{"id":4891,"date":"2021-12-29T17:32:30","date_gmt":"2021-12-29T15:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triplex-confinium.eu\/?p=4891"},"modified":"2021-12-29T17:32:30","modified_gmt":"2021-12-29T15:32:30","slug":"on-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triplex-confinium.eu\/sr\/2021\/12\/29\/on-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"ON BORDERS"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A theoretical research framework. Border as a working instrument for analysis and design<\/b><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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\nThe notion of border signifies a limit condition, characterized by various meanings, layers and distinctions. Thresholds, boundaries and borders define the edges of everyday life and establish relationships between the built environment and communities. While the idea of border underlies a huge, multidisciplinary and complex domain of research, this text is briefly highlighting only some of the recent ideas on the concept of border, putting forth some different disciplinary perspectives for framing this topic. Based on some of the many foundational volumes<\/span> that raise the border as a figure of theoretical analysis, the first part of the text focuses on various contemporary interpretations and typologies of borders, while the second will highlight the concept of border as a working instrument for analysis and design.<\/span>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Intro. The recent study of borderlands phenomena<\/b><\/p>\n

Currently, there is an intense debate surrounding the notion of borders, spanning many disciplines, making this a rapidly blossoming academic field. So called \u201dBorder studies\u201d<\/span> appeared at the end of the XX century and most of the organisations, academic programmes and journals, associations and centers dedicated to this type of research date from the last three decades. The study of borders includes numerous disciplines,<\/span> from political science and sociology to the arts, architecture and media. Therefore, the central perspective of the border studies is the interdisciplinary one, generating research approaches that appear to be important drivers of conceptual change, not only in planning and design. Recently, scholars had adopted the extended term \u201ccritical border studies\u201d<\/span> to reflect a fluid interpretation of what constitutes a border (Gritching and Zebich-Knos, 2017).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The concept of borders is an analytical tool and a reference point for cultural studies. At the same time, it became an attractive <\/span>modus operandi<\/span><\/i> because of its simultaneous material and metaphoric resonance. Border is frequently used as a geographical magnifier to study the evolution of society and tensions around topics like migration, colonialism, identity, conflicts, cross-border cooperation, globalization. Advantageously, the concept of border shifts in focus to peripheric contingent spaces, marked by precariousness and interdependency. This both inconsistent and fertile space incite cross encounters, favouring an unpredictable access to the unfamiliar and unexpected links, some scholars praising the hybridizing effects borders pose. The latent power and innovative possibilities of conflictual regions allow the challenging of the formal structures that enabled the socio-cultural and economic oppression. Moreover, the socio-political transformations of the beginning of the 21<\/span>st<\/span> century<\/span> have added still further nuance to the concept of border. In the post-war period, European borders were challenged by globalisation and the emergence of the EU, both making borders irrelevant and replacing them with cohesive regions. Nevertheless, the recent wave of immigration into the EU and the on-going pandemic had the importance of national borders reinforced, raising the question on how to mediate borders through adaptation to existing contexts and growth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Border research in European cultural studies increasingly focuses on the shifts in European identity. The social oppositions order the populations according to a dualistic logic, highlighting differences and creating numerous boundaries. Borders not only serve as instruments for conflict resolution, but also spatially distribute people and their interactions<\/span> (Silberman, Till and Ward, 2012). In order to accommodate the deterritorialization of capital and wealth, the border\u2019s traditional role changed in geopolitics. It is now more a process than a place. In this respect\u00a0 borders are mobile, following people around,<\/span> \u00a0expanding and \u201cthickening\u201d. (Rosas, 2006). <\/span>\u00a0<\/b>Hence, borders can be found anywhere, transcending physicality and becoming portable, especially wherever poor, ethnic, immigrant, and\/or minority communities collide with the leading society (Fox, 1994): their meaning ever changing with the people experiencing them.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The nature of borders<\/b><\/p>\n

Borders are limits. From ancient times, by describing spaces through which relational systems of identity could be established, they offered groups and societies a sense of stability. The human need to draw lines functions as a cultural practice in its own right. Historically, borders materialised in walls have been justified to protect and regulate conflicts. A wall restrains mobility, interactions and exchange; yet it also establishes order by keeping people secured, protected and separated, tracing limitations between the private and public domains while also defining segregation patterns. The understanding of the many functions of borders is grounded in the cultural relationship to territory, which can change over time. During the Roman empire, \u201climes\u201d were understood as transit zones, areas of contacts between diverse people. Only from the 19th century boundaries had become precise, measurable, both a physical and a legal topic in the Western world. Modern scholars have identified specific forms of bordering that affect not only a city\u2019s structure and functional logic, but also the nature of urban experiences.To describe limits within the city that cut off and constrain neighborhoods, Jacobs coined the term \u201dborder vacuum\u201d.<\/span> Instead of growth, these produce lifeless voids, dead-end city streets, vacancy and urban decay (Jacobs, 1961). In contrast, Lynch argues that boundaries can fuse communities together (Lynch, 1960).<\/span><\/p>\n

The nature of borders can widely vary: they can be visible or invisible, law or custom, closed or opened, edgy or fluid borders. They can also be centres, not only peripheries; borders can be dividers, but also unifiers. The diversity of borders is to be understood through their collective imaginary and their potential: as a place of movement from one area to another, as a meeting point, as a possibility to experience the <\/span>Other<\/span><\/i>, as a social construct for negotiating identity, as instruments for shifting and focusing on the perimeter\/periphery rather than the centre. Borders are generated by differences that are varying in influence and strength, so the borders become negotiable, even pliable, productive, rich in resources and, therefore, characterised by permeability and mutability.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this respect, borders are to be read always considering their spatial strategy of division (intra muros \/extramuros), physical presence, social (racial and etnic including) impact, symbolic meaning, and, at a larger scale, geopolitical effect. Sometimes there are overlapping categories, like city walls, border zones, and migrating boundaries (Silberman, Till and Ward, 2012). There is\u00a0 great variety in the\u00a0 physical materialisations of national borders, from hard and violent to smooth, and even to ones too subtle to be easily noticed. Political borders are sometimes diffused, unclear and temporary<\/span>. Sadly, some borders have saturated our daily headlines, like the US-Mexico one. In the wake of 11 September 2001, border technologies and policing were increasingly expanded. While border wall construction can be considered as a notably aggressive strategy, especially on the environment and on the affected local communities, they have become exceptionally popular with certain politicians throughout the last three decades<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The contradictory yet simultaneous functions of borders \u2014to divide and connect, to exclude and include, to shield and constrain\u2014are essential to all cultures. While mutable borders are a sign of life, closed borders signify social, ethnic or political division and often become quite violent. The hard demarcations also cut border peoples\u2019 ability to coexist, cementing social differences on each side the longer they remain in place (Silberman, Till and Ward, 2012). The sealed borders cause hardened social edges to emerge: the reified borders along the Iron Curtain, the division between North and South Korea, the harsh realities of the Israeli-Palestinian and US-Mexico, but also less visible boundaries of the spatial residential segregation through the global spreading of gated, exclusive communities. These enclaves communicate widening social gaps and show the physical markers of social segregation, as gates, walls, highways, blocks of buildings or natural features, and land use zoning restrictions.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t