From bordering to border thinking: interdisciplinarity and the significance of cognition in border studies

James W. Scott

Chapter 4 in Border Studies, 2025, pp 68-84 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The increasing interdisciplinarity of border studies reflects the centrality of borders and border-making to everyday life. While different iterations of state power and territoriality remain an important point of departure, the border-making role of emotions, affect and trauma is increasingly recognized. These and other sense-making elements of the everyday are often expressed in the form of narratives, images and art and their study has given rise to a degree of disciplinary convergence between the humanities, anthropology, geography and other fields. Moreover, the elaboration of links between cognitive sciences and the humanities is contributing to a more socially embedded understanding of borders. Recent events have reminded us of the close relationships between cultural environments, social backgrounds and political beliefs; political and cultural cognition as well as attempts to minimize disruptive cognitive dissonance help explain, among others, seemingly irrational voting patterns. The chapter provides a brief review of the present state of the art in border studies as reflected in the ‘bordering’ and ‘borderscapes’ approaches. Discussion then proceeds with cognitive aspects of border-making and concrete examples of the use of cognitive approaches. These approaches represent a promising interdisciplinary link between the political, cultural and psychological in the study of borders and their impacts.

Keywords: Bordering; Borderscapes; Conceptual change; Cognition; Interdisciplinarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781800375383
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