Komplexität

Working Paper Vol. 20

Visuel
Cover
Abstract

Despite the increased discourse on the complexity of borders, there are hardly any references in the academic debate as to what exactly complex borders mean or complexity-oriented border research. This paper starts here and discusses the promising relationship between complexity thinking and border research. To this end, it explains what is currently qualified as complex in border research and what understanding of complexity can be found there. The core ideas of complexity thinking are then presented and linked to the ordering and ordered principle of the border. Building on this, border research approaches and methodologies are identified that can be considered enablers of the complexity perspective and, thus, as starting points for complexity-oriented border research.

Miniature
Summary

The author, drawing on the theoretical conceptual developments and changes in the field of border area research during the last decades, identifies and describes three analytical trends ("shifts"): the processual shift, the multiplicity shift and the complexity shift. These are not separate from each other, but refer to specific orientations in border research. Starting from the observation that in the wake of the so-called border turn there was an increase in awareness of borders, and against the background of the practice turn, which no longer sees culture as being characterised by representations, but by practices, through the three shifts new possibilities arise for examining borders, which focus more sharply on the processual and performative elements of the border.

Miniature
Summary

Borders introduce a division into the world. According to the author, this definition has four consequences for a theory of the border: (1) the border is in between, (2) the border is in motion, (3) the border is a process of circulation, (4) the border is not reducible to space. Based on these four consequences he outlines a methodology, or a « critical limology » as he phrases it.

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