Holding the Line
Holding the Line
Borders in a Global World
This volume contains contributions from twenty-four scholarsconcerning the significance and implications of the world’sborderlands in economic, political, and socio-cultural contexts.Together these essays explore the changing role of borders in a globalworld. Are borders increasingly irrelevant under conditions ofglobalization, or can a case be made to demonstrate their continuingimportance at various levels of spatial activity?
Situating itself within a growing border literature, Holding theLine argues that contemporary borders facilitate parallelprocesses of globalization and localization of political activity. Assuch, the essays adopt a holistic approach to understanding the impactof boundaries on both society and space. They demonstrate that anyattempt to create a methodological and conceptual framework for theunderstanding of boundaries must be concerned with the process ofbounding, rather than simply the means through which the physical linesof separation are delimited and demarcated. This approach renders thenotion of a "borderless world" highly problematic, becausethe latter ignores the important and ongoing relationship between thefunctional role of borders in the bounding process, and the symbolicrole of borders as imagined social, political, and economicconstructions embedded within a geographical text.
The changing characteristics of political boundaries during an eraof globalization has become a great focus of interdisciplinary study,and this book will appeal to scholars of political geography, borderstudies, and international relations.
The book will stand on its own, without rivals, in the way it tackles the theme.
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Heather Nicol and Ian Townsend-Gault
Part 1: The World Stage -- New Opportunities andProblems
1. Boundary Permeability in Perspective / Gerald Blake
2. Information Geopolitics: Blurring the Lines of Sovereignty /Thomas M. Edwards
3. Law, Sovereignty, and Transnationalism: Delivering Social GoodsUsing a Functional Approach to Borders / Robert Adamson
Part 2: Regionalism and Subregionalism inEurope
4. European Borders in Transition: The Internal and ExternalFrontiers of the European Union / Eberhard Bort
5. Transnational Regionalism, Strategic Geopolitics, and EuropeanIntegration: The Case of the Baltic Sea Region / James WesleyScott
Part 3: Emerging Perspectives
6. Transfrontier Regionalism: The European Union Perspective onPostcolonial Africa, with Special Reference to Borgu / Anthony I.Asiwaju
7. Trans-Maritime Boundary Cooperation in Southeast Asia: Eroding orEnhancing the Importance of International Boundaries? / CliveSchofield
Part 4: Redefining Boundaries in the Americas
8. Neoliberal Caribbean Integration: The Role of the ACS inRestructuring Borderlines / Heather Nicol
9. Redefining the Nature and Functions of Boundaries: A SouthAmerican Perspective / Roy Bradshaw
Part 5: A Borderless North America?
10. Transportation and Competitiveness in North America: TheCascadian and San Diego-Tijuana Border Regions / Theodore H.Cohn
11. Conflicting Transborder Visions and Agendas: Economic andEnvironmental Cascadians / Donald K. Alper
12. Cascadian Adventures: Shared Visions, Strategic Alliances, andIngrained Barriers in a Transborder Region / Alan F.J.Artibise
13. NAFTA and Transportation Corridor Improvement in Western NorthAmerica: Restructuring for the Twenty-First Century / Daniel E.Turbeville III and Susan L. Bradbury
Part 6: Borders as Metaphors
14. Permeable Borders and Boundaries in a Globalizing World: Feelingat Home amidst Global Poverty / Mathew Coleman
15. Technopoles and Development in a “Borderless” World:Boundaries Erased, Boundaries Constructed / Steven Jackson
Part 7: Rethinking Borders -- Lines, Spaces, andContinua
16. Complex Emergency Response Planning and Coordination: PotentialGIS Applications / William B. Wood
17. Good Neighbour Diplomacy Revisited / Alan K.Henrikson
Part 8: Conclusions
18. Towards a Geopolitics of Life and Living: Where Boundaries StillMatter / Stanley D. Brunn, John F. Watkins, Timothy J. Fargo, JoshLepawsky, and Jeffrey A. Jones
19. From the International to the Local in the Study andRepresentation of Boundaries: Theoretical and Methodological Comments /David Newman
Conclusion / Heather Nicol
Contributors
Index
