Session organisers: Mela Žuljević1, Sabine von Löwis2
(1) Leibniz Institut für Länderkunde (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography), Leipzig, Deutschland
(2) ZOiS – Zentrum für Osteuropa und internationale Studien (Centre for East European and International Studies), Berlin, Deutschland
Session description
This session proposes an exploration into diverse ways in which conflict demarcation lines shape landscapes over time. We want to engage with borderscapes as both material and symbolic interfaces of the political and natural, which are shaped by the temporal agency of frontlines and ceasefire lines. The session aims to trace how such (former) lines of separation remain in the landscapes and shape their image, infrastructures and future development. Vice versa, we also ask how landscape is mobilised in the afterlives of these borderlines, for example, how landscape infrastructures maintain or overcome former territorial divisions, or how landscape symbols illustrate the ongoing presence of a border. In addition, we want to shed light on how people use and remember the landscape - before and after a border or demarcation line has been drawn or has become obsolete. The session organisers invite papers that engage with the following questions:
– What roles do former borderlines (e.g. frontlines or demarcation lines) play in landscape development? How do they affect visions of landscape futures?
– What is the temporal agency of these lines in the landscapes? How do they materialise and shape landscape relations over time?
– How do borderlines or former lines of separation affect emerging landscape issues and environmental conflicts?
– How is landscape mobilised as a tool, infrastructure or an image in maintaining or dismantling territorial divisions? Moreover, by whom and for which reason?
– How do people living in the borderscapes of demarcation lines refer to the division? How do everyday practices and routines contribute or undermine the borderscapes?
– What does the relation of landscape and territorial divisions reveal about the changing understandings of nature and environment?
