BIG Coffee Talk — Relational Restoration Decolonizes Globalization
with Raven Borsey and Morgan Brown | University of Victoria, BC | 10:00AM PST, June 9, 2025
In Person: CFGS C168 (Sedgewick building, University of Victoria). The meeting will take place from 10am to 11am PST.
Raven Borsey and Morgan Brown are joining us for a special BIG_Lab Coffee Talk led by the Indigenous Internationalisms group to discuss their restoration work in relationship to the life and waters of Xw’ullemy (the Salish Sea bioregion), including efforts to protect the salmon amidst climate change and depleting fisheries, the restoration of ancestral plant medicines and seed rematriation, and more.
Xwesultun Raven Borsey is from Lummi Nation and is a graduate student in cultural anthropology at Western Washington University. He is a Young Tribal Leader and Research Fellow with the Setting Sun Institute. His work with Setting Sun Institute includes helping to publish ‘Reefnetters of the Salish Sea,’ the final thesis of world-renowned anthropologist Wayne Suttles.
Morgan Brown is a Tsimshian mother and Environmental Education Coordinator for the Swinomish Tribe who empowers Indigenous youth through traditional plant medicine, first foods, and language revitalization. Her work includes cultivating an educational ethnobotanical garden, revitalizing ancestral trade practices, and healing generational trauma with teachings rooted in kinship and stewardship.
Join us in person at Sedgewick C168 in the Centre for Global Studies on the UVic campus. The meeting will take place from 10am to 11am PST.
CFGS Global Talk — Whatever happened to our borderless world? An anarchist rethinking of the ‘open borders’ debate
with Dr. Nick Megoran (Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Global Studies and Borders in Globalization, University of Victoria) | Victoria, BC & Zoom | November 8, 2023
In Person: CFGS C168 (Sedgewick building, University of Victoria) or Zoom. The meeting will take place from 10:30am to 12pm PST. Register in advance for this meeting here. Registration is free but required.
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, some writers declared that humanity was on the verge of a ‘borderless world.’ Yet three decades later, the world is more fenced and bordered than ever. In response, many scholars and activists have restated the moral and political case for ‘Open Borders.’ How persuasive are these arguments, and do they help us think through what better borderlands might look like? This talk will draw on anarchist traditions in political theology, as well as the author’s own research in various borderlands, to open a broader discussion of borders in the world today.
Dr. Nick Megoran is a Professor of Political Geography at Newcastle University, England. His research considers what it means to value human life in sites as diverse as international borderlands and the neoliberal workplace. He has studied the Uzbek-Kyrgyz and Danish-German borderlands for nearly three decades, and is interested in how critical geopolitical theory and African-American political theology can help us think through how borders can become places in which human life thrives. His publications include Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary (Pittsburgh, 2017) and Big Questions in An Age of Global Crises (Wipf & Stock, 2022).
Global Talk: Borders With/In Transnational Culture
featuring BIG Fellow Victor Konrad | Centre for Global Studies, UVic, Canada | April 26, 2023
Registration for virtual attendance is now open!
BIG Fellow Victor Konrad will be presenting an upcoming Global Talk at UVic’s Centre for Global Studies on April 26th at 10:30am – 12:00pm PST. The event is free. More information here.
DETAILS: Border culture is no longer culture at the margins, but rather it is culture at the heart of geopolitics. Culture has not readily negotiated the transnational turn; culture is at once driving and responding to the turn. Culture’s immutability has centred culture in transnationalism, and it has enabled the flexibility and adaptability of culture in transnational processes. There are borders with transnational culture, borders in transnational culture, and borders with/in transnational culture. In this presentation, we address how border culture is embedded in the profusion of border experience in globalization, yet also clarifies the definition and meaning of home. We examine how the “suture” of the border both separates and connects transnational space, and the nature of the landscapes that emerge in this bordered geography. We draw attention to the dispossession, violence, and gendering that occurs in transnational space. Finally, we conclude with a pre-script and post-script to address culture at the post-humanistic border.
