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This article offers an ethnographic account of ongoing border conflicts in south Lebanon between members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and residents in a south Lebanese border village. It emphasizes the specific experiences of this border population with foreign intervention and land expropriations. It places UNIFIL's current intervention in a long history of Western imperialism in the region. It underlines how UNIFIL weakens the Lebanese state by taking over the sovereign functions a state typically performs. It examines current border contestations in a context of Israeli settler colonialism and its long-term role in shaping the livelihoods in south Lebanese border villages. It argues for the importance of understanding border conflicts and the work of international interventions in their specific local and historical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The north western Atlas Mountains (Béchar region) act as refugia for relict populations of many species which highlights their interest as priority areas for conservation. Further work since the beginning of the last century has been difficult because of restricted access in a military area with long-standing border conflicts. This paper aims to analyse the temporal dynamics of the vegetation communities, to assess the floristic diversity of one of those isolated djebels, Djebel Antar, and to contribute to the knowledge of the conservation status of the species found. Surveys from 1925,1951 (published data) and 2017 (fieldwork) were interpreted and investigations were carried out on honey harvesting, production, and marketing in the Benzireg area to better understand and contribute to the development of beekeeping. A high proportion of endemic and very rare species was found. A tendency towards the homogenisation of the flora was detected with a decrease in plant diversity. Beekeeping is being tested as a means of enhancing biodiversity and contributing to the fight against vegetation degradation by reducing pastoral pressure. Djebel Antar retains its function as a refuge for biodiversity and may play an important role in conservation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the adjudication of a maritime boundary dispute is usually a bilateral process, it is also often the case that third States have an interest in the delimitation to be carried out. Coupled with the potential for the delimitation decisions of courts and tribunals to impact their maritime claims or entitlements, this raises the concern that third State interests could be prejudiced by such a dispute settlement process, without their participation. While third-party intervention has been suggested as a possible means of recourse for such third States, this article argues that third States may, in practice, be hesitant of resorting to intervention. This is because attempts to intervene, whether successful or unsuccessful, are likely to entail the court or tribunal's eventual decision having some legally binding effects on the third State. Further, alternative options remain available to third States desirous of a platform to make their interests known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lord Salisbury, according to the historiography, was notoriously sceptical of international arbitration. Yet, at the end of the nineteenth century, Salisbury's last government entered into an arbitration agreement with Venezuela in relation to its border dispute with British Guiana and a general arbitration agreement with the US. It then took the lead in establishing a permament court of international arbitration at the fist Hague Peace Conference in 1899. This article explains why that change in Salisbury's outlook occurred, how Salisbury developed a distinctively Conservative approach to arbitration in international relations and how the British contribution to the development of an institutional international rule of law at the end of the nineteenth century was as much a Conservative moment as a liberal one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shadow trading is a common activity along state borders. Its omnipresence is puzzling because border checkpoints are highly regulated spaces that are heavily gated and securitized. Most studies attribute such a paradox to ineffective border control and corruption. However, this line of argument overlooks the peculiar nature of border and checkpoint governance. We explore this phenomenon with a case study of the Sino‐Kazakh border where shadow traders negotiate their passage every day. We find that border crossing is a highly organized activity dictated by informal yet specific and meticulous rules that are enforced by various state and non‐state actors. Together, they constitute a kind of gray governance that is thoroughly entwined with the formal regime. It is a kind of technology of rule that enables the state to selectively enforce formal and informal rules so as to accommodate the conflicting goals of border control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The endurance of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute since the 1970s is indicative of the grip that the Westphalian narrative has on the political imagination of academics and practitioners alike. Both materialist and constructivist scholarship has so far struggled to explain the dispute given its limited strategic and unclear symbolic value. Yet recent work in ontological security studies (OSS) has pointed to the intrinsic connection between physical and ontological security, and highlighted how the Westphalian notion of sovereignty constructs territory as part of the state's body, and therefore as part of its embodied self. While this explains why such tiny islets can become existentially important for states, it offers bleak prospects for solving sovereignty-related conflicts. It seems unlikely that the dispute can be mitigated within the confines of the Westphalian system. Yet the insight that the body is constructed and part of the ontological security-seeking self is still useful. Building on this insight, we draw on East Asian medicine (EAM) to propose an alternative way of constructing the body. EAM's monist and relational cosmology helps to conceive a post-Westphalian social body shared by the claimants, making various proposed solutions