relation, geography and geo-spatial information sciences.

Drawing on environmental history and political ecology, this paper contributes to growing debates concerning military-environment encounters and conservation militarisation/securitisation by investigating the complex histories and legacies of these relations. Grounding my insights in South Africa's iconic Kruger National Park, I chart how encounters between environment and military/security activity over the last century offer a repeatedly contradictory picture: military activity, skills, and weapons have harmed wildlife and hence reinforced the need for its protection, and they have simultaneously been deployed in the name of such protection. Furthermore, some of these historical engagements failed to materialise as planned and, as such, provide insight into military-environment frictions as well as nature's ability to thwart militarised interventions. Yet other engagements thrived and resulted in the multi-layered militarisation of Kruger, as both protected area and strategic borderland. Several of these encounters have lived on to shape Kruger's current intensive militarisation tied to rhino poaching, both the state response and poaching itself. Past military activity, in fact, provides an arsenal of enabling factors for current poaching- and conservation-related militarised violence that ultimately proves harmful to conservation efforts.

This paper details the project ―Borderland Stories,‖ which focuses on national identity in various borderland regions of the Russian Federation. The authors point out that the contradiction between the pronunciation of national identity in the borderlands and the practical aspects of borders makes it particularly exciting to focus on national identity formation and daily life in the borderlands, especially in a huge country, such as the Russian Federation, that borders many different countries. Collection and analysis of the material are being conducted in 2014 and the first results are due for presentation in 2015.

With a relational view of landscapes and natural environments as continuously “in process” and formed from the over-layered and interdependent connections between nature and culture, the human and the non-human, this paper considers some recent practices by artists who have worked in the largely rural border region of Northern England and Southern Scotland. Expanding from a focus on the artist Tania Kovats’ 2019 Berwick Visual Arts exhibition, Head to Mouth, and a wider frame of non-anthropocentric ecological thought in relation to the visual arts, it explores the significance of diverse creative engagements with water, here with the River Tweed, and their potential value in a current cross-border context of social and environmental challenges and concern.

The Orthodox island monastery of Valaam in Russian Karelia is today a popular destination for Finnish tourists visiting Russia’s western borderlands. Many of these tourists are descendants of the Karelians who had evacuated the area following World War II. The monastery’s institutionally sanctioned genealogies construct it as the civilizing force, which had brought Christian enlightenment to the local heathen population. This discursive template is played out in the way the place is presented to visitors, with each highlight telling a carefully constructed story that promotes the monastery’s significance for the Russian religious and national identity. Yet, drawing on lived experience, as well as on popular culture, family lore and meanings from collective memory, the Finnish visitors break the monolithic official discourse and produce a complex “thirdspace” in their own measure. This paper is based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted during a homeland visit to Ladogan Karelia in June 2010.

After the Asian Economic Crisis in 1997 and the fall of president Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998, rural and urban Indonesia experienced a surge in vigilante killings and the rise of non-state forms of authorities working within the twilight of legality and illegality, assuming the role of the state. Institutional uncertainty, large-scale decentralisation reforms and the deterioration of formal legal authority in post-New Order Indonesia encouraged these processes. This apparent ‘lawlessness’ became especially evident along the fringes of the Indonesian state where state authority has continuously been contested and in a state of fl ux. This paper argues that observing these processes of lawlessness and vigilantism from the borderlands provides us with an exceptional window to understand the ambiguous relationship between law and order in post-New Order Indonesia. ----- Nach der Asienkrise 1997 und dem Sturz des autoritären Regimes Präsident Suhartos 1998 waren sowohl in den ländlichen Regionen Indonesiens als auch in den Städten eine Zunahme an Bürgerwehrmorden und ein Anwachsen nicht-staatlicher Behörden zu beobachten. Zwischen Legalität und Illegalität übernahmen sie vielfach die Rolle des Staates. Institutionelle Unsicherheiten, groß angelegte Dezentralisierungsreformen und die Verschlechterung der formellen Rechtssprechung förderten nach dem Ende der „Neuen Ordnung“ diese Prozesse. Diese scheinbare Gesetzlosigkeit wurde besonders in den Grenzregionen des indonesischen Staates deutlich, wo die staatliche Autorität permanent in Frage gestellt wird und umstritten bleibt. In diesem Artikel argumentiere ich, dass die Beobachtung dieser „Gesetzlosigkeit“ und Selbstjustiz in Grenzregionen eine außergewöhnliche Möglichkeit bietet, die mehrdeutige Beziehung zwischen Recht und Ordnung in Indonesien nach dem Ende der „Neuen Ordnung“ zu verstehen.

