Boundary Making-A Handbook for Statesmen, Treaty Editors, and Boundary Commissioners.Stephen B. Jones

1946 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-345
Author(s):  
Roderick Peattie
Keyword(s):  
Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-100
Author(s):  
Romaine Farquet

AbstractAlbanian-speaking migrants in Switzerland mobilized massively on behalf of the national cause in Kosovo in the 1990s. Despite this strong engagement with their homeland, however, some have felt forgotten and have been offended by negative stereotypes in Kosovo itself since the war ended in 1999. Taking a boundary-making approach, the author analyses the ways in which Albanian-speaking former activists in Switzerland have responded to their unfavourable standing, and how they have sought to improve their transnational position. She shows how former activists tend to choose between one of two narratives to describe their place in their societies of origin and settlement: either they yearn to be a part of the ‘Albanian nation’ as imagined in Kosovo; or they adopt a new model of what it is to be ‘Albanian’ in Switzerland.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (262) ◽  
pp. 97-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Ladegaard

AbstractMany people in developing countries are faced with a dilemma. If they stay at home, their children are kept in poverty with no prospects of a better future; if they become migrant workers, they will suffer long-term separation from their families. This article focuses on one of the weakest groups in the global economy: domestic migrant workers. It draws on a corpus of more than 400 narratives recorded at a church shelter in Hong Kong and among migrant worker returnees in rural Indonesia and the Philippines. In sharing sessions, migrant women share their experiences of working for abusive employers, and the article analyses how language is used to include and exclude. The women tell how their employers construct them as “incompetent” and “stupid” because they do not speak Chinese. However, faced by repression and marginalisation, the women use their superior English language skills to get back at their employers and momentarily gain the upper hand. Drawing on ideologies of language as the theoretical concept, the article provides a discourse analysis of selected excerpts focusing on language competence and identity construction.


Slavic Review ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret H. Beissinger

Based on fieldwork (primarily in southern Romania), this article treats identity-construction among professional male Romani musicians, investigating in particular the discourse that they generate as they maintain their exclusive vocational niche on the boundaries of intersecting ethnic communities. Seeking to establish the influence of Romani musicians as agents in the construction of their own identity, Beissinger discusses notions that Romani musicians provide of non-Roms and other Roms (including other musicians), as well as how they portray surrounding cultural and political phenomena as expressions of their syncretic occupational and ethnic sense of self. Beissinger argues that Romani musicians are unquestionably enclosed by socially inflicted boundaries but are themselves also agents of boundary-making as they articulate connections with and distinctions from the world around them. Throughout, she draws pertinent comparisons with Romani musicians in other east European countries.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110439
Author(s):  
Byung-Ho Lee

This study analyzes, from a comparative and historical perspective, the clash between state statutory law and native customary law and the consequential effects of that rivalry on ethno-legal categories. It adopts a long-term perspective on Chinese society, with a particular focus on its history over the last three centuries. Although the imperial Chinese state had a centralized legal code, many non-Han subjects followed different legal standards and systems. Such conditions became the basis of legal pluralism and the structural constraint for full-fledged legal uniformity. It is argued that state-imposed ethnic categories in China have been institutionalized to determine those who should be protected, or even privileged, by their own native law. This is especially true during the alien dynasties of conquest, which purposely emphasized the principle of personal law to preserve legal prerogatives of ruling ethnicity. Similarly, indigenes on the frontier carried a variety of legal exemptions on grounds of the principle of territorial law. Such conditions could leave room for individual agency and provide incentives for both acculturated Han settlers and sinicized indigenes to claim native status. Several examples, including an 18th-century homicide case in China’s southwestern frontier, substantiate how individuals manipulated their ethnicity for their self-advantage and how these behaviors complicated the personality and territoriality principles of imperial law. In this sense, ethnic law served as an institutionalized distillation of ethnic group boundaries, which were realigned by shifts in self-identity. The legacy of China’s imperial practices of particularistic jural relations continues today.


