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ANSSI PAASI
Political geographers and political scientists have for a long time perceived
boundaries as fixed, stable empirical entities which divide the global space
into bounded units that change mainly as a consequence of conflicts. Sibley
points out that the boundary question has been a traditional but
undertheorised concern in human geography.1 Perhaps this is the reason why
geographers have not traditionally paid much attention to the meanings of
boundaries in the construction, organisation and reproduction of social life,
territoriality and power, but rather have understood boundaries as forming
categories of their own and then classified them on diverging grounds.2 This
has been linked with the fact that the state-centred system of territories and
boundaries largely defines how we understand and represent the world and
how knowledge of the geography of the world is produced, organised and
used in the reproduction of the nation-state system. The logic of this
maintains that all individuals should belong to a nation and have a national
identity and state citizenship and that the bordered state sovereignties are
the fulfillment of a historical destiny. This view has become pivotal in
defining not only our world-views but also human identities.
National identity is only one of many, often coexisting and overlapping
identities (religious, tribal, linguistic, class, gender, etc.) but it is perhaps the
most fundamental in the modern world. Greenfeld and Chirot argue that this
identity actually defines the very essence of the individual, which the other
identities only slightly modify.3 States are in a decisive role in the
production and reproduction these manifestations of territoriality,
particularly through spatial socialisation and territorialisation of meaning,
which occur in many ways through education, politics, administration and
governance.4 This territorialisation takes place through physical and
symbolic violence, and states everywhere attempt to control, marginalise or
destroy various aspects of centrifugal otherness, such as instances of ethnic
solidarity or indigenous movements.5
Researchers have not been innocent regarding this territorialisation of
the world. They continually produce statistical information in a state-based
framework and construct narratives on how the ideas of sovereignty and the
70 BOUNDARIES, TERRITORY AND POSTMODERNITY
the fact that social action, discourse and ideologies produce diverging,
perpetually changing meanings for boundaries and these are then used as
instruments or mediums of social distinction and control. Boundaries are
institutions, but they exist simultaneously on various spatial scales in a
myriad of practices and discourses included in culture, politics, economics,
administration or education. If some of these practices and discourses, e.g.
in the fields of economics, foreign policy or identity, happen to change, this
does not inevitably mean the disappearance of boundaries. It is portentous
to note that the meanings of sovereignty and territoriality are also
perpetually changing, implying that territoriality is not just a static,
unchanging form of behaviour for a state.25
Taylor has argued that as a political, economic and cultural container, a
state has diverse orientations.26 As a power container it strives to preserve
existing boundaries. This will usually be done by organising foreign and
defence policies, a police force and an army, together with education and
various forms of legislation, on a basis which reflects state-centred forms of
territoriality. As a wealth container, a state will strive to enlarge its territory,
i.e. to strengthen its economic space of links and flows outside its existing
territory, while conversely, as a cultural container it will tend towards
smaller territories, although it will concomitantly aim to maintain the
national identity space and, linked with the economic space, this may again
presuppose a larger territory.
We will look here at three challenging themes which seem to be arising
in the field of contemporary boundary studies, and will develop an approach
that identifies boundaries as complicated social processes and discourses
rather than fixed lines. Firstly we will discuss the discursive construction of
boundaries and the role of narratives in this process. This is linked with the
relation between boundaries and identity, the second theme. Thirdly, we will
consider the links between boundaries and power.
Even though this paper is mainly theoretical and conceptual in its aims,
each of these perspectives will be illustrated by using concrete examples.
These examples concern the Finnish-Russian border area, but they also
draw on broader contexts, particularly the EU, to shape the contemporary
meanings of this area. Both the theoretical discussion and empirical
examples are aimed at illustrating the complicated forms of territoriality
that exist in the contemporary world and at suggesting some alternatives for
traditional boundary studies.