En este trabajo se realiza una discusión sobre la aplicabilidad de la propuesta de la denominada corriente regulacionista en torno a la espacialidad de los procesos recientes de industrialización, para un caso dentro de los países no centrales, en particular sobre el proceso de industrialización ocurrido en la Frontera Norte mexicana, desde mediados de la década pasada. Lo que se cuestiona, primeramente, a nivel teórico, es la utilidad de esta propuesta para parte de los estados no-centrales del Sistema Mundial. También se desarrollan, en el mismo plano, las objeciones principales en relación a sus supuestos generales al aplicarse esta teoría tanto al centro del Sistema Mundial como también al resto de ésta. Las características principales de este reciente proceso de industrialización en el territorio del norte mexicano son esbozadas para luego ser confrontadas a los supuestos subyacentes a la teoría regulacionista. Desde la crítica formulada a esta escuela de pensamiento, se genera una propuesta interpretativa, basada primeramente sobre el concepto de espacio de flujos, y después sobre la flexibilidad en el uso de la región fronteriza del norte mexicanoA debate is proposed in this paper on the suitability of the regulationist proposal to explain the spatial implications of recent industrial processes. This suitability is questioned for a particular territory in a non-central Nation-State, the Mexican Northern Border, from the mid-dle 1980´s. At a theoretical level, the usefulness of this for parts of the non-central nations of the World-System. On the same level the main objections on its general assumptions when this theory is applied to the center of the World-System as well as to the rest of it. Are also developed he main characteristics of the new industrialization process in the northern Mexican territory are depicted. These features are then confronted to the underlying assumptions of the regulationist theory. And, from the critique to that school of though an interpretative proposal is generated, based first on the concept of space of flows and, second, on the concept of flexibility in the usage of the Mexican Northern Border

The Orthodox island monastery of Valaam in Russian Karelia is today a popular destination for Finnish tourists visiting Russia’s western borderlands. Many of these tourists are descendants of the Karelians who had evacuated the area following World War II. The monastery’s institutionally sanctioned genealogies construct it as the civilizing force, which had brought Christian enlightenment to the local heathen population. This discursive template is played out in the way the place is presented to visitors, with each highlight telling a carefully constructed story that promotes the monastery’s significance for the Russian religious and national identity. Yet, drawing on lived experience, as well as on popular culture, family lore and meanings from collective memory, the Finnish visitors break the monolithic official discourse and produce a complex “thirdspace” in their own measure. This paper is based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted during a homeland visit to Ladogan Karelia in June 2010.

The purpose of this paper is to consider: 1) How North American definitions and myths related to literacy have been constructed; 2) How these definitions and myths might be deconstructed; and 3) How a culturally specific and sensitive “brand” of literacy might lead to a more inclusive education for students.

The paper presents opportunities of the phenomenological approach towards the Belarusian‐Polish‐Lithuanian borderlands. Such approach is based upon the principles of understanding of social reality elaborated in phenomenology (E. Husserl, M. Heidegger) and phenomenological sociology (A. Schutz) and presents a different view of the borderlands as compared with the traditional (classical) sociology. The social and cultural space of the borderlands is reflected in the modes of distance (close ‐ distant), temporality (now ‐ then) and the “presence of the Other” (local ‐ stranger), as well as their interrelated modifications. It helps to understand the degree of the acquisition / alienation of various cultural and political phenomena of the historical past and the present‐day life. The historical events and personalities, as well as existing monuments of culture in the borderlands are reflected in “our / alien” dichotomy. This results in the representation of the identities of the borderlands as liquid and plural constructs and the matters of interpretation. Baltarusių, lenkų ir lietuvių pasienio ruožai: fenomenologinė analizė Santrauka Apmąstomos fenomenologinio metodo galimybės, tyrinėjant baltarusių, lenkų ir lietuvių pasienio ruožus. Šis metodas grindžiamas socialinės tikrovės pažinimo principais, plėtojamais fenomenologijoje (E. Husserlis, M. Heideggeris) ir fenomenologinėje sociologijoje (A. Schutzas). Fenomenologinės sociologijos metodu gauti tyrinėjimo rezultatai skiriasi nuo gautųjų tradicinės (klasikinės) sociologijos metodais. Socialinė ir kultūrinė pasienio ruožų erdvė apmąstoma iš vietos (artimas – tolimas), laiko (dabar – tada), „kito akivaizdos“ (vietinis – ateivis) ir jų santykių modifikacijų perspektyvų. Tai padeda geriau suprasti įvairių istorinei praeičiai ir nūdieniam gyvenimui būdingų kultūrinių bei politinių reiškinių panašumus ir skirtumus. Istorinius įvykius ir asmenybes, kaip ir tam tikrus kultūros paminklus, aptinkamus pasienio ruožuose, straipsnio autorius aptaria remdamasis dichotomija savas – svetimas. Prieinama prie išvados, kad pasienio ruožų tapatumai gali būti traktuojami kaip tam tikri kaitūs ir sudėtiniai konstruktai, reikalingi filosofinės, sociologinės ir istorinės interpretacijų. Reikšminiai žodžiai: pasienio ruožai, pasienio tyrinėjimai, sienos, pasienio ruožų fenomenologija, pasienio ruožų sociologija. First Published Online: 14 Oct 2010