In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the deepening of the European Union signaled a time of falling walls, opening borders, and a renewed appreciation for processes of border-transcending globalization. The events of 11 September 2001, however, shifted attention to the securitization of borders and reemergence of a concern with meanings and processes of national identity formation. Scholarship on borders sprawls across disciplines and foci from state borders (from walls to rhetoric), to cultural studies of indigeneity. Fortunately for scholars and students who are interested in the most recent thinking about borders and borderlands from a geographic perspective, Doris Wastl-Walter has designed and compiled an extraordinary overview of current border research perspectives. Most of the contributing authors are geographers or scholars from nearby disciplines who have established their specialization on border issues in previous publications. The book, which includes more than 700 pages and thirty-two chapters, is thoughtfully organized for use as a reference or guide to particular themes (discussed later). Several chapters include tables or maps.
The first section, “Theorizing Borders: Conceptual Aspects of Border Studies,” begins with Anssi Paasi's consideration of border studies as a field of scholarship that has “become more diverse, more integrated—and more international” (12). He concludes that, “the strands of power that constitute the spatialities of complicated boundary-producing practices make it increasingly difficult to think of certain borders as local and of others as global (28). He avers that context makes a difference and the challenge remains for the researcher to conceptualize and at the same time study empirically manifest practices that might have their origins in diverging spatial scales. With this initial theoretical chapter, we are suitably oriented to the rich complexity of border studies from a geographical perspective.
In the second chapter, David Newman directs our attention to bordering processes and notes, “All borders either create or reflect difference, be they spatial categories or cultural affiliation and identities. … Transition zones, frontiers and borderland spaces exist in close proximity to all types of border, in some cases creating a trans-boundary zone of meeting, interaction and hybridity” (44). Continuing the introduction to borders, Henk van Houtum argues that “A border is a verb” because “The border makes and is made … we should speak of border ing” (51). “A border,” he writes, “is and can never be an answer. It is a question” (60). Lest we be carried away by these provocative theoretical discussions, however, three additional chapters in the introductory section provide rich, empirical consideration of these themes in actual border contexts.
In the second section of the book, “Geopolitics: State, Nation and Power Relations,” each of the chapters takes a unique approach to traditional geopolitical issues such as territory, identity, and state. We learn how different scientific paradigms have informed the development of border studies (Scott), how modernity's focus on nation and statehood made previously porous cultural boundaries into a rigid, political boundary (Peristianis and Mavris), how the diversity and dual nature of post-Soviet borders function in different dimension from national to military to symbolic (Kolossov), how there are different geopolitical implications of melting ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic (Heininen and Zebich-Knos), and how the construction of a geobody, “a nation in need of history and shared traits” (226), is useful in understanding current and evolving border dynamics (Dean). The discussions are not stuck at a single, spatial scale but move freely from local concerns to international and continental issues, thereby demonstrating how geopolitical themes play out in different contexts.
The remaining six sections offer a thought-provoking consideration of a diversity of issues and contexts pertaining to borders. The section “Border Enforcement in the 21st Century” includes a consideration of “the vertical element of international boundaries” (Williams, 286), current impacts of historical monopolies of legitimate violence in Latin America (Manero), and chapters on post-9/11 border security in North America (Nicol) and post–Cold War border metamorphosis in Korea (Gelézeau). Other sections of the book provide illustrative, empirical examples of border themes. “Borders and Territorial Identities: The Mechanisms of Exclusion and Inclusion,” “The Role of Borders in a Seemingly Borderless World,” “Crossing Borders,” and “Creating Neighborhoods” consider themes of belonging, identity, migration, and regional cooperation. The final section, “Nature and Environment,” offers refreshing insights on transnational governance (Fall), transfrontier conservation in South Africa (Ferreira), and the delimitation of maritime boundaries (Schofield).
For the novice student of border studies or to the seasoned border scholar, this weighty volume offers a timely and current overview to the state of border-related scholarship in geography and nearby disciplines. It does not merely retrace and reframe the existing foundation of literature on borders, but it expands, extrapolates, and offers fresh insights and new perspectives along multiple dimensions of borders. This book is likely to be of most use for political and cultural geographers as well as scholars and students interested in methodological approaches to studying borders. Although it might be read cover to cover for the purpose of gaining broad and deep insight into border studies (or for writing a book review), most readers will appreciate easy-to-locate sections and themes that allow for a focused extraction of information.