Alterity, Security and Everyday Geopolitics at Israel's Border with Lebanon

Ian Slesinger

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Abstract

This article reassesses themes in the present literature on borders in political geography by using the case study of Israel's border with Lebanon. This securitized landscape invites a definition of the border predicated on a neat dichotomy between one's own identity and a foreign and dangerous “Other.” However even this border is a complex and contradictory boundary, in which residents’ attitudes, beliefs and practices are ambivalent and defy neat categorization. This study provides a more nuanced account of geographical imagination at this border by treating the borderland as a heterotopic space, rather than perceiving the border as a fixed line, and by examining the everyday “micro-political” operations and materialities that inhabitants of the border region perform and experience. While there is clearly a relationship between security and identity at this border, the outcome of this research indicates that this relationship is non-linear and more complex than can be allowed for by a hostile cultural imagination solely based on a self/Other dyad.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)123-139
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Borderlands Studies
Volume31
Issue number1
Early online date2 Mar 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

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