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This paper traces the recent evolution of North American economic and security relations within the context of broader debates in international political economy (IPE) concerning globalization and its effects on the state in the international system. Borrowing from David Lake's discussion of hierarchical sovereignty, this paper argues that efforts to meld security to economics in an integrated North American market devoid of institutions have made sovereignty more hierarchical. It presents an approach to looking at North American integration, which can assist in understanding recent developments that are suggestive of new areas of research and policy development for both practitioners and theoreticians. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that since the completion of the NAFTA in the early 1990s, there has been too much focus on what governments in Ottawa, Washington, and Mexico City have or have not been doing to deepen North American integration. The NAFTA was an anomaly that obscures the larger history of incrementalism that has shaped North America's political economy. A focus on large, government-led integration projects like the NAFTA as a model for North American integration distracts from an examination of the many connections and processes taking place across borders every day. Security has become fully entrenched as a driving paradigm of North American relations. However, much of the activity in this domain and others is taking place at the bureaucratic, sub-state, and non-state levels rather than via active direction from national leadership. As scholars and analysts of North America, we would do well to move away from the NAFTA as a model for negotiating North America's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a political ecology approach to the study of borders through consideration of a lemon's travels in contemporary North American border space. Following discussion of recent work on the dynamic, multi-scalar, and process-based character of modern borders, I suggest that such critical approaches could be usefully augmented by drawing on ideas about socio-material networks advanced by Bruno Latour. By adopting a political ecology framework, border scholars would be able to consider more fully the materiality of borders and bordering processes. Through the example of the lemon, I demonstrate that in constructing the fruit as a particular socio-material artifact that embodies multiple threats to US national space, it and its carrier become implicated in the regulation of political-economic and geopolitical networks that are seemingly far removed from the object of concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]