West vs East, antifascism vs fascism, capitalism vs communism: these are the symbolic boundaries that have divided Europe. Focusing on the Adriatic and central European regions, this collection of essays explores ruptures and continuities in memory cultures, commemorative practices and the varying politics of the past in European borderlands.

The book analyses issues associated with the contemporary and memory in the Polish-German borderlands – a complex, multidimensional cultural and geographic area. The first section of the book, which focuses on contemporary issues, is divided into three parts: namely, a theoretical body, records of conversations with the inhabitants of the borderlands who are engaged in social activities, and records of workshops and conversations that brought together teenage inhabitants of the borderlands. Close cooperation with the inhabitants of two borderland towns resulted in several interesting perspectives on the borderlands, which are seen as a physical space, as well as a mental, intimate, close, and sometimes frustrating space subject to micro- and macro-scale transformations. In this book, the borderlands are viewed from these two perspectives. The micro-scale, is marked out by the individual experience of the inhabitants of the borderlands, and the macro-scale by the institutional framework established for the purpose of constructing an integrated community on the border.

This book offers innovative perspectives on the intersections between history and memory in Central and Eastern European borderlands. It focuses on the case of Latgale, the multicultural region of eastern Latvia which borders Russia, Belarus and Lithuania, and explores the multiple layers of memories and historical narratives about this borderland in Latvian public history. Based on a detailed analysis of national and regional museums, as well as material from interviews and an expert survey, the study examines how different actors and projects negotiate the borderland's complex history and attempt to shape it into meaningful narratives in the present. Moving beyond binary ethnolinguistic approaches of "Latvian" versus "Russian" interpretations of the past, a more nuanced analytical framework is developed that compares state-level constructions of national master-narratives, the uses of history for local region-building, the persistence of Soviet official narratives, and transnational initiatives aimed at transcending the conceptual borders of the nation-state. The reader will find this to be a fascinating study into the little-known case of Latgale and a valuable contribution to the broader research fields of memory politics and borderlands in the post-Soviet space.

An examination of the Basques' response to war

With a New Preface by the Author Through personal journeys and historical inquiry, this PEN Literary Award finalist explores how America’s still unfolding history and ideas of “race” have marked its people and the land. Sand and stone are Earth’s fragmented memory. Each of us, too, is a landscape inscribed by memory and loss. One life–defining lesson Lauret Savoy learned as a young girl was this: the American land did not hate. As an educator and Earth historian, she has tracked the continent’s past from the relics of deep time; but the paths of ancestors toward her—paths of free and enslaved Africans, colonists from Europe, and peoples indigenous to this land—lie largely eroded and lost. A provocative and powerful mosaic that ranges across a continent and across time, from twisted terrain within the San Andreas Fault zone to a South Carolina plantation, from national parks to burial grounds, from “Indian Territory” and the U.S.–Mexico Border to the U.S. capital, Trace grapples with a searing national history to reveal the often unvoiced presence of the past. In distinctive and illuminating prose that is attentive to the rhythms of language and landscapes, she weaves together human stories of migration, silence, and displacement, as epic as the continent they survey, with uplifted mountains, braided streams, and eroded canyons. Gifted with this manifold vision, and graced by a scientific and lyrical diligence, she delves through fragmented histories—natural, personal, cultural—to find shadowy outlines of other stories of place in America. "Every landscape is an accumulation," reads one epigraph. "Life must be lived amidst that which was made before." Courageously and masterfully, Lauret Savoy does so in this beautiful book: she lives there, making sense of this land and its troubled past, reconciling what it means to inhabit terrains of memory—and to be one.

This book discusses the politics of space and identity in the borderlands of northeastern India between the early 1800s and the 1930s. Critiquing contemporary post-colonial histories where this region emerges as fragments, this book sees these perspectives as continuing to be entrapped in a civilizational approach to history writing. Beginning in the pre-colonial period where it focuses on the negotiated character of state-formation during the Mughal imperium, the book then enters the space of the colonial where it looks at some of the early interventions of the East India Company. The analysis of markets as transmitters of authority highlights an important argument that the book makes. Peasantization and the introduction of the notion of the sedentary agriculturist as the productive subject also come up for a detailed discussion, along with economic change and property settlements, which are seen as important ways through which the institution of colonial legality got entrenched in the region. Underlining the interface between the political economy and practices of cultural studies, the book also explores the connections between speech, production of counter narratives of historical memory, political culture and economy, with a focus on the cultural production of a borderland identity that was marked by hyphenated existence between proto- 'Bengal' and proto- 'Assam'.

Focuses on the modern Mexican-American borderlands, where a boundary line seems to separate two dissimilar cultures and economies.

This book aims to theoretically and empirically fill the gap between security studies--that remain focused on the discriminatory function of the border, and borderlands studies--that document the social dynamics of cross border societies.

Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, converges with inexpensive land and labor. Indonesian female migrants dominate the island’s economic landscape both as factory workers and as prostitutes servicing working class tourists from Singapore. Indonesians also move across the border in search of work in Malaysia and Singapore as plantation and construction workers or maids. Export processing zones such as Batam are both celebrated and vilified in contemporary debates on economic globalization. The Anxieties of Mobility moves beyond these dichotomies to explore the experiences of migrants and tourists who pass through Batam. Johan Lindquist’s extensive fieldwork allows him to portray globalization in terms of relationships that bind individuals together over long distances rather than as a series of impersonal economic transactions. He offers a unique ethnographic perspective, drawing together the worlds of factory workers and prostitutes, migrants and tourists, and creating a compelling account of everyday life in a borderland characterized by dramatic capitalist expansion. The book uses three Indonesian concepts (merantau, malu, liar) to shed light on the mobility of migrants and tourists on Batam. The first refers to a person’s relationship with home while in the process of migration. The second signifies the shame or embarrassment felt when one is between accepted roles and emotional states. The third, liar, literally means "wild" and is used to identify those who are out of place, notably squatters, couples in premarital cohabitation, and prostitutes without pimps. These sometimes overlapping concepts allow the book to move across geographical and metaphorical boundaries and between various economies. The Anxieties of Mobility is an ideal text for courses dealing with gender, globalization, and anthropology. A documentary film, B.A.T.A.M., directed and produced by the author, is available from Documentary Educational Resources.

This annotated bibliography provides a guide for grappling with border issues and offers an account of the research discourse on the interdisciplinary disciplines of Border Studies, Memory Studies and (Teacher) Education: the reviews collected in this volume connect a variety of approaches such as education for diversity and inclusion; borders, memories and their representation in the media; Museum Studies and pedagogy, and present a wealth of information and material that refers to major socio-historical events which shaped European regions and dominated public debate. Angela Vaupel is a senior lecturer at St Mary's University College Belfast and has widely published on aspects of European Cultural Studies.