Phantom boundary

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The term phantom boundary describes the continued operation of a former territorial body in current areas, for example in the geographical distribution of voting preferences. Starting in 2009, it was shaped by an international and interdisciplinary research project in the fields of history and Eastern European studies .

definition

Phantom boundaries are defined by the researchers of the BMBF project “Phantom Boundaries in East Central Europe” as “earlier, mostly political boundaries or territorial divisions which, after they have been institutionally abolished, continue to structure the space”.

The focus of the research is not so much “the borders themselves, but rather the spaces that are created through socialization processes within the former territories.” Phantom borders can therefore become visible in architecture, in infrastructures and institutional frameworks or in cultural representations the actors. The term thus describes phenomena of the longue durée , without, however , wanting to promote deterministic conceptions. Regions should not be understood as “natural” cultural areas, but rather as “haunted ghosts” created by humans and updated.

The innovation potential of the concept lies in its three levels of analysis, which are based on the "trinity of space" in Henri Lefebvre : room imagination , room experience and room design . As a result, spaces are firstly produced and communicated discursively. Secondly, actors and scientific observers perceive it as an experience and, in some cases, routinely update it in practice. And third, they are implemented through planned political and administrative interventions (territorialization processes), which in turn can have an effect on the actions of the actors. The aim of the project is to examine the interactions between the three levels and to look at the question of the historical construction and reproduction of regional differences from a different perspective.

Case studies

On the basis of empirical case studies, the project investigated remanence phenomena in Poland, Ukraine , Romania , Hungary , Croatia , Serbia , Bulgaria and Turkey . The project officer and geographer Sabine von Lowis has about the phenomenon on the example of the two-part Sokyrynci village on the western and eastern banks of the river Zbručs studied in Western Ukraine. The course of the Zbruč became the imperial border between Austria-Hungary and Russia at the end of the 18th century in the course of the partition of Poland . In the interwar period, the river divided Poland and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic from each other. Since the end of the Second World War, there has been no state border between the banks of the Zbruč. Nevertheless, the two villages still exist today as independent communities.

In her ethnographically structured micro-study, Sabine von Löwis comes to the conclusion, using the example of the symbol politics and identification processes examined, that the discourse about the supposed division of Ukraine in the case of the villages of Sokyrynci is only the result of national politics of remembrance. For example, the memory of the Ukrainian partisan army UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) is quite ambivalent at the level of individual or local memory - in the western as well as in the eastern village, since many of the villagers counted UPA victims among their relatives and friends . Only when a memorial cross was erected for the non-resident members of the UPA who died in 1944 after independence in 1991 and in the course of the public policy of worshiping the UPA in the cemetery of the western village, the fight for the independence of Ukraine was clearly heroized by the partisan army. The geographer draws the conclusion: "Only the cultural memory and not the individual / communicative memory or the friction between them thus leads to a division of the country on a symbolic level".

Since 2015, Wallstein-Verlag has been publishing an eight-volume series on the subject of "Phantom Boundaries in Eastern Europe" in cooperation with the BMBF project. The first volume was published in July 2015 under the title “Phantom Limits. Rethinking spaces and actors in time ”. In 2016 the project published three more volumes on Poland, Vojvodina and the Banat as well as on the east-west division of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Examples

The result of the parliamentary elections in East Timor in 2018 after the strongest party in the municipalities reflects the centuries-old cultural division of the country into Loro Munu and Loro Sae .
  • "Post-communist electoral geography" in Poland ,
  • Water infrastructure in rural Romania in the 2000s
  • Electoral geography in Ukraine

After the presidential elections in Poland in 2015, Christian Forberg remarked: “In the west Bronislaw Komorowski got the most votes, in the east Jaroslaw Kaczynski got the most votes . The amazing thing about the map is that it roughly shows the former division of Poland , which was only abolished after 1918, after the First World War: the west was ruled by Prussia, eastern and southern parts of Russia and Austria-Hungary . Old borders emerge from the fog of history and live on for generations. ”Similar phenomena can also be observed in the electoral geography of Ukraine, Serbia, Romania and Germany in view of the election results of the party“ Die Linke ”.

