This article was downloaded by: [University of Auckland Library]On: 18 November 2014, At: 14:57Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Journal of Borderlands StudiesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjbs20

Book reviewRoos Pijpers aa Ph.D. student at the Department of HumanGeography and the Nijmegen Centre for BorderResearch , Radboud University , Nijmegen, TheNetherlandsPublished online: 21 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Roos Pijpers (2006) Book review, Journal of Borderlands Studies,21:2, 89-90, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2006.9695662

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2006.9695662

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Book Review

Journal of Borderlands StudiesVolume 21 • No. 2 • Fall 2006

On the Boundary: About Humans at theEnd of Territoryby Thomas LundénSödertörns Högskola (2004) ISBN: 9189315421

Reviewed by Roos Pijpers*

At a recently held border conference I attended, I couldn’t help hearing one of theparticipants loudly asking himself, why social differences nowadays need always betermed “border” and processes of social differentiation “bordering processes.” “Weused to call a social difference simply a social difference,” he sighed, expressing hisdiscontent with the social-constructionist flight border studies have taken in recentyears. Also present at this same conference was Professor Thomas Lundén of Sweden’sSödertörn University College, who presented a paper about borders and language. Thispaper, I presume, draws on his book On the Boundary: About Humans at the End ofTerritory, published in 2004 by Södertörns Högskola, in which a detailed section isdevoted to borders, communication, and languages. Reading Professor Lundén’s bookwould most likely make our grumbling conference participant happy again: in the pref-ace it is stated by the author that “those who expect a text concerning psychologicalborderline-cases, transvestism and other forms of human transgression will be disap-pointed” (6).

Instead, drawing on his research and travel experience of many years, ProfessorLundén has written an interesting book about state borders and their impact on people’slives in the broadest possible sense of the word. On the Boundary starts with a concep-tually oriented chapter about the definition of “the boundary” itself and its relation(through notions such as “power” and “market”) to the individual inhabiting the borderarea. The subsequent chapter identifies a number of factors which influence humanbehavior at the border, apart from language problems including issues of nature, tech-nology, governance, economics, and culture. The book continues with two chapterswhich present extensive case-study elaborations of border cities and border regionsthroughout Europe. Geographical focus is on and within the Scandinavian-Finnish-Baltic area, but since the author’s research interests and travels leave almost no spot onthe European map (and beyond) blank, area coverage ranges from the Dutch-Germanto the Israeli-Palestinian border regions and even to the Nakhichevan exclave in

* Roos Pijpers is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Human Geography and theNijmegen Centre for Border Research at Radboud University Nijmegen, TheNetherlands.

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90 Pijpers, Review of Lundén’s On the Boundary: About Humans at the End of Territory

Azerbaijan (57). Emphasis is, understandably, on places which the author knows best.Descriptions of the border cities Narva/Ivangorod (between Estonia and Russia) andValga/Valka (between Estonia and Latvia) as well as of the Swedish-Norwegian bor-derlands are so detailed that information stretches to include local participation in sportsactivities, for example (143, 156-157).

In traveling in Professor Lundén’s footsteps, I certainly would have found moreregion, city and land use maps helpful, as my cartographic knowledge of further awayor faraway border regions, I must shamefully admit, is rather poor. Whereas I am quitewell able to visualize the awkward boundary situation in the Dutch-German conurbationof Kerkrade-Herzogenrath (128), where the boundary is constituted by a street, simi-larly peculiar circumstances at Savieniba street between Valga and Valka (160-161)were much more difficult for me to imagine without a map. Also, in a study of humanlife at the boundary I would perhaps have expected more life stories of border dwellers,even though these are to be found elsewhere in recent work (see for instance UlrikeMeinhof on border identities in Europe or Pekka Hakamies on Russian settlers inKarelia). These minor comments notwithstanding, professor Lundén’s book offers arich variety of above all historical empirical material “about humans at the end ofterritory.” In this material, the border appears in ancient municipal verdicts, poems,songs, and newspaper articles. A lovely example concerns the poetical illustration ofpornographic and strip-tease activities on the Swedish side of the Norwegian-Swedishboundary, existing because of (or thanks to!) conservative policy on these matters onthe Norwegian side (186):

In the Swedish peripherySaid a stripper, cute Anne Marie-my commerce dependsOn the voting trendsOf Kristelig Folkeparti!

On the Boundary is a well-researched book written by an author with a genuinecuriosity and an impressive background of knowledge about borders, border areas, andborder issues. It will be of interest to scholars across the broad(ening) field of borderstudies, including those involved in psycho-analytical studies of human boundary trans-gressions.

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