Theory of the Border

Theory of the Border
Author: Thomas Nail
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2016-08-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190618671

Despite -- and perhaps because of -- increasing global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

Border Theory

Border Theory
Author: Scott Michaelsen
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 1997
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0816629633

Border Theory was first published in 1997. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Challenging the prevailing assumption that border studies occurs only in "the borderlands" where Mexico and the United States meet, the authors gathered in this volume examine the multiple borders that define the United States and the Americas, including the Mason-Dixon line, the U.S.- Canadian border, the shifting boundaries of urban diasporas, and the colonization and confinement of American Indians. The texts assembled here examine the way border studies beckons us to rethink all objects of study and intellectual disciplines as versions of a border problematic. These writers-drawn from anthropology, history, and language studies-critique the terrain, limits, and possibilities of border theory. They examine, among other topics, the "soft" or "friendly" borders produced by ethnic studies, antiassimilationist or "difference" multiculturalisms, liberal anthropologies, and benevolent nationalisms. Referring to a range of theory (anthropological, sociological, feminist, Marxist, European postmodernist and poststructuralist, postcolonial, and ethnohistorical), the authors trace the genealogical and logical links between these discourses and border studies. A timely critique of a field just now revealing its explosive potential, this volume maps the intellectual topography of border theory and challenges the epistemological and political foundations of border studies. Contributors are Russ Castronovo, Elaine K. Chang, Louis Kaplan, Alejandro Lugo, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, and Patricia Seed. Scott Michaelsen is assistant professor of English at Michigan State University. David E. Johnson is lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Rhetoric and Reality on the U.S.—Mexico Border

Rhetoric and Reality on the U.S.—Mexico Border
Author: K. Jill Fleuriet
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2021-04-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030635570

Stemming from four years of ethnographic research, media analysis of over 750 national news articles published in the 2010s, and decades of the author’s professional and personal immersion in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, Rhetoric and Reality illuminates a place at the heart of our national conversation: the U.S.-Mexico border. K. Jill Fleuriet contrasts the rhetoric of national political and media discourse with that of local border leaders in economics, health care, politics, education, law enforcement, philanthropy, and activism. As she deconstructs the common narrative of a border in need of external intervention to control corruption, poverty, sickness, and violence, Fleuriet engagingly illustrates the range of regional organizing, local development strategies, and community responses in the borderlands that ultimately situate the Rio Grande Valley as the “true North” of the U.S. national compass—where the Valley goes, the rest of the country soon will follow. Rhetoric and Reality asks us to question our own assumptions, especially about those areas that drive national decisions about resource allocation, economic development and national security. “Rhetoric and Reality is an important ethnographic study of the deeply misunderstood, increasingly vilified, Rio Grande Valley located on the Texas-Mexico border. Fleuriet presents a balanced counter-narrative that that shows the region as one of growth, innovation, complexity, and rich with meaning. Rhetoric and Reality is an excellent example of place-based, reflexive scholarship appropriate for use in courses on border theory, applied anthropology, and research methods. Written clearly and crisply with a wide readership in mind, Rhetoric and Reality is mandatory reading for those wanting to better understand the US-Mexico border region and the people who live there.” --Margaret A. Graham, Professor and Chair, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA “This is an important book, as it describes life in the Rio Grande Valley rather than ‘on the border.’ The notion of ‘the border’ as an open range in need of external help is challenged, as the author illustrates the wide range of leadership and programmatic change occurring in the Rio Grande Valley.” --Roberto R. Alvarez, Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, USA

Borders: A Very Short Introduction

Borders: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Alexander C. Diener
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2012-08-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199912653

Compelling and accessible, this Very Short Introduction challenges the perception of borders as passive lines on a map, revealing them instead to be integral forces in the economic, social, political, and environmental processes that shape our lives. Highlighting the historical development and continued relevance of borders, Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen offer a powerful counterpoint to the idea of an imminent borderless world, underscoring the impact borders have on a range of issues, such as economic development, inter- and intra-state conflict, global terrorism, migration, nationalism, international law, environmental sustainability, and natural resource management. Diener and Hagen demonstrate how and why borders have been, are currently, and will undoubtedly remain hot topics across the social sciences and in the global headlines for years to come. This compact volume will appeal to a broad, interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students, including geographers, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, international relations and law experts, as well as lay readers interested in understanding current events.

