The Inescapable Territorial Trap in International Relations: Borderland Studies and the Thai-Lao Border from 1954 to the Present

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article argues that International Relations as a discipline has a strong interrelationship with geopolitics. The geopolitical characteristics are the self-claim for objectivity, Western supremacy, separation of space and people’s assumption, and the expectation for nationalistic advice. The four characteristics, this article argues, lead to the territorial trap of the political geographer John Agnew (1994). The traps are the dichotomous understanding of inside/outside space of the state, the myth of self-contained state and the border reification monopolized by the elites. This article uses the Thai–Lao border as an example of how scholars in International Relations have been caught in the traps since the year of Laos’ independence in 1954. Despite International Relations’ literature often not being aware of the solutions to escape from the territorial trap as proposed by Agnew and Corbridge (1995), the historical awareness of the states involved, broader social and economic structure of a hegemon, and changes in geopolitical order were taken into theoretical consideration by a number of scholars. However, the three territorial traps mentioned have remained. This was because the geopolitical characteristics have never disappeared. As a result, to escape from the territorial trap, a more people-oriented framework in the Borderland Studies needs to be embraced in International Relations. The Borderland Studies is interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on people’s mobility and has a centripetal approach, meaning the borderland is taken as the centre of analysis.