Bounded spaces in a ‘borderless world’ : border studies, power, and the anatomy of territory

This article appeared in the Journal of Power, and the research was carried out as the author was serving as an Academy Professor of the Academy of Finland.

The article scrutinizes three themes regarding the roles of bordered territories: 1) the contested role of theory in border studies, 2) the role of contextuality, and 3) progress towards redefining the idea of a “border” (especially beyond fixed entities).

Territory as a phenomenon is complex and can be seen through four dimensions: socially, politically, culturally, and cognitively. Paasi argues that boundedness and territory are not withering in significance, but rather can be seen as processes embedded in the production and reproduction of social relations on various scales and should, therefore, be studied critically. Alone the popularity of cross-border activities and networks provides evidence of the ongoing struggle over meaningful bounded spaces - while at the same time arguably creating new ones.

Paasi traces the evolving border studies research field. In research on borders, borders were seen for a long time as empirical-physical entities. In the 1990s, a wider international community of border scholars began to theorize the meanings of boundaries, albeit often within a single discipline. With efforts to theorize border studies comes the tension between universalism and particularism, whether there should be general theories or contingent context-bound interpretations. In the social sciences, knowledge is situated and, as such, Paasi doubts whether than can be any general universal border theory due to the complexity of the contexts of borders. Paasi discusses the various roles of theory in research and suggests working with theory as conceptualization in order to make abstractions about the features, dimensions, and relations of borders that are a part of how they are produced and reproduced.

Through the discourse over time on the nature of borders, Paasi demonstrates how a consensus has evolved around rethinking borders as physical areas, regions, ideas of boundedness, and frequently the source of divisions. Borders, which are actually vacillating, are part of power discourses manifesting in national ideologies and material landscapes. In following this “borders are everywhere” thesis, borders may actually be increasing the strength of national communities as they are part of emotional and technical landscapes of control. One example here involves a consideration of borders at an airport, which may be in the middle of a nation but simultaneously represent a site of surveillance and control based on multiple types of borders and identities, from nationalities to the global elite traveller.

Paasi acknowledges a certain tendency for humans to organize themselves territorially stemming from their “spatial socialization”, the process through which individuals are socialized as part of their territorially bounded spatial entities – and participate in their reproduction. This practice results in what Passi called “socio-spatial consciousness”, a lens for understanding the relation between human action and social structures in the production and reproduction of border meanings (227).

In a final discussion for future research, Paasi suggests that comparative border studies should seek to explore borders contextually in relation to space, territory, region, place, agency, power, and socio-economic practices. Likewise, geography should broaden the scope of possible empirical sources for studying borders as well as the scales, separate and together, for understanding processes of bordering.