Search

The Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, have been managed as a fortress of conservation since the late 1950s. Well-maintained borders separate the Galápagos National Park (GNP) and inhabited areas as incommensurable spaces of natural (protected) and human (productive) life. In recent years, ecological, political, and economic crises have challenged this separation and stimulated shifts in the socioecological thought that underlies conservation management. In this article, we draw on the insights of border studies and of studies that recognize the hybrid and collective nature of conservation to trace the discursive and material exchanges that traffic the GNP border. The goal is to resituate the contribution of borders in nature conservation: from borders as technologies that fix space for protection to borders as sites of lively encounters with the potential to transform conservation theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his seminal work on cartography, Brian Harley develops insights and raises questions about the power of maps. This article takes up these insights and questions through an anti-essentialist reading of Foucault's later thinking merged with concepts from grounded theory. The research examines the interrelated economic, strategic, legal, and technical aspects of mapping activities that use and create cadastral (property) maps. Using multiple scales, I analyze cadastral mapping activities through decomposition into interactions, boundary objects, and contextual factors to establish how empowerment and limitation take place. The examples come from fieldwork in Poland that explores cadastral mapping discrepancies. Following the demise of socialist forms of government and property in 1989, studies from the 1990s found differences (by area) between officially mapped ownership and actual property usage of up to 40 percent in rural areas. Although most Polish cadastral maps from rural areas were then, and still are, officially accepted as accurate, many remain functionally unusable. Further, the high level of discrepancies failed, and still fails, to systematically disrupt cadastral mapping, farming, and other economic activities. Considering this background, the article explores the processes of making property rights and the limits of state-centric constructions of territory. Reflecting the increased use of geographic information systems in cadastral mapping and the controls of Common Agricultural Policy disbursements, the article also analyzes different meanings of accuracy and the limits of cadastral mapping's calculative power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates local actions that transgress, subvert, and ignore the imposition of sovereign authority at the borders of sovereign states. It describes the creation and gradual securitization of the 4,096-km border between India and Bangladesh, which has culminated with the construction of roads, floodlights, and fences on the majority of the previously open and lightly guarded border. Then, by drawing on interviews with borderland residents, it analyzes the ways that people interact with, talk about, and cross the border in their daily lives. The motives and consequences of these cross-border connections are not precisely captured by the literature on sovereign power and the state of exception, which identifies very little space for resistance, or the literature on dominance–resistance in power relations, which understands most actions as political resistance in a broad milieu of power. To reconcile these conflicting views on resistance, this article proposes spaces of refusal to understand a range of activities that are not overt political resistance but nevertheless refuse to abide by the binary framing of state territorial and identity categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past century there have been a number of distinct attempts by geographers to generalize about the nature of international boundaries. The most influential contemporary movement is that which considers them as examples of more general processes of “bordering” or “bounding.” This approach is insightful but not without limitations, and can be advanced through writing what are termed “boundary biographies” that explore how specific boundaries materialize, rematerialize, and dematerialize in different ways, in different contexts, at different scales, and at different times. A biography of the Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan boundary traces its materialization as a result of the 1924 through 1927 process of national territorial delimitation and its multiple and varied re- and dematerializations throughout the Soviet and particularly the post-Soviet periods. This biography illustrates the importance of geography for understanding processes of nation-state formation and political contestation in Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent scholarship has pointed out the multidimensional character of national borders and the implausibility of the border as a single and coherent concept. In this article, I build on this scholarship as I discuss how geographers can critically engage in the dialectic of the border concept. To develop this argument, I review some of the existing literature on the concept of the border and cross-border migration and suggest that various material practices and meanings related to borders can be conceived of as 'aspects' of the border concept. I argue that the impossibility of integrating these aspects into a coherent concept constitutes an important moment in the dialectic of the border. Critical geographers have an opportunity to engage with this border dialectic by offering meanings of borders that enable new possible border practices. I advocate a democratic aspect of the border concept decoupled from the state and implemented through a multitude of possible practices. I recognize that the consequences of such scholarly engagement in the border dialectic are not entirely foreseeable and therefore require continual reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes the case for addressing nonhumans as actors in geopolitical processes such as boundary making and enforcement. The challenge of this line of argumentation is to account for nonhumans as actors without enacting dualistic ontologies that locate the natural and social in separate realms. To address this methodological challenge, I present a posthumanist political ecology. I elaborate my argument and methodological approach in relation to my research on the environmental dimensions of U.S. border security. Specifically, I examine how deserts, rivers, Tamaulipan Thornscrub, and cats inflect, disrupt, and obstruct the daily practices of boundary enforcement, leading state actors to call for more funding, infrastructure, boots on the ground, and surveillance technology. As my research illustrates, taking nonhumans seriously as actors alters explanations for the escalation of U.S. enforcement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial and human dimensions of climate change are brought into relief at international borders where climate change poses particular challenges. This article explores “double exposure” to climatic and globalization processes for the U.S.