Anssi Paasi | University of Oulu (original) (raw)

Papers by Anssi Paasi

Research paper thumbnail of Revisiting "Bounded Spaces in the Mobile World": A Contextualized Rejoinder

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2024

This contribution aims firstly to contextualize the author's article Bounded spaces in the mobile... more This contribution aims firstly to contextualize the author's article Bounded spaces in the mobile world: Deconstructing 'regional identity' (Paasi 2002) and, secondly, to give a response to four invited comments on that article published on this forum. This paper is organized as follows. After the introduction, the geographical and conceptual contextualization of the TESG article and the scientific links behind the article will be discussed. These are followed by a response to four comments.

Research paper thumbnail of Academic capitalism and anglophone hegemony in political geography

Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Geography., 2024

This article scrutinizes the characteristics of neo-liberal of university, academic capitalism, g... more This article scrutinizes the characteristics of neo-liberal of university, academic capitalism, geopolitics of knowledge and the forms of so-called Anglophone hegemony. The key focus is on the wide debate on the Anglophone hegemony in human and political geography and on the dominant role of English language. This debate is examined to shape the roles of the geopolitics of knowledge, the forms of symbolic capital in academic life and the broader material, ideological and political practices and processes.

Research paper thumbnail of New Borders and Mobility in the Age of Globalization: De-bordering, Re-bordering, and Beyond

Routledge Handbook of Borders and Tourism, 2023

The authors analyze borders and tourism in the context of globalization. They critically assess t... more The authors analyze borders and tourism in the context of globalization. They critically assess the progress and status of borders and border studies in various narratives related to globalization. In so doing, they start with an understanding that both “borders” and “globalization” are contested and historically contingent categories. The focus of the chapter is threefold. The authors first scrutinize how globalization became topical in research since the 1990s in relation to tourism. Tourism has been recognized as an important force in the process of globalization, owing principally to its contribution to creating modern transportation systems and infrastructure that support traveling, such as airports, hotels, and resorts. Expanding tourism has also forced governments to simplify formal procedures related to travel and adopt innovative technologies, such as self-check-in kiosks, which enable the processing of an escalating number of tourists. Second, the authors examine how borders became a keyword in the age of globalization, and how the meaning of borders has been gradually shifting. Tourism, along with other forms of mobilities, both physical and imsaginative travel, has contributed to the touristic visions of the world as borderless or “un-bounded”, often drawing on the metaphors of “networks” and “fluids”. Finally, they problematize the relation between territories, borders, and (tourism) mobilities. In so doing, the authors contend that borders and mobilities are becoming increasingly two sides of the same coin though mobility itself remains divided.

Research paper thumbnail of Regional geographies of climate change

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2023

This essay is a commentary on Peter Taylor's article "The geographical ontology challenge in atte... more This essay is a commentary on Peter Taylor's article "The geographical ontology challenge in attending to anthropogenic climate change: regional geography revisited". Taylor's article develops, in the context climate change, several themes that he has outlined during his long career. This commentary focuses particularly on the contested (discursive) regional, regional geographic and state-centric frames critically examined in Taylor's paper. Despite the mushrooming literature on climate change, ontological issues related to regionality/spatialities explored by Taylor have been largely overlooked. He introduces a useful multi-scalar and multi-dimensional framework for problematizing the ontologies of the spatialities related to climate change emergency. This commentary focuses on this framework in the context of regional geography. Since regional/territorial, particularly statecentric frames are frequently taken for granted, Taylor's proposal is very welcome and provides a valuable addition not only to the debate on climate change but also to the ongoing resurgence of regional geography and regional thinking.

Research paper thumbnail of Locating the territoriality of territory in border studies

Political Geography, 2022

Locating the territoriality of territory in border studies

Research paper thumbnail of Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border

Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 1996

... Territories, boundaries, and consciousness: The changing geographies of the Finnish-Russian b... more ... Territories, boundaries, and consciousness: The changing geographies of the Finnish-Russian boundary. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Paasi, Anssi. PUBLISHER: J. Wiley & Sons (Chichester, England and New York). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1996. ...

