Lisa Philips Valentine

Sovereign Survival: Borders as Issues

Abstract Revisiting the relevance of state borders in a changing world, this paper focuses on the complexities of the intersection of the hegemonic character of the state and its manifestations in issues at the border. Three types of border conflict are presented in this case study: trade and the construction of issues across the Canada‐U.S. border, the indirect impact of that state border on social services and social life in the area, and the decreasing significance of statist standards as one approaches its borders. The study uses a typical decision of a quasi judicial agency, the National Transportation Agency, to illustrate the hegemonic practice embedded in the normal practice of statist structures. It concludes with the paradox that the rule of law is crucial to control the exercise of public power and yet the application of legal principles reinforces the ascendancy of hegemonic forces. The border as the hinterland of the state is a liminal zone where these dynamics are especially visible.

Imposing the border: The Detroit River from 1786 to 1807

Abstract In 1783, a border was imposed across the Old Northwest by the newly‐formed United States and Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris. That division down the center of the southern Great Lakes waterway was reconfirmed by the Jay Treaty of 1794. Despite these treaties, control of the borderland region remained in contention. This paper addresses the impact that the imposition of the border had on life in this region as a step on the way to understanding the impact of borders more generally. This historical case study focuses on aspects of social and political transformation in the contested borderlands of the Old Northwest, highlighting both the macrolevel strategy of states, which moved to conclude treaties with the indigenous population in order to control the territory and to deploy settlement, and the microlevel accommodations of settlers, traders, corporations and Native American communities. This paper traces the transformation of the Detroit hinterlands, the specific events around the imposition of the border, and the interdependence of community, commerce and the state. This brief historical overview illustrates immediate outcomes of the creation of a border and outlines some of its social, political, economic and legal consequences in the period.

Code Switching and Language Leveling: Use of Multiple Codes in a Severn Ojibwe Community

Introduction. The northernmost dialect of Ojibwe, often designated Severn Ojibwe by scholars,1 is spoken in some seventeen northwestern Ontario and northeastern Manitoba villages situated along the drainage system of the Severn and Winisk rivers. This dialect has long been an enigma to historians and linguists. Linguistically, Severn Ojibwe differs in a number of important lexical, phonological, and grammatical respects from its closest Ojibwe neighbor, the Northwestern dialect (following the terminology of Rhodes and Todd 1981), spoken directly to the south. To the north, east, and west of the Severn area lie several dialects of another Algonquian language, Cree. Many of the features that distinguish Severn from other Ojibwe dialects are quite similar to Cree, though these same features often show the clear reflexes of Ojibwe phonological development which indicate that they cannot be recent borrowings from Cree.2 Close scrutiny of the codes used in the Severn Ojibwe community of Lynx Lake, one of the remote and seemingly isolated village located in this broad expanse of the subarctic taiga, provides a great deal of information about social relationships among the Severn people, Cree populations, and the Euro-Canadian matrix culture. Within this community of some three hundred people, one finds two subdialects of Severn Ojibwe, three dialects of Cree (Swampy, Plains, and Moose), and at least two varieties of English regularly employed as linguistic resources. Most code-switching research has involved groups living in industrialized societies where two or more speech communities exhibit extensive, daily contact. In the majority of these studies, the languages involved are