also a cultural system of signification. A state
that successfully reproduces itself as a nation
must have specific symbolic and institutional
practices for narrating, signifying and legitimat-
ing the nation and the bounded territory that it
occupies. In this context, boundaries become part
of the ways by which people try to make sense
of the world at all spatial scales. Boundaries
not only divide but also define and regulate
social action. They are, in a way, ‘forces at work’
(Rée, 1998).
One significant ideological manifestation of
the territorial trap has been the understanding of
‘national cultures’ as homogeneous coherent
phenomena so that territory and exclusiveness
become ‘natural’ constituents of cultures.
Boundaries become, thus, an integral part of the
very understanding of a ‘national culture’, and a
particular problem for those who inhabit border-
lands or cross them as immigrants, refugees or
exiles. Yet cultures have always been based on
the exchange of ideas and material innovations,
and it is cultural flows that have drawn nations
together (Featherstone, 1995). National cultures
also change perpetually: new generations produce
new national sharings, amalgamate them with
‘tradition’ and may generate perspectives on
territory, boundaries and identity that differ con-
siderably from those of previous generations
(Paasi, 1996). This dynamic underscores once
again how group identities based on bounded
cultures are not natural but are created in specific
contexts and in response to certain forces.
‘Cultural identity’ is, therefore, both the scene
and the object of political struggles (Cohen,
1998: Jackson and Penrose, 1993). To take but
one illustration, in Bosnia, for instance, Muslim,
Croat and Serb children learn their own ‘truths’
of the national history. Hence, Gavrilo Princip,
the Bosnian Serb who shot Archduke Franz
Ferdinand in Sarajevo and set World War I in
motion, is a ‘hero and poet’ for Serbs, an ‘assassin’
for Croats and a ‘nationalist’ for Bosnian Muslims
(Hedges, 1997).
The contemporary world harbours hundreds of
ethno-national groups; by some estimates there
are as many as 5000 of these ‘nations’. They
coexist with some 200 bounded states that repre-
sent a vast array of internal differences in
‘national’ cultures, economies, identities and
backgrounds of inhabitants. In fewer than 20
states the minorities account for less than 5 per
cent of the population. This suggests that even if
the attempt to fuse national identity and national
state has been the major motive in European and
world history, most modern states are plural multi-
national and multicultural states (Schaeffer,
1997; Smith, 1995). As a result numerous socialgroups in Europe and elsewhere regard
themselves as ‘nations’ and struggle for self-
determination or a state of their own. In some
places this process occurs peacefully (Scotland);
in other contexts violence has been part of the
process (Basque country, Northern Ireland,
Kurdistan, Israel); in the extreme case the result
has been a terrible civil war (Sierra Leone, East
Timor). This suggests that territory and bound-
aries are still vital in national imagination,
symbolism and rhetoric.
While the world presented in maps is often
ahistoric and stable, it is the postcolonial strug-
gles that give the current geopolitical map much
of its dynamic, especially inside the existing
boundaries. While the international border dis-
putes between India and Pakistan and between
Ethiopia and Eritrea have recently been very
visible in the media, in fact most border conflicts
occur nowadays inside states. Since 1995 only
one or two conflicts per year have been between
states, whereas some 25–30 have been within
states. In Africa, for instance, most conflicts
occur inside the existing colonial boundaries
(Biger, 1995; Shapiro, 1999). While also inter-
state conflicts occur now mainly in poor Third
World countries, nationhood, forms of identity
and even national iconographies are increasingly
contested in most contemporary states. Also the
‘first nations’ all around the world are good
examples of internal challenges to boundaries.
Often supporting environmental values, tradi-
tional community life and identities, and
people’s rights to land and old territories, they
struggle to transform the legislation and territor-
ial governance that have been created by domi-
nant national groups. Their interests may also
cross the existing state borders – often by using
modern information technology.
Displaced people and immigrants also question
the significance of boundaries and the state-
centred territorial and ‘cultural’ order. The inten-
sifying interaction between states has created a
‘perpetual motion machine’ where refugees,
migrants and tourists cross borders and create
networks of translocalities, places where
processes occurring from local to global scale
come together (Appadurai, 1996). The separa-
tion of people from their ‘native culture’ through
either physical dislocation or displacement – the
colonizing imposition of ‘foreign culture’ – has
been one of the most formative experiences of
this century, and the estimated number of
refugees alone has been 60–100 million people
since World War II (Bammer, 1994). Whereas
the refugees at the end of World War II were
mainly Europeans, this group is increasingly
heterogeneous today, the main groups now beingBOUNDARIES IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD 4673029-ch24.qxd 03-10-02 11:03 AM Page 467