Question Of Borders Research Articles

The Democratic Backsliding Debate and the Controversy over Regime Classification in Israel

Abstract Using the 2023 controversy over Israel's judicial overhaul as a case, this article analyzes the broader, decades-long debate about the nature of the Israeli regime. It demonstrates how conflicting assumptions about democracy and the Israeli regime underpin different interpretations of the proposed judicial overhaul. The 2023 debate contraposed majoritarian and liberal orientations, echoing previous understandings of Israel as either a liberal democracy or a diminished type of democracy like ethnic democracy. Despite their differences, both positions in this debate regard Israel as a democracy equivalent to other liberal democracies in the West and neglect the question of the regime's borders and its implication for the regime's classification.

Performance enacting mobility and shifting borders – the global countryside?

ABSTRACT This essay considers how performances by Takayama Akira (founder of Port B) are made to explore experiences of mobility and migration among people who traverse geographical and geopolitical spaces in Japan and elsewhere. In making works that uncover hidden sites that are connected to diasporic and migratory passage, Takayama invites reflections on questions of borders, zones, regions, and the passages between them. Our paper will discuss how Takayama’s work is a form of place-making. His tour performances and mobile ideas of theatre create complexities around the meaning of place in terms of re-spatialized institutional strata and civic designations. We aim to explore how civic institutions and designations such as “rural” and “city” are being broken and/or made liminal. Our paper will outline how this spatial dramaturgy has ramifications for the “global countryside” (Woods) as something both institutionalized and yet to be.

Movement fracturing “the international” —or, what does it mean to give primacy to movement?

Movement fracturing “the international” —or, what does it mean to give primacy to movement?

Pragmatic Opportunism: Ireland and the Czechoslovak Crisis 1938–39

Acquisition of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia was the next phase of Nazi Germany’s expansion in 1938. When it seemed likely that the region would indeed be incorporated into Germany’s borders, based on a mixed historic and ethno-cultural logic, nations across Europe with unresolved border questions of their own took notice—Ireland among them. This article will examine the extent to which a fervent desire to undo the country’s partition influenced Irish foreign policy at a time when international tensions over the Sudetenland were brewing into a potential European conflict. The contradictory nature of Irish foreign policy at the time will be illustrated, and Ireland’s navigation of one of interwar Europe’s most dynamic crises will in turn be re-assessed.

'Protecting the NHS' - and its limits

There are limits in articulating political struggles around the NHS and the imagined geographies of the nation: struggles based on nostalgia for the post-war welfare state risk co-opting the NHS for an exclusionary, nationalist politics. In tracing the times and spaces of the health service the article asks: when was the NHS? and where is the NHS? The idea of universal healthcare - and changing ideas of nation, state and welfare - are articulated in particular political conjunctures. The whereabouts of the NHS is more than a question of devolution and territorial politics in an increasingly disunited Kingdom; there are also questions of borders, and of workers who are trained and drawn into the NHS from overseas: it is impossible to imagine the NHS without grappling with the ways in which colonialism is integral to the formation of the post-war national welfare state. As both a residual of the national welfare state, and as an emergent site of political and cultural work, the NHS is continuously reworked within dominant politics; while it also offers an emotionally powerful political resource to galvanise popular public support that resists such tendencies. We therefore insist on the need to get to grips with the complex and partial embedding of private interests and market logics within the organisation of healthcare - often framed, rather crudely, in terms of the 'Americanisation' of the NHS. But we also warn of the analytical limits, and political dangers, of framing political struggles around national spatial imaginaries when seeking to 'protect' the NHS in these times of crisis.

Иммануил Кант и Александр Блок о проблеме границы: взгляды из Кёнигсберга и Петербурга

The article presents the problems of the border in the philosophy of I. Kant and the poetry of A. Blok. The aim of the study is to identify the Baltic “structures of everyday life” as a context for the actualization of reasoning about borders, to show how cities mediate reasoning about the border. The use of geohistorical methodology F. Braudel allowed us to consider the boundary discourse in terms of structure, conjuncture and events. In the aspect of structure, it is shown that the actualization of uncertainty as an essential property of the border can be associated with the influence of the sea, the tone of intellectual activity, the question of borders and the need for serious efforts to understand the answer to the question are related to the material structures of everyday life in the Baltic States.