2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Van Eijk

This article examines ‘neighbouring’ as the setting in which cross-category relations develop and symbolic boundaries are constructed. The study is based on thirty in-depth interviews with residents living in a multi-ethnic and a mono-ethnic neighbourhood in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The findings challenge the hoped-for outcomes of social mixing in neighbourhoods, as well as the view that boundary making is something inherent to multi-ethnic neighbourhoods only. Neighbour relations are often setting-specific (relations are interchangeable, scripted and bounded, and passively maintained), which is relevant for understanding the spatiality of neighbouring and the limited exchange of personal information between neighbours. Because neighbouring involves the balancing of personal privacy and close spatial proximity, the exchange of personal information is limited, while spatial proximity ensures easy access to observable (through seeing, hearing and smelling) categorical markers that signify class, ethnicity, lifestyle, etc. In this way, neighbour interaction reconstructs symbolic boundaries rather than breaking them down.


2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zorodzai Dube

What does it mean to live in a society where everything good is located within one ethnicity, and geography? In reading the gospel of John, one gets the impression that faithful disciples, the Holy Spirit and morality are exclusively located within the Johannine community and can only permeate to the outside through the good work of the insiders – the disciples. Everything is asymmetric – morality, ideal disciples and good virtues – these originate from within John’s community. Outside John’s community, it is darkness that awaits the illuminating lights of John’s disciples, without which they will remain in perpetual darkness. Despite recent theories that position John as a missionary and an open community, still it does not remove the asymmetric nature of the gospel. The study builds on views inspired by scholars such as Jonathan Draper (1992:13) to argue that John used the Holy Spirit to naturalise identities. From this perspective and if read from the South African context of racism, ethnicity and gender, John makes the reader think about the consequences and implications of exclusive social boundaries.Keywords: Spirit, identity, boundary making, modernity, Social cohesion


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 106-122
Author(s):  
Fiona Hurd ◽  
Suzette Dyer

Purpose Communities of work are a phenomenon closely associated with government social and industrial policy, and can be tracked in contemporary examples globally alongside industrial development. The purpose of this paper is to explore community identity within a town which was previously single industry, but has since experienced workforce reduction and to a large degree, industry withdrawal. Design/methodology/approach Using an inductive approach, the researchers interviewed 32 participants who had resided (past or present) within the instrumental case study town. A thematic analytical framework, drawing on the work of Boje (2007) was employed. Findings A significant theme to emerge from the participants was the public assertion of social cohesion and belonging. However, what was interesting, was that beneath this unified exterior, lay accounts of multiple forms of demarcation. Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s (1983) notion of the imagined community, and Bauman’s (2001) identity in globalisation, this contradiction is conceptualised as boundary-making moments of identification and disidentification. Research limitations/implications This research is specific to the New Zealand context, although holds many points of interest for the wider international audience. The research provides a broad example of the layering of the collective and individual levels of identity. Social implications This research provides a voice to the wider individual, community and societal implications of managerial practices entwined with political decisions. This research encourages managers and educators in our business schools to seek to understand the relationship between the political, corporate, community and individual realms. Originality/value This research makes a significant contribution to understandings of the interconnectedness of social policy, industry, and the lived experiences of individuals. Moreover, it contributes to the broader single industry town literature, which previously has focussed on stories of decline from a North American context.


Author(s):  
Jenny Paananen ◽  
Camilla Lindholm ◽  
Melisa Stevanovic ◽  
Taina Valkeapää ◽  
Elina Weiste

