Beyond Borders

Authors

Kathleen Braden, Seattle Pacific UniversityFollow
Wilbur Zelinsky
Sergei RogachevFollow
Thomas BaerwaldFollow
Aleksei Naumov, Moscow State UniversityFollow
John Florin
Raymond Krishchyunas
Aleksei NovikovFollow
Stanley Brunn

Document Type

Book

Publication Date

1998

Keywords

Beyond Borders, Braden, United States, Russia

Abstract

Is it possible to look out over the Ural Mountains and see Appalachia? To find the character of the American West in the vast open space of Siberia? To smell the citrus and feel the warm sun of the Black Sea coast and be struck with a sense of Florida?

This book is based on just such an idea: that we can look beyond our borders and discover fundamental realities about places that transcend differences of culture, language, and politics. Five American and four Russian geographers wrote this book to provide glimpses of understanding about the United States and Russia. Despite the size and power of our two nations and more than seventy years of cold war, we seem to have a meager comprehension of each other, perhaps because each country is so often viewed as a monolith and we emphasize our differences, rather than similarities.

The authors of this book worked together in the hopes of overcoming some misimpressions of the past. Beyond Borders became an experiment - an attempt to compare the United States and Russia by pairing up and analyzing eleven regions. We have therefore taken the rather risky step of suggesting similarities between New England and Novgorod, between Odessa and New Orleans, between Moscow and New York. But perhaps the time has never been more appropriate for such a new approach to geography because so many people seem adrift on the changing world map. In an era when establishes states are breaking up, new alliances are forming, and the very idea of state sovereignty is being transformed, we may begin to question whether all these lines on the map actually mean anything to people. Is there an underlying "real" geography which can provide an anchor?

Recommended Citation

Braden, Kathleen; Zelinsky, Wilbur; Rogachev, Sergei; Baerwald, Thomas; Naumov, Aleksei; Florin, John; Krishchyunas, Raymond; Novikov, Aleksei; and Brunn, Stanley, "Beyond Borders" (1998). SPU Works. 2.
https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/works/2