Routledge Bordering: Identity Processes between the National and Personal

What is a border? This seemingly simple question is here answered via a multidisciplinary study of the cultural, geographic and historic existence of borders, and the ways that they have shaped our world. Using the Danish-Swedish border to illustrate the actions of groups and individuals engaged in bordering since the 1600s, this richly theoretical discussion highlights the complexities of political and cultural identity processes. Comparative perspectives are brought together to produce a thoughtful analysis of how such processes function, and of how borders work on both an imagined nationhood and experiential personal level. The author also examines how throughout history people have lived with and influenced or been influenced by borders, why some borders remain uncontested while others repeatedly provoke cross-border conflicts, and how today's bordering processes may be deliberately manipulated. Review 'Now, what the Scandinavian (he has lived and worked in both Denmark and Sweden) ethnologist Anders Linde-Laursen is doing in his extremely in-teresting study Bordering: Identity Processes be-tween the National and Personal is quite a stroke of genius. He uses the double concept of border/bor-dering as an Archimedean fixed point which makes it possible for him to look at questions of national and personal identity, from as it seems quite a new and fresh angle, since he places border, not identity per se, or national, personal identity, at the centre of his study'. Ethnologia Scandinavica About the Author Professor Anders Linde-Laursen, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology, East Michigan University, USA