Concept Of Border Research Articles

Is Natural Law a Border Concept Between Judaism and Christianity?

ABSTRACTWith the passing of disputations between Jewish and Christian thinkers as to whose tradition has a more universal ethics, the task of Jewish and Christian ethicists is to constitute a universal horizon for their respective bodies of ethics, both of which are essentially particularistic being rooted in special revelation. This parallel project must avoid relativism that is essentially anti‐ethical, and triumphalism that proposes an imperialist ethos. A retrieval of the idea of natural law in each respective tradition enables the constitution of some intelligent common ground for ethical cooperation in both theory and practice between the traditions. This essay also suggests how the constitution of this common ground could include Muslims as well. The constitution of this common ground enables religious ethicists to present more cogent ethical arguments in secular space, but only of course, when those who now control secular space are open to arguments from members of any religious tradition.

Imagining the border and Southern spaces: Cinematic explorations of race and gender

For some time the US-Mexico border has been a symbol – and site – of conflict, collaboration, and transnational mobility. Related to the border, the topic of undocumented immigration, and Mexican migrants in particular, has received considerable attention in US mainstream media. Cinema in particular, provides a context for producing and interrogating discourses of nationalism, nativism, and fear. The cinematic examples I draw on illustrate an ongoing fear (and terror) about borders and border crossing of various forms. In this paper I explore how narratives of borders and nationhood are mapped onto immigrant bodies and border spaces through specific filmic representations. In order to undertake this study I focus on three cinematic examples exploring immigration at the US-Mexico border – Touch of Evil, The Border and Lone Star. I examine how concepts of borders, race, and gender, and tropes of ‘The South’ are reterritorialized around immigrant bodies and specific locales. I argue that an inability to control and ‘fix’ boundaries around possible ‘threats’ to specific US spaces and identities is counteracted by displacing this fear onto more easily marked targets that are viewed as posing challenges to US national (and personal) security, i.e., undocumented immigrants. At the same time, cinematic images illustrate that the threats and spaces for immigrants themselves become increasingly marginalized, blurred, and frequently erased.

Functional borders, sustainable security and EU-Balkan relations

This article explores the concept of functional borders, and argues that the changing nature of borders and the functions that these may be called to fulfill have implications for the sustainabiliry of security. This is particularly pertinent to our understanding of the types of social and economic interactions that exist within and among the countries of SEE that appear to consider as the guarantee of their future security, stability and economic prosperity their integration with the European Union.

Geopolitics of the Northern Dimension: A Critical View on Security Borders

The Cold War geopolitical order has crumbled. As a consequence questions related to security, borders and identity have gained momentum in European politics as well as throughout the world. This article reflects the concept of security border both in the light of critical geopolitics and ideas of 'critical security thought', i.e. post-positivist security thinking (critical and postmodern orientations). The post-Cold War era means that the capability of the state to control security political space, and new border transgressing threats, is uncertain. Security borders are therefore becoming ever harder to define and draw. The empirical dimension of the article is the policy and process of creating the European Union's Northern Dimension (ND). The ND process is analysed, and particular attention is paid to the concept and practices of security borders. Critical geopolitics and 'critical security thought' serve as a theoretical framework. They provide a theoretical context and basis for the notion of security border. In this article critical geopolitics and post-positivist security thought constitute both an ontological and epistemological foundation for the study, while the notion of security border functions as an analytical tool for studying the ND. This article claims that the ND is an ambivalent (security) process. Second, it argues that the concept of security border is a useful analytical tool for geopolitical investigation.

