The Geography of Border Landscapes

The Geography of Border Landscapes

Border Region
Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, former Yugoslavia, Russia, Japan, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Botswana, Mexico
Language(s)
Anglais
Introduction

This book deals with border landscapes, placing the emphasis on the impact that political decisions and ideological differences can have on the environment in border areas.

Summary

In this book, geopolitical experts from different countries provide important information on border landscapes thereby enabling us to get a deeper understanding of certain aspects of cultural landscapes. The political border represents a spatial limit to the political organisation of territories. But the way in which these borders are used and perceived can have an effect on the landscape.

Content

For geographers, the concept of the border landscape remains a vague one and has had little or no impact on the discipline. The primary objective is to initiate a debate on the nature of the border landscape. The introduction outlines the history of the concept of the border landscape and briefly presents the different case studies the book contains. Through the different examples, the book describes, classifies and explains the evolution of border landscapes and the changes they have undergone from different methodological angles. Borders have differing levels of permeability that also depend on the nature of the flows and the timescale. Borders are very diverse and have different functions. This book contributes a variety of reflections on the border landscape to facilitate understanding of the concept.

The tables of contents is as follows:

  1. Introduction: The border landscape concept
  2. From conflict to harmony in border landscapes
  3. Geographical investigations in boundary areas of the Basle region (‘Regio’)
  4. Boundary, values and identity: The Swiss–Italian transborder region
  5. Some developing and current problems of the eastern border landscape of the Federal Republic of Germany: The Bavarian example
  6. Geographic problems of frontier regions: The case of the Italo-Yugoslav border landscape
  7. The impact of sovereignty transfer on the settlement pattern of Sakhalin Island
  8. Society, state and peripherally: The case of the Thai– Malaysian border landscape
  9. The Indonesia–Papua New Guinea border landscape
  10. Coastal islands on an international boundary: Dauan and Parama in the Torres Strait
  11. Inter- and intra-regional conflicts in Pakistan’s border landscape
  12. The Gulf of Aqaba coastline: An evolving border landscape
  13. The evolution and contemporary significance of the Bophuthatswana–Botswana border landscape
  14. Where the Colorado flows into Mexico
  15. Peacekeeping missions and landscapes
Conclusions

Each case study deals in one way or another with a complex and changing set of interrelations between society, the economy, the political system and space. Borders can be differentiated from the social, economic and political points of view and on the level of interactions internal to the State. The book is constructed around the three spatial dimensions conceptualised by John House: state-state differentiation, intra-state core and boundary-length differentiation.

Key Messages

There is still scope for a great deal of research in this field, but the book emphasises the need to escape the narrow limits of the conceptual definition of the term 'border landscape'. It is necessary to establish a link with the development of cultural geography from the point of view of the concept of landscape, but also with the other social sciences.

Lead

Dennis Rumley, professor at the University of Western Australia

Julian V. Minghi, Professor Emeritus,      Department of Geography, University of South Carolina

Author of the entry
Perrine
Dethier
Contact Person(s)
Date of creation
2019
Publisher
Routledge
Identifier

ISBN : 9781 138815582

eISBN : 9781315746593