1. Revisiting Borders: Some New Ideas in Border Studies
International Symposium “Urban Borderlands and Citizenship” Rikkyo University Feb. 25, 2017
Revisiting Borders: Some New Ideas in Border Studies
Fuminori Kawakubo

2. Network of Border Studies in Japan
The establishment of the ABS Japan chapter in 2016
Center for Asia Pacific Future Studies, Border Studies Module, Kyusyu University
Slavic Eurasia Research Center, Border Research Unit , Hokkaido University

3. Introduction
Borders are typically understood as limits or lines. They also bring with them a sense of division or separation in space.
The main assertion is that borders are social construction, “made by humans to help them organize their lives.”

4. 1. Border, Power and Order Borders are first and foremost about power.
Border making is a power strategy that uses difference to assert control over by inscribing difference in space. (Sack, 1986)

5. Bordering space is a means for ordering space
　(Albert et. al 2001).
State territorial borders are political-territorial boundaries. They are territorial and symbolic at the same time (Newman and Passi 1996).

6. 2. Double meaning of borders: beyond simplistic dichotomy (Popescu 2012)
An essential aspect of state borders is their double meaning as lines of separation and contact in space.
Whenever a line is drawn between two groups of people, that line obtains two meanings simultaneously.

7. It is essential to avoid understanding the separation and contact functions of borders as a simplistic binary in which they operate in opposition to each other.
State borders have various degree of permeability.
There is no single meaning or purpose behind state borders. Borders and societies are “mutually constitutive processes”.

8. 3. Transforming border terminologies (Newman 2006 )
Crossing borders between countries is often difficult because of the language problem. The same is true of the crossing disciplinary borders.
The terminologies and semantics used by the diverse group of scholars and practitioners remain incomprehensible.

9. 4. Historical development of border studies (Popescu 2012)
During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the border studies literature consisted primarily of descriptive case studies that focused on the historical evolution of borders and on their physical features.
Frontier and Border (Kristof 1959)

10. 1920s-1950s
Between 1920s and 1950s the literature on boundaries expanded significantly.
Cf. S. B. Jones developed the border-making typologies and distinguished four main stages in the establishment of international borders; allocation, demarcation, delimitation and management (Jones 1945).

11. 1950s-1980s
From the 1950s and the 1980s, boundary studies lost significant momentum.
Cf. Approaches to interstate borders in this period are often characterized as “functional.” Their main thrust was to examine the functions of borders in relation to the economic exchange flows (Kolossov 2005).

12. The late 1980s
In the late 1980s, the social sciences started to incorporate social theory and poststructuralist theories of culture.
In border studies, the emphasis was placed on the multidimensional character of social, cultural and spatial borders and borderlands. (Bucken-Knapp et al.2001; Diener and Hagen 2009).

13. Post 1990s-
The revitalization of interest in the study of borders can be attributed to challenges and changes presented by globalization.
The new realities moved away from the focus on the visible functions of border lines to see border landscapes as a product of a set of cultural, economic, and political interactions.

14. The main interest in border landscapes contributed to a change of focus in border studies from interstate borderlines to borderlands.
the borderlands—where social processes induced by borders, such as perceptions, stereotypes, and actions, are experienced and reproduced (Michaelsen and Johnson 1997; Newman 2006a; Passi 1996).

15. cf. O. J. Martinez “Border People”
O. Martinez (1994) developed a typology of borderland development that sheds light on the nature and the range of possibilities of interactions across borderlands.
* Alienated Borderlands
* Coexistent Borderlands
* Interdependent Borderlands
* Integrated Borderlands

16. 5. “Renaissance” of Border Studies
The study of borders has undergone a “renaissance” during the last two decades (D. Newman).
Much of this renaissance has been characterized by a crossing of disciplinary borders

17. Conclusion
Border studies became increasingly critical of the uncontested nature of state borders as ostensibly natural division between societies. (Passi 1996).
What new approaches to border studies was the fact that the process of bordering rather than borders themselves were essential for the understanding of border spaces.
Borders are never completed; instead they are always in the making, always being imagined and reimagined (Popescu, 2012).

18. Discussion points
Can we incorporate various fields into border studies as a single framework?
How can we establish constructive dialogues between border studies and other discipline such as migration studies?
How can we create common terminologies from the perspectives of different academic backgrounds?
How do we overcome simplistic dichotomy between inside and outside, here and there, us and them in traditional border thinking?