Abstract
Boundaries are a well-established object of enquiry within contemporary human geography. “In a variety of formats and intensities, boundaries continue to demarcate the territories within which we are compartmentalized, determine with whom we interact and affiliate, and the extent to which we are free to move from one space to another” (Newman 2003:, D. Boundaries. In J. Agnew, K. Mitchell, G. Ó Tualthail (Eds.), A companion of political geography (pp. 121–137). Malden-Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). These observations prompt analysis of the ongoing geopolitical and cultural action of these political institutions in all their forms, even if we view contemporary spaces as de-territorialized and borderless and even if the public discourse describes regions merely as elements within a wider global network. In any case, material and immaterial limits are meaningful sources of information for reading the structure of territories and understanding their social, cultural, political and historical relationship: boundaries leave landmarks, directly related to their geopolitical function, on landscapes; these landmarks become both objects of human perception (primarily visual) and subjects within processes of political representation (landscapes); boundaries are the primitives of spatial knowledge on which humans build their geographical images of places; boundaries are a mighty basis of the mimetic function played by cartographic language. Thus, in light of both their physical and narrative dimensions, it may be argued that geographical boundaries, rather than being limits or barriers, are material places directly involved in the diffusion of cultural traits; or go even further, it may be claimed that in border regions, these material objects act as peculiar cultural traits which we term “symbolic borderplaces”.
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Notes
- 1.
“The building is along the road that, since ancient times, has connected Veneto to Tyrol”.
- 2.
Literally “the inn of the border”.
- 3.
We use the words borders and boundaries as synonymous, to mean the limits that demarcate the political and cultural geographies of regions and territories.
- 4.
- 5.
Osteria is an Italian word meaning both small restaurant and inn.
- 6.
Literally “punitive expedition”. This was the term used to describe the counteroffensive launched by the Empire in 1916 along the Italian front.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
The authors translated the quotations originally written in Italian.
- 11.
For a reading of the famous “Genetic Boundary Classification”, developed by Richard Hartshorn, see dell’Agnese (2003).
- 12.
Connection: See, again Chap. 3.
- 13.
Connection: Cultural traits that lose or change their function can be seen as undergoing a process of re-use or, in evolutionary terms, ‘exaptation’. To deepen these concepts, see the Connection in the introduction of Chap. 3.
- 14.
Connection: The reflections of Chap. 21 on the function of literature may add some elements to think about the artistic representation of places.
- 15.
Connection: Some psychological processes of cultural elaboration are presented in Chap. 7, especially with regards to ‘multicultural minds’.
- 16.
Connection: See Chap. 10 for a philosophical reflection on the notion of map, and on some typologies of maps in representing the origin and diffusion of cultural traits.
- 17.
- 18.
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We would like to thank Clare O’Sullivan for her language revisions.
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Malatesta, S., Schmidt di Friedberg, M., Squarcina, E. (2016). Geographical Boundaries as Places of Meeting and Diffusion of Cultural Traits. In: Panebianco, F., Serrelli, E. (eds) Understanding Cultural Traits. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24349-8_9
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