Borders and Border Politics in a Globalizing World (The World Beat Series)

Borders represent an intriguing paradox as globalization continues to leap barriers at a vigorous pace, merging economies and cultures through world trade, economic integration, the mass media, the Internet, and increasingly mobile populations. At the same time, the political boundaries separating peoples remain pervasive and problematic. Borders and Border Politics in a Globalizing World offers a carefully selected group of readings to enhance student understanding of the complexities of border regions. The reader brings together key writings on the histories of borders, their social development, their politics, and the daily life that characterizes them. The authors place their analyses of these issues in an international context, stressing how borders influence, and how they are influenced by, global processes. The selections provide a window on our current understanding of human interactions at and along national and interethnic boundaries, interactions that will characterize borders and border politics for decades to come.

Drawing on a worldwide set of case studies, this text divides border issues into seven thematic categories: borders as barriers; borders, migrants, and refugees; borders and partitioned groups; borders, perceptions and culture; borders and the environment; borders, goods, and services; and maritime and space borders. An excellent text for courses on boundaries, ethnicity, and international relations, this collection of cutting-edge information and analysis on borders and border politics in the context of ongoing globalization will shed light both upon international and subnational boundaries and upon the unfolding processes of globalization.

Thomas L. Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and columnist-the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and the author of numerous bestselling books, among them From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World Is Flat.

He was born in Minneapolis in 1953, and grew up in the middle-class Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1975 with a degree in Mediterranean studies, attended St. Antony's College, Oxford, on a Marshall Scholarship, and received an M.Phil. degree in modern Middle East studies from Oxford. After three years with United Press International, he joined The New York Times, where he has worked ever since as a reporter, correspondent, bureau chief, and columnist. At the Times, he has won three Pulitzer Prizes: in 1983 for international reporting (from Lebanon), in 1988 for international reporting (from Israel), and in 2002 for his columns after the September 11th attacks.

Friedman's first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, won the National Book Award in 1989. His second book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999), won the Overseas Press Club Award for best book on foreign policy in 2000. In 2002 FSG published a collection of his Pulitzer Prize-winning columns, along with a diary he kept after 9/11, as Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11. His fourth book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (2005) became a #1 New York Times bestseller and received the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in November 2005. A revised and expanded edition was published in hardcover in 2006 and in 2007. The World Is Flat has sold more than 4 million copies in thirty-seven languages.

In 2008 he brought out Hot, Flat, and Crowded, which was published in a revised edition a year later. His sixth book, That Used to Be Us: How American Fell Behind in the World We Invented and How We Can Come Back, co-written with Michael Mandelbaum, was published in 2011. It was followed by Thank You For Being Late in 2016.

Thomas L. Friedman lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family.