Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

Anthropological attention to political and cultural borders has grown considerably over the last twenty years. This has been due in most part to the increasing scholarly attention paid to international and other political borders, in ways that mirror political and economic elites who have continued to place borders centre-stage in their debates on the good and bad effects of globalisation. Once principally the focus of geography, today the study of borders – including their territorial, geophysical, political and cultural dimensions – has become a primary interest across the disciplines due to changing scholarly approaches to such key research subjects and objects as the state, nation, sovereignty, citizenship, migration and the over-arching forces and practices of globalisation.

The article deals with the question of how people as individuals live and simultaneously direct a border region in different ways. How are ordinary inhabitants' tactical choices and manoeuvring movements related to the organised space of two nation states and their mutual borderland? What is the analytical gain, if the borderland is a seascape with dwellers that are more maritime than territorial in their practices and views? Using Ingold's perspective of seafaring versus shipping and aspects of Deleuze/Guattari's nomadology, a cultural analysis is performed on a number of interviews with pleasure boaters in the Swedish-Danish Öresund Region. The striated and linear space of the nation state was found to be fundamental for how people live the border region. However, by its stress on heterogeneity and unpredictability the smooth space of wayfaring inhabitants is also a crucial factor for understanding how border regions come into being and change.

This article concentrates on one particular local cross-border activity carried on after the Second World War. This was a type of smuggling called joppaus in the local dialect, a practice which was enabled by the post-war economic recession and the scarcity of goods from which Finland suffered. This form of unauthorised economy is said to have been responsible for the rapid revival of the region and its inhabitants after the destruction inflicted by the war. The standard of living in the Tornio River Valley has been better than in the north of Finland in general, and this has been explained in part by this type of smuggling. Furthermore, in the last few decades joppaus has become part of the local cultural heritage.

In the last ten years, many books and articles dedicated to Pelasgians have been published in Albania, mostly by amateur historians and linguists. These works question the official discourse on the Illyrian origin of Albanians inherited from the socialist era. They also question the relationship of Albanians with Greeks, both in ancient times and in the present. Considering the fact that a significant number of those authors originate from southern Albania and that their books are widely read and appreciated in this Albanian borderland, this article argues that the recent success of Pelasgic theories can be partially explained by the new uses of the border in the post-1991 context and by the state of relations between Albanians and Greeks as experienced at the local level. Imagining the Pelasgians as prestigious ancestors appears as an answer to feelings of inequality and marginality related to new practices of the border.

This article analyses the conceptual path to the creation of national territorial autonomies of the Komi (Zyrians) and Komi-Permiaks in the 1920s. It focuses on the history of the idea of Komi autonomy and on the formation of the borders of the Komi Autonomous Oblast. The creation of the Komi autonomy was, first of all, the project of the small group of nationalist Komi communists. They tried to unite all the Komi politically, and were successful as far as their aims were in accordance with contemporary Soviet nationalities policy. However, they were not able to include Permiak areas, mainly because of the opposition of neighbouring Russian provincial elites.

In an interdisciplinary workshop in the former Iron Curtain borderlands of the Czech Republic and Bavaria seven multi-national artists and one European ethnologist revealed the cultural dynamics of boundaries both by exploring an expressive landscape and memory field, and by experiencing cultural difference as reflected in the co-operation and creation processes within the group. By using ethnographic approaches to assist the process of developing and conceptualising artworks and self-reflexive, ethno-psychoanalytic interpretation, the project followed the impact of twentieth-century border frictions and violence into collective identities, but also the arbitrary character of borders. The results suggest how a multi-perspective, subjectively informed methodology of approaching space and spatially expressed memory could be developed both for ethnology and for art, bridging the supposed gap between 'artistic' and 'scientific' methods by combining their strengths in a complementary way.

On the basis of fieldwork conducted in the two towns Görlitz and Zgorzelec, situated directly on the German-Polish border, this article explores how different versions of the border are enacted among Polish and German high-school pupils. As is usually the case with borders, the German-Polish border has a multiple, even ambivalent character. Inspired by the performative approach within actor-network theory, this article aims to qualify the concept of the multiple border, where multiplicity is understood as heterogeneous practices and patterns of absences and presences that constitute the border. The data, based on ethnographic fieldwork, consist of 'cartographies', maps made by the pupils, followed up by 'walking conversations' in the two towns on the border. The analysis shows that the border is not only enacted differently; also it is suggested that the performances all deal with and constitute an ambivalent border.

Coleman, S. and P. Collins (2007) (eds), Locating the Field, Space, Place and Context in Anthropology (Oxford: Berg), 256 pp., Pb: £19.99, ISBN-13: 978-1845204037.

Screeton, P. (2008), Mars Bars and Mushy Peas: Urban Legend and the Cult of Celebrity (Loughborough: Heart of Albion), 184 pp., Pb: £14.95, ISBN-13: 978-1-905646-11-1.

Smith, L, and A. Natsuko (2009) (eds), Intangible Heritage (London and New York: Routledge) 312 pp., Pb: £23.99, Hb: £70.00, ISBN-13: 978-0-415-47396-5.

Tiesler, N. C. (2006), Muslime in Europa: Religion und Identitätspolitiken unter veränderten gesellschaftlichen Verhältnissen (Münster: LIT), 240 pp., Pb: €24.90, ISBN-13: 978-3-8258-9490-0.