-Mexico border region, where rapid urbanization, industrialization, and agricultural intensification result in vulnerability to water scarcity as the primary climate change concern. For portions of the western border within the North American monsoon climate regime, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects temperature increases of 2 to 4°C by midcentury and up to 3 to 5°C by 2100, with possible decreases of 5 to 8 percent in precipitation. Like the climate and water drivers themselves, proposed societal responses can also be regionalized across borders. Nevertheless, binational responses are confronted by a complex institutional landscape. The coproduction of science and policy must be situated in the context of competing institutional jurisdictions and legitimacy claims. Adaptation to climate change is conventionally understood as more difficult at international borders, yet regionalizing adaptive responses could also potentially increase resilience. We assess three cases of transboundary collaboration in the Arizona-Sonora region based on specific indicators that contribute importantly to building adaptive capacity. We conclude that three key factors can increase resilience over the long term: shared social learning, the formation of binational “communities of practice” among water managers or disaster-relief planners, and the coproduction of climate knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, U.S. military and civilian agencies have been rethinking security in the context of globalized production and trade. No longer lodged in a conflict between territorial borders and global flows, national security is increasingly a project of securing supranational systems. The maritime border has been a critical site for experimentation, and a spate of new policy is blurring “inside” and “outside” national space, reconfiguring border security, and reorganizing citizenship and labor rights. These programs seek to govern integrated economic space while they resurrect borders and sanction new forms of containment. Forces that disrupt commodity flows are cast as security threats with labor actions a key target of policy. Direct connections result between market rule created to secure logistic space and the broader project of neoliberalism. Even as neoliberalism is credited with expanding capitalist markets and market logics, it is logistics that have put the cold calculation of cost at the center of the production of space. Since World War II, logistics experts have conceptualized economy anew by spatializing cost-benefit analysis and applying systems analysis to distribution networks. The “revolution in logistics” has changed how space is conceived and represented, and transformed the practical management of supply chains. Historically a military technology of war and colonialism abroad, today logistics lead rather than support the strategies of firms and the security of nations across transnational space. These shifts have implications for the geopolitics of borders and security but also for social and political forms premised on the territory and ontology of national space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a substantive analysis using the Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System (GIS), one of the earliest national historical GISs. It develops exploratory techniques to explore local patterns of demographic change and applies these to the study of infant mortality in England and Wales from 1851 to 1911. The techniques developed could be applied to a wide variety of fields where the aim is to explore long-term spatio-temporal change using data published for administrative units that are affected by boundary changes. The Victorian and Edwardian eras saw the origins of the sustained infant mortality decline that characterized the entire twentieth century. Although the period has been extensively studied for a century and more, our knowledge of this vital phase is still surprisingly limited. In particular, much of the research to date has focused on urban areas and has thus stressed urban explanations as to why infant mortality began to decline. Because this article uses a comprehensive GIS database, we are able to challenge some of the orthodoxies that have emerged. It reveals that patterns of infant mortality decline in different parts of the country were more complex than has previously been described. Far from the national rate being driven by changes in urban areas, the largest declines and earliest declines in infant mortality were found in rural parts of the southeast of England, as the rural periphery lagged far behind. Urban areas were slow to decline due to the specific conditions that existed in them in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macedonia's centrality to the making of Greece over the past century provides the empirical grounding for an exploration of how cultural-symbolic borrowing rather than cross-border othering has been crucial for border making in Modern Greece and, by extension, everywhere in the world. There has been a recent revival in studies of borders between states and what they mean in relation to both the history of state formation and the effects of globalization on state power. Typically, however, the borders between modern “nation-states” are seen as originating in cross-pressures between pairs of neighboring states just the same in Africa today as, say, in nineteenth-century France. The wider contemporary geographical context may be invoked in terms of the “sides” taken in particular border disputes by other nearby states or by the Great Powers. Rarely, however, is the wider historical-geopolitical context invoked as the primary source of the practices, simultaneously material and symbolic, that produce the desire for precise borders in the first place. With increased globalization, however, the making of Greece in Macedonia may become increasingly problematic because the political logic of all national border-making is increasingly in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With broad lines and dark shading, the cartographic depictions of ancient states and empires convey the impression of comprehensive political entities having firm boundaries and uniform territorial control. These depictions oversimplify the complexities of early state growth, as well as overstating the capacity of central governments to control large territories. Archaeological and textual evidence suggests that ancient states are better understood through network models rather than bounded-territory models. Network approaches enable us to depict competition within and among polities as they grow, the efficient use of nodal points as a focus for political leaders, and the realities of nonoverlapping ritual, social, and economic activities that have an impact on political cohesion. Network maps and bounded-territory representations are compared for the Inka, Mauryan, and Sassanian polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arizona-Utah boundary follows 37° north latitude. This boundary is a good example