Annotation. A third volume of essays from various activities and events organized by the Centre for International Borders Research at Queens University of Belfast considers three modes in the analysis of culture and cross-border cooperation--cultures of co-operation, co-operation about culture, and the impact of culture on forms of co-operation--as possible strategies in the comparative social science of European borderlands. The case studies range from Israel's Green Line to Ulster Unionist identity. There is no index. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Scholarly interest in the study of state borders and border regions is growing in Europe, keeping pace with the remarkable changes associated with the transformation of old borders and the creation of new ones in the European Union and beyond over the last fifteen years. Social scientists have increasingly examined cross-border co-operation as one way to understand the changes which affect European borderlands. Ironically, given the recent turn to issues of culture and identity in the social sciences, one of the most neglected aspects of the critical and comparative analysis of cross-border co-operation has been culture. Culture and Cooperation in Europe's Borderlands, the first collection of essays to provide multidisciplinary perspectives on these issues in European borderlands, presents three modes of analysis of culture and cross-border co-operation as a tentative way forward to redress this imbalance. These overlapping perspectives, on cultures of co-operation, co-operation about culture, and the impact of culture on forms of co-operation, are offered as possible strategies in the comparative social science of European borderlands. The contributions to this collection examine some or all of the following: - cross-border cooperation about culture, in such areas of culture as tradition, language use and rights, and education. - cross-border cooperation and culture, i.e., in ways in which ‘culture’ enhances or hinders economic and political co-operation across state borders, as for example, through issues of national, regional and local identity, cultural practices, and ethnic relations. - the culture of cooperation, i.e., ways in which co-operation across borders creates new cultural codes, political practices, organizational cultures and transnational social and political institutions.

Their respective ancestral cultures in England and Spain, argue scholars Milo Kearney and Manuel Medrano, had common roots in medieval Europe, and both their conflicts and the shared understandings that may form the basis for their cooperation trace back to those days."--BOOK JACKET.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were high hopes of Russia’s "modernisation" and rapid political and economic integration with the EU. But now, given its own policies of national development, Russia appears to have ‘limits to integration’. Today, much European political discourse again evokes East/West civilisational divides and antagonistic geopolitical interests in EU-Russia relations. This book provides a carefully researched and timely analysis of this complex relationship and examines whether this turn in public debate corresponds to local-level experience – particularly in border areas where the European Union and Russian Federation meet. This multidisciplinary book - covering geopolitics, international relations, political economy and human geography - argues that the concept ‘limits to integration’ has its roots in geopolitical reasoning; it examines how Russian regional actors have adapted to the challenges of simultaneous internal and external integration, and what kind of strategies they have developed in order to meet the pressures coming across the border and from the federal centre. It analyses the reconstitution of Northwest Russia as an economic, social and political space, and the role cross-border interaction has had in this process. The book illustrates how a comparative regional perspective offers insights into the EU-Russia relationship: even if geopolitics sets certain constraints to co-operation, and market processes have led to conflict in cross-border interaction, several actors have been able to take initiative and create space for increasing cross-border integration in the conditions of Russia’s internal reconstitution.

Border security has been high on public-policy agendas in Europe and North America since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City and on the headquarters of the American military in Washington DC. Governments are now confronted with managing secure borders, a policy objective that in this era of increased free trade and globalization must compete with intense cross-border flows of people and goods. Border-security policies must enable security personnel to identify, or filter out, dangerous individuals and substances from among the millions of travelers and tons of goods that cross borders daily, particularly in large cross-border urban regions. This book addresses this gap between security needs and an understanding of borders and borderlands. Specifically, the chapters in this volume ask policy-makers to recognize that two fundamental elements define borders and borderlands: first, human activities (the agency and agent power of individual ties and forces spanning a border), and second, the broader social processes that frame individual action, such as market forces, government activities (law, regulations, and policies), and the regional culture and politics of a borderland. Borders emerge as the historically and geographically variable expression of human ties exercised within social structures of varying force and influence, and it is the interplay and interdependence between people's incentives to act and the surrounding structures (i.e. constructed social processes that contain and constrain individual action) that determine the effectiveness of border security policies. This book argues that the nature of borders is to be porous, which is a problem for security policy makers. It shows that when for economic, cultural, or political reasons human activities increase across a border and borderland, governments need to increase cooperation and collaboration with regard to security policies, if only to avoid implementing mismatched security policies.