ontologically possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional approaches to the 'North Korea Problem' underpin the interests of great powers and the Westphalian canon that buttresses the status quo of a divided Korea, normalising and perpetuating the abnormality of the Korean body. This article draws on a postcolonial approach to international relations and uses East Asian medicine (EAM)'s principles and epistemological underpinnings as an analytical framework to examine the effects of the inter-Korean border on Korea's body politic and to assess the 2018 inter-Korean border crossings. I demonstrate how the inter-Korean border serves as a site that manifests a new possibility and how invisible ordinary people play an indispensable role in mending the abnormalised Korean body, defying the idea of Korea's intractable conflict. Ultimately, this study rethinks state and non-state interactions, as well as their reciprocal and conflicting relations, in producing, perpetuating and mitigating artificial myths about inter-Korean border conflicts as a conceptual dialogue between state-centred and EAM-inspired approaches towards reconciliation processes. By drawing on the implications of escaping the Westphalian canonical nexus of power-knowledge-discourse, I suggest an alternative way of healing from inside out by de-abnormalising the inter-Korean border and (re)historicising the agency of unseen people in re-imagining the Korean body politic and world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While using polynomial functions to define window functions is an initial approach in studying the memristor element, it is susceptible to generating imaginary results. However, using window functions, including the trigonometric function, is a current field of research on the memristor element. This paper uses the trigonometric Blackman window function to present a new memristor element model and investigates its nonlinear ion drift model properties. The motivation of this study is the usage of the trigonometric Blackman window function, which presents a more detailed definition and leads to more accurate results in windowing operations. The Blackman window function can address the issues of border locking and terminal state. Numerical simulations have verified this proposed structure. Additionally, the analog realizations of the memristor element constructed with the Blackman window function have been achieved on a Field Programmable Analog Array, which offers fast prototyping, serving as an alternative approach for emulating memristors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commons' problems and solutions have the elements of local, proximate, and large‐scale distal processes. Solutions, therefore, require accessing, implementing, and coordinating information and actions at multiple scales. Restoring commons, such as fisheries, will require a better understanding of how stakeholders access and use information at various scales to resolve governance and restrictions problems. In 179 household interviews, perceptions of fisheries conflicts and their causes were identified, and 16 management committee key informants described their methods for mediating hypothetical small‐scale fisheries problems in Kenya. The 6 studied sites varied in human development and demographic contexts but had notable similarities that reflected a respondent's focus on localized, direct, and proximate fishing conflicts. The most cited problems included limited space, disagreement about gears, poor resource conditions, and locally inadequate benefits. The most cited sources of information were local households and the community, and there was considerably less acknowledgment of distal problems and solutions. Key informants selected a limited number of local community‐focused solutions. For example, informants chose to mediate conflicts between neighbors with local community meetings rather than through formal national institutions. Therefore, distal solutions were likely to be perceived as ineffectual, possibly due to the challenges of polycentric governance coordination. However, widespread overfishing arises from overarching distal processes not fully amenable to local solutions. Therefore, a focus on local action is expected to limit the ability to address distal problems. These include conflicting values, demographic changes, supportive governance frameworks, emerging technologies, resolving conflicting local rules, fair between‐group enforcement, responding to temporary shortages of fish, and intercommunity border and rule disputes. Improved coordination and integration of information and institutions to simultaneously address both proximate and distal common's problems are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assertion of (territorial) nationalism by Nepal has serious implications for its bilateral relationship with India. Once dominant, the singular narrative of the upper-caste Hindu Parbatiya nationalism is increasingly encountering competing narratives emerging from the marginalised Janajatis and the Madhesis of Nepal. Accordingly, several nationality sentiments that were sidelined earlier have now become salient. While the India factor in these competing perspectives of nationalist discourses in Nepal appears to be subtle (but important), the growing territorial dimensions to it invariably locates India in a prominent position. This article investigates the implications of the changing dynamics of Nepal's nationalism on its bilateral relationship with India. Looking at the internal dynamics of nationalism discourses in Nepal, the article offers a critical analysis of the territorial disputes between India and Nepal, and its implications on nationalism in Nepal and on the bilateral relationships between India and Nepal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been discussions on the validity of theorising border studies since the beginning of this century. The nature of borderlands encompassing borders may be understood from a generalised perspective, but this special section argues the importance of contextualising borders from an appropriate theoretical framework built on preceding works. From such a viewpoint, this special section investigates various aspects of East Asia's borders and borderlands and contextualises them in the region's dynamic geopolitical and geoeconomic