The author, drawing on the theoretical conceptual developments and changes in the field of border area research during the last decades, identifies and describes three analytical trends ("shifts"): the processual shift, the multiplicity shift and the complexity shift. These are not separate from each other, but refer to specific orientations in border research. Starting from the observation that in the wake of the so-called border turn there was an increase in awareness of borders, and against the background of the practice turn, which no longer sees culture as being characterised by representations, but by practices, through the three shifts new possibilities arise for examining borders, which focus more sharply on the processual and performative elements of the border.
The UniGR-Center for Border Studies Border Textures working group was set up in 2015 to pursue and further develop the cultural orientation of Border Studies in the Greater Region. This research orientation focuses on the symbolic-social dimension of borders, which it addresses from both high and popular cultural angles and everyday cultural angles. To do this the working group has developed the Border Textures approach, which, as a methodology and heuristic, addresses the practises and discourses around borders with their actors, media, materialisations, effects, places and the complex interactions between them. The approach forms an instrument for analysis and refection that helps to understand the social and cultural workings and mechanisms of border (de)stabilisation.
Borders introduce a division into the world. According to the author, this definition has four consequences for a theory of the border: (1) the border is in between, (2) the border is in motion, (3) the border is a process of circulation, (4) the border is not reducible to space. Based on these four consequences he outlines a methodology, or a « critical limology » as he phrases it.
Natural resource management (NRM) systems are characterized by complex relationships between technical, eco-social, economic, and political processes and perspectives. In the analysis and management of natural resource systems we encounter a multitude of social, disciplinary, cultural, and technical boundaries that can be bridged by a trans- and interdisciplinary research design. Many different concepts for inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration in NRM systems exist already in various research areas in the USA, Switzerland and Great Britain. The concept of “boundary work” provides an additional approach to designing effective and successful trans- and interdisciplinary research on NRM systems and to building bridges between science, politics, and society. In such trans- and interdisciplinary research, various problems arise, which are illustrated by relying on a research project on NRM systems in Uzbekistan.
