New book release: Territorial borders as practice

Ulla Connor is a sociologist and completed her PhD in 2022 at the University of Luxembourg with a praxeological study of territorial borders in the empirical field of cross-border cartography. She is a member of the UniGR-CBS Working Group Spatial Planning and talked to the UniGR-CBS about her latest publication.
 

In an interview with the UniGR-CBS the author Ulla Connor explains what her book is about and who should read it.

Ms. Connor, you have written a book on the invention of the border region. What can readers expect?

Readers can expect a scholarly investigation at the intersection of border studies and sociology of practice. The study is not only a theoretical examination of territorial borders. I also participated myself in the practice of cross-border cooperation. For more than half a year I followed actors of cross-border cooperation and observed how they create and use cross-border maps. The maps are shown everywhere and are almost silent partners in the cooperation process – only in the closer examination it became clear which central role they play in the emergence of border regions.

For your research, you went into the assembly hall of border regions, so to speak, well equipped with ethnographic tools. What did you experience there?

Ethnographic observations are an excellent method to open “black boxes”. Thus, as a researcher in the role of an “intern,” I was able to document and analyze the work processes related to cooperation and cartography from the inside, so to speak. Although I had dealt with cross-border cooperation in advance, many things about the inside view were surprising. I was able to experience firsthand how territorial borders – which we in the Schengen area mostly know from maps – break down into a multitude of “smaller” borders in everyday cooperation. Suddenly, I found myself in a maze of jurisdictional issues, language barriers, legal obstacles, and cultural, administrative, and political differences.

In your book, you propose a border praxeology. What do you mean by this?

With “border praxeology” I take up an idea of my colleagues Dominik Gerst and Hannes Krämer (University of Duisburg-Essen) and develop a corresponding research approach. The idea is not to look at the practice of the actors from “above” or “outside”, but to place research in the middle of the action. In this way, territorial borders can be described as a practice from a new perspective and action dynamics can be worked out, of which the actors themselves are often not aware. This approach enables researchers, but also those involved in the practice, to see and question their everyday work in a new way. With the praxeological approach, I was able to show how territorial borders are dealt with in everyday work and that cooperation and cross-border cartography paradoxically produce borders themselves.

Who would you recommend reading your book?

I recommend the book to all scholars, students, and those interested in territorial borders, border regions, sociology of practice, and ethnography. In addition, I wrote the book for actors working in a cross-border context. During my investigation of the everyday life of cooperation, I met really great people who push and solve cross-border issues with great commitment. The book is about the complexity of their task.

Bibliographic information on the book

Connor, Ulla (2023): Territoriale Grenzen als Praxis: Zur Erfindung der Grenzregion in grenzüberschreitender Kartografie (Border Studies. Cultures, Spaces, Orders, vol. 8). Baden-Baden, Nomos.

The book is available in open access.

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