Artificial states? On the enduring geographical myth of natural borders
Artificial states? On the enduring geographical myth of natural borders
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DOI：
10.1016/j.polgeo.2010.02.007
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发表时间：
2010-03-01
影响因子：
4.1
通讯作者：
Fall, Juliet J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fall, Juliet J.
Alberto Alesina，William Easterly和Janina Matuszeski的论文Artificial States，于2006年6月作为国家经济研究局的工作文件出版，提出了一种将国家边界的性质与国家的经济成功联系起来的理论（Alesina，Easterly和Matuszeski，2006）。本文批判性地审查了这一建议，自然边界和种族同质性是可取的经济原因。它对他们发展的人工和自然边界的理解提出了质疑，认为这忽视了两个世纪的批判性和定量地理学，这些学术已经绘制，记录和批评了地形与国家和边界的适当形状之间的联系。它探讨了他们的论点是如何与民族同质国家的辩护联系在一起的。重点是他们的目的论和矛盾的非历史性的愿景，通过呼吁同质性和几何命运的空间神话，基于对空间作为容器的反动理解，使政治自然化。在这样做时，我注意到这些建议与冲突后分治的呼吁之间的密切联系，以及它们所依赖的族裔和文化同质化的相应论述。我不把边界看作是几何物体，不管是不是弯曲的，我认为边界是通过物化、自然化和拜物教化的同时进行的。(C)2010爱思唯尔有限公司版权所有。
Alberto Alesina, William Easterly and Janina Matuszeski's paper Artificial States, published as a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper in June 2006, suggests a theory linking the nature of country borders to the economic success of countries (Alesina, Easterly, & Matuszeski, 2006). This paper critically examines this suggestion that natural boundaries and ethnic homogeneity are desirable for economic reasons. It takes issue with the understanding of artificial and natural boundaries that they develop, arguing that this ignores two centuries of critical and quantitative geographical scholarship that has mapped, documented and critiqued the obsession of a link between topography and the appropriate Shape of states and boundaries. It explores how their argument is linked to a defence of ethnically homogeneous states. The focus is on their teleological and paradoxically ahistorical vision that naturalizes politics by appealing to spatial myths of homogeneity and geometric destiny, grounded in a reactionary understanding of space as container. In so doing, I am mindful of the strong links between such proposals and calls for post-conflict partition, and the corresponding discourses of ethnic and cultural homogenization on which they rely. Instead of thinking of boundaries as geometric objects, squiggly or not, I consider boundaries through the simultaneous processes of reification, naturalization, and fetishization. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.