Conflating Imagination, Identity, and Affinity in the Social Construction of Borderlands Culture Between Canada and the United States

Abstract

Americans and Canadians are reevaluating and reinventing the borderlines and borderlands that both divide and link two nation-states and many cultures and regions. The social construction of borderlands culture now conflates imagination, identity and affinity. Reimagination of the border is led inordinately by fear, and the powerful forces of securitization and militarization by the United States. Identity now requires verification at the border according to national standards where numerous hybrid, transient, and traditional forms are not acknowledged or tolerated. Borderlands, once an amorphous and extensive construct of affinity, are now emerging as scaled-down, managed corridors and gateways where “top down” visions for national security and identity fail to align with “bottom up” regional, community, and cross-border organizational reimagination of how the border works. Borderlands culture is challenged in the twenty-first century as Americans and Canadians attempt to reinvent the border between them yet risk the loss of the borderland integration that assures continuity and sustainability in a rapidly evolving global reconstruction of space and place.

Keywords:

• imagination
• identity
• affinity
• borderlands culture
• Canada–US border
• global reconstruction

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to acknowledge the suggestions for revision from Claudia Sadowski-Smith and Randy Widdis, and the helpful comments of participants in the US Library of Congress Symposium on Borderlines/Borderlands, June 15–16, 2010, Washington, DC, where this article was the lead off presentation for the symposium. This article is based in part on research supported in 2009 by the Border Policy Research Institute, Western Washington University.

Notes

1. The Maine Acadian Culture Survey was conducted in 1991 by the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. A summary and finding aids for the collections are found in:http://www.loc.gov/folklife/guides/map.html