contexts. The selected four articles focus mainly on border issues in China, North Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan and Hong Kong, showing that East Asia, particularly the East China Sea region, consists of non-conventional borders and that deviations from the Westphalian sovereign territory characterise East Asian borderlands. These articles persuasively illustrate how the 'contextual theorisation' of borders in East Asia becomes possible by identifying the common aspects shared by their cases. I conclude that bringing in a regional or trans-border/local framework for border studies can deepen our understanding of borders and borderlands and guide us in a better direction of research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The completion of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge marks not only a record-setting achievement in engineering, but also a materialisation of ongoing efforts by the People's Republic of China to engage in cooperative projects aimed at expanding and deepening integrative connections with the semi-autonomous Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong. This paper explores the colonial and post-colonial social construction of Hong Kong as a political-economic island, and the implications this carries into the tensions and open conflicts that have unfolded under the One Country, Two Systems agreement. Using the bridge as a case, it critically examines the geopolitical and biopolitical dimensions of infrastructure as a practice of subnational (de)bordering. The case renders visible a contemporary moment where infrastructure occupies a central position at the conjuncture of technology, advanced governmentality and shifting geographies of sovereignty in the People's Republic of China, within subnational city-regional development plans, as well as internationally in projects, such as the geographically expansive Belt and Road Initiative. A close examination of the Bridge project highlights the constructed and contested nature of borders, as well as the complex identities and ideologies that define them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism remains a major influence on international relations in an increasingly globalised world. Many of the wars that erupted after the Cold War have their origins in ethnic tensions, border conflicts, or national aspirations. Given this, the geo-politicisation of nationalism deserves more attention in the literature. The current study aims to further the area by considering the role of territorial disputes in spawning various forms of nationalism and geopolitics. It develops an analytical framework based on the existing border dispute between Nepal and India in the 'Kalapani' region. Post-2019, the Kalapani dispute not only has represented bilateral border disputes between two entities but also reflects the overall geopolitics of the region. Similarly, it also represents the rise of 'nationalism' as a political anchor point in domestic politics in both India and Nepal. The paper based its assessment on the primary and secondary data analysis. Drawing on the data, this paper argues that border disputes between India and Nepal have two facets that signal the rising nationalism in both sides and the changing geopolitics of South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the conventional understanding of North Korean borders as classic barriers that block infiltration of outside influences, this paper argues that the Sino-North Korean border region has undergone considerable transformations, especially at the local level. By analysing local-level trans-border activities, it shows that North Korea seeks to develop the Sino-North Korean border region as a space of opportunity. Even the heightened political conflicts between China and North Korea and the tightened international sanctions against North Korea failed to dampen local actors' economic imperatives, particularly after the 2012 and 2013 decentralisations in North Korea. Local actors were active in driving trans-border economic practices and, in turn, transformed the Sino-North Korean border region into potential cross-border cooperation zones. Although there has been conflict and competition in border region development between North Korea and China, we argue that local governments and entrepreneurs' efforts to maximise economic independence in the border regions are persisting, and their geo-economic imperatives are important factors in reshaping the Sino-North Korean border region by initiating and advancing trans-border interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working on the border The confrontation with the terminal illness and death of a group member is a drastic experience for a therapy group. On the one hand, it mobilised forms of social support beyond the group framework in this therapy example, which raises questions about the work on what Foulkes once called the "border zone" of group therapy. On the other hand, this experience challenged us to deal with basic existential issues on the border between life and death, such as fear of loneliness, death and dying. And it catalyses development-limiting conflicts such as survivor's guilt, fear of changes in the group, etc., which thus become accessible for processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 2019, the Indian government dissolved the state of Jammu and Kashmir, designating its Northern region as the Union Territory of Ladakh. Two months later, it released a new Political Map of India on which Ladakh was drawn as one of India's largest territories. Like most representations of territory on political maps, the claims made were simplified. India's rendering did not acknowledge that Pakistan and China administered much of Ladakh's territory; nor did it represent the region's intricate, multi-ethnic population, topography, or ecosystems. This article approaches the construction of this political map historically. Rather than using regional history to bolster any state's claims, we argue that the confusion over the map reflects a disconnect between the abstractions of state territory and the realities of high-altitude socio-ecologies. We compare the socio-ecologically and climatically embedded bordering practices of pre-territorial Tibetan–Ladakhi states outlined in local language sources with the abstract understanding of territorialised borders that the new map represents. The Tibetan–Ladakhi approach, which concentrated on pathways and mountain-pass checkpoints, allowed for social and ecological flows around and through these checkpoints. By contrast, the current bordering regimes have bifurcated communities, demanded fixedness, and required three large armies to defend arbitrary borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay contributes to literature on the intersections of white settler colonialisms, racial capitalism, and U.S.