Boundaries and borders

Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary (1)

1 PACTE - Pacte, Laboratoire de sciences sociales

Symbolic artifacts that help to understand and define spatial discontinuities, boundaries and borders are essential to our territorial alphabet. The text first recalls on the historic construction of a bounded form of thinking (spatially) within the Western world, according to a model that was disseminated worldwide through colonization. The focus shed by globalization on flows and networks profoundly questions the nature of boundaries and borders, making them appear as more and more topological. In this context, where de/rebordering processes cannot be considered as symmetric to de/reterritorialization processes, contemporary borders have to be grasped through their portativity, considering a change of focus towards the individual and his/her personalization of a mobile device. The chapter ends sketching the premises of an ontology of the mobile border, allowing time and instability to be instilled into a renewed analysis of spatial limits.

Mots clés: mobile border; border; boundary; bordering; de/rebordering; de/reterritorialization; territoriality; space; territory; mobility; body; embodied border; biometrics; security; wall; barrier; demarcation; materiality; network; ontology

Domaines: Géographie; Science politique; Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary. Boundaries and borders. Agnew, John; Secor, Anna; Sharpe, Joane ; Mamadouh, Virginie. Handbook of Political Geography, Wiley-Blackwell, pp.13-25, 2015, 978-1-118-72588-7. ⟨halshs-01823059⟩