literature

  • Rita Aldenhoff-Hübinger, Catherine Gousseff and Thomas Serrier (eds.): Europe vertical. On the east-west division in the 19th and 20th centuries . Volume IV of the series Phantom Frontiers in Eastern Europe . 2016, Wallstein.
  • Michael G. Esch: The city as a playing field: concepts of space, uses, interpretations of space by Polish hooligans . Volume IV of the series Phantom Frontiers in Eastern Europe . 2016, Wallstein.
  • Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Hannes Grandits, Claudia Kraft, Dietmar Müller, Thomas Serrier: Phantom Boundaries: Rethinking Spaces and Actors in Time . Volume I of the series Phantom Frontiers in Eastern Europe . 2015, Wallstein.
  • Sabine von Löwis: About tracing and understanding phantom borders in the Ukraine . In: Bloch Notes - Newsletter of the Center Marc Bloch , October 2013.
    • Ambivalent spaces of identification in western Ukraine: the phantom of the old borders on the Zbruč . In: Europa Regional 22.2014 (2015) 3-4, pp. 148–162.
    • (Ed.): Phantom Borders in the Political Geography of East Central Europe , Sonderheft der Erdkunde 2 (2015).
  • Đorđe Tomić: Phantom borders and regional autonomy in post-socialist Southeast Europe: Vojvodina and the Banat in comparison . Volume VI of the series Phantom Borders in Eastern Europe . 2016, Wallstein.
  • Andrew Tompkins: Phantom Boundaries in East Central Europe: Interim Assessment of a New Research Concept . In: H-Soz-Kult , April 16, 2014

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christian Forberg: Phantom Boundaries in Europe - Report on Deutschlandfunk from February 19, 2015
  2. ↑ a b Hannes Grandits, Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Claudia Kraft, Dietmar Müller, Thomas Serrier: Phantom boundaries in Eastern Europe. A scientific positioning , in: Dies .: Phantom limits. Rethinking spaces and actors in time , Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2015, p. 18.
  3. ↑ Laura Roos: Report on the panel discussion On the benefits of area studies in times of globalization. November 12, 2015 , p. 2.
  4. ^ Henri Lefebvre, La production de l'espace , Paris 1974.
  5. ^ Hannes Grandits, Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Claudia Kraft, Dietmar Müller, Thomas Serrier: Phantom borders in Eastern Europe. A scientific positioning. In: Dies .: Phantom limits. Rethinking spaces and actors in time. Wallstein, Göttingen 2015, pp. 38–55.
  6. ↑ Sabine von Löwis: On tracing and understanding phantom borders in the Ukraine , in: Bloch Notes - Newsletter of the Center Marc Bloch, October 2013.
  7. ↑ Sabine von Löwis: Ambivalent identification spaces in western Ukraine: the phantom of the old borders on the Zbruč , in: Europa Regional 22.2014 (2015) 3-4, pp. 148–162.
  8. ↑ Sabine von Löwis: Ambivalent identification spaces in western Ukraine: the phantom of the old borders on the Zbruč , in: Europa Regional 22.2014 (2015) 3-4, p. 158.
  9. ^ Wallstein series Phantom borders in Eastern Europe
  10. ↑ a b phantomgrenzen.eu: The project
  11. ^ Sabine v. Löwis: Phantom Borders in the Political Geography of East Central Europe: An Introduction , in: Erdkunde 69 (2015) 2, pp. 99-106.
  12. ^ Hannes Grandits, Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Claudia Kraft, Dietmar Müller, Thomas Serrier: Phantom borders in Eastern Europe. A scientific positioning , in: Dies .: Phantom limits. Rethinking spaces and actors in time , Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2015, p. 15.
  13. ↑ phantomgrenzen.eu (PDF)
  14. ↑ ifl.wissensbank.com (PDF)
  15. ↑ hsozkult.de