strengthening the territorial integrity of the state, while frontiers, in contrast, are centrifugal in character; they are outwardly oriented, integrate different ecumenes and chal-lenge the control functions of the state.76
Minghi urged political geographers to acknowledge that
"boundaries, as political dividers, separate peoples of differ-ent nationalities and, therefore, presumably of differdiffer-ent icon-ographic makeup."77 He suggested, that political geographers should work towards a more interdisciplinary approach and undertake investigations in the sociological, cultural, and economic areas "for the spatial patterns of social behavior can be even more important than other patterns in determin-ing the impact of a boundary and its viability as a nation-al separator."78 Prescott, in turn, was mainly concerned with identifying spatial relationships between politics and geog-raphy. He saw the exercise of political sovereignty, of which borders are the formal delimiters, as an important source of morphological and functional variation of space.79
Borders as complex social constructions
While the dynamic role of borders had been overlooked and borders as a research topic neglected during the preced-ing decades, the predominant geopolitical atmosphere di-rected research interests back to borders around the turn of 1970s and 1980s. Increased velocity and volatility of globali-zation and, later, the post Cold War "disorder" and the asso-ciated tearing down the East-West division revealed that the empiricism, description, and categorization had their defi-ciencies. With the end of the Cold War, the previously stable border concept began to change and border studies began to be acknowledged as a discipline in its own right. Influenced by the broader critical turn in the social sciences, border studies became more inclusive towards the ethics of borders.
Since the end of the Cold War era, state borders have increasingly been understood as multifaceted social institu-tions rather than solely as formal political markers of sov-ereignty. Whereas the field had earlier pre-dominantly fo-cused on the study of the demarcation of boundaries (i.e., the borderlines), the focus arguably shifted to borders as broad-er constructions. Dissatisfaction with the apolitical and "ob-jective" assumptions of empiricism fuelled the application
76 Kristoff, "The Nature of Frontiers and Boundaries," 270–272.
77 Minghi, "Boundary Studies in Political Geography," 428.
78 Minghi, "Boundary Studies in Political Geography," 428.
79 Prescott, The Geography of Frontiers and Boundaries.
of various critical approaches. Some of them became asso-ciated with postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, which analyze the social construction of borders in terms of discourses, agency, and practices.80 Border scholars became interested in the social production of borders, sites at and through which socio-spatial differences are communicated.
Borders, as a consequence, became viewed as relational, not given.
In order interpret the broad socio-political transforma-tions that manifest themselves at borders, a multifaceted un-derstanding of borders is needed. In order to achieve that, it is first necessary to acknowledge how the border concept has developed historically. The brief description of the history of border studies presented above seeks to underline the need to recognise that border studies are of much older origin than what the contemporary literature commonly presumes.
The understanding of border has not only evolved during the last centuries and decades, but there are also various under-standings and conceptualizations that exist concurrently.
80 Houtum and Scott, Boundaries and the Europeanisation of Space,
30 23.
Recommended reading:
Boggs, S. Whittermore. International Boundaries: A Study of Bound-ary Functions and Problems. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940.
Brigham, Albert Perry. "Principles in the Determination of Bounda-ries," Geographical Review 7 (1919): 201–19.
Brunet-Jailly, Emmanuel. "Theorizing Borders: An Interdiscipli-nary Perspective." Geopolitics 10 (2005): 633–649.
Cahnman, Werner Jacob. "The Concept of raum and the Theory of Regionalism." American Sociological Review 9 (1944): 455–462.
Cohen, Saul B. Geopolitics of the World System. Lanham, MD: Row-man and Littlefield, 2003.
Grundy-Warr, Carl & Clive Schofield. "Reflections on the Relevance of Classic Approaches and Contemporary Priorities in Boundary Studies," Geopolitics 10 (2005): 650–662.
Hägerstrand, Torsten. "Space, Time and Human Conditions." In Dy-namic Allocation of Urban Space, edited by Anders Karquist, Lars Lundquist and Folke Snickers. Farnborough: Saxon House, 1975.
Hartshorne, Richard. "Suggestions as to the Terminology of Political Boundaries." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 25 (1936): 56–57.
Holdich, Thomas H. Political Frontiers and Boundary Making. Lon-don: MacMillan 1916.
Jones, Stephen B. "Boundary Concepts in the Setting of Place and Time." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49 (1959): 241–55.
Kolossov, Vladimir. "Border Studies: Changing Perspectives and Theoretical Approaches." Geopolitics 10 (2005): 606–632.
Kristoff, Ladis. "The Nature of Frontiers and Boundaries." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49 (1959): 269–282.
Lösch, August. The Economics of Location. New Haven: Yale Uni-versity Press, 1954.
Minghi, Julian V. "Boundary Studies in Political Geography." An-nals of the Association of American Geographers 53 (1963): 407–
Paasi, Anssi. "The Political Geography of Boundaries at the End of 428.
the Millennium: Challenges of the Deterritorializing World." In Curtain of Iron and Gold: Reconstructing Borders and Scales of Interaction, edited by Heikki Esklinen, Ilkka Liikanen, and Juk-ka Oksa, 9–24. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999.
Paasi, Anssi. "Generations and the Development of Border Studies."
Geopolitics 10 (2005): 663–671.
Peattie, Roderick. Look to the Frontiers: A Geography of the Peace Table. New York: Harper, 1944.
Prescott, John Robert Victor. The Geography of Frontiers and
Boundaries. Chicago: Aldine, 1965. 31
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Prescott, John Robert Victor. Political Frontiers and Boundaries.
London: Allen and Unwin, 1987.
Spykman, Nicholas John. "Frontiers, Security and International Or-ganization." Geographical Review 32 (1942): 430–445.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: H. Holt & Co, 1920.
Internet resources:
Borders and Boundaries - Geography - Oxford Bibliographies. Ac-cessed May 24, 2015. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/
document/obo-9780199874002/obo-9780199874002-0056.xml.
Classical Geopolitics: A summary of key thinkers and theories from the classical period of geopolitics. Accessed May 20, 2015. http://
energeopolitics.com/about/classical-geopolitics-a-summary-of- key-thinkers-and-theories-from-the-classical-period-ofgeopoli-tics/
EUBORDERSCAPES State of Debate Report. Accessed May 24, 2015. http://www.euborderscapes.eu/index.php?id=project_re-ports.
Historiography of Classical Boundary Terminology. Accessed May 12, 2015. http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/CentreforIn- ternationalBordersResearch/Publications/WorkingPapers/Map-pingFrontiersworkingpapers/Filetoupload,175431,en.pdf.
The Definition of Geopolitics – The Classical, French and Critical Traditions. Accessed May 20, 2015. http://www.exploringgeopol-itics.org/publication_efferink_van_leonhardt_the_definition_of_
geopolitics_classicial_french_critical/
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