Research paper thumbnail of Anssi Paasi: The institutionalization of regions: an autobiographic view on the making of socio-spatial theory in the Nordic periphery

Peter Jakobsen, Erik Jönsson & Henrik Gutzon Larsen (editors): Socio-Spatial Theory in Nordic Geography: Intellectual Histories and Critical Interventions. Springer, 2022

This chapter is an autobiographic reflection of author’s academic track, with a focus on the theo... more This chapter is an autobiographic reflection of author’s academic track, with a focus on the theory of the institutionalization of regions, outlined in the 1980s in the context of the ongoing socio-spatial theory debates in geography. The chapter discusses how working in a peripheral university positioned this research. The chapter also reflects the academic influences and the concept of theory behind the theory of the institutionalization of regions. It then charts the “travel” of this theory outside of Finland. By looking at the debates on the Anglophone hegemony in geography, the chapter also reflects the role of “mediators” behind the possible mobility of theories, as well the motives of scholars to contribute to theoretical debates.

Research paper thumbnail of Examining the persistence of bounded spaces: remarks on regions, territories, and the practices of bordering

Geografiska Annaler B, 2022

Regions and territories become institutionalized as part of wider geohistorical processes and pra... more Regions and territories become institutionalized as part of wider geohistorical processes and practices in which these spatial entities accomplish their borders, institutions, symbolisms, and normally contested identity narratives. The borders of bounded spaces are ever more topical today because of the mobilities of human beings (tourists, migrants, refugees), the rise of (ethno-)nationalism and regionalism, anti-immigration discourses and racism, features that expose the ideological significance of territory and the forms of physical and symbolic violence that are often embedded in borders/bordering. This essay explores the tenacity of bounded spaces in academic research and in social practices, and the meanings attached to such spaces. It will analyze how geographers and other social scientists have understood and conceptualized regional and territorial borders. Borders are material and ideological constructs, institutions, processes, and symbols that are critical in the production and reproduction of regions/territories, identities, and ideologies. The article leans on author’s idea of spatial socialization and Shields’ notion of social spatialization in making sense of how the obstinate power of borders is embedded in the production and reproduction of bounded spaces and in the process of subjectification.

Research paper thumbnail of Locating the territoriality of territory in border studies

Political Geography, 2022

Locating the territoriality of territory in border studies

Research paper thumbnail of Dancing on the graves: Independence, hot/banal nationalism and the mobilization of memory

Political Geography, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi: Nation, Territory and Memory: Making State-Space Meaningful. In Storey, David (editor 2020) Research Agenda for Territory and Territoriality. Cheltenham: Elgar

Research Agenda for Territory and Territoriality, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Anssi Paasi & Md Azmeary Ferdoush: New borders and mobility in the age of globalization: De-bordering, re-bordering and beyond

Routledge Handbook on Political Borders and Tourism (eds. Dallen Timothy and Alon Gelbman), 2022

The emphasis in this chapter is threefold. First, we will scrutinize how globalization became top... more The emphasis in this chapter is threefold. First, we will scrutinize how globalization became topical in research since the 1990s. Second, we will examine how border became a keyword in the age of globalization, and how the meaning of borders has been gradually shifting. The third aim is to problematize the relations between territories, borders, and (tourism) mobilities. Tourism along with other forms of mobilities, both corporeal and imaginative travel, has contributed to the visions of the world as “un-bounded”, often drawing on the metaphors of “networks” and “fluids”. Cultural and economic flows and the mobility of human beings are indicators of structural changes, uneven development, and spatial differentiation.

Research paper thumbnail of Kaj Zimmerbauer & Anssi Paasi: Hard work with soft spaces (and vice versa): problematizing the transforming planning spaces

European Planning Studies, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi (2021). From bounded spaces to relational social constructs: conceptualization of the region in geography.  Kohlenberg Paul and Nadine Godehart (eds.) The Multidimensionality of Regions in World Politics. London: Routledge.

