Spaces and Identities in Border Regions

... with the editors

1. »Books the world doesn't need.« Why does this not apply to your book?

Also in the scientific field spaces and identities are often still assumed to be pre-existing and fixed elements. The contributions in this book, by contrast, show, both on a theoretical and an empirical level, how spaces and identities can be consistently conceived and investigated as social processes. Here, border regions constitute particularly suitable contexts for reflection and are only rarely subject of interdisciplinary approaches.

2. Which new perspectives does the book open?

The closely interlinked chapters of the book were written in an international context, marked by different languages, academic structures and styles of thought. This diversity was at the same time a source of inspiration for the joint approach with its three points of focus: institutional, media-related and everyday-cultural practices as crystallization points of spaces and identities. What is remarkable here is the rare attempt to consider social and territorial dimensions of spaces and identities in combination with each other and also determine them empirically.

3. What significance does the subject have in the current research debates?

It is in particular with its interdisciplinary character that the book responds to current approaches in the Humanities, which are referred to as ›Doing Space‹, ›Doing Identity‹, ›Practice Turn‹ or ›Governmentality Studies‹. But their combination with border regions as contexts and objects of investigation ties into an only very recent development in 'Border Studies'. In doing so, the book makes a theoretically and empirically grounded contribution in the field of social-constructivist ›Border Studies‹ and space and identity research.

4. With whom would you preferably like to discuss your book?

In the same way that an increasing number of scholars are working along the margins of disciplines, this book also stands at the crossroads between various disciplines of social and cultural studies. Considering the concepts employed and the approaches used, it would be particularly attractive to engage in a debate with colleagues from the fields of spatial sociology, social and cultural studies, praxeology and governmentality theory.

5. Your book in one sentence:

It brings a new perspective to a familiar terrain that puts spaces, borders and identities into context and turns social practice into a key category.