Soft Borders


Book Description

While sovereignty is increasingly contested within academic circles, most recent military conflicts have been over issues of sovereignty in some form. Focusing on Yugoslavia in the 1990s, this book explores the issues surrounding 'sovereignty' and calls for a radical rethinking of the notion and the institutions and practices that it grounds.




Bordering the Baltic


Book Description

In this book, scholars from different disciplines use case studies drawn from Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark to analyze the last century's construction of, engagement with, and challenges to both "hard" and "soft" Scandinavian boundaries. The book provide historical examples of how national borders have been contested by Scandinavian states caught between powerful Continental neighbors; these attempts to firm up boundaries can be contrasted to the denationalization of borders caused both by the globalization of communications and markets and by political efforts to submerge national boundaries in a common Baltic identity. A second set of studies focuses on boundaries defining Scandinavian minorities. Here, the book analyzes the spaces, rituals, bodies, gender roles, and collective-identity discourses implicit in majority-minority boundaries - and their transgression. Throughout, Scandinavian bordering processes are studied in terms of the groups that launch them, the methods by which they are propagated, and, finally, the meanings supposedly, and actually, invested in them. (Series: Nordische Geschichte - Vol. 10)




Screen borders


Book Description

Film and television offer important insights into social outlooks on borders in France and Europe more generally. This book undertakes a visual cultural history of contemporary borders through a film and television tour. It traces on-screen borders from the Gare du Nord train station in Paris to Calais, London, Lampedusa and Lapland. It contends that different types of mobilities and immobilities (refugees, urban commuters, workers in a post-industrial landscape) and vantage points (from borderland forests, ports, train stations, airports, refugee centers) are all part of a complex French and European border narrative. It covers a wide range of examples, from popular films and TV series to auteur fiction and documentaries by well-known directors from across Europe and beyond.




Imagined, Negotiated, Remembered


Book Description

This collection of writings explores European borders from the 15th century to the present. The territorial scope ranges from the Arctic Ocean and Scandinavia to Central Europe. In these papers, borders are understood not only as separating lines in the terrain, but also as socially constructed divisions in people's choices, speeches, actions, and memories. Borders are not only drawn: they are imagined, negotiated, and remembered. (Series: Studies on Middle and Eastern Europe / Mittel- und Ostmitteleuropastudien - Vol. 11)




JAIR Journal of International Relations


Book Description

JAIR Journal of International Relations (JAIR J. Int. Relat.) is a biennial, peer-reviewed, refereed journal of International Relations published by The Jadavpur Association of International Relations with the financial assistance from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi.




Children and Borders


Book Description

This collection brings together an interdisciplinary pool of scholars to explore the relationship between children and borders with richly-documented ethnographic studies from around the world. The book provides a penetrating account of how borders affect children's lives and how children play a constitutive role in the social life of borders.




Stage Lighting Handbook


Book Description

The Stage Lighting Handbook is well established as the classic practical lighting guide. The book explains the process of designing lighting for all forms of stage production and describes the equipment used. This new edition includes up-to-date information on new equipment and discusses its impact on working methods.




Active Borders in Europe


Book Description

This book explores how identities, public spheres and collective memories are being transformed in cross-border areas, contributing to the broad sociological context of Europeanization. Offering case studies on the German-Czech-Austrian, and Czech-Polish-German borderlands, the book introduces original primary data on cross-border cooperation. This data is interpreted using the concept of active borders, which approaches borders as a source of multicultural competence and cognitive capacity. In turn, the authors argue that Europeans need to treat borders, both territorial and symbolic, as specific cultural forms. Active borders allow an unprecedented level of cross-border cooperation and integration, and foster a better understanding of differences, rather than re-embedding them or constructing others. Accordingly, the authors contend that active borders promote more dynamic, open and resilient societies, and represent crucial prerequisites for the success of the European integration project.




Neighbourhood Policy and the Construction of the European External Borders


Book Description

This book looks both backward and forward with regard to the European Union’s political strategies towards its neighbouring countries. By bringing together the perspectives of critical geopolitics, policy studies and border studies, it presents a comprehensive review of the European Neighbourhood Policy and how it impacts the ongoing construction of the EU’s external frontiers. Is the EU committed to promoting integration in a ‘wider’ European space, or is a “fortress Europe” emerging where the strengthening of internal cohesion is coupled with the militarisation of its external borders? The book aims to problematize this question by showing how the EU’s external policies are based on a mixture of openness and closure, inclusion and exclusion, cooperation and securitisation. The European Neighbourhood Policy is a controversial strategy where regionalization and bordering, homogenisations and differentiations, centrifugal and centripetal forces proceed side-by-side, in an explicit attempt to construct a selective, mobile and fragmented border. A specific focus is devoted to the diversity of geo-strategies the EU is pursuing in its neighbouring countries and regions, macro-regional strategies and cross-border cooperation initiatives as new scales of cooperation, and the role of other global players.




Borderlands into Bordered Lands


Book Description

Since 1991, post-Soviet political elites in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus have been engaged in nation- as well as state-building. They have tried to strengthen territorial sovereignty and national security, re-shape collective identities and re-narrate national histories. Former Soviet republics have become new neighbours, partners, and competitors searching for geopolitical identity in the new "Eastern Europe", i.e. the countries left outside the enlarged EU. Old paradigms such as "Eurasia" or "East Slavic civilisation" have been re-invented and politically instrumentalized in the international relations and domestic politics of these countries. At the same time, these old concepts and myths have been contested and challenged by pro-Western elites. Borderlands into Bordered Lands examines the construction of post-Soviet borders and their political, social, and cultural implications. It focuses on the exemplary case of the Ukrainian-Russian border, approaching it as a social construct and a discursive phenomenon. Zhurzhenko shows how the symbolic meanings of and narratives on this border contribute to national identity formation and shape the images of the neighbouring countries as "the Other" thereby shedding new light on the role of border disputes between Ukraine and Russia in bilateral relations, in EU neighbourhood politics and in domestic political conflicts. Zhurzhenko also addresses 'border making' on the regional level, focusing on the cross-border cooperation between Kharkiv and Belgorod and on the dilemmas of a Euroregion 'in absence of Europe': Finally, she reflects the everyday experiences of the residents of near-border villages and shows how national and local identities are performed at, and transformed by, the new border. Borderlands into Bordered Lands was honored by the American Association for Ukrainian Studies as best book 2009/2010 in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture. For more information, view: www.ukrainianstudies.org.