Frontier & Identity

Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World by Malcom Anderson

INTRODUCTION

"Contemporary frontiers are not simply lines on maps, the unproblematic givens of political life, where one jurisdiction or political authority ends and another begins; they are central to understanding life."

fron·tier  

[fruhn-teer ]

noun

originated from the Military as "the zone in which one faced the enemy"- now it is the precise line at which jurisdictions meet

• the part of a country that borders another country
• a boundary; border
• the land or territory that forms the furthest extent of a country's inhabited regions
• the edge, the furthest limit of a space
• the basic political institution 
• it defines the identity of a group of individuals
• it bounds space
• the limits, physically and culturally

 

i·den·ti·ty

[ahy-den-ti-tee, ih-den-]

 

noun

 

political or social; based on locality, social class, language, ethnicity, and religion

• the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another
• the sense of self, providing sameness and continuity in personality over time 
• an instance or point of sameness
• an assertion that two terms refer to the same thing

"A pervasive, often almost superstitious fear characterizes closed frontiers as line of transition between two worlds- crossing them involves a passage to dangerous forbidden lands."