Research paper thumbnail of Problematizing "bordering, ordering and Othering" as manifestations of socio-spatial fetishism

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (2021), 2021

This paper will re-examine and reflect critically Henk van Houtum and Ton van Naerssen’s paper ‘B... more This paper will re-examine and reflect critically Henk van Houtum and Ton van Naerssen’s paper ‘Bordering, Ordering and Othering’ that came out in a related theme issue in TESG in 2002. My first goal is to contextualise their paper into the debates on borders/bordering that began to flourish at the turn of the millennium and have emerged since then. I will then evaluate the enduring significance of this text and discuss the geohistory of othering. My final intention is to push their ideas further and to problematise the processes of bordering, ordering and othering as ideological and material manifestations of socio-spatial fetishism that often conceal power relations
and the alternatives for challenging and transcending these processes.

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi (2020): Regional Geography

Kobayashi, A (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi (2020). Political borders. In Kobayashi, Audrey (editor). International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Oxford: Elsevier

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, A (2019): Borderless worlds and beyond: challenging the state-centric cartographies. In Paasi, A, Prokkola, EK, Saarinen, J and K Zimmerbauer (eds.) Borderless worlds for whom? Ethics, moralities, mobilities.(Routledge) pp. 21-36

Research paper thumbnail of The SAGE Handbook of Human Geography: Two Volume Set

The SAGE Handbook of Human Geography: Two Volume Set, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi, Prokkola, Eeva-Kaisa, Saarinen Jarkko & Kaj Zimmerbauer (eds. 2019) Borderless Worlds for Whom? Ethics, Moralities and Mobilities. London, Routledge. 238p.

Borderless Worlds for Whom? Ethics, Moralities, Mobilities, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of Revisiting "Bounded Spaces in the Mobile World": A Contextualized Rejoinder

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2024

This contribution aims firstly to contextualize the author's article Bounded spaces in the mobile... more This contribution aims firstly to contextualize the author's article Bounded spaces in the mobile world: Deconstructing 'regional identity' (Paasi 2002) and, secondly, to give a response to four invited comments on that article published on this forum. This paper is organized as follows. After the introduction, the geographical and conceptual contextualization of the TESG article and the scientific links behind the article will be discussed. These are followed by a response to four comments.

Research paper thumbnail of Academic capitalism and anglophone hegemony in political geography

Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Geography., 2024

This article scrutinizes the characteristics of neo-liberal of university, academic capitalism, g... more This article scrutinizes the characteristics of neo-liberal of university, academic capitalism, geopolitics of knowledge and the forms of so-called Anglophone hegemony. The key focus is on the wide debate on the Anglophone hegemony in human and political geography and on the dominant role of English language. This debate is examined to shape the roles of the geopolitics of knowledge, the forms of symbolic capital in academic life and the broader material, ideological and political practices and processes.

Research paper thumbnail of New Borders and Mobility in the Age of Globalization: De-bordering, Re-bordering, and Beyond

Routledge Handbook of Borders and Tourism, 2023

The authors analyze borders and tourism in the context of globalization. They critically assess t... more The authors analyze borders and tourism in the context of globalization. They critically assess the progress and status of borders and border studies in various narratives related to globalization. In so doing, they start with an understanding that both “borders” and “globalization” are contested and historically contingent categories. The focus of the chapter is threefold. The authors first scrutinize how globalization became topical in research since the 1990s in relation to tourism. Tourism has been recognized as an important force in the process of globalization, owing principally to its contribution to creating modern transportation systems and infrastructure that support traveling, such as airports, hotels, and resorts. Expanding tourism has also forced governments to simplify formal procedures related to travel and adopt innovative technologies, such as self-check-in kiosks, which enable the processing of an escalating number of tourists. Second, the authors examine how borders became a keyword in the age of globalization, and how the meaning of borders has been gradually shifting. Tourism, along with other forms of mobilities, both physical and imsaginative travel, has contributed to the touristic visions of the world as borderless or “un-bounded”, often drawing on the metaphors of “networks” and “fluids”. Finally, they problematize the relation between territories, borders, and (tourism) mobilities. In so doing, the authors contend that borders and mobilities are becoming increasingly two sides of the same coin though mobility itself remains divided.