Place and ethnicity in two merchant diasporas: a comparison of Sindhis and Jews in Gibraltar

In this article I offer a comparative view on two merchant diasporas residing in the British crown colony of Gibraltar: the Sindhi Hindus and the Sephardic Jews. Diasporic groups have often been defined through their relationship to their homeland and/or place of residence. Based on fieldwork among these two groups I argue that their identifications, their culture and their social structure cannot be understood by focusing solely on local life and on the relationship to the homelands. A complete understanding must take account of a third spatial connection: the links between the individual communities that create a new and unique field of discourse, symbols and practice. This third connection is emblematic for the working of pre– and postmodern capitalist networks. The article examines this issue in relation to religion, education, politics and other arenas of life in Gibraltar and wider diasporas, drawing upon anthropological concepts of boundaries and borders, which are here conceived as ‘zones–in–between’. The research demonstrates how both local and global changes since 1945 have resulted in the contrasting paths taken by Sindhis and Jews in Gibraltar.

What Don't Economists Know Now that Marshall Knew a Century Ago?

In the twentieth century economics has been dominated by the idea that rigorous thinking is limited to the natural sciences. This belief has gotten in the way of contemporary economists' understanding of Marshall's legacy. Marshall conceived of economics as a science of complexity. Hence he considered essential to take into account the institutional and behavioral peculiarities that often require the close attention to empirical details that the Walrasian approach neglected. Marshall held that the appropriate style for economics to deal with economic complexity should be made of different languages. Classical mathematical language alone cannot grasp the complexity of the real economy by itself because it plots precisely defined conceptual borders where in the real world the borders are uncertain and the concepts ill-defined and unable to be captured in one precise definition.

When Strangers Bring Cameras: The Poetics and Politics of Othered Places

LIKE ALL NARRATIVES OF IDENTITY, STORIES OF PLACE TAKE SHAPE AND DERIVE meaning in and through a system of differences. This is who we are, and more importantly perhaps, this is who and what we are not. True places, where authenticity and realness are said to dwell, find expression in the discursive imaginary topographies of Otherness and so come down, not in maps, but in stories of alterity that mark home from away. A place without a story is really nowhere at all. It comes as no surprise then that highly storied regions like northern New England and Appalachia enter into the national imaginary as worlds apart. Bounded by images of rugged coastlines, pristine lighthouses, and lobster boats, the conceptual borders of Maine take shape in opposition to the desolate hollers, rusty cars, and soot-encrusted miners of eastern Kentucky. But if places like these are conceived and translated through a prism of differences, modern practices of imagemaking and the kinds of looking relations they help shape underscore the degree to which northern New England and Appalachia share a common past as deeply othered places. Rural, poor, and historically dominated by outside interests, they have been shaped less by their geographical location in America's hinterlands than by the weight of visual excess that has historically bounded them as separate and apart

The Language of War: Literature and Culture in the U.S. from the Civil War through World War II (review)

At its broadest, James Dawes's The Language of War is a fascinating study of the relationship between war and language—both in the sense of what war does to language and in the sense of what sort of power language has to intervene in war. The materials for this study are widely drawn from history, literature, philosophy, sociology, and legal studies; generally located in the United States; and addressed to the culture and language that emerged after the Civil War, after World War I, and after World War II. Its most provocative and illuminating discussions occur at the beginning and the end, where Dawes's focus is at its broadest and the issues are posed in their most globally significant terms. His Introduction establishes two conflicting models of the relationship between language and violence. The first is an "emancipatory" model based on the premise that language and violence are mutually exclusive, and that as a result "social structures built around democratic language practices emancipate us from the reign of force" (1). The second is a "disciplinary" model premised on the notion that language and violence constitute each other. As a result language functions "as a disciplinary regime premised on the use of force and as a method of disciplining and controlling violence in order to concentrate its effects" (ibid.). His intervening chapters take up an array of related issues ("counting and discrimination, objects and objectivity, autonomy and the problem of consequences, the solidity of conceptual borders, the referentiality of language" [23]) before returning to these models at the end of the book. In the last chapter, "Total War, Anomie, and Human Rights Law," he conducts a stunning theoretical analysis of the Geneva Conventions. He begins by tracking how the conceptual maneuvers of international law governing the conduct of war achieve their aim:

