Special Issue: Confronting Borders in the Arctic

Journal of Borderland Studies | Volume 33, Issue 2 | 2018

In this thematic issue, six papers and three short commentaries investigate the evolving nature of borders in the Arctic in an era of climate change and globalization. Together, they illustrate how processes unique to the Arctic, such as sea ice melt and Inuit self-governance, tell a larger story about the co-evolving relationship of people and the environment, and the physical and constructed borders that give them meaning. Arctic human–environment relations are embedded in distinct histories and materialities in which border-making is understood as a multi-scalar arena of subnational and transnational actors, rather than the exclusive domain of the state. At the same time, the Arctic is shaped by powerful agents of change whose impacts span national borders and reconfigure environmental barriers. The papers in this issue reveal the ways in which Arctic climatic, political, economic, and demographic change amount to a transformation in thinking about Arctic borders and bordered spaces. We hope that the Arctic case will stimulate further investigation in borderlands around the world undergoing similarly transformative changes to physical and human systems.

Read the full issue here: Journal of Borderlands Studies Special Issue: The Arctic: Vol 33 No 2: Spring 2018

Contents
Confronting Borders in the Arctic by Scott Stephenson

Global Arctic by Klaus Dodds

Finding the Global Arctic by Jessica Shadian

The “Global Arctic” as a New Geopolitical Context and Method  by Lassi Heininen and Matthias Finger

Navigating Political Borders Old and New: The Territoriality of Indigenous Inuit Governance by Jessica Shadian

(Un)frozen Spaces: Exploring the Role of Sea Ice in the Marine Socio-legal Spaces of the Bering and Beaufort Seas by Kristen Shake, Karen Frey, Deborah Martin, Philip Steinberg

Rescaling Borders of Investment: The Arctic Council and the Economic Development Policies by Heather Nicol

Drawing Boundaries in the Beaufort Sea: Different Visions/Different Needs by Rob Huebert