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Ana-Teodora Kurkina

State Boundaries in the Minds of Men: Bulgarian Intellectuals Dividing the Balkans in the mid-19th CenturyThe correlation between the political imagination of intellectuals and their social ties is rarely linked to the state-building projects they produce. In most cases, political and social realities in regions do not coincide with the state boundaries sketched by intellectuals. Nevertheless, they do reflect the ideas of a narrow stratum of interconnected individuals that are easy to target and follow.The current text introduces and analyses the individual ties that laid the foundation for state-building creativity in the context of the mid-19th century empires. It suggests that elites occupy a different place in the social hierarchy of the forming nations, creating their preliminary state boundaries mostly based on their own interconnections and personal considerations. While their plans do not necessarily succeed, they usually reflect the nature of the debates and concerns of a relatively small group that conceives them.The case of the Bulgarian public actors in the mid-19th century offers a concentrated picture of a predominantly mobile intellectual elite engaged in the division of the Balkans. That elite included not only revolutionary thinkers like Georgi Rakovski, but also poets and journalists like his younger contemporaries, Hristo Botev and Lyuben Karavelov. Following their writings, one can produce a picture illustrating the correlation between state boundary-making and the imagination of intellectuals. While the Bulgarian example is easy to follow, it is not unique. The hypothesis can be transferred to other cases and other elites engaged in state-building debates, especially those isolated from the reality of their target group due to their position in the social hierarchy, emigrant status or conflicting affiliations. Государственные границы в сознании людей: деление Балканов болгарскими интеллектуалами в середине 19 века Корреляция между политическим воображением интеллектуалов и их социальными связями редко ассоциируется с проектами по конструированию государства, которые они создают. В большинстве случаев, политические и социальные реалии в различных регионах не совпадают с государственными границами, начертанными полити- ческими активистами. Они отражают идеи узкой прослойки контак- тирующих индивидумов, чьи действия легко увидеть и проследить.Данный текст рассматривает и анализирует личные связи политических активистов, которые заложили основы проектов по конструированию государства в контексте империй середины 19 века. Автор утверждает, что интеллектуальные элиты занимали особое место в социальной иерархии формирующихся наций, создавая предварительные государственные границы, базируя их на своих личных связях и идеях. Их планы не венчались успехом во всех случаях, однако, они отражали природу дебатов и интересов маленькой группы, которая их выражала, но никак не всего населения.Случай болгарских политических активистов середины 19 века представляет собой пример преимущественно мобильной элиты, вовлеченной в раздел Балканского полуострова. Эта элита включала в себя не только революционных мыслителей как Георгий Раковский, но также поэтов и публицистов как его младшие современники Христо Ботев и Любен Каравелов. Анализируя оставленные ими письменные документы, можно воспроизвести модель, иллюстрирующую корреляцию между конструированием государственных границ и политическим воображением интеллектуалов. Болгарский пример предлагает достаточное количество материала для проведения исследования, однако, он далеко не уникален. Данная система может буть перенесена на другие случаи, в которых фигурируют элиты, причастные к конструированию государственных границ. Наиболее подробно данная модель иллюстрирует деятельность представителей элиты, которые находятся в изоляции от своей целевой группы из-за своего положения в социальной иерархии, статуса эмигранта или противоречивых идентичностей. Granice państwowe w umysłach ludzkich: dzielenie Bałkanów przez bułgarskich intelektualistów w połowie XIX wiekuKorelacja między polityczną wyobraźnią intelektualistów a ich więziami społecznymi rzadko jest kojarzona z tworzonymi przez nich projektami budowy państwa. W większości przypadków regionalne realia polityczne nie pokrywają się z granicami państwowymi wyznaczonymi przez działaczy politycznych. Odzwierciedlają one idee wąskiej warstwy wzajemnie powiązanych jednostek, których działania można łatwo dostrzec i prześledzić.Niniejszy tekst analizuje osobiste powiązania aktywistów politycznych, którzy stworzyli podstawy dla projektów budowy państw w epoce imperiów połowy XIX wieku. Autorka twierdzi, że elity intelektualne zajmowały szczególne miejsce w społecznej hierarchii formujących się narodów, tworząc wstępne granice państwowe w oparciu o osobiste więzi i idee. Ich plany nie we wszystkich przypadkach były zwieńczone sukcesem, lecz odzwierciedlały specyfikę debat i interesów małej grupy, która je wyrażała, a nie całej ludności.Przypadek bułgarskich aktywistów politycznych połowy XIX wieku stanowi przykład mobilnej elity zaangażowanej w podział Półwyspu Bałkańskiego. W skład tej elity weszli nie tylko rewolucyjni myśliciele jak Georgi Rakovski, ale także poeci i publicyści jak Christo Botev i Luben Karavelov. Analizując pisane przez nich dokumenty, można odtworzyć model ilustrujący korelację pomiędzy konstruowaniem granic, a polityczną wyobraźnią intelektualistów. Bułgarski przykład oferuje wystarczającą ilość materiału do badania, lecz jest daleki od bycia wyjątkowym. Model ten może być przeniesiony do innych przypadków, w których biorą udział elity zaangażowane w konstruowanie granic państwowych, jednocześnie znakomicie ilustruje działalność przedstawicieli elit, którzy są odizolowani od grupy docelowej ze względu na sprzeczną z nią tożsamość, status emigranta lub pozycję w hierarchii społecznej.


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