The historical separation between Judaism and Christianity is often figured as a clearly defined break of a single entity into two separate religions. Following this model, there would have been one religion known as Judaism before the birth of Christ, which then took on a hybrid identity. Even before its subsequent division, certain beliefs and practices of this composite would have been identifiable as Christian or Jewish.In Border Lines, however, Daniel Boyarin makes a striking case for a very different way of thinking about the historical development that is the partition of Judaeo-Christianity. There were no characteristics or features that could be described as uniquely Jewish or Christian in late antiquity, Boyarin argues. Rather, Jesus-following Jews and Jews who did not follow Jesus lived on a cultural map in which beliefs, such as that in a second divine being, and practices, such as keeping kosher or maintaining the Sabbath, were widely and variably distributed. The ultimate distinctions between Judaism and Christianity were imposed from above by "border-makers," heresiologists anxious to construct a discrete identity for Christianity. By defining some beliefs and practices as Christian and others as Jewish or heretical, they moved ideas, behaviors, and people to one side or another of an artificial border—and, Boyarin significantly contends, invented the very notion of religion.

'Thrillingly unique, knowledgeable, perceptive and profound' IAN DUNT 'Extraordinarily perceptive and original' ANTHONY SELDON 'Refreshing and important' RAFAEL BEHR 'A light-footed journey along the fault lines of history. Baston reveals a forgotten Europe.' KATJA HOYER A riveting history of Europe told through twenty-nine key borders that define the past, present and future of our continent Europe's internal borders have rarely been 'natural'; they have more often been created by accident or force. In Borderlines, political historian Lewis Baston journeys along twenty-nine key borders from west to east Europe, examining how the map of our continent has been redrawn over the last century, with varying degrees of success. The fingerprints of Napoleon, Alexander I, Castlereagh, Napoleon III and Bismarck are all there, but today's map of Europe is mostly the work of the Allies in 1919 and Stalin in 1945. To journey to the centre of the story of Europe, Baston takes us to its edges, bringing to life the fascinating and often bizarre histories of these border zones. We visit Baarle, the town broken into thirty fragments by the Netherland-Belgium border, and stop in Ostritz, the eastern German town where Nazis held a rock festival. We meander the back lanes of rural Ireland, and soak up the atmosphere in the coffee houses of the Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi. Through these borderlands, Baston explores how places and people heal from the scars left by a Europe of ethnic cleansing and barbed wire fences, and he searches for a better European future - finding it in unexpected places.

The current U.S. immigration nightmare is a product of capitalism. The familiar, heartbreaking stories of dangerous treks, migrant exploitation, asylum, family separation and detention all have their roots in the material conditions of the dominant economic system. Immigrants’ place in American democracy has long been intertwined with questions of cheap labor and exploitation, sovereign power, and the preservation of class relations. Through different facets of the immigration system, Borderlines explores how power and profit are perpetuated by the divisions between migrant and citizen and the resulting dehumanization of both. It demonstrates the necessity of a radical working-class demand for economic and political justice across borders and the edges of democracy.

Featuring 25 drawings in charcoal, conte crayons, and pastels, this handbook pairs portraits of people who live and work along the U.S.-Mexico border with bilingual poems that have been inspired by each of the drawings. A testimony to the people of the Rio Grande Valley, these drawings and poems capture their spirit, their quest for happiness, and their struggles to overcome economic hardship. This remarkable book highlights characters such as the "young street musician," the "six-year-old street vendor," and the "wise woman with rings." Compassionate and aesthetically compelling, this record raises awareness about social and cultural issues associated with border life, such as education, literacy, and poverty, and fosters cross-cultural understanding. "Con 25 dibujos al carboncillo, al lapiz conte y al pastel, este manual combina los retratos de la gente que vive y trabaja en la frontera entre EEUU y Mexico con los poemas bilingues que han sido inspirados por cada uno de los dibujos. Un testimonio del pueblo del valle Rio Grande, estos dibujos y poemas captan su espiritu, su busqueda de la felicidad y su lucha para superar la penuria economica. Este libro notable subraya personajes como "el joven musico ambulante," "la vendedora ambulante de seis anos" y "la sabia mujer con anillos." Compasivo y convincente de manera estetica, este libro despierta conciencia acerca de los asuntos sociales y culturales asociados con la vida fronteriza, como la educacion, el alfabetismo y la pobreza, y promueve la comprension intercultural."