of how a Western boundary was established, and, once it had been drawn, what techniques were used to have it changed. Western boundaries were drawn by Eastern congressmen who had little understanding of the physical and cultural geography of the area, and, for the sake of convenience, usually used lines of longitude and latitude as boundaries. These congressmen were much more interested in national issues and concerns (in drawing 37° that interest was slavery) than in the needs and desires of local residents. It is understandable why few were happy with the resultant boundaries. Thirty-seven degrees developed as one such boundary, and soon after it was drawn there were attempts to change it. Nevada was successful in having that boundary eliminated along its westernmost end; but Utah, though it had good arguments to have the boundary shifted, and tried many times under several different circumstances, and with various techniques, was never successful, The boundary remains along 37° between Arizona and Utah, but the problems caused by that boundary also remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functions of the Willow Palisade, a barrier of trees developed in China during the Ch'ing dynasty illustrate the Manchu government's attitude towards the Tungpei region. The location of gates and personnel, travel accounts, and hsien gazeteers reveal changes in the Palisade during the two hundred and fifty years of Ch'ing rule. Study of the Willow Palisade contributes to an understanding of traditional China's frontier viewpoint and illuminates contemporary China's attitude towards its northeastern border with the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movements of people between various origins and destinations in an urban road network are sensitive to changes in the network which increases the capacities of certain links. The effects of improvements in some links are not transmitted equally to all portions of the network. The road network may be partitioned into regions to test the extent to which the fields of network effects extend into other regions. Though not entirely impermeable, the boundaries stand up well in delineating noninteracting parts of the network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A segment of the international boundary dividing southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora provides an opportunity to examine the impact of culturally distinct land-use patterns on plant communities that were homogeneous prior to completion of a continuous fence line separating the two countries. Photographs taken in 1892, 1969, and 1976 illustrate the changing spatial contrasts in wild vegetation spanning the international boundary. Since the drought and over-stocked range conditions of the early 1890s, there has been a general increase in herbaceous and woody vegetation. Presently, grass is taller and there is greater grass cover with less barren ground on the United States side. These conditions result from different grazing histories and different livestock management practices in the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1870 and 1910 the northern plains was transformed from Indian reservation to a farming frontier for whites as a result of decisions made outside the region, and by the adaptations of while and Indian settlers. The frontier migration fields of Sanborn County, South Dakota, and Bowman County, North Dakota, were heavily concentrated in the Middle West. illustrating the shift in migrant origins as the frontier pushed westward. The contrast in patterns of development between North and South Dakota was largely determined by the location and timing of railroad construction, which in turn reflected the government's land grant and Indian policies. Within Sanborn and Bowman counties, pioneer settlement patterns illustrate the role of group migration, public land policies, and railroad land sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The redistricting of Washington State presented an opportunity to apply, with court sanction, a variety of geographic criteria: compactness and regularity; integrity of well-known units (counties and cities); following of natural geographic boundaries; and consideration of functional unity and cultural homogeneity--rather than a political criterion of partisan advantage to particular parties. The existence of two party plans provided an opportunity to measure the effect of such partisanship th rough comparing the operation of differing criteria to the same data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Epsilon Generalization can consistently define the borders and core region of a noncontiguous community. The Nappanee, Indiana, Amish area is used to demonstrate the technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An approach employing three basic themes, movement through space, development in place, and changing relative location through time, is a fruitful method of reevaluating conventional environmental, cultural, and economic interpretations of frontier American. Study of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in tile eighteenth century indicates that frontier areas were more complex socially and more sophisticated economically than has generally been acknowledged. Traditional views of population migration and land acquisition, the contributions of national-cultural groups, and the development of economic activities are questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of this paper have been developed on the assumption that the functional effectiveness of a state varies spatially within its own territorial limits. The case of West Pakistan has been considered. An attempt has been made to distinguish the areas of varying degree of functional effectiveness in West Pakistan and thus to provide a framework for a more realistic understanding of the functional relationship of a state with the various parts of its territory. The concept implies that the area is culturally homogeneous, and is used here to measure the administrative- economic quality of a given area. The basic criteria employed are a) the density of population and b) density of transportation lines. The ecumene (the effective state area) has been delimited as that part of the total area which provides economic support to most of its inhabitants. The remaining portion of the state has been termed extra-ecumerical." The ecumene has been classified into minimally effective area, intensively effective area, is more, and the core area. The intensively effective area is more densely populated ( 100 persons to the square mile) and has a closer mesh of transportation lines (each part lies within five miles of a motorable road or railroad station. Additional measures of agricultural productivity, intensity of market potential, magnitude of manufacturing, and the degree of urbanization have been used to locate the core area which is depicted as the Lahore-Lyallpur axis Karachi, because of its nonagricultural base, falls short of the measures of a core area and has been termed the "sub-core." Thus it has been found that there are observable disparities of functional effectiveness in West Pakistan.