-Mexico borderlands history by tracing the web of spatial, temporal, and legal power relations that produced El Paso, Texas' seemingly legitimate possession of stolen Mexican territory known as "El Chamizal" in the El Paso-Cd. Juárez borderlands. This land theft became the Chamizal Dispute: an international land and boundary conflict between the U.S. and Mexico caused by the meandering Río Grande that defines the "fixed" international border between El Paso, Texas and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua. In the 1860s, multiple shifts in the Rio Grande "relocated" El Chamizal north of this river/boundary. Soon thereafter, and despite Mexico's sustained claim to and jurisdiction over this land, recently arrived Anglo American settlers incorporated El Chamizal into the nascent City of El Paso. In 1964, the U.S. and Mexico finally agreed to resolve this conflict by virtue of the landmark Chamizal Treaty, which ceded 630-acres of El Paso to Cd. Juárez as El Chamizal. Contrary to what dominant state accounts and the mainstream historical literature on this settlement would have us believe, however, this ceded land includes only a fraction of the original contested terrain. El Chamizal therefore remains a stolen tract of land nestled within the heart of El Paso. Drawing on oral histories, court testimonies and affidavits, and an array of binational records, this essay demonstrates that this ongoing theft is not a finite or complete project. Rather, the process hinges on a fragile web of spatial, white settler temporal, and legal practices of concealment/denial anchored to a colonial rumor that refuses to open this region to the mystery and wonder of the Río Grande's "wayward life, beautiful experiment in how to live." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the conflict between Venezuela and Guyana in the Essequibo border region. This long-standing dispute could escalate due to the new Latin America strategy of the USA, which includes a military deterrence strategy against the growing influence of China and Russia. Brazil has strengthened its armed forces at the borders with Venezuela and Guyana. The conflict revolves around the Essequibo territory, which is rich in oil and natural resources and affects various international treaties on border settlement between Venezuela and Guyana. There have been attempts at a settlement, but the conflict has further intensified with threats and military actions from both sides. There is hope for a peaceful solution through dialogue and negotiations. The conflict has a geostrategic dimension between the USA and Latin America and has global significance in the context of the new West-South/East conflict. [Extracted from the article]

A zone of disputed colonial cartographies, the Cuvelai floodplain in southern Angola and northern Namibia (formerly German South West Africa) was belatedly occupied during World War 1 by a Portuguese army and South African officials. A Neutral Zone was established along the disputed border and the Kwanyama king Mandume forced to reside south of the contested and straight abstract lines that constituted the unstable border. Ongoing disorder led Mandume to exercise authority in Angolan territory. Anxiety about the revival of African power led to a South African military expedition to remove the king in 1917. A significant number of photographs were produced of Mandume's dead body on the battlefield. Close examination suggests an unsettling series of documented actions, where the apparent motive was an incontrovertible identification shot of the dead king. However the prone body defeated the perspectival construction of the camera box. The buckling of linear perspective by the lifeless body required soldiers to manhandle Mandume. One such photograph prompted a radical remediation by the Namibian artist John Muafangejo. The limits of the camera, its structural ambivalence, produced a polarised reinterpretation that forcibly confronts the colonial metanarrative with the spectre of its own border violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the implementation of the Final Peace Agreement in Colombia, in particular with the Programas de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial (PDETs, Development Programmes with a Territorial Focus), Colombia has been characterised by the development of differentiated processes of state construction, configuration of the armed conflict and territorial transformations. However, from being one of the great promises of peace, the PDETs have become instead an element of conflict by not including community governance initiatives in their implementation, nor have they recognised the legacies of rebel governance in marginalised regions, as occurs in Argelia (Cauca) and in Pradera (Valle del Cauca), Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between Türkiye and Iraq have gone through different stages between 2003 and 2023. The objective of our article is to analyze the constants and evolution of the relationship between the two neighbors from the Turkish perspective. We try to explain how economic aspects and border security issues are at the heart of Turkish diplomacy. Since the AKP and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power, the Turkish vision and strategy in the Middle East, and in Iraq in particular, have passed through different moments which depended on the regional context or the Turkish domestic context - a complex bilateral relationship that depends on several factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the post-Soviet relationship between Russia and China. Topics discussed include the history of border disputes between China and Russia, the opening of the Chinese economy and the rise in China's annual trade with Russia, and the Sino-Russian geopolitical match as reflected on treaties signed between the two countries.