The Finnish-Russian border is a good example of various forms of de-
territorialisation that have occurred since the collapse of the rigid East-West
dichotomy, and also shows that it is essential to consider the
multidimensionality of borders and approach them contextually. A longer
historical perspective, beginning from the period when Finland was an
74 BOUNDARIES, TERRITORY AND POSTMODERNITY
autonomous state within the Russian Empire (1809-1917) before gaining its
independence in 1917, shows the importance of understanding boundaries
contextually.27 During the autonomy period the border was very much an
open one and there was a great deal of cultural and economic cross-border
interaction. Using the categories of Martinez, this may perhaps be labelled
as an interdependent borderland.28 When Finland gained its independence,
the territorial strategy of the state changed radically: the border became an
ideological one, a much used example in textbooks of political geography,
and there was a minimal amount of interaction across the border - it was a
typical alienated borderland. Furthermore, the border itself became a
decisive symbol in the Finnish national identity, since it distinguished
Finland from the Soviet Union, typically represented as the Other, or the
Evil One.29 After the Second World War, Finland had to cede more than 12
per cent of its territory to the Soviet Union and the border became a strictly
guarded line. Finland's position in western geopolitical images also
changed, so that where it had been classified in the western bloc before the
Second World War, it was represented in textbooks of political geography
after the war as an eastern European state. This was very much based on the
changes in the country's international geopolitical position that followed
from the pacts that it was forced to enter into with the Soviet Union. The
Finnish state adopted a very cautious foreign policy, and all cross-border
trade was organised formally at state level.30
After the demise of the Soviet Union this strictly closed boundary
between a small, western capitalist state and the leading socialist state
changed rapidly and became much more open to all kinds of flows. It is still
strictly guarded on both sides, however, illustrating in a sense the arguments
set out by Taylor on the diverging, coexisting territorial strategies that
nation-states may practice.31 Finland's entry into the European Union at the
beginning of the 1995 has changed the meanings of this boundary still
further, since it is now the only border between the EU and Russia. This fact
has given it new functions and meanings that actually operate on spatial
scales larger and smaller than the state. The former is accentuated by the
forecasts of those Finnish social scientists who claim that during the next
decade Europe will be a federal state and that the European Economic and
Monetary Union (EMU) is the first step in that direction. This would imply
a very radical change in the territoriality of the state. On the other hand,
concrete cross-border spatial planning and development projects are now
occurring on a sub-state scale, which again 'transcends' the former
territorial exclusiveness of the border.32
BOUNDARIES AS SOCIAL PROCESSES 75
but how, by what practices and in the face of what resistances, this boundary
was imposed and ritualised.41 This is a strong and somewhat 'non-
geographical' argument. We should perhaps point out - as Giddens does -
that while borders are in principle nothing more than lines drawn to
demarcate the sovereignty of states, their location may be significant for the
fortunes of states in the event of territorial disputes.42 This is the case also
with the history and symbolic meanings of boundaries and how these
manifest themselves in the territorial identities of the inhabitants of states
and in the iconographies of states. This means that we should understand
boundaries more broadly than traditional studies suggest. A boundary does
not exist only in the border area, but it manifests itself in many institutions
such as education, the media, novels, memorials, ceremonies and
spectacles, etc. These are effective expressions of narratives linked with
boundaries and border conflicts and serve as references to the Other. These
mediums are also the essence of the institutionalisation of the border
symbolism and perform the key functions of symbolism; that is, social
control and communication.43 As far as nationalism is concerned,
particularly challenging objects of research are the practices and discourses
that territorialise memory and transform it as part of the civil religion.44 The
latter is important in the spatial socialisation process of the citizens and
occurs most effectively in education.
Education in geography and history in particular typically produces and
reproduces the iconography of boundaries; that is, the symbols that
essentially construct the history and meanings of a territory. This
iconography forms an entity that can be scrutinised using many types of
concrete material, since boundaries exist in various practices and
discourses: in politics, administration, economics, culture or the
organisation of ethnic relations. These have both material and textual
manifestations (newspapers, books, drawings, paintings, songs, poems,
various memorials and monuments, etc.), which reveal and strengthen the
material and symbolic elements of historical continuity in human
consciousness. Particularly challenging objects of research are maps, which
are often the results of deeply institutionalised practices of power and
representation. Geography is therefore exploited in many senses in these
boundary producing practices.45
The construction of identity narratives is a contested political process
and part of the distribution of social power in society. 'Struggles over
narrations are thus struggles over identity', write Somers and Gibson.46 The
narrative constitution of identities points to the fact that language is a
fundamental element in the nature of identity, where language is understood
broadly as including other language-like systems which mean, represent or
symbolise something 'beyond themselves'.47 This is the case with most
BOUNDARIES AS SOCIAL PROCESSES 77
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BOUNDARIES AS SOCIAL PROCESSES 79
Territorial discourses and practices at the state level are now diverging. In
the broader context, territorial Finland is part of western Europe and the EU
(and now also the forthcoming EMU zone) and speculations on possible
NATO membership occupy a significant position in current Finnish society,
all of which in a sense constructs an exclusive border between Finland and
Russia. On the other hand, Finland has been very active in the EU context
in opening links with Russia and including that country in a larger European
space. Finland was particularly active in efforts to have Russia accepted as
a member of the Council of Europe. Similarly, current efforts to develop a
Northern Dimension in European Union policy have the same aim: to create
economic links, particularly with north-western Russian, in order to prevent
environmental problems and to integrate Russia into the larger European
space. These links are therefore not merely economic ones but also deep
reflections of the aims of security policy elites.57 In spite of the still strict
territorial control maintained at the border, the new spatial planning
practices established by the Finnish and Russian authorities are producing
new regionalisations that span this border. Thus the border region is now
divided into four development zones, Southern Finland-St. Petersburg,
Karelia, Arkhangelsk and Barents, each of which has its own problems and
its own planning strategies based on cross-border co-operation. Increasing
cross-border links are not looked on favourably everywhere. There has been
deep scepticism in the Baltic countries, notably Estonia and Latvia, where
the Finns are accused of 'unscrupulous efforts to consider only Finnish
interests', intrigues with the Americans and attempts to capture transport
contracts with Russia. The Finnish perspective is completely opposite.
