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Jonathan Friedman
University of California-San Diego The issue of boundaries has become a formidable issue in recent years, more so in Europe than in the United States although it is clearly a rising object of debate, not least in the current election. In Germany and Sweden mass, even Tsunami like waves have raised basic issues of the nature of boundaries and what is meant to occur inside of them where ever new boundaries are being forged, a process that usually comes under the heading of the fragmentation of the nation state. This conference is, of course, about much broader issues which raises the interesting question of the difference between the practice of boundaries as an essentially emic phenomenon and the systemic analysis of boundaries as an objective or etic phenomenon. With respect to boundaries the two are very much at variance with one another. The boundaries of world systems as they expand and contract is not the same issue as the boundaries between nations, street gangs and ethnic groups. However there is clearly a systemic connection between the two phenomena. This is an issue that we have studied in the contemporary world as the interaction between expansion/contraction of hegemony and the homogenization/fragmentation of social orders. It might even be suggested that this articulation is common not only to state and imperial orders but to non-state kinship based orders. The integration of formerly autonomous socio-political units into larger systems need not imply their erasure even if they are suppressed. There is a continuum of integration ranging from loosely ranked federation to assimilation. In periods of contraction this process is reversed. The etic boundaries of the system thus articulate systemically with the constitution of internal boundaries.
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