ABSTRACT
Generally, boundaries – perhaps particularly borders between nations – have been thought of as problems. As the geographer Jean Gottmann observed, ‘The record of history demonstrates that political limits in geographic space have been and remain a major source of tension and conflict’ (Gottmann 1980b, 433). The emphasis of the present chapter shall be, instead, on the actual and potential role of political borders, especially the administrative regimes set up to control them, as solutions – as potential ameliorative factors in situations which might, otherwise, erupt in local recrimination or even wider violence. In short, ‘border incidents’, if imaginatively and skilfully managed, can lead to peace as well as war. What is required is thus a new way of looking at boundaries, theoretically as well as practically, as definers of ‘neighbourhood’, as generators of ‘good neighbourly relations’ between countries.
