“Borders, Territory and Conflict in a Globalizing World” was the theme at a conference held in Israel.  Experts deliberated on ethnicity, power relations and technology. Dr. Gotlieb emphasizes that such issues  must be linked to the environment.

The conference engaged specialists from Europe, the US, India, Canada, Russia, Israel and elsewhere on a variety of subjects relating to changes in the world political order as a result of globalization.  Familiar geographical concepts such as territory, borderlands, states and geopolitics were reexamined in light of developments that have taken place in the post-9/11 world.

In his keynote address, Prof. Alexander Murphy of the University of Oregon set the conference’s tone with a discussion of “Territory’s Continuing Allure.” He noted that the contemporary nation-state system is often incongruous with the societies they supposedly represent. Consequently, substate and extra-state “identity communities” – ethnic and linguistic groups —  continue pressing for self-determination and recognition. These aspirations challenge existing states and the system that sustains them.

Ethnic conflict and borders were a major focus of the conference. Among the cases discussed was  Abkhazia and other “unrecognized” republics in post-Soviet space. IGU vice president Prof. Vladimir Kolossov of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Prof. John O’Loughlin of the University of Colorado, Boulder described the uneasy relationship between the Abkhaz majority and the Georgian minority in state-building process following the territory’s secession from the Republic of Georgia.