Liam O'Dowd

The Changing Significance of European Borders

The accelerating globalization of economic and cultural life and the growing density of international and supranational institutions have led many to assume the decreasing significance, even practical redundancy, of state borders. Yet, the case for redundancy is weak. Far from disappearing, state borders have proliferated with the break-up of the Soviet bloc. They have become more flexible, differentiated and salient as the Single European Market has re-configured the borders of the European Union (EU). Internal and external border regions have become sites of extensive cross-border cooperation promoted by a multiplicity of local governmental and non-governmental agencies, their respective national governments and the European Commission. While the number of state borders is increasing, their changing functions and meanings are becoming manifest through issues such as environmental pollution, animal diseases, crime, immigration, refugees, asylum seekers and the de-regulation and re-regulation of the global economy. Yet, academics and key policy have often seen them as marginal to both disciplinary and policy concerns. The scale of recent border change, however, has encouraged a substantial growth in research on borders across a range of social science disciplines and a renewed policy interest in border regions by the EU and its member states (see for example, Hansen, 1983; Sahlins, 1989; Eger and Langer, 1996; M. Anderson, 1996; O’Dowd and Wilson, 1996; Newman, 1998; Paasi, 1998; Sparke, 1998; Wilson and Donnan, 1998; Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999). This renewed interest has been accompanied by a growing recognition of the fundamental importance of boundaries in social life. Wallace (1992: 14), a leading analyst of European integration, notes that the question of territorial boundaries is central to the study of political systems, legal jurisdictions and socio-economic interaction. The Indian sociologist, T.K. Oommen has even suggested that the ‘rise and fall, the construction and deconstruction of various types of boundaries is the very story of human civilisation and of contemporary social transformation’ (cited in Paasi, 1998: 83) This essay attempts to provide an overview of the changing significance of EU state borders as a contribution to the analysis of

Introduction: Why Study Borders Now?

The question of why study borders is raised in concrete form by the remarkable upsurge of activity and interest in state borders, border regions and border-crossing processes. The upsurge is recent, ongoing and widespread, not only across Europe but in other continents as well. It takes a variety of different guises including new journals and special issues; email and websites; conferences and research programmes. There has been a proliferation of programmes devoted to the inter-disciplinary study of borders and border communities; of European Union development programmes for border areas; and of policy-oriented agencies, either freestanding or part of local government, dealing with cross-border regions, cooperation and governance. The upsurge is evidenced in the variety of new and established border centres such as the ones in Abenraa, Denmark, in Armagh, Northern Ireland, at the University of Durham, England, at the University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands, in Tartu, Estonia, Tarvisio, Italy, and at Queen’s University Belfast – just to mention a few. There is a substantial interest in borders at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, at Trieste University in Italy and at various centres in Finland. The present volume on cross-border cooperation follows others such as Anderson and O’Dowd (1999) and Bucken-Knapp and Schack (2001). Borders research is being supported by the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the European Science Foundation; while the British ESRC’s Transnational Communities Research Programme has been centrally concerned with border-crossings. Standard texts such as Malcolm Anderson’s (1996) political science account of frontiers, Prescott’s (1987) political geography of boundaries, and Rumley and Minghi’s (1991) border landscapes have been joined by Paasi’s (1996) study of the Finnish-Russian border, Wilson and Donnan’s (1998) anthropological collection, Helliwell’s (1998) account of the economic significance of borders, and Joenniemi and Viktorova’s (2001) collection focused on security. Conventional publications are now joined by electronic publishing (CIBR 2001). This upsurge in activity on borders is in fact very recent, much of it occurring only in the last decade, and much of it is focused on Europe (see Van Houtum, 2000). But there is also increasing activity in other

‘Escaping the Cage of Ethno-National Conflict in Northern Ireland: The Importance of Transnational Networks

Abstract The paper uses research on the EU Special Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of the Republic of Ireland (Peace II) to interrogate the relationship between inter-nationalization, transnationalism and the amelioration of a deeply territorialized ethno-national conflict. It concludes that inter-national cooperation and territorial containment strategies risk enhancing zero-sum territorial politics without more coherent articulation of strategies for building transnational networks of cooperation and conflict resolution.

Three narratives in search of a city

This paper highlights the role of narratives in expressing, shaping and ordering urban life, and as tools for analysing urban conflicts. The paper distinguishes analytically between two prominent epistemological meta-narratives in contemporary urban studies and multiple ontological narratives in a given city—in this case Belfast. The first meta-narrative represents cities as sites of deepening coercion, violence and inequality and the second sees them as engines of new forms of transnational capitalism. Both are marked by the strategy of specifying ‘exemplar’ or ‘paradigm’ cities. The core of the paper addresses how these two meta-narratives map onto and interact with, three contemporary ontological narratives of urban regeneration in Belfast. We conceive of narratives—epistemological and ontological—as analytical tools and objects of analysis but also as tools for social action for competing political and economic interests and coalitions. While in the urban studies literature Belfast is typically studied as an exemplar ‘conflict city’, it is now being promoted as a ‘new capitalist city’. In the context of post-Agreement Belfast, we explore not only the ‘pull’ of exemplar narratives but also resistances to them that are linked to multiple and hybrid senses of place in the city. We conclude that any significant move beyond the exigencies of rampant commodification or recurring inter-communal antagonism must firstly, encourage new forms of grassroots place-making and, secondly, reform of Belfasts (and Northern Irelands) fragmented governance structures.