Bridging South America and the United States in Black Music Research

Just as the idea of a as a symbolic construction of general is politically problematic, the concept of musical boundaries and borders within it is equally perplexing. Latin-American scholars have insisted on setting boundaries of musical traditions according to the existing social stratification at a given time and space. Most have perceived those traditions in a four-part model of stratification: primitive traditional indigenous communities, folk-rural-peasant groups, urban popular mestizo groups, and dominating elite urban groups. The basic difficulties with such a criterion of classification are that stratification is not fixed and stable and that sociocultural or ethnic can vary considerably in time and space, according to the various contexts in which it is negotiated and for what specific purposes. Boundaries and borders are clearly related to the question of and must be rethought with special attention to the various factors that contributed to forge an old or contemporary (Behague 2000). Actually, we must recognize as did Richard Morse, that the word keeps losing its edge and thus needs to be resharpened periodically. He writes, identity is not 'national character' as diagnosed by detached socio-psychiatry but collective awareness of historic vocation. Identity starts with tacit self-recognition (Morse 1995, 1). What seems particularly relevant, therefore, is the articulation of the relationship between music and the various contexts of (self-recognition) construction. In an earlier essay (Behague 1982), I called attention to the dubious benefit of previous searches for origins in Latin-American and Caribbean musical expressions in relation to the configuration of contemporary societies. I warned then that the general tendency in Europe and North America of viewing Latin America as a monolithic cultural area has often resulted in naive, simplistic, and reductionist generalizations about the traditional musics of Latin America, particularly in the writings of non-Latin-Americans. The actual diversity of the musics of the Latin-American continent has become clearer since the 1960s as a result of more field research being carried out by more scholars from Latin America, Europe, and North America. To day we have not, however, accumulated enough empiric knowledge of the vast music corpora of the continent to allow meaningful and comprehensive cross-cultural comparisons among music cultures that share a common ethnohistory but have developed different cultural expressions, as, for example, in the case of Afro-Caribbean communities of Cuba and Haiti and those of western Colombia and northeastern Brazil. I also argued at that time that the significance of the prominent social stratification that typifies Latin America's social organization elucidates to a large extent the musical expressions that function as class symbols. I asserted that stratification provides the keystone for accounting for the various musical and performative practices to be found in both rural and urban areas of the continent, assuming that the stratification is contextualized in very specific terms (time and space). Hence, the ways in which we have classified the musical traditions of the area need further reflection. The question becomes exponentially more intricate in attempting to bridge Latin American and U.S. black musical boundaries and traditions. In 1998, when Samuel Floyd approached me with very topic, my immediate response was that such a topic had never been dealt with before, to which he responded: this is the reason, of course, that we want to address it. And furthermore, the idea of a session on Traversing Musical Boundaries in Research and Writing was precisely to encourage a bridging of the Latin-American-Caribbean-U.S. connections, as well as a bridging of the geographical boundaries that plague black music scholarship and inhibit our knowledge of those connections. …