International diplomacy has been essential in resolving conflicts in Ecuador. Throughout its history, it has contributed to resolving border disputes and political tensions at the national and international levels. However, there are factors that can negatively influence these efforts. Despite the challenges, diplomacy will always be vital to maintaining the peace and security of the country. This study focuses on analyzing the role of international diplomacy in conflict resolution in Ecuador and evaluating its impact on the stability of the country and the region. The neutrosophic AHP method was used to obtain the factors that can act as obstacles to carrying out effective diplomacy. It was recognized that internal policy can have a negative impact, so solutions are proposed that can contribute to a more effective approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing explanations for India-China border crises rely on rational actor models and assumes centralized decisionmaking. Instead, I argue that the several recent India-China border crises cannot be understood without separately interrogating the role of the PLA in China's national security policymaking. I argue that the PLA uses its operational independence to continuously challenge Indian forces on the contested border. The Indian forces, when confronted, pushed back. The several recent border standoffs are a manifestation of the interactions between the two armed forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Journal of Strategic Studies focuses on the theory and practice of strategy, with an emphasis on China, nuclear matters, and strategic theory. The current issue includes articles on China's nuclear revolution, the People's Liberation Army's military strategic guidelines, Chinese decision making in peace and crisis, France's response to the rise of China, the Chinese Communist Party's use of economic statecraft, and nuclear matters from theoretical and historical perspectives. The journal also includes essays on strategic theory and the influence of important strategic thinkers. The editors promise to continue providing insightful and engaging articles in the future. [Extracted from the article]

Marine Spatial Planning is labelled as 'an idea whose time has come' based on its applicability to address spatial conflicts and deliver sustainable use. Legislation such as the EU MSP Directive 2014/89/EU and the UK Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 requires that neighbouring marine spatial plans are coherent and coordinated to address cross-border issues. However, the implementation of MSP in cross-border areas is complex due to different administrative processes, fiscal and legislative procedures. This study argues that cross-border MSP is challenging in areas that are faced with historically contested borders which limit effective delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Two contested case study regions: Germany, Poland and the island of Ireland are compared. To help understand contemporary issues, a bespoke theoretical evaluative framework, the 'Wheel of Integration and Adaptation' is used to identify the challenges of cross-border MSP. An in-depth review of planning documents, policies, legislation was undertaken alongside interviews. This demonstrated that in contested areas, cross-border MSP must contend with the following challenges: 'inter alia' geographical peripheries syndrome, schema overload, limited transparency and blue justice, diplomatic consultation processes and differences in planning philosophies. This paper concludes by presenting five interventions as steps toward advancing cross-border MSP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the emergence of a distinct field of inquiry that bridges the gap between discussions on the place of religions in modern political systems and the examination of modes of religious sovereignty. Topics discussed include the genealogy of religion in modern sovereignty, the theological aspects of divine authority and territorial boundaries, and the intervention of modern sovereignty into the nature of life itself.

In this paper, I present a case of dispute resolution from Pakistan where kinship leaders play a key role in resolving local disputes. Scholars often cite that such practices provide evidence of a failed state. However, I show how these traditional practices elucidate ongoing processes of boundary management. On the one hand, these practices reveal the efforts by non-state leaders to carve out their autonomy by taking on a role traditionally played by the state. In fact, their ability to management local/state boundaries is linked to how they manage boundaries within their communities. The state, in turn, recognizes or legitimates these boundaries when it is politically convenient or allows them to save face. I document such negotiations in my research and show how they are critical to understanding how villagers see the state and vice versa. The Pakistani case is important as the ubiquity of its alternate dispute resolution system problematizes the taken-for-granted status of the state and makes visible the mechanisms by which the boundaries between the state and society are continually negotiated and the implications for the citizen/state relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Monterrey has become a space of great inequalities and increasingly notorious socio-spatial phenomena. Its different problems have been used by the government and the private sector to justify interventions in working-class neighborhoods, as is the case of the “Independencia” neighborhood. This article looks to analyze the aspects that turn this neighborhood into a disputed space and identify how this is reflected in the territory through the (in)action of public and private actors. It uses a qualitative methodology supported by interviews, informal talks, and non-participant observations that were made in 2019 and 2020. The paper shows how abandonment and a lack of government investment in working-class neighborhoods is part of an urban revaluation process that seeks to attract private investment to these sectors and end the presence of those “others” who are considered a threat to the urban order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the formation and diminishment of collective hope in Vietnam by tracing the Facebook-based circulation, intensification, and attenuation of affective engagement with the Đồng Tâm land dispute in Hanoi from April 2017 to September 2020. The dispute enables us to conceptualize online activism as essentially fueled by collective embodiment of hope, understood as temporalized openness toward the 'not-yet' that stretches beyond pre-existing agendas. The magnitude of online activism depends not on the network itself but on how