Bounded spaces in question: x-raying the persistence of regions, territories and borders

Abstract

This essay introduces the special issue of Geografiska Annaler B, which includes revised and extended articles originally presented at the Vega Symposium in Stockholm in 2021. The symposium entitled Bounded Spaces in Question: X-raying the Persistence of Regions and Territories focused on the continuing importance and challenges of regions, territories and borders, both in geographical thinking and in different social (political, cultural and economic) practices. These keywords and their multiple concepts have become highly important in geographic and interdisciplinary literature since the 1990s. The purpose of this Special Issue is to bring these categories into the same framework and to problematize the changing nature of bounded spaces and related power relations. The articles by Anssi Paasi, Alexander B. Murphy, Martin Jones and Linn Axelsson seek to transcend the ‘self-evident’ meanings of these categories and examine the related theoretical and practical challenges at different spatial scales. The authors examine the changing meanings of these keywords in an increasingly diverse political geographical landscape, characterized by globalization, various forms of mobility, the rise of populism and (right-wing) nationalism, and the simultaneous opening and closing of regional/territorial spaces.