particular have studied the struggles and symbolic links between social
groups, and this question is becoming an increasingly challenging one in a
world of voluntary and forced movement and exile.60 Barth, for instance,
puts more emphasis on boundaries than on identity, since the classifications
constituting the grounds for identity mean in fact the construction of
boundaries.61 Calhoun points out that although the concern for distinction
may be universal, identities themselves are not.62 Neither are they free-
floating. Collective identity is not generated naturally but is socially
constructed and produced by the social construction of boundaries.
The meanings of boundaries are thus underlined by the fact that
identities are produced through these boundaries. They become part of
collective identities, shared memories and the sense of continuity between
generations. Identities are often represented in terms of a difference
between Us and the Other, rather than being something essentialist or
intrinsic to a certain group of people.63 While identity is based on
differentiation, this should not inevitably take the form of opposition, of
drawing a hard boundary between 'us' and 'them'.64 This has been the case,
however, in many realist international relations studies, in political
geography, and more importantly, in the operation of contemporary states.
It should now be evident that boundaries are not 'constants' but mean
different things for different actors and in different contexts. The production
of boundaries is linked effectively with the social and spatial division of
labour, the control of resources and social differentiation. Military leaders
and statesmen all produce representations and visions of the meanings of
boundaries, and these are all historically contingent. How does this take
place? Eisenstadt and Giesen claim that constructing boundaries and
demarcating realms presupposes symbolic codes of distinction. They argue
that the core of all codes of collective identity is formed by a distinction
between 'us' and 'others'. Identity codes are linked in discourses with other
social and cultural distinctions such as sacred-profane, centre-periphery,
past-present-future or inside-outside.65
Recent studies on the construction of foreign policy discourses,
understanding them as boundary-producing practices developed by the
state, provide one interesting approach. Campbell, for instance, has
examined the relations between identity and difference and how they are
exploited in the construction of threats in foreign policy discourses. The
representations of threats serve in turn to secure the boundaries of a state's
identity.66 The Finnish-Russian border illustrates Campbell's argument. The
Soviet Union was the Other for the Finns, and before the Second World War
this image held good both at the political level and in the national process
of socialisation. After the war, Finnish foreign policy towards the Soviet
Union was very cautious, and both the official 'geopolitical truths' and, for
82 BOUNDARIES, TERRITORY AND POSTMODERNITY
What, then is 'power' in the case of boundaries? The major challenge for
boundary studies is to analyze how the state-centred naturalization of space
is produced and reproduced, and how the exclusions and inclusions between
'We' and 'Them' that it implies are historically constructed and shaped in
relation to power, various events, episodes and struggles.72 Therefore one
logical object of study is geographical concepts and terms, particularly
boundaries, and how they have historically functioned within national
discourses. An analysis of the activities of Finnish academic geographers
and geography teachers, for instance, has shown that they have done much
to shape people's understanding of the national territory through their
representations and conceptualisations, and that they have also effectively
developed diverging concepts and categories to represent the boundary in
specific ways. In a word, they have produced geopolitical scripts that have
at times been put to effective use by the political and military elites of the
state.73
Campbell points out that states are never finished as entities and the
tension between the demands of identity and the practices that constitute it
can never be completely resolved, because the nature of identity can never
be fully revealed.74 Massey similarly remarks that identities are never 'pure'
even though they are often represented as such.75 It is a challenging task to
trace this process and to see how the purification of space takes place
through the construction of exclusions and boundaries.76 Since boundaries
are an expression of the power structures that exist between societies, a
major challenge for boundary research is to deconstruct such power
relations in the form of boundary narratives. Boundaries may therefore be
comprehended as flows of power in which memories are transformed into
things of the present and future. It is of vital importance to analyze how
certain rituals and symbols, discourses and practices of power have
emerged, taken their current shape, gained in importance, and affected
political decisions. This puts the accent on a contextual, culturally and
historically sensitive approach to boundary studies.