new media facilitate an attunement between the public and the latent force of subaltern dissensus. When such connection was disrupted, political hope faded when it was enveloped by endless crises habituated by the network. With implications in Vietnam and beyond, the article highlights hope as a political affect and a political capacity indispensable in social struggles, which enables us to embrace instead of enclosing precarious possibilities of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Channel News Asia has been an excellent news site in Asia and other foreign countries because of its exceptional phrase complexity and informative text which is at par to The Guardian or VICE, despite being CNN tier news site by the web and operational design. Framing analysis is a method used to examine how media outlets and communicators shape the perception of news events by emphasizing certain aspects while downplaying or ignoring others. This method is crucial in understanding how media influence public opinion and the construction of social realityCurrently, the South China Sea conflict is part of the CNA’s subtle information delivery regarding UCChina rivalry without sounding like Yellow Journalism. Using Robert N. Entman’s framing analysis, the author was able to discover how CNA delivers the geopolitical issues to provide information regarding US-China rivalry in trade market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a plethora of research on border disputes, border dispute resolution, unsettled borders, and artificially drawn borders. Yet, no study has so far been conducted on the comparative analysis of borders settled with mandatory powers and between nation-states. This article fills this research lacuna and makes a novel contribution to border scholarship by exploring the linkages between border settlement dynamics and the border status quo. In analysing and comparing Turkey's borders drawn between the 1920s and the 1930s, it is shown that Turkey's Iraqi and Syrian borders settled with mandatory powers (Britain and France respectively) have resulted in the emergence of alternative border imaginations by one of the neighbouring states, albeit without reaching the level of an official demand to change the status quo. Since its independence, Syria has produced an alternative border imagination with respect to its Turkish border by showing Turkey's Hatay province within its borders in its official maps and documents. Since the cession of Mosul to Iraq, Turkey's alternative border imagination has taken the form of state actors' contemplations about resettling the border. In sharp contrast, the Turkish-Iranian border, settled after long consultations between two independent nation-states, effectively resolved boundary-related problems, resulting in the mutual endorsement of the border status-quo. This article concludes that border settlement processes create path-dependent effects that are carried over to subsequent generations of state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on the limitations of language and representation in conveying the pain of ongoing global conflicts, particularly in Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ukraine. Topics include the inadequacy of "bearing witness" as an act often detached from immediate danger and the evolving role of poetry and literature in the digital age where eyewitness testimonies are readily available.

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) leverage data and knowledge about a problem. They provide a nonnumerical pathway to solving partial differential equations by expressing the field solution as an artificial neural network. This approach has been applied successfully to various types of differential equations. A major area of research on PINNs is the application to coupled partial differential equations in particular, and a general breakthrough is still lacking. In coupled equations, the optimization operates in a critical conflict between boundary conditions and the underlying equations, which often requires either many iterations or complex schemes to avoid trivial solutions and to achieve convergence. We provide empirical evidence for the mitigation of bad initial conditioning in PINNs for solving one-dimensional consolidation problems of porous media through the introduction of affine transformations after the classical output layer of artificial neural network architectures, effectively accelerating the training process. These affine physics-informed neural networks (AfPINNs) then produce nontrivial and accurate field solutions even in parameter spaces with diverging orders of magnitude. On average, AfPINNs show the ability to improve the L 2 relative error by 64.84 % after 25,000 epochs for a one-dimensional consolidation problem based on Biot's theory, and an average improvement by 58.80 % with a transfer approach to the theory of porous media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies exploring the sociology of news have identified and established a range of factors that influence journalism and shape media narratives. However, little has been known regarding the narrative construction in the English language broadcast media in India. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between (re)emerging right-wing nationalism and English language television journalism in India. A qualitative thematic discourse analysis was conducted on the monologues on Republic TV and Times Now's primetime debates during the India–China border conflict, 2020. The study reports a major shift in the nature of TV journalism in India: far from being passive observers of right-wing nationalist ideology in the 1990s, TV journalists in contemporary India are acting as active participants in propagating them. The study complements existing works on sociology of news by demonstrating how journalism is shaped by dominant political sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of recent cases from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT). The ICJ ruled in favor of Colombia in a dispute with Nicaragua over the delimitation of the continental shelf. In another case, the ICJ accepted Guyana's claims in a border dispute with Venezuela, allowing the case to proceed. The IRMCT delivered its final judgment in a case against Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović, finding them guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in Bosnia and increasing their sentences to 15 years of imprisonment. This is expected to be the last case handled by the IRMCT before its closure. [Extracted from the article]

