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and current material differences between phenomena are seemingly less
ontologically secure. The challenge for those on the 'wrong' side of bor-
ders and boundaries is to find ways to get their voices heard louder and
longer.
ENDNOTES
ter 1,
but I will look at both semantic boundaries and, to a lesser extent, their spatial
expression on the ground.
2
At this point, let me quickly challenge two ideas that suggest it's an ontological dual-
ism (i.e. somehow inherent in the world, regardless of our classificatory schemas).
My challenge will hold no surprises at all in light of the past four chapters and
recapitulates earlier arguments. The first idea, long discredited in both political sci-
ence and political geography, is that of 'natural borders' and 'natural boundaries'. It
was once believed that the 'real' political geography of a state, both external and inter-
nal, was dictated by 'natural barriers' (such as rivers, coasts and mountain ranges).
In this light, 'artificial' divisions were those that, from a geographical perspective,
appeared quite arbitrary (such as the straight-line borders drawn by European colo-
nial officials to delimit many African states during the late nineteenth century). As
many critics have noted, this natural-artificial distinction cannot account for the fact
that
all
political boundaries and borders are in some sense constructions: for instance,
an ocean strait only becomes a political dividing line if a political authority decides to
place a line there and, if need be, to police traffic across it. Analogous to the idea that
some political borders and boundaries are natural, there's the much more tenacious
idea of 'natural kinds'. This has been much debated by philosophers, and refers to the
ontological differences presumed to inhere in natural phenomena (human and non-
human). For instance, if one supposes that atoms are natural kinds, can one say the
same about larger-scale phenomena like genes (which I discussed in the previous chap-
ter) or mountains (see Smith and Mark, 2003)? These philosophical debates aside, it's
probably fair to say that most people believe in natural kinds (even though they don't
use this term and even if the particular kinds they recognise in their daily lives neces-
sarily vary according to experience and education). However, as I've argued from the
first page of this topic, we need to regard natural kinds as semiotic constructs that are
every bit as unnatural as the 'natural' borders that political scientists and geographers
now rightly view with suspicion. Whatever the case happens to be, the line between
'natural' phenomena and other entities is always contingent on decisions that are, in
principle at least, open to contestation and change.
3
This practice of separating an idea or concept from its physical or material manifesta-
tion/realisation recalls Tim Mitchell's exploration of the 'reality effect' that, following
Roland Barthes, is characteristic of the Western worldview. I discussed Mitchell's work
towards the end of
Chapter 1.
4
Intellectual property law is one of several areas of the law in which concepts of nature
and its collateral terms are used and applied. Legal discourse, and the hundreds of
thousands (if not millions) of professionals globally who create and use it, is an espe-
cially powerful discourse. As David Delaney argued, 'Law is authority. What law says
is, well, the law. What it says about nature is enforced by . . . the state . . . Attention
to the law sharpens our awareness that control over the word, over meaning, over the
terms of categorical inclusion and exclusion, is strongly conducive to - if not deter-
minative of - control over segments of the material world that are given meaning'
(Delaney, 2001: 489).
5
In most patent law, as in wider intellectual property law, there's usually also reference
to a fourth criterion: namely,
stability
. This means that the information contained