Research paper thumbnail of Regional geographies of climate change

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2023

This essay is a commentary on Peter Taylor's article "The geographical ontology challenge in atte... more This essay is a commentary on Peter Taylor's article "The geographical ontology challenge in attending to anthropogenic climate change: regional geography revisited". Taylor's article develops, in the context climate change, several themes that he has outlined during his long career. This commentary focuses particularly on the contested (discursive) regional, regional geographic and state-centric frames critically examined in Taylor's paper. Despite the mushrooming literature on climate change, ontological issues related to regionality/spatialities explored by Taylor have been largely overlooked. He introduces a useful multi-scalar and multi-dimensional framework for problematizing the ontologies of the spatialities related to climate change emergency. This commentary focuses on this framework in the context of regional geography. Since regional/territorial, particularly statecentric frames are frequently taken for granted, Taylor's proposal is very welcome and provides a valuable addition not only to the debate on climate change but also to the ongoing resurgence of regional geography and regional thinking.

Research paper thumbnail of Locating the territoriality of territory in border studies

Political Geography, 2022

Locating the territoriality of territory in border studies

Research paper thumbnail of Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border

Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 1996

... Territories, boundaries, and consciousness: The changing geographies of the Finnish-Russian b... more ... Territories, boundaries, and consciousness: The changing geographies of the Finnish-Russian boundary. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Paasi, Anssi. PUBLISHER: J. Wiley & Sons (Chichester, England and New York). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1996. ...

Research paper thumbnail of Anssi Paasi: The institutionalization of regions: an autobiographic view on the making of socio-spatial theory in the Nordic periphery

Peter Jakobsen, Erik Jönsson & Henrik Gutzon Larsen (editors): Socio-Spatial Theory in Nordic Geography: Intellectual Histories and Critical Interventions. Springer, 2022

This chapter is an autobiographic reflection of author’s academic track, with a focus on the theo... more This chapter is an autobiographic reflection of author’s academic track, with a focus on the theory of the institutionalization of regions, outlined in the 1980s in the context of the ongoing socio-spatial theory debates in geography. The chapter discusses how working in a peripheral university positioned this research. The chapter also reflects the academic influences and the concept of theory behind the theory of the institutionalization of regions. It then charts the “travel” of this theory outside of Finland. By looking at the debates on the Anglophone hegemony in geography, the chapter also reflects the role of “mediators” behind the possible mobility of theories, as well the motives of scholars to contribute to theoretical debates.

Research paper thumbnail of Examining the persistence of bounded spaces: remarks on regions, territories, and the practices of bordering

Geografiska Annaler B, 2022

Regions and territories become institutionalized as part of wider geohistorical processes and pra... more Regions and territories become institutionalized as part of wider geohistorical processes and practices in which these spatial entities accomplish their borders, institutions, symbolisms, and normally contested identity narratives. The borders of bounded spaces are ever more topical today because of the mobilities of human beings (tourists, migrants, refugees), the rise of (ethno-)nationalism and regionalism, anti-immigration discourses and racism, features that expose the ideological significance of territory and the forms of physical and symbolic violence that are often embedded in borders/bordering. This essay explores the tenacity of bounded spaces in academic research and in social practices, and the meanings attached to such spaces. It will analyze how geographers and other social scientists have understood and conceptualized regional and territorial borders. Borders are material and ideological constructs, institutions, processes, and symbols that are critical in the production and reproduction of regions/territories, identities, and ideologies. The article leans on author’s idea of spatial socialization and Shields’ notion of social spatialization in making sense of how the obstinate power of borders is embedded in the production and reproduction of bounded spaces and in the process of subjectification.