Urban Intersections: Religion and Violence in Belfast

Abstract Addressing the intersections of religion and violence in ‘post conflict’ Belfast, this paper focuses on the nexus between religion, violence and memory. It distinguishes between the churches (institutionalised religion) embedded in the physical and social environment of the city, and popular religion that recurs in the contexts of parades, protests and sectarian conflict. Wider debates on the relationships between religion, violence and politics are integrated with recent empirical data. We argue that while asymmetries between Protestantism and Catholicism continue to inform politics and vice versa, there are also signs of change in the religious politics of Belfast and in how they accommodate violence.

Promoting Civil Society Across the Borders of the EU Neighbourhood: Debates, Constraints and Opportunities

One of the aims of this article it to clarify the nature of the debate over ‘civil society’ and its relationship to the state. It begins by suggesting that the EUs borderland provides a context in which deep-rooted ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ understandings of state and civil society meet and overlap. The second section outlines the geo-political reshaping of the ‘Neighbourhood’. It concentrates on the influence of non-EU actors, notably Russia, complementing the EU-focused literature on the subject. The third section elaborates the consensus in the literature on the weakness of civil society in the EU ‘Neighbourhood’. This is followed by a discussion of ‘Western’ debates over the role and significance of civil society. This discussion suggests that the ‘export’ of a Western model eastwards begs many questions about which particular model is to be promoted. It concludes that the precise characteristics of state-civil society relationship remains central to the prospects for enhancing civil society co-operation.

The States of Ireland: Some Reflections on Research

There is now a substantial body of research on the state in Ireland which cross-cuts the disciplines of history, political science, economics and sociology. Published work on the state in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland has done much to advance our knowledge of Irish society. Yet, this research fails to draw on some key aspects of the Irish experience which illuminate the nature of the state in the modem world. This, in tum, has placed limits on the analysis of the state in Ireland. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Irish state research to date has been the reluctance to problematise both Northern Ireland/Britain and the Irish Republic as units of analysis. Instead, these units have been taken for granted, almost as natural units of analysis, the apparently inevitable outcome of economic and political evolution. The result is that we are left with a rather static ahistorical conception of the state rather than with a sense of it as a dynamic social construction. The taken-for-granted approach to existing states is all the more remarkable given the particular circumstances of the Irish case. On the island of Ireland, we currently have two states, the British and Irish. Over the past two centuries, there has been a variety of constitutional and administrative arrangements which have reflected the degree to which the sovereignty and boundaries of existing states were contested throughout the period. Currently, the Anglo-Irish Agreement has forged unique links between the two national governments to help manage the issue of contested sovereignty in Northern Ireland. In addition, moves towards European integration have implications for the sovereignty of all EC states. Ireland is a powerful reminder of the continued relevance of Max Webers argument that the monopolisation of the means of coercion within fixed boundaries remains a central preoccupation of the national state. Both this monopoly and the state boundary continues to be contested, violently in Northern Ireland, and constitutionally in the Irish Republic. State boundaries in Ireland have never enclosed self-contained economies. Irish nationalism at its most autarkic was never able to negate the countrys integration into the international capitalist economy.

A sociology of Ireland: a review symposium

In A Sociology of Ireland, Tovey and Share have produced a book significantly different from other available texts that aim to provide an overview of present-day Irish society. I would characterise the books originality on the basis of a distinction between two broad kinds of sociology that have developed, in Europe at least, since the 1960s and that seem now be growing increasingly apart. This is the distinction between what I would call the sociology ofthe research centres and the sociology of the university departments (with the proviso that a small number of departments that have themselves strong research centres, or are closely allied with such centres, deal primarily in research centre type sociology). With the main exception of Pelions (1982) lively, often insightful, but nonetheless highly idiosyncratic Contemporary Irish Society, other works that have so far attempted to give a general sociological account of modem Ireland have reflected the sociology of the research centres and primarily, of course, the sociological research of ESRI and of individuals, whether Irish or foreign, with some formal or informal connection to ESRI. In this category would fall Breen et al.s (1990) Understanding Contemporary Ireland, and the collections by myself and Whelan (1992) The Development ofIndustrial Society in Ireland, and Heath et al., Ireland North and South. The significance of A Sociology of Ireland is, then, that it represents the first integrated text in the field that, in clear contrast, reflects the sociology of the

Structures and Narratives of Border Change: Perspectives from North America, Europe and the Middle East

The proliferation, differentiation, and re-configuration of political borders are integral parts of the story of contemporary globalization. In this context, borders and borderlands have proved to be compelling sites for studying empirically the relationships between processes of capital accumulation, new forms of governance and transformations of identity manifest in different forms at the level of large geo-economic blocs, states, and sub-state regions. While the thrust of capital accumulation may be to transcend fixed territorial borders - notably those of national states - states nevertheless remain essential to regulating and supporting such processes. Thus transnational blocs - such as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), the European Union (EU), and the Mercado Comun del Sur (Mercosur, or Common Market of the South) - can be seen to figure as part of a new bordering strategy for the global economy in which classical national state borders are not so much replaced as displaced whilst acquiring new functions and meanings.

Religion, Violence and Cities: An Introduction

Abstract The catalyst for this special issue was a symposium entitled Religion, Violence and Cities, held under the auspices of a five year inter-disciplinary research project on ethno-nationally divided cities.1 While this project expressly addressed cities divided by ethno-national conflict, it was clear from the beginning that there was an important religious dimension to such conflicts in most, if not all, the cities being studied.2 The rationale of the Special Issue is to examine how this religious dimension exacerbates (or moderates) urban violence within a broad comparative context. Although three of the following articles are informed by Project research, we draw the net wider to encompass a broader geographical spread from the Balkans, the Middle East, Nigeria and Japan.