The purpose of this article is to examine the physical nature of and the geographical role performed by the core-area in the formation of a particular group of states namely those of Europe. The geographical pattern of the states of Europe had, in general taken shape before the age of modern nationalism, and it is difficult to discover among the forces which brought the states into being during the middle ages. The authors define what they mean by core-area. A core area must have considerable advantages in order to perform its role. It must have within itself the elements of viability. The article talks about how various European countries expanded their boundaries.

This article considers the case of Kano, the largest city of the western Sudan, and its present province, which is roughly coterminous with the area which was directly under the sway of Kano for nanny centuries. The Kano province dealt with here is one of the thirteen administrative provinces of the region of North Nigeria. Despite the apparently unfavorable physical geography of the region, the province, especially during the wet season, presents the appearance of a vast rolling park. It is covered particularly in the western and southern areas, with maize, millet and other grain crops.

This article studies how boundary classifications have evolved, from the simple artificial-vs.-natural division, through classifications describing the basis of the boundary, as physical, anthroprogeographical, and so forth, to a classification which related the boundary to the cultural landscape at the time of establishment. In order to define some of the basic concepts underlying the nature and role of boundaries, boundary studies in a general context are treated. If generalizations are to have any validity, they must be drawn from and tested by significant case studies that fulfill the requirements of objective research.

The difficult terrain for three regions in Peru has not only resulted in seriously unbalanced demographic pressures within two regions, but has simultaneously permitted the third, which occupies over half the national territory, to remain isolated and grow progressively closer to the economy of Brazil. Significantly greater acarages cannot be added along the coast without exorbitant costs. Settlement is restricted in some of the oases by lack of level land and in most of them by water shortages. Further the division of Andean rivers for use in the costal region is becoming impractical, and, although the employment of wells is expected to increase plantings somewhat, the method is expensive, especially when water table drops.

Explores the subject of frontiers and boundaries. Origins and evolution of the terms; Manifestation of the spontaneous tendency for growth of the ecumene; Development of patterns of civilization; Appropriateness of the term boundary.

Explores the relationship of boundaries to their geographical and historical milieu. Common assumption regarding the boundaries of primitive men; Compatibility of definite boundaries with depopulated defensive zones; Role of kinship and territory in political organization.

Focuses on the use of statistical testing for validating the regional boundaries. Analysis of the geologic, physiographic, soil, land use, type of farm and population growth regions; Establishment of unit areas according to physiographic and geologic observations; Relationship between the features of natural environment used to delimit the area and the physical and socio economic properties of the regiona.

The article presents reviews and abstracts of boundary problems in Europe. The study focuses briefly on the present status of disputed areas in Europe, listing the most important disputes and including a briefly annotated bibliography. It has been realized there are many other disputed areas in Europe but for reasons of space or absence of unbiased studies they have been left out. Since April 1949, when the border changes were brought into effect, voices of dissatisfaction have been heard from both sides of the Dutch-German border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the claims of the Netherlands for economic changes along its boundary with Germany. Problems encountered in the political geography of the post-war period; Damages caused during the war by the Germans; Influence of the general political situation in Europe and the postponement of a final treaty with Germany to the frontier corrections considered by the western powers.

Focuses on the position of the Köppen Da/Db Boundary in the Eastern United States. Significance of the agricultural climate; Variation of the boundaries; Comparison of the latitudinal variations of the western terminals and the eastern terminals.

Focuses on the boundary dispute between California and Nevada. Overview of the boundary; Association of the northern part of the border zone with the Sierra Nevada; History to the formation of the Nevada territory.

