The Lines that Continue to Separate Us: Borders in Our Borderless World

The nature of 'antecedent', 'subsequent' and 'superimposed' boundaries, referring to the relationship between border demarcation and the extent to which the territory in question had been settled or was perceived as constituting virgin and unsettled land. The superimposed borders of the colonial and imperial powers in Europe which such borders have been responsible for much of the intertribal warfare, genocide and ethnic cleansing in Africa, Asia and other parts of the colonized world. Also a good example of this would be the terminologies and typologies which were used by geographers over 50 years ago in their attempt to categorize border types and to create typologies which would neatly slot different borders into separate compartments explaining the way in which they evolved over time and were demarcated.”
While many geographers are unable to grasp the idea that a border can be a non-territorial construct, many sociologists and psychologists are equally unable to fathom why territory should play such a dominant role in our contemporary understanding of borders, as though the only unit of societal ordering which requires categorization and compartmentalization is the physical space in which we reside. …