Borders & Border Regions in Europe & North America

A comprehensive analysis by scholars from a number of fields focused on a comparative approach to borders and frontiers.

From the preface: "In June of 1994, a group of scholars from Europe and North and Central America congregated in Berlin in order to attend a three-day conference on issues related to international border regions and transboundary cooperation. The conference, titled "Borders and Border Regions: N e w Roles in a Changing Global Context," was organized jointly by the Institute for International Security and Conflict Resolution and the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias (both at San Diego State University); the Institute of Regional Development and Structural Planning (IRS) in Erkner (by Berlin), Germany; the Science Center for Social Research(WZB) inBerlin;andtheInstitutdesEtudesPolitiques(IEP)inParis. Economists, political scientists, historians, geographers, conflict resolution experts, and sociologists, among others, were in attendance....The purpose of this scientific encounter was to encourage a genuine interna tionalization of research on transboundary cooperation. In order to do this, itwas felt that discussion should be kept as broad as possible, allowing for a treatment of economic, cultural, political, environmental, and security components of transboundary regionalism. As is evident from the international literature, a bewildering array of concepts are being circulated and popularized in an attempt togivemeaningtoapost-ColdWarworld.We areofferedattractiveandexciting new concepts of political geography, such as regions states and localforeign diplomacy while the environmental imperative, the paradigm of bioregionalism, is forming the basis of local attempts at transboundary problem solving."