Walls Borders Boundaries

How is it that walls, borders, boundaries—and their material and symbolic architectures of division and exclusion—engender their very opposite? This edited volume explores the crossings, permeations, and constructions of cultural and political borders between peoples and territories, examining how walls, borders, and boundaries signify both interdependence and contact within sites of conflict and separation. Topics addressed range from the geopolitics of Europe’s historical and contemporary city walls to conceptual reflections on the intersection of human rights and separating walls, the memory politics generated in historically disputed border areas, theatrical explorations of border crossings, and the mapping of boundaries within migrant communities.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the question remains ‘Do good fences still make good neighbours’? Since the Great Wall of China, the Antonine Wall, built in Scotland to support Hadrian's Wall, the Roman ‘Limes’ or the Danevirk fence, the ‘wall’ has been a constant in the protection of defined entities claiming sovereignty, East and West. But is the wall more than an historical relict for the management of borders? In recent years, the wall has been given renewed vigour in North America, particularly along the U.S.-Mexico border, and in Israel-Palestine. But the success of these new walls in the development of friendly and orderly relations between nations (or indeed, within nations) remains unclear. What role does the wall play in the development of security and insecurity? Do walls contribute to a sense of insecurity as much as they assuage fears and create a sense of security for those 'behind the line'? Exactly what kind of security is associated with border walls? This book explores the issue of how the return of the border fences and walls as a political tool may be symptomatic of a new era in border studies and international relations. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this volume examines problems that include security issues ; the recurrence and/or decline of the wall; wall discourses ; legal approaches to the wall; the ‘wall industry’ and border technology, as well as their symbolism, role, objectives and efficiency.

Walls play multiple social, political, economic and cultural roles and are linked to the fundamental question of how human beings live together. Globalization and urbanization have created high population density, rapid migration, growing poverty, income inequality and frequent discontent and conflict among heterogeneous populations. The writers in this volume explore how walls are changing in this era, when social “containers” have become porous, proximity has been redefined, circulation has intensified and the state as a way of organizing political life is being questioned. The authors analyze how walls articulate with other social boundaries to address feelings of vulnerability and anxiety and how they embody governmental processes, public and social contestation, fears and notions of identity and alterity. This book’s authors explore walls as the consequence of a changing web of social relationships. Whether walls are physical objects on the landscape or metaphors for difference among specific groups or communities, the writers consider them as heterotopias, powerful sites around which ways of living together are contested and transformed. They also investigate how architectural planning concerning walls may de facto become a means of waging war, as well as how demolishing walls may give way to new ways of imagining security.

*** Winner of the 2013 Julian Minghi Outstanding Research Award presented at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting *** Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, why are leading democracies like the United States, India, and Israel building massive walls and fences on their borders? Despite predictions of a borderless world through globalization, these three countries alone have built an astonishing total of 5,700 kilometers of security barriers. In this groundbreaking work, Reece Jones analyzes how these controversial border security projects were justified in their respective countries, what consequences these physical barriers have on the lives of those living in these newly securitized spaces, and what long-term effects the hardening of political borders will have in these societies and globally. Border Walls is a bold, important intervention that demonstrates that the exclusion and violence necessary to secure the borders of the modern state often undermine the very ideals of freedom and democracy the barriers are meant to protect.

This creative and informative book explores the ways in which barriers can be used to add style and character to the garden. The first half of the book looks at boundary choices, from traditional fences, walls, hedges, trellises and railings, to screens and natural boundaries. The second section of the book looks at the finishing effects that can be applied to off-the-peg or existing boundaries to customize them with your personal style, add a decorative theme, or blend them in with the property and its surroundings.

Borderwall as public space / Teddy Cruz -- Ronald Rael -- Pilgrims at the wall / Marcello Di Cintio -- Borderwall as architecture / Ronald rael -- Transborderisms / Norma Iglesias-Prieto -- Recuerdos / Ronald Rael -- Why walls don't work / Michael Dear -- Afterwards / Ronald Rael

As economic and military walls have come down in the post-Cold War era, states have rapidly built new barriers to prevent a perceived invasion of undesirables. This work examines the practice, politics, and consequences of building these walls.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the question remains ’Do good fences still make good neighbours’? Since the Great Wall of China, the Antonine Wall, built in Scotland to support Hadrian's Wall, the Roman ’Limes’ or the Danevirk fence, the ’wall’ has been a constant in the protection of defined entities claiming sovereignty, East and West. But is the wall more than an historical relict for the management of borders? In recent years, the wall has been given renewed vigour in North America, particularly along the U.S.-Mexico border, and in Israel-Palestine. But the success of these new walls in the development of friendly and orderly relations between nations (or indeed, within nations) remains unclear. What role does the wall play in the development of security and insecurity? Do walls contribute to a sense of insecurity as much as they assuage fears and create a sense of security for those 'behind the line'? Exactly what kind of security is associated with border walls? This book explores the issue of how the return of the border fences and walls as a political tool may be symptomatic of a new era in border studies and international relations. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this volume examines problems that include security issues ; the recurrence and/or decline of the wall; wall discourses ; legal approaches to the wall; the ’wall industry’ and border technology, as well as their symbolism, role, objectives and efficiency.