Western Mindscapes: A Philosophical Challenge

The concept of a invites philosophical analysis. In the context of Canadian philosophy (see Armour and Trott, The Faces of Reason), such an analysis will be essentially dialectical. This approach finds its origins in the works of Hegel and other neo-Hegelian philosophers, such as F. H. Bradley, T. H. Green, and Bernard Bosanquet, writing in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Neo-Hegelian traditions influenced the writings of most of the early philosophers across Canada. The Hegelian dialectical method was a tool for making sense of and bringing sense to the young Canada. More recently, Hegelian dialectical methods are found in works by philosophers (George Grant, Charles Taylor, Leslie Armour), literary critics (Northrop Frye, Linda Hutcheon, Robin Mathews), historians, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and film critics (Barry Cooper, Ian Angus, David McGregor, Stanley Barrett, Bruce Elder, among others) (see McGregor). Dialectical reasoning has a basic premise: we develop concepts of understanding as well as concepts for understanding through a consideration of opposing ideas, each of which requires the other for its meaning to be grasped. Often such opposing ideas generate a synthesis, a third idea that emerges from the other two. One of Hegel's examples concerns existence. That some particular thing exists only makes sense against the logic of being and not-being. The processes of affirming the existence of something and negating the existence of something are logical categories of the mind, but empty of referential content. Concepts of and about existence (and existing things) are made possible by these categories of the rational mind. One can rightly ask if a mindscape, as a concept, can be presumed or acquired in isolation from other reference points against which such a metaphor of cultural identity can be understood. I shall explore the idea of a in the Canadian context. Are there oppositions to be identified out of which a concept of the West arises? The elaboration of will involve: first, a comparison of the concept with the concept of landscape; second, an inquiry as to whether a is a determinate or indeterminate idea; and, third, a proposal that accords with the dialectical nature of all concepts. Underlying all concept formation is a worldview. In Canada, the expression of a rests on a worldview grounded in logic. Such an expression presupposes an understanding of the dialectical processes whereby we draw conceptual borders, cultural boundaries, and a sense of place. What we exclude in such existential exercises is as critical to our sense of self and identity as what we include. That sense of self, of course, could include being a Westerner. Mindscapes and Landscapes The term Western mindscape is ambiguous. It could apply as meaningfully to an aesthetic analysis of twentieth-century literature as to a description of propagandistic advertising during World War Two. What presuppositions lie behind the word mindscape? We can begin by comparing a with a landscape. Landscapes do not exist independently of human perceptions. Landscapes can come into existence and be identified in two ways. First, they can be created by framing procedures. The use of frames, as in photography and other two-dimensional artworks, marks out the focus for the viewer. A set of binoculars, a window, or a doorframe can serve similar aesthetic purposes. The optics of the eye can mark out a landscape--a selected view (vision) that occupies our attention. Second, landscapes can be created. We hire outdoor landscapers to alter visual places, examples of which can be property, streets, an undeveloped geographic location, or buildings. A place that is landscaped can be identified prior to the l andscaping. It may also come into existence because of the landscaping. …

La notion de frontière et sa signification dans la Péninsule indochinoise

La notion de frontière et sa signification dans la Péninsule indochinoise

古代エジプトにおける国境の概念とその地理的位置

This paper focuses on the concept and purpose of borders or frontiers in ancient Egypt from a geographical view.Egypt is surrounded by desert on both sides of the Nile. The natural environment and isolated geographical location formed a natural barrier from foreign invasions, as well as providing very effective internal communications through the Nile.The borders or frontiers of ancient Egypt were not consistent throughout history. They were not easily distinguishable by the lines of demarcation. Particularly away from the Nile, aecumene regions or ‘empty lands’ were geographically stretched out very wide.The Definition of a border or frontier in ancient Egypt is diverse and sometimes contradictory. Historically they represent delineations of geographical, political, administrative, religious and cosmological order: aspects different from the modern borders or frontiers. Two terms which may be recognized as an expression of the borders and frontiers are in hieroglyphics: t3s expresses the actual geographical borders, and drw expresses the end of the cosmos, and frontiers far beyond the range of t3s.When considering either the borders or frontiers of ancient Egypt from a functional point of view, at least five types can be considered: natural, administrative, political, religious, and ethnic borders or frontiers. Each had its own function and geographical range.Natural borders were very stable geographically and geomorphologically only limited to the Nile Valley down to the First Cataract and the desert margins to the both sides of the Nile in the Delta regions. Administrative borders delineated by the margins of the frontier nomes were almost equal to the natural borders during the Dynastic era. The administrative borders extended much further than the natural borders at the Greco-Roman era by the establishment of new nomes outside of the traditional range of Egypt. Political borders, de facto limits of the state, were rather dynamic in its expansion, according to the foreign affairs. Guarding the borders from the foreign invaders and bedouins was recognized as one of the most important tasks for the pharaohs to undertake as lords of not only Upper and Lower Egypt, but also of foreign lands, beyond the borders of Egypt. Ethnic frontiers were not clearly distinguishable expect through their difference in faith, language and customs.The activities of the agricultural production were not typically in the frontier regions. The temples, military parks, custom posts and fortresses were scattered and placed in strategic points in the frontier zones, near trading centers with the neighboring countries. Their location represented the geographical distance of the frontier as well as their position with respect to their neighbors.