This introduction together with the whole special issue on border technologies challenges the limitations of potentially simplistic understandings of contestation, disputes, and political intervention inherent in many accounts of material politics. How do border technologies turn borders into a contested space and how do they come to matter for specific affected communities, especially migrants? How do border technologies manifest hegemonic border-control regimes and thereby marginalise their contestations? Or else, how do they open up alternative versions of the border? Simplified notions of material publics assume that controversial issues may easily turn public. They are also too narrowly framed within the logics of the nation state, de jure citizenship, and specific political articulations of contestation as legitimate within representative democracies. Therefore, these notions disregard opaque, non-transparent forms of government as they are in place through border control regimes, on the one hand, and other less visible forms of contestation deriving from migrant issues and struggles as non-citizens, on the other hand. Migrants concerned with these issues are already marginalised population groups in the context of border technologies. They potentially struggle to make public issues of concern among a wider audience. The introduction together with the special issue expands the analytical repertoire, first, to understand forms of (im)possibilities of contestations related to border technologies and how they are co-shaped by socio-material and epistemic conditions; and second, to include less visible types of material politics, as contesting articulations may appear differently and remain only partially known to wider publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss various human‐wildlife conflicts (HWC) inherent within communities bordering a mid‐sized, semi‐porous wildlife conservancy in Kenya. HWC are a growing issue as human population expands into wildlife habitat to put people and wildlife in more frequent contact and compete for scarce resources. In 2018, we surveyed the crop‐raiding and livestock depredation experiences of 918 households from 10 separate villages and asked about the experiences of the villagers with HWC over the past 3 years. These communities are protected from wildlife with two different fence designs, a standard 12‐strand electrical fence, and an upgraded predator‐proof fence design. We found that between 70% and 91% of respondents had experienced some form of HWC including 39.5% who reported threats to their person from wildlife encroachments despite electrical perimeter fencing. HWC happened more often at night and during the dry seasons. The most common encroachments were from elephants, hyenas, leopards, and baboons. Community respondents rated that the upgraded predator‐proof fences performed better than the standard 12‐strand fences. However, even the predator‐proof design had issues with keeping monkeys from entering the communities and crop raiding. We discuss potential mitigation measures, including an improved predator‐proof fencing design that incorporates butterfly stingers that may offer better protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OpenStreetMap (OSM) as one of the most successful projects of Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) has attracted millions of contributors to work together and produces massive open geographical data. However, the co-work does not always run smoothly since mapping can involve conflicted understandings of the reality. In this paper, we investigate behaviors of mapping related to territorial disputes to reveal the characteristics of contributions and examine the contradictions between ground truth as the vision of OSM and the theory of critical cartography. We perform our experiments from the perspectives of entities, changesets, and contributors using the full history data of OSM. The experiments show that territorial-dispute-related contributions have substantially different characteristics from various aspects but they cannot be treated as outliers either, considering that most contributors do not focus on disputed boundaries. Interpreting OSM data as a converging state to ground truth or equally opinions can both be inaccurate. We also find that mapping disputes may not be absolutely negative in a VGI project. We perform quantitative, large-scale (global) analysis of dispute-related mapping. The results show that territorial-dispute-related contributions and contributors are different from contributions and contributors in general. Territorial-dispute-related mapping is not an independent phenomenon for OSM. The contributors make much more disputes-unrelated contributions. Dispute-related entities have more (divergent) versions than normal boundaries, attract more participants, and are more semantically complete, especially for names. Dispute-related changesets generally attract more discussions. The spatial distribution of the dispute-related changesets is consistent with real-world territorial disputes and very different from that of all boundary-related changesets and all changesets. Contributors who participate in dispute-related contributions are generally more active. These users tend to have a special interest in boundaries but most of them do not focus on disputed boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rebels can comply with international law during a conflict by not violating international borders, yet strategic goals may incentivize rebels to violate these borders. When do international borders affect the spatial and temporal distribution of rebel activity in a conflict setting? I theorize rebels have an incentive to refrain from violating borders when doing so will reduce their international legitimacy. When international legitimacy is a less important goal, rebels will be more likely to violate borders. I test this claim in the context of the 1948 War in Mandate Palestine by exploiting a quasi-natural experiment in how the 1947 UN partition line was drawn. Using an original dataset on over 1,000 Palestinian villages from British colonial documents and an atlas of aerial photographs of Palestine, I use a geographic regression discontinuity design to see how the UN partition line affected the location and timing of depopulated villages during the war. The results show that villages in areas that the UN assigned to the future Israeli state as part of the 1947 partition plan were more likely to be conquered before Israel received recognition. These findings have important implications for understanding where and when rebels target areas and shed new light on important dynamics of the 1948 War in Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting discourse analysis on Chinese textual materials around 1962, this paper tries to inductively explore the national identities of Chinese people during the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. It finds that China perceived itself