It has been not uncommon for states that cast envious eyes on the lands of their neighbors to appeal to a higher law in justification of their claims. The idea of "natural frontiers" has at some time or in some way been employed politically by many nation-states and forms an interesting complement to the no less significant idea of "living space." Both ideas are in a sense an appeal to the higher sanction of a "natural law." The idea of "limites naturelles" had gained a wide acceptance in literary and educated circles and that it was of political importance at the time of the French Revolution.

Focuses on the boundaries of geography. Role of geography to astronomy and to geology; Impact of scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions opening the utilization the third or vertical dimension of the earth's surface; Configuration of three-dimensional earth-space.

Examines the verbal description of international boundaries in diplomatic notes, treaties and other documents. Employment of aerial reconnaissance; Use of boundary descriptions by diplomats, lawyers, surveyors, cartographers and engineers; List of main methods of boundary description.

Discusses the boundary suit between the States of Michigan and Wisconsin between 1932 and 1936 which resulted in the striking out of Green Bay and lower Menominee River boundary provisions of a previous decree of the U.S. Supreme Court. Issue of res adjudicata; Subjects in dispute; Whaleback shoal and the geographical center of Green Bay; Gap in the boundary in Upper Lake Michigan.

Examines the impress of effective central authority upon the landscape in the United States. Phenomena of economic geography; Security as a product of effective central authority; Features of boundaries; Expressions of governmental activity.

Suggests a method and some terminology that might be applicable for studies on the geographic and political boundaries of the Upper Silesia region, which is part of the great border belt between Germans and Slavs. Natural defense boundaries; Boundaries marked in nature; Boundaries based on areas similar in landscape features.

Discusses the surface configuration of Southeastern Brazil. General concept of southeastern Brazil as a plateau; Coastal lowlands; Deltas; Flood plain basins; Crystalline plateaus; Diabase areas.

In this article, the application of physiography and geography to public business is illustrated by many features of the boundary suit between the States of Michigan and Wisconsin which was acted upon by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1926. The case demonstrates how lawyers, geographers, engineers, legislators, soldiers, Indian guides and pilots and members of other occupations and professions can work together. It shows some of the simple uses of maps. It reveals the elementary nature of what constitutes material evidence in the highest judicial body.

The article presents the geographical treatment of the boundaries of New England. All lines used as state boundaries may be grouped in two great classes: topographic and mathematical. The early charters of the New England district made no explicit mention of the character of the limiting line where the colonies bordered the ocean. The shore boundary has a further great advantage over all others in that it is a physical and ethnic, as well as a political boundary. The position of a river boundary may be determined by any part of a river, such as the middle a bank, the deepest channel, etc.

Discusses the domain of geography in the U.S. Proposed partition of geography's domain; Need of a synthetic areal science; Value of scientific trespass.

This article focuses on some considerations on the geographical provinces on the U.S. The map of the U.S. is equivalent, of the maps of the Great Britain and India, on a same scale and plan. It gives the same picture of man occupying the earth. The groupings of men under reaction to their environment come out at once as before. As geography transcends political boundaries, Canada is included. Nothing on the map indeed, is more striking than the way portions of Canada unite with neighboring portions of the U.S.

The barrier boundaries long exercised a dominant influence upon Mediterranean history. For ages they confined that history within the narrow limits of the basin, except where a few natural openings offered pathways to regions of contrasted climate and production beyond. These breaches in the barrier were varied in their geographical character, but all have focused upon themselves the historical events of wide areas. They have crowded into their narrow channels streams of trade, migration, colonization, and conquest, they have drawn these from remote sources and directed them to equally remote destinations.

The article discusses geographical research. It is becoming increasingly likely that geographers should come to an agreement as to the division of the United States into natural provinces. In a broad way, the division of the United States into provinces serves two purposes. First, for the discussion and explanation of the physical features of the country and second, as a basis for the plotting and discussion of social, industrial, historical and other data of distinctly human concern. This second purpose is distinctively geographic. The first has its geographic side also but, it is quite us much geologic as geographic.

Comments on the observation of writer William Norton about frontier conditions of human settlement in South Africa. Density of the population; State of transportation for the immigrants; Methods of frontier agriculture.

In this article Michael W. Dobson, a researcher gives an experiment that required subjects to outline regions of high, medium and low density on an unquantized map of the rural population density in Kentucky. Muller opted to test the boundaries on three class maps rather than subjects' recreations of boundaries that serve to indicate the trivial nature of delineating patterns of density on a classed map. Although the accuracy ratings computed for the three class visual regionalization of the unquantized map were not quite as good as that for the best of the classed maps, the results were reasonably comparable.

Comments on the geography of commuting. Variations in the areal extent of the smallest administrative units; Introduction of bias into the figures to represent commuting; Comparison between censuses based on administrative boundaries.