1 - Centring the Margins: Fifty Years of African Border Studies

Abstract

The inherently interdisciplinary and comparative nature of studies of borders of modern states, which are offshoots of the Westphalian system, has led to their broad categorization into ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ border studies. Raimondo Strassoldo, a leading scholar and pioneer of border studies in Europe, would appear to have appropriately captured this distinction when he described the latter vis-a-vis the former in terms of ‘a new emphasis on the socio-economic aspects; focused on the integrative rather than conflictual processes; and on problems of border people instead of the nation-states; ... instigated by local authorities and European organisations rather than national governments... [and] more than the traditional ones ... policy-oriented’...