Epilogue
'The rise and fall, the construction and deconstruction of various types of
boundaries', Oommen writes, 'is the very story of human civilization and of
contemporary social transformation'.77 This argument lends support to the
key conclusion of the present paper: instead of simply accepting rhetorical
comments on how boundaries are disappearing in the 'world of flows',
boundary scholars should be more sensitive to the changing meanings of
boundaries. They also should pay more attention to the contextual nature of
boundaries and to developing approaches that are based on recent social,
84 BOUNDARIES, TERRITORY AND POSTMODERNITY
NOTES
(Aldershot: Ashgate Publishers 1999); D. Newman and A. Paasi, Fences and Neighbours in
the Postmodern World: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography, Progress in Human
Geography 22 (1998), pp.186-207; M. Anderson (note 2); M. Anderson and E. Bort (eds.),
The Frontiers of Europe (London: Pinter 1998).
12. L. O'Dowd and T. Wilson (eds.), Borders, Nations and States (Aldershot: Avebury 1996);
Anderson and E. Bort (eds.), The Frontiers of Europe (London: Pinter 1998); H. van
Houtum, The Development of Cross-Border Economic Relations (Center for Economic
Research, Tilburg University 1998).
13. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateus. Capitalism & Schizofrenia (London:
Athlone Press 1988).
14. G.Tuathail, 'Political Geography III: Dealing with Deterritorialization', Progress in
Human Geography 22, p.82.
15. A. Amin and N. Thrift, 'Living in the Global', in A. Amin and N. Thrift (eds.),
Globalization, Institutions and Regional Development in Europe (Oxford: OUP 1994), p.2.
16. K. Ohmae, The End of the Nation State (New York: Free Press 1995), p.11.
17. J. Agnew (note 8).
18. P. Hirst and G.Thompson, Globalization in Question (Cambridge: Polity Press 1996).
19. J.Anderson, 'The Exaggerated Death of the Nation-State', in J. Anderson, C. Brook and A.
Cochrane, A Global World? Re-ordering Global Space (Oxford: Open University 1995) p.67.
20. R.D. Sack, Human Territorially (Cambridge: CUP 1986), p.1.
21. J. Anderson, 'The Shifting Stage of Politics: New Medieval and Post-Modern
Territorialities?' Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, pp.133-53.
22. A. Paasi (note 2).
23. Z. Mach, Symbols, Conflict and Identity (Albany: SUNYP 1993) p.43.
24. O. Martinez, 'The Dynamics of Border Interaction. New Approaches to Border Analysis', in
C.H. Schofield (ed.), Global Boundaries, World Boundaries, Vol.1 (London: Routledge,
1994), pp.1-15.
25. A. Murphy (note 6).
26. P. Taylor, 'The State as Container: Territoriality in the Modern World-System', Progress in
Human Geography 18 (1994), pp.151-62.
27. A. Paasi (note 2).
28. O. Martinez (note 24).
29. A. Paasi, Geographical Perspectives on Finnish National Identity, Geojournal 43 (1997),
pp.41-50.
30. A. Paasi (note 2).
31. P. Taylor (note 26).
32. A. Paasi, 'Boundaries as Social Practice and Discourse: The Finnish-Russian Border as an
Example', Regional Studies (forthcoming).
33. J. Gottmann, The Significance of Territory (Charlottesville: UVP 1973).
34. A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, 'Beyond "Culture": Space, Identity, and the Politics of
Difference', Cultural Anthropology 7 (1992), pp.6-23.
35. M.R. Somers, 'The Narrative Construction of Identity: a Relational and Network Approach',
Theory and Society 23 (1994), pp.605-49.
36. M.R. Somers and G.D. Gibson, 'Reclaiming the Epistemological "Other": Narrative and the
Social Constitution of Identity', in C. Calhoun, (ed.). Social Theory and the Politics of
Identity (Oxford: Blackwell 1994).
37. A. Paasi (note 2).
38. See also M. Anderson (note 2).
39. D. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: CUP
1990), p.6
40. H. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge 1990).
41. R. Ashley, 'Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique',
Millennium 17 (1988), pp.227-62.
42. A. Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987),
p.51.
43. A. Paasi (note 2).
88 BOUNDARIES, TERRITORY AND POSTMODERNITY