refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, Bosnia and
some African countries. UNHCR’s statistics
show that more than 22 million asylum seekers,
refugees and displaced people existed in 1998.
While the pressures for transformation chall-
enge the existing territorial order, states struggle
to maintain their bounded national territories and
identities, and to control, marginalize or destroy
opposition (Shapiro and Alker, 1996). Various
strategies exist to promote social integration,
such as assimilation encouraged by the state, and
various forms of socio-cultural autonomy and
language accommodation for minorities (Knight,
1985). The statistics of Amnesty International
show that not only symbolic but also physical
violence is a much used instrument in territorial
control: in 1998 human rights were violated in
142 states, political murders occurred in 47 states
and people were arrested in 78 states because of
their opinions. For many in the power structures
of the state that are dominated by the majority
nation, the perspectives of other nations and
peoples within the borders of the state are ignored,
denied and repressed. Many states have difficulty
acknowledging that they are not the nation-states
of their images and myths but multinational and
multicultural states with many different kinds of
peoples and perspectives.BOUNDARIES IN A
TRANSFORMING WORLDNo contemporary discussion of state borders can
avoid addressing globalization since this process
implies ‘border crossings’ and blurring of the
spatial categorizations between ‘us’ and ‘them’
(Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999). Authors do not
always make it clear whether they talk about the
globalization of institutions (economy, culture),
consciousness or communication networks.
Recent comments suggest that a satisfactory
definition must capture such elements as exten-
sity (stretching of social, political and economic
affairs), intensity, velocity (‘speeding up’) and
impact (Held et al., 1999: 15). All these elements
imply that boundaries between domestic and
‘global’ affairs are increasingly blurred, chal-
lenging one of the key assumptions of the terri-
torial trap (see Rosenau, 1997).
It is useful, however, to make a distinction
between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of the
globalization thesis that respectively imply
different views on the future of the state and
boundaries (Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999). The
proponents of the strong version put primary
stress on economics and technology, with asecondary emphasis on culture. States are
perceived as less important than transnational
corporations or social movements and communi-
ties, which do not respect boundaries. This view
seriously underestimates the cultural element
that serves as an important ‘glue’ in the territor-
ial trap. In Finland, for instance, the success of
Nokia in the expanding mobile phone markets is
viewed not only as an international but also as a
national success story, inspiring Finnish pride. In
this way the factor that is hollowing the territor-
ial trap in an economic sense is strengthening it
in a symbolic or cultural sense. This indicates
that globalization has perhaps changed but not
inevitably diminished the significance of cultural
or jurisdictional barriers (see Cohen, 1998). Most
strong thesis supporters see boundaries as fixed
entities and territoriality or sovereignty in essen-
tialist terms, i.e. they lean on the modernist
language of traditional political geography.
Hence boundaries are understood as lines divid-
ing social entities, not as discursive formations
and processes that are sedimented in the social
and cultural practices of these very entities
(Paasi, 1998). Authors like Ohmae (1995) use
the ideas of a borderless world as metaphors
depicting the condition of economic liberalism
and expanding capitalism, rather than discussing
concrete state borders. As such they are ‘big
metaphors’ (Barnes and Duncan, 1992) since
they change the rhetoric that is used in research.
‘Weak versionists’ (or ‘sceptics’) see inter-
nationalization as more significant than globali-
zation (Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999; Held et al.,
1999). For them the state is still the major con-
text in which people organize their daily life
(Hirst and Thompson, 1996). Accordingly, terri-
torial states are not withering away but simply
operate in a dynamic, global context. Moreover,
globalization represents not the end of territorial
distinctions and distinctiveness, but rather new
influences on local (economic) identities and
development capacities (Amin and Thrift, 1995).
The ultimate question is what will be the balance
between markets and state in the emerging
systems of global governance?
As far as the changing meanings of boundaries
are concerned, one important part of the global-
ization discourse has been the rise of specific
rhetoric that in principle calls into question the
image of a fixed territorial order, existing territo-
rial traps and boundaries. Castells has been
extremely influential in providing spatialized
metaphors and arguments for current debates.
His idea of the space of flows implies the
decreasing power of sovereignty and a challenge
to national identities and national boundaries
(Castells, 1989). Other much used notions are468 GEOPOLITICAL CULTURES3029-ch24.qxd 03-10-02 11:03 AM Page 468