Abstract
This article introduces a collection of case studies on the politics of borders and the place-making processes in Southeast European border environments. It opens with explorations of how the social analysis of borders oscillates between border studies and border theory, and between the study of borders as things and as ideas. The focus on the territoriality of borders, analyzed as dynamic social-spatial formations, is proposed as a meeting point between the two approaches. On this premise, this article examines some key elements in contemporary ethnographic research on borders in Southeastern Europe.
Highlights
This article introduces a collection of case studies on the politics of borders and the place-making processes in Southeast European border environments
The anthropology of borders is inextricably tied to ethnographic research in borderlands and among border peoples, who live, or work, or play, or travel through border areas, and many of whom do all of these
A key theme in anthropological studies of these borderlands and border arrangements has been the examination of the many ways that institutional borders – the geopolitical ones, Anthropology of East Europe Review Special Issue - 37 (1), 2021
Summary
This same Southern-Italian region is characterized by karstic geology and little rain, yielding a rural landscape that appears burnt throughout the hot season, and rich in small ravines, sinkholes, aquifers and caves. My grandfather’s advice marked a boundary that is utterly rarefied and irrelevant for me today, but was well traced in his experience He recognized and projected a meaningful demarcation between these two small towns, while his grandson sees no or little boundary and otherness, for what amounts to an almost indistinct part – politically, socially, geographically, linguistically – of the same agricultural southern area bordering the big city on the coast. Other evidence of the vitality of anthropological investigations of the changing nature of local, regional and national borders in the Eastern reaches of Europe has been the rise of regular conferences and schools committed to the training in ethnographic approaches to borders, as has occurred annually in the Konitsa Summer School since 2006 This special issue of the Anthropology of East Europe Review is in large part a result of these initiatives. Despite the evidence that emanates from borderlands about the border multiplicities (Andersen et al 2012), some critics might see that the gap between the study of borders as things and that of borders as ideas seems to have gradually widened rather than narrowed.
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