Borders create problems for those whose lives they frame. These problems have two dimensions. The first concerns the efforts of the modern state to coerce or persuade local populations to accept its jurisdiction, political and economic decisions, notions of a unitary national culture and the dubious benefits of its military protection. These efforts are often acute in border regions. Here, the power of the nation-state and its symbolic apparatus do not fade out, but intensify, as a number of contributors to this volume point out (in particular, Sahlins; Hann and Bellér-Hann). This often places inordinate demands on minority populations, for whom a border often cuts across preexisting and culturally more relevant ties with others excluded by these borders. Majority populations may apparently reap the benefits of such arrangements, but suffer the longer-term consequences of living with problematic ‘others’ in their midst.

The second is born of the contradiction between nationalism and globalisation. Realignments within the remains of the modern nationstate system have aggravated the tendency of borders to cut across formerly undifferentiated territories, and even through the middle of metropolitan centres (as in Sarajevo, Nicosia and Jerusalem). In part, this is due to the fact that borders are no longer capable of separating people in quite the same ways. Today, the symbolic apparatus of the nation-state is overtly contradicted by a flow of commodities, capital, labour and media messages across borders according to the dictates of political-economic realities which are transnational and global.