Victor Konrad is Adjunct Research Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Recently, Dr. Konrad was visiting professor at Eastern China Normal and Yunnan Normal Universities in Shanghai and Kunming, Radboud University, Netherlands, and Karelian Institute of University of Eastern Finland, and visiting fellow at the Border Policy Research Institute, Western Washington University.
From 1990 to 2001, Dr. Konrad established the Canada-US Fulbright Program and Foundation for Educational Exchange between Canada and the United States. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was a professor of Anthropology and Geography at the University of Maine and Director of the Canadian-American Center. Dr. Konrad is past president of the Association of Borderlands Studies and the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, and recipient of the Donner Medal.
Professor Konrad is author and editor of more than 100 books, articles and book chapters in cultural and behavioural geography, border studies and Canadian studies. Recent books include North American Borders in Comparative Perspective (2020) Borders, Culture, and Globalization: A Canadian Perspective (2021), Border Culture. Theory, Imagination, Geopolitics (2022).
Global Talks are weekly discussions/presentations where we are able to listen to presentations from researchers within CFGS, the university more broadly and also invited guest speakers. These normally take place weekly on Wednesdays from 10:30-noon.
Borders, Culture, and Globalization: A Canadian Perspective
Victor Konrad, Melissa Kelly | University of Ottawa Press | 2021
Border culture emerges through the intersection and engagement of imagination, affinity and identity.
It is evident wherever boundaries separate or sort people and their goods, ideas or other belongings. It is the vessel of engagement between countries and peoples—assuming many forms, exuding a variety of expressions, changing shapes—but border culture does not disappear once it is developed, and it may be visualized as a thread that runs throughout the process of globalization.
Border culture is conveyed in imaginaries and productions that are linked to borderland identities constructed in the borderlands. These identities underlie the enforcement of control and resistance to power that also comprise border cultures.
Canada’s borders in globalization offer an opportunity to explore the interplay of borders and culture, identify the fundamental currents of border culture in motion, and establish an approach to understanding how border culture is placed and replaced in globalization.
British Columbia’s Borders in Globalization
Nicole Bates-Eamer and Helga Hallgrimsdottir | Routledge | 2022
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies. This book is a case-study collection examining the influences and functions of British Columbia’s (BC) borders in the 21st century; it examines bordering processes and the causes and effects of borders in the Cascadian region, from the perspective of BC. The chapters cover diverse topics including historical border disputes and cannabis culture and identity; the governance of transboundary water flows, migration, and pre-clearance policies for goods and people; and the emerging issue of online communities. The case studies provide examples that highlight the simultaneous but contradictory trends regarding borders in BC: while boundaries and bordering processes at the external borders shift away from the territorial boundary lines, self-determination, local politics, and cultural identities re-inscribe internal boundaries and borders that are both virtual and real. Moreover, economic protectionism, racial discourses, and xenophobic narratives, driven by advances in technology, reinforce the territorial dimensions of borders. These case studies contribute to the literature challenging the notion that territorial borders are sufficient for understanding how borders function in BC; and in a few instances they illustrate the nuanced ways in which borders (or bordering processes) are becoming detached from territory.
Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability
Simon Dalby | University of Ottawa Press | 2020
We now find ourselves in a new geological age: the Anthropocene. The climate is changing and species are disappearing at a rate not seen since Earth’s major extinctions. The rapid, large-scale changes caused by fossil-fuel powered globalization increasingly threaten societies in new, unforeseen ways.
But most security policies continue to be built on notions that look backward to a time when geopolitical threats derived mainly from the rivalries of states with fixed boundaries. Instead, Anthropocene Geopolitics shows that security policy must look forward to quickly shape a sustainable world no longer dependent on fossil fuels.
A future of long-term peace and geopolitical security depends on keeping the earth in conditions roughly similar to those we have known throughout history. Minimizing disruptions that would further put civilization at risk of extinction urgently requires policies that reflect new Anthropocene “planetary boundaries.”
Read Dr. Leonhardt van Efferink’s summary of Simon’s book on ExploringGeopolitics.org.
On globalization, borders, and borderlands: A historical geographical perspective.