GENDER AND THE AESTHETICS OF DISPLAY: BAROQUE POETICS AND SARTORIAL LAW

Seventeenth-century poetics makes heavy use of clothing metaphors to explain rhetorical devices. Of course it is not clothing per se, that ist found to be useful in illumnating the principle of poetic or decorative language but the concept of border, of hierarchically organized gradations of oranamentation. The similarity, the 'simile' between the discourse on ornamentation in rhetoric and the discourse on ornamentation in dress which has come to be associated with a gendered display of power is the focus of this article. We are accustomed to seeing vestimentary codes as highly gendered. When examining the history of fashion in seventeenth century Europe, it becomes apparent that social hierarchy is the dominant means of classification, gender is a secondary means. Likewise, when dress is used metaphorically, the tertium comparationis is hierarchy. In both signifying systems - dress and poetic language - rank and class supersedes gender.

Rome and the enemy: imperial strategy in the principate

How did the Romans build and maintain one of the most powerful and stable empires in the history of the world? This book draws on the literature, especially the historiography, composed by the members of the elite who conducted Roman foreign affairs. From this evidence, Susan P. Mattern reevaluates the roots, motivations, and goals of Roman imperial foreign policy especially as that policy related to warfare. In a major reinterpretation of the sources, and the shows that concepts of national honor, fierce competition for status, and revenge drove Roman foreign policy, and though different from the highly rationalizing strategies often attributed to the Romans, dictated patterns of response that remained consistent over centuries. Mattern reconstructs the world view of the Roman decision-makers, the emperors, and the elite from which they drew their advisers. She discusses Roman conceptions of geography, strategy, economics, and the influence of traditional Roman values on the conduct of military campaigns. She shows that these leaders were more strongly influenced by a traditional, stereotyped perception of the enemy and a drive to avenge insults to their national honour than by concepts of defensible borders. In fact, the desire to enforce an image of Roman power was a major policy goal behind many of their most brutal and aggressive campaigns. Rome and the Enemy provides a look into the Roman mind in addition to a re-examination of Roman conceptions of warfare and national honour. The resulting picture creates a fresh understanding of Rome's long mastery of the Mediterranean world.

La vecindad México-Guatemala : una tensión entre proximidad y distancia

Las relaciones entre México y Guatemala han mostrado su especificidad, la cual, como se sostiene en este texto, ha sido la de una tensión fluctuante entre la proximidad y la distancia. El énfasis en la vinculación bilateral se ubica en el contexto de las relaciones más amplias México-Centroamérica.Al momento inmediatamente posterior a la independencia de la hoy Centroamérica, la vida de este último conjunto estuvo más estrechamente ligada al destino del imperio y la república mexicanos. Al producirse la fragmentación de las provincias, los marcos de relaciones de cada uno de los nuevos países se fueron individualizando. Por ello, se plantea la tesis de que, con el correr de los años, es difícil hablar de los vínculos entre México y los países centroamericanos como un todo. Los nexos con Guatemala tienen la especificidad de la vecindad limítrofe y el análisis de las continuidades y cambios se pueden beneficiar de un redimensionamiento del concepto de frontera. Los acontecimientos recientes han modificado no solamente el entorno de la región, sino también el de sus vínculos con el exterior. En este último ámbito, México y Centroamérica han experimentado en el pasado inmediato –los dos últimos decenios– un nuevo periodo de relaciones, en el que no sólo ha cambiado su naturaleza, sino que se han estrechado deliberadamente las influencias y los contactos.

