Urbanities,
Vol. 3 • No 1 • May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
132
Besides the keynote lectures, the special panel discussion on the renewal of Berlin and
its contemporary development and the lecture, or interview with the architect Daniel
Liebeskind on his Berlin architectural implementations can be considered as highly
inspirational.
Considering its size in the environs of Humboldt University, the conference was very
well managed in terms of organisation. The credit for that mainly belongs to the main
organiser Sarah Green, but also her assistant Darien Rosentals and the local organiser Rozita
Dimova. It can be considered especially significant that within its framework there were
opportunities of presentations and strengthening contacts with similar networks and
organisations, which participated in joint round tables, and that there was a contextualisation
of the topics of the eastern borders into the global developmental paradigms.
The conference emphasised a whole range of topics. It was often clear from the
individual contributions that the borders between states are a visualisation of a large number
of phenomena, but these phenomena play out on the entirety of large territories, which
surround the borders. Observing events on the site of the demarcation helps reveal striking
phenomena, but their significances require knowledge of a whole range of contexts
associated with the economy and social behaviour of large groups of people in the interior.
The study of borders thus leads again to wide multidisciplinary perspectives encompassing
events in the entire society.
The conference confirmed the knowledge on the diversity and difficult to grasp nature
of the various types of borders using comparable social-science instruments. Many
demarcations have nothing in common with state borders. What is ever more important in the
globalised world are borders leading across states and demarcating individuals and groups
determined by ethnic, language, professional, income, confessional or other means. These
notional borders are becoming ever more important in comparison with state borders, while
states are losing significance not only in the area of economic relations, but also in power
relations, which are concentrating ever more distinctly outside of state structures. A study of
borders that do not form boundaries of states allows the discovery of the real actors, who
influence the money flows, lifestyle and economic behaviour of people across continents.
One the large topics opened by the conference is also question of the relationship between the
social behaviour of people and its materialisation or visualisation. The topic of borders shows
how little social sciences know as yet about regularities of this relationship.