The book considers the persistent tendency to represent the “Middle East” as a region enclosed in less permeable boundaries. This perspective of enclosure haunts Middle Eastern Studies and is part of ongoing cultural debates on cross-border circulation, currently challenged by spectacular outbursts of violence along resurfacing lines of division. This critical study analyses selected works of four contemporary Anglophone migrant writers from the Middle East (namely, Rabih Alameddine, Diana Abu-Jaber, Laila Halaby and Elif Shafak) to demonstrate that, in spite of the forceful lines that remain after religious, ethnic and political disputes, this region does not exist as a rigidly delimited place in the writing of migrants who reclaim it back from beyond its boundaries. Rather than being a permanent location, it is constructed as a place that flows into other places and is constantly reshaped by a variety of personal stories, migrant trajectories, departures and returns.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the International Conference on Adaptive and Intelligent Systems, ICAIS 2011, held in Klagenfurt, Austria, in September 2011. The 36 full papers included in these proceedings together with the abstracts of 4 invited talks, were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The contributions are organized under the following topical sections: incremental learning; adaptive system architecture; intelligent system engineering; data mining and pattern recognition; intelligent agents; and computational intelligence.

From our earliest schooldays, we are shown the world as a colorful collage of countries, each defined by their own immutable borders. What we often don't realize is that every political boundary was created by people. No political border is more natural or real than another, yet some international borders make no apparent sense at all. While focusing on some of these unusual border shapes, this fascinating book highlights the important truth that all borders, even those that appear "normal," are social constructions. In an era where the continued relevance of the nation state is being questioned and where transnationalism is altering the degree to which borders effectively demarcate spaces of belonging, the contributors argue that this point is vital to our understanding of the world. The unique and compelling histories of some of the world's oddest borders provide an ideal context for this group of experts to offer accessible and enlightening discussions of cultural globalization, economic integration, international migration, imperialism, postcolonialism, global terrorism, nationalism, and supranationalism. Each author's regional expertise enriches a textured account of the historical context in which these borders came into existence as well as their historical and ongoing influence on the people and states they bound. To view more maps from the David Rumsey Map Collection, visit www.davidrumsey.com. Contributions by: Eric D. Carter, Karen Culcasi, Alexander C. Diener, Joshua Hagen, Reece Jones, Robert Lloyd, Nick Megoran, Julian V. Minghi, David Newman, Robert Ostergren, and William C. Rowe.

American territorial borders have undergone significant and unparalleled changes in the last decade. They serve as a powerful and emotionally charged locus for American national identity that correlates with the historical idea of the frontier. But the concept of the frontier, so central to American identity throughout modern history, has all but disappeared in contemporary representation while the border has served to uncomfortably fill the void left in the spatial imagination of American culture. This book focuses on the shifting relationship between borders and frontiers in North America, specifically the ways in which they have been imaged and imagined since their formation in the 19th century and how tropes of visuality are central to their production and meaning. Rodney links ongoing discussions in political geography and visual culture in new ways to demonstrate how contemporary American borders exhibit security as a display strategy that is resisted and undermined through a variety of cultural practices.

Scholars of different schools have extensively analyzed world systems as networks of communication under the fashionable heading `globalization.' Our collected new research pushes the argument one step further. Globalization is not a homogenization of all social life on earth. It is a heterogeneous process that connects the global and the local on different levels. To understand these contemporary developments this book employs innovative concepts, strategies of research, and explanations. Globalization is a metaphor for different borderstructures, new borderlines, and conditions of membership, which emerge in a global world-system. As a world-system expands it incorporates new territories and new peoples. The process of incorporation creates frontiers or boundaries of the world-system. These frontiers or boundary zones are the locus of resistance to incorporation, ethnogenesis, ethnic transformation, and ethnocide.