Pragmatic Opportunism: Ireland and the Czechoslovak Crisis 1938–39

ABSTRACT: Acquisition of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia was the next phase of Nazi Germany's expansion in 1938. When it seemed likely that the region would indeed be incorporated into Germany's borders, based on a mixed historic and ethno-cultural logic, nations across Europe with unresolved border questions of their own took notice—Ireland among them. This article will examine the extent to which a fervent desire to undo the country's partition influenced Irish foreign policy at a time when international tensions over the Sudetenland were brewing into a potential European conflict. The contradictory nature of Irish foreign policy at the time will be illustrated, and Ireland's navigation of one of interwar Europe's most dynamic crises will in turn be re-assessed.

Cartographies of Difference: Inventing Difference in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

The central image in Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Shadow Lines (1988) is that of the “upside-down house”. The “upside-down house” was a product of a notional exercise undertaken by Thamma, the narrator’s grandmother, when she was a young girl. When their ancestral home was partitioned with a wall due to persistent familial disputes, the young children of the family found it difficult to cope with the now hostile environment. In response, Thamma invented stories about the portion of the house that belonged to their Jethamoshai, her father’s elder brother. The stories told herein are absurd and comical, but they contain a deeper social message, as they suggest that such irrational narratives are indispensable when drawing lines and erecting walls that separate people and communities from each other. As such, the upside-down house becomes a metaphor for the consequences of the Partition that shook the Indian sub-continent in 1947, when two communities that had long co-existed suddenly found themselves on opposite sides of an arbitrarily drawn fence. Collateral to the metaphor is the intimation that, in order to sustain myths of nations and nationalism, the interested players need to concoct narratives of difference and othering. Through the image of the “upside-down house”, this paper seeks to explore questions of home, nation and borders as depicted in The Shadow Lines.

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction

The Border of My Body

With my husband Miško Šuvaković, I spent October 1998 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It was a time when Serbia expected a NATO intervention, which happened in the spring the following year. I was intensively reading the selection of Slovenian poetry translated into Serbo-Croatian by the Slovenian-Bosnian poet, Josip Osti. As someone raised as a Yugoslavian by nationality, the wars in Yugoslavia were a personal drama. Inspired by Osti’s translations and the political situation, I wrote fourteen poems titled “Eseji o slobodi kretanja” (“Essays on the Freedom of Moving”). At the centre of most of these poems were the questions of borders in materiality and in our minds, and of the impossibility of moving through the new countries’ borders that appeared during and after the Yugoslavian wars. The emotional relationship to the war as well as the geopolitical and geocultural changes in this region are at the center of these poems. The two poems presented here were published in my collection of poetry, All-Over (Belgrade: Feminist 94, 2004).

Faith and fatherland? The Ancient Order of Hibernians, northern nationalism and the partition of Ireland

AbstractIn 1912, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (A.O.H.) had become the most significant nationalist organisation in Ulster, a powerful auxiliary to the Irish Parliamentary Party, and a key part of what unionists feared would be Rome rule in a self-governed Ireland. However, while the A.O.H. is crucial to understanding nationalist Ulster and the border question, its reputation for fraternal secrecy and the apparent suddenness of its decline after the Irish Party's 1918 collapse has often seen it elude sustained academic enquiry. This article provides the first examination of the order from the Ulster crisis to the early decades of partition, drawing on the records of its governing Board of Erin. Scrutinising the grassroots and the leadership, this article interrogates dissension among Hibernians, the suspension of divisions and defections to Sinn Féin as the order reconciled proposals for Ulster exclusion with its traditional appeal. While Hibernians often found themselves part of a three-cornered conflict in the violent 1920s, the order ultimately survived on both sides of the border with regional variation important in estimating decline. Its persistence, therefore, illustrates something of the lived experience of partition and highlights important threads of continuity in a period of political and social upheaval.

Sciences, Philosophies, and the Question of Borders

This essay contributes in part to the discussion of the concept of the border [frontière] and its relations between philosophies and sciences present within the work Épistémologie des frontières. It suggests that borders function as both a separation and a union between the domains of philosophies and sciences in their multiplicity. Borders are determinant in the times of interdisciplinarity, and such investigations are necessary because the accustomed links between philosophies and sciences can no longer be assumed. This essay proposes some hypotheses concerning methodology and the relation to the real to exercise a modelization as the articulation of multiple points of view. Modelization allows for the invention of democratic pragmatics of philosophy/philosophies towards a global re-evaluation of the relations that disciplines, such as the sciences and ethics, share with philosophy

