Despite its breadth and interdisciplinary nature, there are some general themes that run through early-21st-century border research. By the turn of the 20th century, border studies could justifiably claim to be experiencing a renaissance. In response, geographers and other social scientists developed new methodological and theoretical approaches for border studies. This began to change around 1980-ironically, as some scholars, mostly from business and technology backgrounds, began predicting an imminent “borderless” world. As a result, border research tended to be rather descriptive, focusing on terminology and classification. After 1945, however, scholars worked to disassociate their field from the narrow, prejudiced interests of their respective governments. As such, early border scholars generally focused on advancing the strategic interests of their home states pertaining to territorial claims and border demarcation. As a distinct field of academic inquiry, border studies drew its initial impetus from geopolitical rivalries among European powers coinciding with rapid colonial expansion and devastating world wars during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This burgeoning, interdisciplinary field of border studies covers a broad range of concerns, including state sovereignty, globalization, territorial disputes, trade, migration, and resource management, among other topics. Indeed, borders have become prominent topics of research for a range of scholars from across the social sciences and humanities. Borders and boundaries, commonly defined as the lines dividing distinct political, social, or legal territories, are arguably the most ubiquitous features within the field of political geography.
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