It is entirely appropriate that this book should be produced in Dundalk. Located on the Northern rim of the Irish Pale, this town has straddled a border for centuries. Over the past thirty years, it has come to be closely identified with violent Republicanism both by the Unionist community in Northern Ireland and by Constitutional Nationalists in the South. Against such a hostile background academics attached to the Institute of Technology there have bravely confronted and interrogated these processes which have so blighted the history not only of Dundalk but of places and spaces throughout the world similarly located. In a wide-ranging series of articles, perhaps the strongest message to emerge is that of border as limitation. The notion of border as a liminal space where worlds converge, new realities emerge and transcendence is possible rarely surfaces. Instead, the border as a physical manifestation of divisiveness is repeatedly explored. In a passionate statement of solidarity with the Palestinians, Lavalette describes the construction of the apartheid wall: “The wall is eight feet high and has a watchtower every three hundred metres. Although there are no maps, it is thought it could end up being close to one thousand kilometres in length by the time it is completed” (p. 18). Yndigegn shows how spatial borders gradually become mental borders such that, as visual borders disappear, new invisible borders appear (p. 33). The article explores the dualism of borders—simultaneously protecting those inside from external threats while also preventing those inside from reaching or engaging with the outside world. Ni Eigeartaigh takes up the duality theme in the exploration of individualism as a process either of liberation or one of alienation. Taking the title from an aphorism of Kafka’s “My Prison Cell, My Fortress”, she explores a view of contemporary society as repressive, and of its inhabitants as complicit in the repression. Drawing on a wide span of literature and disciplines, she teases through the paradox of contemporary society that the freedom gained from the liberation of the individual from communal obligations and repression has resulted in a loss of identity and an overwhelming sense of isolation and powerlessness. She concludes that in the “absence of a restrictive system of social control, the individual is forced to take responsibility for his own actions….It is to avoid this responsibility that many…choose the security of the prison cell above the hardship of the outside world.” Her paper does not go on to look at the potential role of the State or of fundamentalist movements in playing on the fear and disconnectedness of the citizenry as an equally likely outcome to that of a stronger capability for personal responsibility. One could argue for instance that the Euoropean Fascist movement and the Nationalist movement of the early- to mid-twentieth century were both based precisely on the dislocation at personal and social level resulting from the breakdown of pre-industrial communitarian ties. While there is no attempt in the book to elucidate any particular developmental relationship between the different contributors, two broad themes may be detected—a concern with borders as socio-political and geographical constructs on the one hand and a concern with the formation of identity in the individual’s relationship to the wider society on the other. Some light is cast on the latter issue by de Gregorio-Godeo who posits discourse as a core concept in identity formation. This leads to the conclusion that individual identity, in this case individualism, is in fact socially constructed in a “dialectical interplay between the discursive and the social identities included—so that they are mutually shaped by each other” (p.93). Using critical discourse analysis, he goes on to explore changing notions of masculinity as evidenced in the Health sections of men’s magazines.

Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. In Land of Necessity, historians and anthropologists unravel the interplay of the national and transnational and of scarcity and abundance in the region split by the 1,969-mile boundary line dividing Mexico and the United States. This richly illustrated volume, with more than 100 images including maps, photographs, and advertisements, explores the convergence of broad demographic, economic, political, cultural, and transnational developments resulting in various forms of consumer culture in the borderlands. Though its importance is uncontestable, the role of necessity in consumer culture has rarely been explored. Indeed, it has been argued that where necessity reigns, consumer culture is anemic. This volume demonstrates otherwise. In doing so, it sheds new light on the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, while also opening up similar terrain for scholarly inquiry into consumer culture. The volume opens with two chapters that detail the historical trajectories of consumer culture and the borderlands. In the subsequent chapters, contributors take up subjects including smuggling, tourist districts and resorts, purchasing power, and living standards. Others address home décor, housing, urban development, and commercial real estate, while still others consider the circulation of cinematic images, contraband, used cars, and clothing. Several contributors discuss the movement of people across borders, within cities, and in retail spaces. In the two afterwords, scholars reflect on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a particular site of trade in labor, land, leisure, and commodities, while also musing about consumer culture as a place of complex political and economic negotiations. Through its focus on the borderlands, this volume provides valuable insight into the historical and contemporary aspects of the big “isms” shaping modern life: capitalism, nationalism, transnationalism, globalism, and, without a doubt, consumerism. Contributors. Josef Barton, Peter S. Cahn, Howard Campbell, Lawrence Culver, Amy S. Greenberg, Josiah McC. Heyman, Sarah Hill, Alexis McCrossen, Robert Perez, Laura Isabel Serna, Rachel St. John, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Evan R. Ward