Cultural Geography

BOUNDARIES IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD 463

of the boundary, supplementingthe power of the

state. The number of crossing points has increased

dramatically, being now more than 20. The border,

however, has not disappeared and is still controlled,

but now in less exclusive ways, displaying the

changing meanings of boundaries and territoriality.

Further, it is not only a state-to-state border but

also the sole border between the EU and Russia

and one of the deepest divides in the world as far

as the standards of living in the respective states

are concerned.

Most people outside Finland may not know

that Oulu is one of the central bases of operation

of Nokia, a traditional Finnish manufacturing

firm that has rapidly become the most significant

name in the mobile phone marketplace. Its slogan

‘Nokia – connecting people’ celebrates the oppo-

site of boundaries and borders. With R&D centres

in 15 countries on four continents, products sold

in 130 states, and more than 90 per cent of its

stock owned by foreigners, Nokia is a global

company that has apparently transcended the

borders of the nation-state. Along with the rise

of Nokia and other high-tech firms, Oulu has

become increasingly international, partly because

of the links between these firms and the univer-

sity, both of which draw educated people to the

city, many of them crossing the borders between

states, cultures and social roles. The city is the

centre of the province of Northern Ostrobothnia,

which means that much of the regional decision

making within the context of the EU is located

there, again passing national boundaries. This

relativitization of the location of Oulu during the

1990s seems to illustrate the changing functions

of political boundaries in a globalizing network-

ing world. Superficially at least, it seems to

support arguments about the disappearance of

borders and nation-states in a world character-

ized by networking people, transnational corpo-

rations and suprastate levels of governance

(Ohmae, 1995).

However, the disappearance of boundaries has

been more celebrated in the catchy logos of

transnational corporations than realized in prac-

tice. Boundaries are dense and multilayered

processes whose meanings derive not merely

from economic forces (or slogans!) but also from

the accumulated histories and cultures of politi-

cal entities that are still very much alive: states.

The world political map is made up of almost

200 different states. Between them are hundreds

of boundaries, some open and peaceful, some

closed and full of political dynamite. All of these

borders are human creations and a good number

of them have contested stories of identity, struggle,

desire and history embedded in their existence

(Kirby, 1996). As the Finnish–Swedish and

Finnish–Russian borders demonstrate, even

different boundaries of the same state may have

diverging, historically contingent narratives

of identity associated with them. These narra-

tives and their everyday meanings may also vary

in the socio-spatial consciousness of various

Figure 24.1 The Berlin Wall 2000

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