Research paper thumbnail of Locating the territoriality of territory in border studies

Political Geography, 2022

Locating the territoriality of territory in border studies

Research paper thumbnail of Dancing on the graves: Independence, hot/banal nationalism and the mobilization of memory

Political Geography, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi: Nation, Territory and Memory: Making State-Space Meaningful. In Storey, David (editor 2020) Research Agenda for Territory and Territoriality. Cheltenham: Elgar

Research Agenda for Territory and Territoriality, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Anssi Paasi & Md Azmeary Ferdoush: New borders and mobility in the age of globalization: De-bordering, re-bordering and beyond

Routledge Handbook on Political Borders and Tourism (eds. Dallen Timothy and Alon Gelbman), 2022

The emphasis in this chapter is threefold. First, we will scrutinize how globalization became top... more The emphasis in this chapter is threefold. First, we will scrutinize how globalization became topical in research since the 1990s. Second, we will examine how border became a keyword in the age of globalization, and how the meaning of borders has been gradually shifting. The third aim is to problematize the relations between territories, borders, and (tourism) mobilities. Tourism along with other forms of mobilities, both corporeal and imaginative travel, has contributed to the visions of the world as “un-bounded”, often drawing on the metaphors of “networks” and “fluids”. Cultural and economic flows and the mobility of human beings are indicators of structural changes, uneven development, and spatial differentiation.

Research paper thumbnail of Kaj Zimmerbauer & Anssi Paasi: Hard work with soft spaces (and vice versa): problematizing the transforming planning spaces

European Planning Studies, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi (2021). From bounded spaces to relational social constructs: conceptualization of the region in geography.  Kohlenberg Paul and Nadine Godehart (eds.) The Multidimensionality of Regions in World Politics. London: Routledge.

Research paper thumbnail of Problematizing "bordering, ordering and Othering" as manifestations of socio-spatial fetishism

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (2021), 2021

This paper will re-examine and reflect critically Henk van Houtum and Ton van Naerssen’s paper ‘B... more This paper will re-examine and reflect critically Henk van Houtum and Ton van Naerssen’s paper ‘Bordering, Ordering and Othering’ that came out in a related theme issue in TESG in 2002. My first goal is to contextualise their paper into the debates on borders/bordering that began to flourish at the turn of the millennium and have emerged since then. I will then evaluate the enduring significance of this text and discuss the geohistory of othering. My final intention is to push their ideas further and to problematise the processes of bordering, ordering and othering as ideological and material manifestations of socio-spatial fetishism that often conceal power relations
and the alternatives for challenging and transcending these processes.

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi (2020): Regional Geography

Kobayashi, A (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi (2020). Political borders. In Kobayashi, Audrey (editor). International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Oxford: Elsevier

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, A (2019): Borderless worlds and beyond: challenging the state-centric cartographies. In Paasi, A, Prokkola, EK, Saarinen, J and K Zimmerbauer (eds.) Borderless worlds for whom? Ethics, moralities, mobilities.(Routledge) pp. 21-36

Research paper thumbnail of The SAGE Handbook of Human Geography: Two Volume Set

The SAGE Handbook of Human Geography: Two Volume Set, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Paasi, Anssi, Prokkola, Eeva-Kaisa, Saarinen Jarkko & Kaj Zimmerbauer (eds. 2019) Borderless Worlds for Whom? Ethics, Moralities and Mobilities. London, Routledge. 238p.

Borderless Worlds for Whom? Ethics, Moralities, Mobilities, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of Borderless worlds for whom? Ethics, moralities, and mobilities (Routledge 2019)

The key motivation for producing this edited volume stems from the increasingly important fact th... more The key motivation for producing this edited volume stems from the increasingly important fact that contemporary borders can be simultaneously both closed and open, and have multiple functions and even locations, as contemporary territories are not merely bounded units but also relationally constituted. This is the material and discursive basis of various forms of mobilities and diverging ethical and moral claims that can emerge in relation to rights and responsibilities. The chapters of this interdisciplinary book will address these contradictory developments in the relations between various forms of mobility and types of borders that have been typically discussed separately (e.g. borders and tourism or migration and borders).