Description: This book examines North America's Arctic and sub-Arctic borders and their changing relevance in a global world. Its point is that North America's Arctic borders are being dramatically reshaped by globalization in various forms, at the same time that they are adjusting to new internal pressures.
Brief description:
Heather Nicol is Professor of Geography in the School of the Environment and Director of the School for the Study of Canada at Trent University. Nicol was the 2015-2016 Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Arctic Studies at the University of Washington.
Review Quotes:
In North America's Arctic Borders, the focus is on differentiating many distinct types of borders in the North American Arctic, from Alaska across northern Canada to Greenland, but the real interest is in how those various borders are in constant evolution and flux. Many of them are permeable. The 'Westphalian' sovereignty borders between the Arctic states focus specifically on national and subnational jurisdiction, but interact with still-evolving international law, particularly with reference to marine environments, with legislative and executive devolution to subnational jurisdictions and with the increasing impact of the Arctic Indigenous peoples in shaping public policies.
Heather N. Nicol, the lead author and principal contributor, is a geographer; her fellow editor, Andrew Chater, is an Arctic policies specialist, and the other contributors bring expertise in Indigenous, environmental, and economic issues. This disciplinary range supports a nuanced understanding of how borders in the North are being challenged by changing crossborder movements of people, goods, and services, and the persistence and re-emergence of Arctic Indigenous geographies, as well as accelerating climatic change, which ignores human borders of any kind.
There is a useful and broad-based bibliography. The University of Ottawa's 'Collection 101' is a series of compact surveys of 'topics that appeal to a general public', 'approximately 101 pages' (series editors' emphasis). This volume, however, has 174 pages, and would have seriously benefited from more rigorous editing, to eliminate repetition and some clumsy and occasionally incoherent writing. The many and pertinent maps are printed in a faint grayscale and are too small for easy decipherment. It is regrettable that the authors' excellent intentions have not been better served in the editorial process.
It remains to be seen how the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the other Arctic states' responses to this, will further impact on the character of bordering and international interaction in the circumpolar North.