Abstract
This commentary revisits Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness Anssi Paasi’s landmark monograph about the changing geographies of the Finnish-Russian border (1996). It discusses how the book contributed to the poststructuralist turn in political and cultural geography and to the reinvention of both geopolitics and border studies. It argues that the book remains an insightful and inspiring read as Paasi’s lessons on spatial socialization, social spatialization and the multiscalar dynamics of geopolitical representations and national identities have much to offer to research and understand spatial imaginaries and spatial identities in the comprehensive (geo-) political rearrangements we are currently witnessing.
Paasi’s groundbreaking book Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness was ahead of its time. Published in the mid-1990s, it contributed to the poststructuralist turn in political and cultural geography and to the reinvention of both geopolitics and border studies. The innovative character of the book might be lost to younger scholars and students today, as most of its original features have become mainstream in geography. At the time, Paasi was able to reshape our understanding of national boundaries and nationalism by thoroughly examining the geographical dimensions of boundary constitution and the geographical manifestation of territorial demarcations. The book was also breaking new ground by connecting the structural and the everyday, dealing with both macro geopolitical representations of the nation and international relations, and everyday lived experiences of individuals.
Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness addresses changes in the world system of states and their boundaries. Much of the fieldwork was done in the late 1980s, when the bipolar order of the Cold War seemed everlasting, but it was published after the collapse of Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Paasi wrote about these major transformations from his Finnish standpoint. Finland held a special position in the Cold War geopolitical order, being economically and politically firmly Western (with a liberal democracy and a social democratic market economy) but geopolitically firmly linked to the USSR (through the 1948 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance). Moreover, it shared since its independence from the Russian Empire in 1917 a long land border with the USSR, that was dramatically redrawn at its expense during World War II and that influences both its domestic politics and its foreign policies.
The book
The book is a dense volume consisting of three parts. Part One elaborates the theoretical framework. Chapter 1 covers the social construction of ‘we’ and ‘the Other’ (us and them) but also ‘here and there’, and Chapter 2 the ways political geography has dealt with boundaries and social spatialization, the production of territories and the institutionalization of regions. Chapter 3 deals with time, space and consciousness and addresses multiscalar aspects of social integration, spatial socialization and socio-spatial consciousness.
Part Two analyzes the institutionalization of Finnish territory during the 20th century. Chapter 4 deals with nationalism, geopolitics and changing boundaries. Chapter 5 discusses representations of Finnishness in the arts and in school geography, and Chapter 6 addresses the changing role of the Finnish-Russian boundary and its representation by Finnish geographers.
Part Three focuses on the local experience of the border. A short Chapter 8 presents a conceptual analysis of place and local experience. Chapter 9 offers a rich empirical analysis of the institutionalization of the locality of Värtsilä (known for the Wärtsilä factory, ancestor of the Finnish corporation with the same name that is now operating globally), especially after the new state boundary divided the commune and two-thirds of its territory (including the original factory) were left in Soviet territory, while its inhabitants moved westwards. Chapter 10 deals with the return to Karelia, after the fall of the USSR and the opening of the Finnish-Russian border, when people who had kept spatial memories alive for half a century but also younger Finns who had been socialized into this local but uprooted identity were able to cross the border and visit Russian Värtsilä. The epilogue revisits debates in (political) geography about the state and about place. Overall the book is a stimulating read featuring plenty of historical and methodological details and a lot of maps, pictures and other illustrations.
The impact
While it stands out as an influential publication, the book has possibly not been acknowledged as a classic as much as it deserves, most likely because of its empirical grounding in the peculiar case of Finland and Northern Karelia (some would have said at the time idiosyncratic, but I had visited the country many times, was quite familiar with Finnish history and had spent a whole summer in Tuupovaara in the mid-1980s, so I was thrilled to get into the details of the Finnish experience), and perhaps also because of more mundane practicalities (I don’t remember a paperback ever being published, the hardcover reprint now available is fortunately more affordable).
The book is often seen as a landmark monograph in critical border studies because of its thorough documentation of the embodied experiences of the border, but I concur with Natalie Koch (2015) to stress that it was even more importantly a major contribution to the geographical understanding of the state, and to the conceptualization of the nation as a state effect, demonstrating how spatial socialization is, in this case, producing ‘Finland’ (Koch, 2015: 30). Foregrounding this crucial contribution is also more in line with Paasi’s sustained engagement with the institutionalization of bounded territories, states, substate or supranational regions alike (Mamadouh 2024; see also Paasi, 1986, 1996, 2002, 2022 for a few examples).
(Re-)reading TBC in the 21st century
The cover of the book shows ‘Geopoliticus child watching the birth of the New Man’ by Salvador Dalí, that he painted in 1943 during his years in the USA. It represents a time of geopolitical turmoil (World War II remaking the world political map), and more specifically the rise to power of the USA, the New Man emerging out of a egg-shaped Earth, and the decline of Europe. Dalí’s painting seems pertinent again today, in the times of comprehensive (geo-)political rearrangements we are witnessing.
Once more, the geographies of the Finnish-Russian border have changed and the post-Cold-War political map in Europe is reshuffled. Spatial socialization in Finland might have changed dramatically again, but it is still deeply marked by the relation to Russia. Reading (or revisiting) this richly documented analysis of the past helps us understand the current events in the region.
Moreover, the book remains an insightful and inspiring read for more general reasons. First, it is an excellent example of an exciting combination of theoretical ambitions and empirical depth. Second, it is a compelling demonstration that theoretical work can be grounded anywhere, including in liminal cases like the Finnish-Russian border. Third, it can inform research about spatial identities in the many places where inhabitants deal with the legacy of similarly changing geographies and complex layers of spatial socialization. Finally, it conceptualizes processes that we still do not understand properly and we still fail to address in ways that prevent conflict, violent dispossession and open warfare.
Paasi’s framework to comprehend the impact of spatial socialization and social spatialization and to explore the multiscalar dynamics of geopolitical representations and national identities has much to offer to research and understand spatial imaginaries and spatial identities. ‘Nationalism has been badly misunderstood by the social sciences’ was the first sentence of the editor’s preface (British political geographer Peter J. Taylor) in the mid-1990s, a time where academics were taken aback by the resurgence of nationalism in the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. And it is still very true today.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.