Randy William Widdis | The Canadian Geographer | 2019
Under current dialectical conditions of globalization and increased demands for security, borders are no longer just symbols of sovereignty and national histories; they are evolving into new forms and as such are taking on new functions. Yet while borders continue to exist and are arguably more fluid and dynamic than ever before, despite the once robust but now contested rhetoric of “a world without borders,” this doesn’t mean that borders prior to the current phase of globalization were relatively static and stable. What is constant is the fact that borders and borderlands are always in a state of becoming and in this context, we need to address the relationship that exists between borderland evolution and the changing forces of globalization. This paper considers the important role that time-space plays in globalization and borderland theory and in doing so emphasizes that any such effort must recognize the importance of historical geographical context. My argument is developed with reference to the Canadian-American borderlands and the relationship between Canada and the United States that developed during the various phases of globalization that emerged after the creation of two North American polities following the American Revolution.
Widdis, Randy William. “On globalization, borders, and borderlands: A historical geographical perspective.” The Canadian Geographer 63, no. 3 (2019).
On Globalization, Borders and NationStates: Some Historical Musings
Randy William Widdis | BIG Research Reports | #19
Although many associate globalization with the post-WW II period, a view enforced by the perception that the world has become “smaller” as a result of technological innovations such as the computer revolution, there are others who argue that the current spread of influence of culture, language, religion, transportation, communication, media, technology, trade, business practices, and interrelated government and corporate finance is just the latest phase of this process. Indeed, some maintain that globalization began on October 12th, 1492 when Columbus discovered America, signalling the start of European colonialism that “sustained interaction in a manner that deeply linked [different parts of the world] through global trade.” Others argue that revolutionary economic and social theories developed during the late 18th and early 19th centuries propelled the world into the first real stages of globalization. The fundamental tenets of the then prevailing mercantilist doctrine were being questioned by theorists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and David Hume and politicians, including British Prime Minister Lord Shelburne and John Adams.
Randy William Widdis
Borders in Globalization Denmark – Germany
Martin Klatt and Isabelle Walther-Duc | BIG Research Reports | #29
The Danish-German border is short in comparison to other EU internal borders. Still it is relevant also as the border between the continent and Scandinavia, or the countries within the Nordic Council. The border’s history is conflict ridden. It was drawn in 1920, together with other new borders drawn in connection with the post WW-I order in Europe, reflecting (not only) the result of a plebiscite. The decades from 1920 to the 1950’s witnessed a bordering process with clear demarcation as well as the introduction of strict visa regimes and migration restriction, accompanied by the cut of economic flows and continued political challenges to the exact location of the border. Especially Denmark was interested in securing the border from possible German claims of revision. This changed only after Denmark joined the EC in 1973. Infrastructure investments as a freeway (opened fully in 1983) connecting the Jutland peninsula with the Hamburg metropolitan area and its seaport (2nd-3rd in Europe), the shorter “line as the birds fly” rail and road connection across Fehmarn-Lolland, disrupted by a 1 h ferry passage (1963), the introduction of frequent ferry services on the Rostock-Gedser route after German reunification (1990) and the planned fixed link under the Fehmarn Belt together with railway and road improvements on both shores (opening in the 2020’s) have made the region the major transport corridor between Europe and Scandinavia.
Martin Klatt and Isabelle Walther-Duc
Locating the Canadian Border(s) in Global Mineral and Metal Production Networks
Julia Calvert | BIG Research Reports | #87
The structure of international trade has undergone profound shifts in recent decades. Advances in communication and transportation combined with the liberalization of trade and capital flows has made it more profitable for companies to outsource large portions of their manufacturing and service activities abroad. The vertically-integrated and geographically concentrated production structures dominant during the Fordist era have therefore largely been replaced by fragmented and dispersed forms of production. Such forms have been alternatively labelled as global commodity chains, global value chains and global production networks. The growing mobility of capital, goods and services has raised concerns over the power and predatory practices of transnational corporations (TNCs). TNC, critics argue, are free to capitalize on favourable regulatory conditions in almost any country; they simply need to move or subcontract through a firm located in that jurisdiction. This in turn reduces the bargaining power of labour and governments while complicating efforts to govern corporate activities (Feenstra 1998). From this view both states and state borders are porous and ineffective in a global economy where TNCs dominate as economic intermediaries.
Julia Calvert