1st Edition
Curtains of Iron and Gold Reconstructing Borders and Scales of Interaction
First published in 1999, this book examines the construction of new political, economic and mental borders in post-Cold War Europe. Various national and regional settings are analyzed along the old East-West divide. In post-Cold War Europe the East-West divide no longer exists in the form of the clear-cut Iron Curtain, separating two security blocs, two politico-economic systems, and two ideologically and culturally distinct worlds. Still, it remains clearly discernible, both in the form of unrelenting politico-cultural differences and as an economic Golden Curtain. At the same time, a more complicated system of intersecting political, economic and mental borders keeps developing. Today, there are various scales of interaction, which produce distinctive national, regional and local experiences of borders. In this book, the construction of new political, economic and mental borders is analysed by specialists from both sides of the former East-West divide. The future of European borders is discussed in various national and regional settings, from the Barents Region in the North to the Old Habsburgian lands in ‘Mitteleuropa’.
1. Introduction. Heikki Eskelinen, Ilkka Liikanen and Jukka Oksa. Part 1: Setting the Scene. 2. The Political Geography of Boundaries at the End of the Millennium: Challenges of the De-territorializing World. Anssi Paasi. 3. Towards a Conceptualization of Border: The Central European Experience. Josef Langer. 4. Across the Line: Borders in Post-Westphalian Landscapes. Sergei Medvedev. 5. Borders Change – So Do Space, Identity, and Community. Pirji Jukarainen. Part 2: Cross-Border Dynamics in Prospective Major Regions. 6. Frontier Regions in the National Strategy for Development: The Russian View. Alexander Granberg. 7. Politics on the Edge: On the Restructuring of Borders in the North of Europe. Thomas Christiansen and Pertti Joenniemi. 8. Urban Networking in the Baltic Sea Region. A Nordic View. Perttu Vartiainen. 9. Economic Border Regions and Spaces in the Baltic Sea Region. J. Ilari Karppi. Part 3: Actors, Barriers and Interfaces. 10. "Smuggled" Ethnicity and "Other" Russians. Construction of Identities in Post-Soviet Estonia. Olga Brednikova. 11. National Interests and Local Needs in a Divided Setumaa: Behind the Narratives. Eiki Berg. 12. Evolving Regimes for Local Transboundary Cooperation. The German-Polish Experience. James Wesley Scott. 13. Entrepreneurial Decisions with Spatial Impact along the Eastern German Borders. Franz Barjak. 14. Dynamics of Local Cross-Border Activities between Carinthia (Austria) and Slovenia. Doris Wastl-Walter and Andrea Kofler. 15. Socio-economic Processes in the Hungarian-Yugoslavian Border Zone. Ágnes Pál and Imre Nagy. 16. Development, Environment, and Security in Asymmetrical Border Reions: European and North American Perspectives. Norris Clement, Paul Ganster and Alan Sweedler. Part 4: On the Divide in the North. 17. The Changing Border and the Many Images of Karelia. Jukka Oksa. 18. Near the Metropolis, beyond the Border. St. Petersburg and Eastern Finland before the October-Revolution. Kimmo Katajala. 19. Border-crossings. The Co-construction of National Security and Regional Development. Tarja Cronberg. 20. Where Russia Meets the EU. Across the Divide in the Karelian Borderlands. Heikki Eskelinen, Elisa Haapanen and Pavel Druzhinin. 21. Cross-Border Coperation of Women’s Organizations. The Case of the Karelian Republic. Larisa Boichenko and Kaija Heikkinen. 22. The Political Construction of Identity: Reframing Mental Borders in Russian Karelia. Ilkka Liikanen. Part 5: Epilogue. 23. Asymmetry and Interaction. Borders in the International System. Jyrki Käkönen.
