Abstract
Abstract The building blocks of global society are conventionally thought of in terms of ‘flows’, ‘scapes’, ‘key nodes’, and ‘global cities’, to name a few. We rarely consider borders and border regions. However, state borders provide a crucial component of a globalizing society in transition. Exhibiting a structural ambivalence, borders can be seedbeds of cosmopolitanism, sites of cultural closure, or often both simultaneously. To understand cross-border interaction we have to engage with a complex configuration of global and sub-global dynamics. In this article I argue that borders are revealing analytical tools that must be included in any grounded theory of global change. I draw on fieldwork conducted in the German-Polish border region, mostly in the German-Polish twin city Guben/Gubin. Here we are confronted with the simultaneous processes of globalization, European integration and post-socialist transformation.
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