Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
compartmentalisation
. As analysts, the 'denaturalising' approach advocated in
this topic applies not only to what putatively natural entities are made to
signify, but also to their demarcation from all those things listed on the right
side of
Figure 1.5
(their 'constitutive outsides'). To know nature, people rou-
tinely stake claims about what is
not
nature, and this has often profound
BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES
What is a 'border'? Who creates and enforces borders, and why? These ques-
tions are normally thought to be the preserve of political scientists and
political geographers. According to political scientist Mark Salter, 'The bor-
der is a primary institution of the contemporary state' (2011: 66). Borders
define the geographical limits of sovereign nations. They enclose parcels of
territory over which national governments have political and legal jurisdic-
tion. They also mark the symbolic and material limits of state power (hence
the well-known distinction between 'home affairs' and 'foreign affairs').
If a national government 'interferes' in the domestic matters of another
sovereign state it may well be seen to have 'overstepped the mark'. This is
most obvious in cases of a military attack or invasion, but can apply in less
dramatic circumstances too. Similarly, at the sub-national level, where it's
more common to talk of 'internal boundaries' rather than borders, there's
usually a clear link between the partitioning of domestic territory and the
delimitation of political authority and responsibility. For example, local and
regional governments will raise taxes from 'their' populations and have a
range of powers and duties they can (or must) discharge. It's not normally
the business of other sub-national authorities to exceed their geographi-
cal remit, unless invited to do so. Political borders and boundaries can be
'hard' ones, but need not be. The intensely militarised and surveilled United
States-Mexico and Israel-Palestine borders are (in)famous examples of the
former, but many others are highly permeable (albeit selectively so). For
example, cross-border travel within the European Union is relatively easy
for its citizens, while the internal political boundaries of nation states are
routinely crossed when people journey to work, make business trips or take
a domestic holiday. Even so, permeability does not mean that the borders
or boundaries in question don't matter. Instead, it means that while cer-
tain persons and things are allowed to cross political dividing lines with few
restrictions, others (for instance, political refugees and contraband goods)
encounter real barriers to movement, which cannot be ignored.
Important as political borders and boundaries are, they scarcely exhaust
the subject of why, how and with what effects people segment the world
in both thought and practice. Nor is this segmentation the sole preserve
of politicians and bureaucrats. Geographer Reece Jones (2009) is one of
several to argue that the study of borders and boundaries should be a