as a persistent and resilient nation in the ongoing fight against invasion and oppression. The predominant social discourse around 1962 showed a strong enmity and resistance toward the imperialism which was then imposed on India. These national identities have formed a natural response as maintaining a tough stance toward incursion and repression, and have contributed to China's resolution to defense its territory with resorting to military force, even though it might not be beneficial in terms of diplomatic relations and economic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since ancient times, there have always been border disputes between countries and local communities and these border disputes have been the main factor in the emergence of wars and conflicts. In particular, the political borders of the Arabian Peninsula and especially Saudi Arabia were drawn with different wars and treaties after the First World War. Due to this fact and due to reasons such as the imposition of borders, the availability of oil and energy resources, the strategic location of some regions or islands, and the intervention of extra-regional powers, some parts of these borders have not yet been agreed upon and these disagreements have continued to the present day. The most important border dispute in question is the one that is between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Especially with the strengthening of the Houthis, the border dispute went beyond partial conflicts and caused Saudi Arabia to declare war on Yemen. This study will evaluate the effects and consequences of border security on bilateral relations between the two countries by addressing the concept of border and border security. The literature review showed that the problems between Yemen and Saudi Arabia were mostly handled with their sectarian dimensions and that the border dispute was not adequately addressed. The in-depth examination of this topic shows the importance of the article. The case analysis method was used in the article. Case analysis involves examining a particular individual, group, audience, event, policy area or institution for research. Although the case analysis method has been identified with qualitative research, it was thought that it would be more appropriate to apply the case analysis method in both quantitative and qualitative research in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the discussion of the relationship between the border factor and geopolitics in the post-Soviet area and strives to identify the drivers and obstacles in the sphere of territorial integration between Kazakhstan and Russia. The aim of the article is to characterize the geopolitical landscape of thses countries and to reveal the ambivalent context of Kazakhstan's cooperation with regions across Russian-Kazakhstani border proceeding from the analysis of the interests of key players in Central Asia and the current status of the cross-border cooperation between two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the memoryscapes of Cieszyn Silesia, Orawa and Spisz in a context of the border conflicts of the twentieth century. The regions located on the current Czech-Polish and Slovak-Polish border have lived through paralleled histories of the border demarcation after WWI, which was unprecedented there. In both cases the national minorities were left behind the border, outside of their home states. Their stories and memories are, however, not being researched together. This paper contrasts the patterns of memory production related to the border shifts in the landscape in both regions. Emphasis is placed on the memory sites, their narratives and memory activism related to the conflicting past. The results show that the main axes of both memory debates are contrasting. While the conflict over Cieszyn Silesia was most shaped by the short war in 1919, the lesser-known dispute over Orawa and Spisz was marked by numerous smaller incidents, assimilation efforts and a layer of post WWII violence. This has important consequences for the memory production. The other important differentiating factor is the scope of memory activism inside of the national minority group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting discourse analysis on Chinese textual materials around 1962, this paper tries to inductively explore the national identities of Chinese people during the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. It finds that China perceived itself as a persistent and resilient nation in the ongoing fight against invasion and oppression. The predominant social discourse around 1962 showed a strong enmity and resistance toward the imperialism which was then imposed on India. These national identities have formed a natural response as maintaining a tough stance toward incursion and repression, and have contributed to China's resolution to defense its territory with resorting to military force, even though it might not be beneficial in terms of diplomatic relations and economic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Albanian-Greek maritime border in the Straits of Corfu region and the Ionian Sea reflects a complicated geographical, historical, and political reality, which constitutes a special characteristic of the Balkan Peninsula coastal region as a whole. For many centuries, the navigational routes of the Strait of Otranto and the Corfu Channel were characterized as important strategic, military, and commercial seaways for the ancient peoples of the region. In this respect, even though the Albanian-Greek southern border region has been at the center of conflicts and disagreements between these countries for many years, the problem is not thought to be completely related to the specific delimitation of the maritime borderline. The interstate maritime boundary is official and internationally recognized and is shown on all official political maps as an international borderline. The Albanian-Greek borderline is a product that came as a result of the Balkan Wars and the First World War, in which there was a great involvement and influence of the Great Powers' diplomacy. Nowadays, the possibility of Albania-Greece interstate conflicts over the southern border area and maritime borders exists. In this context, ethnographic complexity is considered problematic due to the existence of the Greek minority in Albania, as well as Albanian immigrants living in Greece. On the other hand, the natural resources that possess the maritime regions of the Corfu Channel and the Ionian Sea are another reason for the dispute over the maritime border. However, according to US security institutions, these cross-border disputes between these states may only remain at the political level and not degrade further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]