Nomadic 'Fences': Modern Concepts of the Borders and Borderlands
(2009-2010)
Design of a training course

This research training course (6 lectures and 6 seminars) offers students new perspectives in understanding the construction of space and acquaints them with contemporary theories, concepts, and methodology of border studies. The course represents a combination of different disciplinary approaches (sociological, politological, anthropological, and geographical), manifold theoretical areas (concepts of borders and borderland, concepts of national states and nationalism, concepts of power, concepts of space, the theory of practices, feministic theories etc.) and different levels (macrotheories, middle-range theories, and microtheories). In addition to theoretical work, the course includes a set of examples from case studies, allowing students not only to acquaint themselves with different approaches, but also to understand the processes of focusing, conceptualizing empirical material, and designing an interpretive scheme.
Topical issues from lectures: nationalism of borders and the social production of "Other" in the borderland; the authority's attitudes towards the border; risks and pleasures of the border, etc. One of the lectures will be devoted to a specificity of the Soviet borders and to the most problematic borderlands in the post-Soviet space (the frontier with Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Estonia). A series of lectures will be read for 3-4-year students at the Samara State University Faculty of Sociology during the 2010 spring term.
Researcher: Olga Brednikova.
Supported by the Course Development Competition program of the Open Society Institute (Budapest).

Svetogorsk-Imatra: Goodneighboring
(2007)

Project of the South Karelia Institute, Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT).
Coordinator: Virpi Kaisto (South Karelia Institute).
The goal of the project was to explore the attitudes of the inhabitants of borderland towns of Svetogorsk (Russia) and Imatra (Finland) towards the unique common space of a Russian-Finnish twin town. The main question of the research was: are the implemented integration projects becoming a part of everyday life for Svetogorsk inhabitants? Researchers analysed a) available "social capital" of Svetogorsk and the comfort level of the town's environment (attitudes of its dwellers to the town in general and the level of their satisfaction with life in it, the experience of their interaction with the neighbouring town, their evaluation of trust and safety in both towns), b) dwellers' involvement in the problems of the "divided town" (their position, identification with it, information and assessment of cooperation, their experience and interest in participation in joint projects, and their estimation of priorities in the development of the twin town).
Participant from CISR: Nadya Nartova.
Supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.

The Cultural Politics of Memory in the Estonian-Russian Borderlands
(2003-2008)

The project is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Robert Kaiser (Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA).
This project investigated: 1) the intersection between power, place, and identity occurring as a result of de- and re- territorialisation of post-soviet space (by the cultural politics of memory, we refer to the power imbedded and inscribed in the cultural discourses and practices of "memory work"); 2) the construction of the past through the analysis of changes of commemorative landscapes (new and reconstituted monuments, cultural events and festivals, new presentations of the past in school textbooks and tourist guidebooks, official "texts," and others). The research was conducted in so-called divided towns of Ivangorod and Narva in the north, and in the Setomaa region in the southern border area. The basic methods of research are in-depth expert and biographical interviews, observation, and text analysis.
Participant from CISR: Elena Nikiforova.
Supported by the American Councils for International Education (ACTR/ACCELS), the CISR, the Kone Foundation (Finland).

New Russian Borderland: Space-as-Lived and Space-as- Represented (the case of Narva-Ivangorod divided towns)
(Since 2003)

The project is aimed at studying and theoretically understanding the borderland as a phenomenon in post-Soviet space. Theoretical bases of this work are the concepts of social construction of space, the concept of post-Soviet nation-building, and borderland theories.
The research is devoted to Ivangorod and Narva, two cross-border towns located on the post-Soviet Russian-Estonian border. The project attempts to do the following:
- to analyze the process of forming social space of borderland as a uniform zone of everyday life (practices of crossing the border and "consumption" of alien space, transboundary social networks, situations and conditions for social interaction between residents of the neighboring states, etc.);
- to reconstruct the models of typification and structurization of time and space in the borderland;
- to define dominating agents and narratives involved in discursive reproduction of the borderland space;
- to analyze the peculiarities of nation building in the context of the borderland, as well as the processes of "localization" taking place in cross-border territories;
- to specify and redefine key concepts and categories used in the analysis of the borderland as a social phenomenon (re- and de-territorization, transboundaring, translocalness, transnationality etc.).
Researcher: Olga Brednikova.
Supported by the European University at St. Petersburg and CISR.
To be presented as a Doctoral thesis.

Frontiers and Processes of Re-(de-)territorisation in the Borderland Area
(The Case of the Russian-Estonian Borderland)
(Since 2002)

The research focuses on studying the process of borderland formation as a social phenomenon in post-Soviet space. The tasks of the research are as follows: the comparison of national and local in the context of national construction, the analysis of the process of producing "localness" and forming a uniform zone of everyday life at the borderland. Also under examination are the peculiarities of functioning frontier institutions, citizenship in the borderland, and the reconstruction of senses attributed to the border. The objects of the research are the so-called divided cities of Ivangorod and Narva located on the Russian-Estonian border. The basic methods of the research are in-depth expert and biographical interviews, observation and discursive analysis of texts.
Researcher: Olga Brednikova.
Supported by the European University at St. Petersburg and the CISR.

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