CALL TO SEND TEXTS FOR BOOK: BORDER SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL THROUGH ARCHITECTURE, INFRASTRUCTURE AND LANDSCAPE

Alejandro González Milea Announcement
Location
Italy
Subject Fields
Architecture and Architectural History, Cultural History / Studies, Urban History / Studies, Borderlands

Editor Alejandro González Milea, Co-editor Olimpia Niglio

Through time, the borders have been inherent to human life since many believes, knowledge and actions are founded through territorial occupation, and create basic forms of difference, but among the scales of organization, without a doubt, the State has been predominate. Up to now, a variety of studies have focused on the phases of the construction of borders; and even though during the Cold War there was a diminish in its numbers and varieties, since the last three decades there has been an emergence in its interest up to reaching a variety of topics and perspectives that can been characterized as immense. During the 1990’s, the spokesman of globalization suggest strong pressures on borders, but what it is true is that at the beginning of the new millennium they still hold their meaning. In some cases they could have lost something in their linear characteristics to acquire others of a regional reason or function in a wide network that even connect several countries. To the tenacious idea that the borders functioned as buffer areas that absorbed or softened the interstate conflicts, many phases and complex functions were added to them but they never stopped being understood as the “State furs”.

From the Imperial States through the National States up to the mundialization and globalization times, the de-bordering and re- bordering phenomena have left a variety of indelible marks in the territory . In fact, two persistent characteristics of the forms of government and construction of sovereignties have been the production of otherness and the territorialization of difference, up nowadays there are very few studies that cover the mechanisms and modalities with which the governments have used the infrastructure and the landscape to carry out the surveillance and control. Even when the meaning of a border can refer to the offensive and defensive of the military conquest processes and the entering to a territory for long periods of time, this editorial project mostly focuses in the material and symbolic dimensions with which the surveillance and control has been carried out over the flow of people and goods, the land, sea and air communication tracks in regards to their access, entries and pathways as a territorial expression of the States through time.

The editors call to send texts that explain such mechanisms and modalities in regards to the State, namely, analyze the intentions translated into specific interventions. It is of interest the research results that relate to one of the following phenomena:

  •   The scope with which such infrastructures was conceived since frequently the national State and the territorial State do not match;

  •   How the characteristics of such infrastructures and the interventions on the natural landscape were defined and discussed -in the phases such as the project-, since the borders were a scenario for the acting of technical bureaucracies of the State;

  •   In what way the variety of built forms solved the difference between areas and border lines, since it frequently has been the search for governmental sovereignty beyond the strict limits of the territorial State;

  •   In what way the buildings, infrastructures and landscape have had to adapt to changes in the discourses around division and integration, the conflict and dialogue and inclusion and exclusion;

  •   And overall, in the field of tax collection, in what way such infrastructures have favored or discouraged the accumulation and movement of capital.

    The editors welcome the case studies regarding land customs and sea customs in ports and rivers, establishments and migration and sanitary inspection booths, collection booths among internal jurisdictions, tool booths, observation towers, military bases, detention centers, bridges and entrances between countries, and of course walls, ditches, fences and even sites, landmarks and/or monuments. And also analysis that focus on modifications of the natural landscape as long as they relate to surveillance and control. The texts can use a wide temporality as long as they refer to the relations between States, and theoretical and conceptual reflections are possible in areas and border lines mentioning at all times the critical apparatus (theoretical or historiographical tradition) which they are based on.

    ABSTRACTS

    Abstracts of up to 600 words will be received with a tentative title, name and institutional affiliation, explanation of the main arguments 

    and a description of the information sources to be used (i.e. documentary sources), also including three or four bibliographical references. And a brief curricular summary of the author is required, no more than six lines length.

    IMPORTANT DATES

    Call for texts display. 1st September 2020 Deadline for abstract submission. 30 January 2021 Deadline for texts submission. 30 May 2021

    LANGUAGES ALLOWED

    Spanish and English

    GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS AND FORMAT PAPER

    http://esempidiarchitettura.it/sito/forauthors/

    CONTACT

    publicationseda@gmail.com

    The editors September 2020

Contact Information

Alejandro González Milea

Olimpia Niglio Soriente

Contact Email
alejandromilea@gmail.com