Victor Konrad

Border Culture, the Boundary Between Canada and the United States of America, and the Advancement of Borderlands Theory

In the process of globalization it is border culture that ultimately sustains linkages, assures continuity and maintains prosperity between bounded states. In this essay we explore how border culture works, and how the conceptualization of border culture advances our understanding of how borders work. Our approach is to establish a place for the consideration of culture in the more extensive debates about border theory through a focus on the Canada-U.S. border, and how this border advances our knowledge of border culture and border theory.

Toward a Theory of Borders in Motion

Abstract The premises of this exploration in border theory are that borders are always in motion, that our theories about borders need to reflect this axiom beyond acknowledging borders as process and changing quality, and that these theories need to align with the “motion turn” in the social sciences. After characterizing and visualizing borders in motion, the paper evaluates the potential building blocks for a theory of borders in motion. These include concepts of border construction and reconstruction, exercise of power, equilibrium seeking, vacillating borders, spaces of flows, and uncertainty in transition space, among others. Analogues from basic and environmental science are postulated to explain how motion operates to generate bordering and create borders and borderlands, as well as account for movements surrounding borders and their alteration and reconciliation. Three component realms of a conceptual framework are offered: generation and realization of borders through dichotomization and dialectic, border dynamic motions and signatures, and alteration and reconciliation of the border in response to breaking points. The evolving framework is articulated with reference to a case study from the Pacific Northwest border region between Canada and the United States.

In the Space between Exception and Integration: The Kokang Borderlands on the Periphery of China and Myanmar

ABSTRACT In 2015, the isolated border region of Kokang in Myanmar experienced armed conflict reported around the world. Most of the estimated 100,000 refugees from the conflict crossed the border to China, while hostilities continued for six months. Unlike other ethnic minorities fighting Myanmar’s government forces all along the extensive, mountainous border with China, the Kokang is largely of Han Chinese origin with a well established and nurtured relationship with China. Based on 458 questionnaires and interviews, media reports and official government releases, this article explores the varying imaginaries of territory, security and geopolitics of distant Kokang, from refugees now in China, Chinese from adjacent Yunnan and other provinces, as well as analysts viewing the conflict from afar. The study offers a lens for border studies to view the multi-scalar and extended geopolitics of nation states and their peripheral sub-national components. Specifically, the article addresses the changing role of the border under conditions of conflict and security enhancement and the malleable definition of borderlands territory. The study reveals how borders are utilised creatively by territorial inhabitants, their neighbours and their governments, how borders work in remote places, and how cross-border culture operates even in conflict situations to mediate borders. It enlarges our understanding of evolving borders in the space between exception and integration emerging in simultaneous globalisation and localisation.

Conflating Imagination, Identity, and Affinity in the Social Construction of Borderlands Culture Between Canada and the United States

Americans and Canadians are reevaluating and reinventing the borderlines and borderlands that both divide and link two nation-states and many cultures and regions. The social construction of borderlands culture now conflates imagination, identity and affinity. Reimagination of the border is led inordinately by fear, and the powerful forces of securitization and militarization by the United States. Identity now requires verification at the border according to national standards where numerous hybrid, transient, and traditional forms are not acknowledged or tolerated. Borderlands, once an amorphous and extensive construct of affinity, are now emerging as scaled-down, managed corridors and gateways where “top down” visions for national security and identity fail to align with “bottom up” regional, community, and cross-border organizational reimagination of how the border works. Borderlands culture is challenged in the twenty-first century as Americans and Canadians attempt to reinvent the border between them yet risk the loss of the borderland integration that assures continuity and sustainability in a rapidly evolving global reconstruction of space and place.

Continental East–West and Global North–South? Re-imagining (B)orders in Globalization

A perspective from border studies imagines an emerging global order based on how an increasing number, extent and intensity of borders, bordering practice and borderlands interact with the forces of globalization. The result of this interaction is an evolving, richly textured and complex layering of global transition in which several processes are apparent with spatial signatures. These are related to and explained by new conceptualizations of borders and an emerging theory of borders in motion. Foremost among the conceptualizations is the notion of shifting: borders and borderlands are not necessarily where they appear to be or where they once were. Another is positioning: imposition and superimposition that creates constantly changing border spaces, bordering practices and border places. Finally, packing develops intensities of border function and articulates variable border production. These conceptualizations of borders in motion offer a new credence and framework of inherited and enhanced territorial differentiation and compilation, which elevates the discourse beyond cardinality, colonialism and continentality, interrogates these ingrained notions, and suggests that the world is indeed evolved and evolving (b)ordered space.