Politične razmere na Slovenskem leta 1920

The article presents a thorough analysis of the dynamic political situation on Slovene ground in 1920, which was created by protest marches connected to the question of Slovene borders, women's right to vote, the establishment of the communist Workers' Socialist Party of Slovenia and the assembly of the catholic Slovene People's Party (SLS) in Ljubljana. The reality of the communist movement was shown by the railway and general strike in the second half of April 1920, which culminated on April 24, with tragic blood spill on Zaloška cesta in Ljubljana. Politically, the communists were the third strongest actor in the state and for the purpose of their elimination, the Belgrade government passed the so-called Obznana law on December 29, 1920, and forbid their activities. The changing political situation could also be seen at the already limited management of Slovenia. There were several changes of the Land Government for Slovenia, which were connected to the changes of the central government in Belgrade. The year 1920 was a turning point in many ways. It predicted troubled political years ahead and the prediction was right.

Border Crossings Through the Eyes of a Female Narrator: Concept Border in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Literary Discourse

Many recent studies have focused on the depiction of BORDER from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, gender studies, cultural studies. However, little research has been undertaken to study the books for children that address questions of borderlands, territorial and metaphorical borders in historical and modern fiction among which is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Series. The objective of this article is to study the portrayal of cultural concept BORDER from the perspective of a female child narrator in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s literary discourse, focusing on the depiction of territorial and metaphorical borders in order to establish the possible influences and interrelations. The multidisciplinary approach that combines the methods and former research findings of such disciplines as cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, border studies, discourse studies is implemented to determine the narrator model and the peculiarities of psychonarration in the book series; classify concept BORDER from the point of view of cognitive linguistics and restructure its components; provide an analysis of the figurative and associative layer of the cultural concept BORDER and examine the role of the verbalization of feelings and emotions in the portrayal of territorial and metaphorical border crossings in Wilder’s books. Overall, it is assumed that the female child narrator has been chosen by the author based on the psychological peculiarities of the target audience of the books. The results indicate that the combination of the external and internal forms of psychonarration ensures a clearer portrayal of the female perception of border crossings in the analyzed discourse. The territorial and metaphorical borders depicted in Wilder’s works are interwoven and influenced by historical, biographical, gender, and psychological peculiarities.

An Honourable U-Turn? Finland and New Europe after the End of the First World War

Abstract The article deals with the situation of a small, newly- and uncertainly independent country that had a peculiar experience in the year 1918. The country had declared its independence in December 1917, had received the recognition from Soviet Russia, the Nordic countries, Germany and its allies, and France in January 1918. Almost simultaneously, it drifted to a civil war, in which both the Germans and the Russians participated. However, the Civil War was mainly a domestic concern, and the outcome was the defeat of an attempt at a socialist revolution and the victory of an extremely pro-German government that even elected a German king in Finland in October 1918. The project was never fulfilled, but the experience left an exceptional, pro-German mental heritage, to which the terms of the armistice of November 1918 was a shock. They were seen as unjust, revengeful and even petty—both by the Finnish “Whites” (non-socialists) and the “Reds” (socialists). The Versailles Treaty in 1919 did not directly concern Finland. However, it might have done so in the question of Finnish borders, which was still partly unresolved—both in the west (a strife with Sweden over the Åland Islands) and in the east (ethnically Finnish Eastern Karelia). Moreover, the Allies were uncertain whether Finland should be considered Scandinavian or Baltic. Britain and the United States had not yet recognized Finland’s independence, so in order to secure independence and territorial integrity, the Finns had to adjust to the Allies’ demands and actively drive a Western-oriented policy. This was done for the same reason why the German orientation had been previously adapted—the threat of Russia and revolution—but it was psychologically strenuous for some political circles because they felt that there was an element of dishonorable opportunism to it. However, they could offer no alternative in a situation in which a newborn state had to secure its independence and legitimacy in New Europe, adjusting to disappointments and demands.

Landscape, justice and the quality of life in emblematically embodied nation/states – the case of Denmark

ABSTRACT The modern notion of the landscape of the nation-state, we argue, emerged in part through an ‘emblematic’ fusion of the nation, imagined as a bio-organic body-politic, and the state conceptualised in geo-metric terms as the Euclidean, cartographic framework within which that body operates. The eliding of the geo-metric with the bio-organic has influenced national discourse, law and practice by defining the legal and social right to belong within this landscape in bio-spatial terms. This is exemplified by the international political cause célèbre of the ‘Schleswig-Holstein Border Question’ and its continuing ramifications for the quality of life in Denmark—particularly for those living in the landscapes of state-designated immigrant ‘ghettoes’ scheduled for physical and social eradication because their settlements are perceived as endangering the bio-spatial cohesion of the ‘nation-state’.