Cross-Border Management

Cross-Border Management
Author: Rongxing Guo
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2015-01-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3662451565

This book presents a new approach to management in an increasingly interactive world. In this context, the use of the word “new” has two meanings. The first relates to a new definition of borders (which are natural, institutional, functional, or mixed); the second concerns the fact that the book applies (and, where necessary, develops) analytical tools, methods and models that are different from those used in other similar books. The objectives of this book are: to clarify whether existing management theories and methods can be effectively applied in an entity (which can be defined as a sovereign country, a region, a community, a culture, or a firm) as the latter increasingly interacts with the rest of the world; to develop qualitative and quantitative methods to help leaders make optimal decisions for their entity and, at the same time, to maximize the positive (or minimize the negative) effects of those decisions on the rest of the world; and to design workable cross-border cooperation plans and conflict-management schemes that allow policy-makers to better cope with the challenges and problems posed by our increasingly interactive world.

Critical Border Studies

Critical Border Studies
Author: Noel Parker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2016-03-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134930607

This edited collection formalises Critical Border Studies (CBS) as a distinctive approach within the interdisciplinary border studies literature. Although CBS represents a heterogeneous assemblage of thought, the hallmark of the approach is a basic dissatisfaction with the ‘Line in the Sand’ metaphor as an unexamined starting point for the study of borders. A headline feature of each contribution gathered here is a concerted effort to decentre the border. By ‘decentring’ we mean an effort to problematise the border not as taken-for-granted entity, but precisely as a site of investigation. On this view, the border is not something that straightforwardly presents itself in an unmediated way. It is never simply ‘present’, nor fully established, nor obviously accessible. Rather, it is manifold and in a constant state of becoming. Empirically, contributors examine the changing nature of the border in a range of cases, including: the Arctic Circle; German-Dutch borderlands; the India-Pakistan region; and the Mediterranean Sea. Theoretically, chapters draw on a range of critical thinkers in support of a new paradigm for border research. The volume will be of particular interest to border studies scholars in anthropology, human geography, international relations, and political science. Critical Border Studies was published as a special issue of Geopolitics.

The Politics of Borders

The Politics of Borders
Author: Matthew Longo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107171784

Borders are changing in response to terrorism and immigration. This book shows why this matters, especially for sovereignty, individual liberty, and citizenship.

Undoing Border Imperialism

Undoing Border Imperialism
Author: Harsha Walia
Publisher: AK Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2014-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 184935135X

“Harsha Walia has played a central role in building some of North America’s most innovative, diverse, and effective new movements. That this brilliant organizer and theorist has found time to share her wisdom in this book is a tremendous gift to us all.”—Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine Undoing Border Imperialism combines academic discourse, lived experiences of displacement, and movement-based practices into an exciting new book. By reformulating immigrant rights movements within a transnational analysis of capitalism, labor exploitation, settler colonialism, state building, and racialized empire, it provides the alternative conceptual frameworks of border imperialism and decolonization. Drawing on the author’s experiences in No One Is Illegal, this work offers relevant insights for all social movement organizers on effective strategies to overcome the barriers and borders within movements in order to cultivate fierce, loving, and sustainable communities of resistance striving toward liberation. The author grounds the book in collective vision, with short contributions from over twenty organizers and writers from across North America. Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist, writer, and popular educator rooted in emancipatory movements and communities for over a decade. Praise for Undoing Border Imperialism: “Border imperialism is an apt conceptualization for capturing the politics of massive displacement due to capitalist neoglobalization. Within the wealthy countries, Canada’s No One Is Illegal is one of the most effective organizations of migrants and allies. Walia is an outstanding organizer who has done a lot of thinking and can write—not a common combination. Besides being brilliantly conceived and presented, this book is the first extended work on immigration that refuses to make First Nations sovereignty invisible.”—Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of Indians of the Americas and Blood on the Border “Harsha Walia’s Undoing Border Imperialism demonstrates that geography has certainly not ended, and nor has the urge for people to stretch out our arms across borders to create our communities. One of the most rewarding things about this book is its capaciousness—astute insights that emerge out of careful organizing linked to the voices of a generation of strugglers, trying to find their own analysis to build their own movements to make this world our own. This is both a manual and a memoir, a guide to the world and a guide to the organizer's heart.”—Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World “This book belongs in every wannabe revolutionary’s war backpack. I addictively jumped all over its contents: a radical mixtape of ancestral wisdoms to present-day grounded organizers theorizing about their own experiences. A must for me is Walia’s decision to infuse this volume’s fight against border imperialism, white supremacy, and empire with the vulnerability of her own personal narrative. This book is a breath of fresh air and offers an urgently needed movement-based praxis. Undoing Border Imperialism is too hot to be sitting on bookshelves; it will help make the revolution.”—Ashanti Alston, Black Panther elder and former political prisoner

Border Writing

Border Writing
Author: D. Emily Hicks
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 1991
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0816619832

Annotation Examines Latin American literature from the perspective of attempts to break through national, genre, domain, and other borders in order to perceive, or create, a whole culture. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Feminism Without Borders

Feminism Without Borders
Author: Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2003-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822330219

DIVEssays by a pioneering theorist of feminism, multiculturalism, and antiracism./div