Borders of violence - boundaries of identity: demarcating the Eritrean nation-state

This article explores the concepts of borders and boundaries in the formation of an Eritrean national identity. The dialectical relationship between the State of Eritrea and its borders towards the Sudan and Ethiopia are addressed in order to analyse how this relationship influences the formation of a 'formal' national identity. The cultural, political, religious and historical configuration of the Eritrean frontiers makes it difficult to demarcate a particular Eritrean identity, distinguishing it from Sudanese ethnic and religious identities or historical-politico and ethnic Ethiopian identities. The Eritrean border conflicts with the Sudan and Ethiopia are used as empirical cases to show how state violence through the mobilization of the multi-ethnic national army is employed in order to manifest a significant other that the 'formal' Eritrean national identity may be contrasted against. The article concludes that the Eritrean boundaries of identity and borders of territory are still in the making, and what they will eventually embrace and contain remains to be seen.

LINKING APHID ECOLOGY WITH NUTRIENT FLUXES IN A CONIFEROUS FOREST

Flows of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in throughfall and soil solutions in forest ecosystems vary spatially and temporally. However, the reasons for the variability of DOC flows are unknown. Phytophagous insects such as aphids have not been considered a potential source of organic carbon, even though aphids feeding on trees excrete copious amounts of honeydew. We followed the key processes determining the origin, flow, and path of honeydew from the phyllosphere of a Norway spruce stand to the soil. We analyzed the chemical composition of needle leachates, throughfall, and soil solution to calculate fluxes of DOC and hexose-C in an aphid-infested and an uninfested Norway spruce stand. At the individual aphid level, the amount of honeydew produced was dependent on temperature, developmental stage, and the nutritional status of spruce. At the population level, colony growth and natural enemies influenced the amount of honeydew available in the phyllosphere. The growth rates of microorganisms on spruce needles were significantly increased when honeydew was available. This study of the fate of honeydew and associated metabolites within a forest stand shows that the concentrations of DOC and hexose-C in throughfall were reduced on the way to the soil and that there were no differences in the soil solutions from infested and uninfested stands. However, the distribution and abundance of honeydew-producing Homoptera had a marked effect on the spatial and temporal variability in the DOC concentrations in throughfall. High DOC concentrations in throughfall during summer are not exclusively due to the leaching of nutrients from leaves, but may also be attributed to the excreta of aphids. Our results highlight the importance of studying physiological and life history processes in addition to taking the traditional biomass approach to ecosystem studies. We discuss our results with regard to the types of information that are preserved, transformed, or lost when crossing the conceptual border between one scale of observation and another. We emphasize the importance of identifying key processes at different spatiotemporal scales by linking the biology of individuals and populations with flows of energy and matter within an ecosystem, while stressing the need to identify ecosystem changes at different scales of observation.

Body/Text/History: Violation of Borders in Assia Djebar's Fantasia

Body/Text/History: Violation of Borders in Assia Djebar's Fantasia

Le concept de frontière en sciences sociales : vers de nouvelles acceptions

The concept of border in the social sciences : towards new definitions. This review of recent conceptions of the border in the social sciences looks at how a new examination of a notion can lead to the renewal of a field. This is the case with anthropology, which in the sixties opened an avenue for the study of cultural and symbolic borders. The introduction of this innovative approach has strongly influenced the field of social sciences, and we can see its legacy in the emergence of cultural history or geography. These two disciplines actively use and work with the notions of borders and borderlands. The process of border formation has recently been the topic of many studies that incorporate and combine geographic, human, and political parameters. Such studies enable us to expand our understanding of the concept. Furthermore, they contribute to the development of interdisciplinary research and they inform us about state and nation building.

The origins of the conception of Israel's state borders and its impact on the strategy of war in 1948–49

The origins of the conception of Israel's state borders and its impact on the strategy of war in 1948–49