The division of Ireland and its foes: The centenary of resistance to partition

AbstractCritics of partition argue that it contributes to the perpetuation, rather than the amelioration, of territorial conflict. This paper engages with the theoretical debates on partition, focusing on the particular and illustrative case of Ireland. The island has been partitioned into two polities for a century. Opposition to the partition of Ireland has existed from the outset to the contemporary Brexit context. The argument is that while hostility to partition has experienced different forms, namely, political and violent and different degrees of intensity, there is a historical continuum of contestation against partition in Ireland. While the territorial issue was calmed by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Brexit has reanimated the border question, providing political momentum for those who aim to challenge the territorial status quo.

State insurance in the Soviet legal doctrine

This article attempts to analyze the theoretical approaches towards regulation of state insurance by various branches of the Soviet law that existed in the legal thought of the XX century. Attention is focused on the state activity aimed at formation of the specialized insurance funds and peculiarities of their use. The article examines the procedure for the formation of state insurance fund, development trends, understanding of the essence and the key role of state insurance in the Soviet period. It is indicated that state insurance in the Soviet period represented the activity of government branches on formation of the specialized monetary funds by means of contributions made by socialist organizations and citizens (policyholders) that were used by the insurance system to compensate for material damage caused by natural disasters, accidents, etc., as well as carried out preventive measures and awareness-raising activity for their prevention. The following conclusions were formulated: in the Soviet period insurance as the legal institution was studied by a range of legal sciences, including the science of financial law; the insurance relations were regulated by several branches of the Soviet law. It is worth noting that the question on the boundaries of such regulation was of ambiguous and debatable nature. For the most part, insurance relations in the Soviet period were regulated by the norms of financial and civil law. The Soviet financial law regulated the relations that arouse in the process of development of state insurance as one of the main types of financial activity of the state. The property relations that established on the basis of implementation of these general terms were of civil nature. The question of sectoral borders is still relevant for many post-Soviet states.

„Le roi est mort – vive le roi!” vom Kaiserreich ins Königreich Jugoslawien 1918/1919

The conclusion of the First World War also entailed the end of Slovenian loyalty to the Habsburg crown. A Slovenian caricature of Emperor Francis Joseph published on December 1, 1918 in the satiric newspaper Kurent marked a first strong sign of the break with old traditions and loyalty. Until the collapse of the monarchy, such an attitude towards the Emperor had been inconceivable among the Slovenes. But the short-lived State of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and its successor the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes provided the opportunity to discard everything old and create a new South Slavic understanding. These changes posed rather difficult issues on different levels to Slovenian political leaders. The new state had to be constituted bottom-up from its foundations. The first years of the new Kingdom proceeded under the pressures of elections, constitutional debates, new territorial border questions, economic changes, and the introduction of a new currency, among others. Many of these issues led to political crises which destabilized the young state. At the same time, the Slovenian political parties often did not agree on key political issues. Consequently, the Slovenes faced turbulent times in the post-imperial transition period.

To what extent has EU integration transformed the territorial conflict in Northern Ireland? A post-Brexit referendum re-assessment

As the Irish border question has re-emerged in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum, this article aims at assessing the influence of EU integration on the evolution of the Northern Irish territorial conflict. It argues that European influence has not really transformed the conflict as some, mostly in constructivist circles, have claimed. The first section shows that the post-Brexit context in Northern Ireland reveals two major problems in the constructivist interpretation: the resilience of traditional unitary conceptions of State sovereignty in the UK and the ambiguities of the SDLP's post-nationalist discourse on the need to deterritorialise Irish national identity in the context of European integration. The following sections elaborate on each of these two aspects. The second section shows that even if EU integration partly facilitated a joint Dublin/London approach on the Northern Irish issue, the 2016 referendum reveals that British political elites preferred to risk the long-term destabilisation of Northern Ireland than to make concessions on their unitary and indivisible conceptions of the entire UK as one sovereign State. Regarding the SDLP, the third section demonstrates that in spite of its more Europeanised, post-nationalist and deterritoialised discourse during the Peace Process, the party has remained fundamentally the same: a Northern Irish moderate nationalist party committed to the old territorial objective of Ireland's reunification.