Terrorism's Role in Re-shaping Border Crossings: 11 September and the US Borders

To what extent do boundaries shape state-centred scales of discourse and action? In an attempt to answer this question, the article delves into one of the key ambiguities characterising boundaries: their being both static markers of sovereign jurisdictions and socially produced and reproduced institutions. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of ‘productive power’, and taking as a referent the Durand Line, the paper elaborates upon Robert Sack's contribution, and proposes an analytical framework that simultaneously captures, while maintaining distinct, two dimensions of territoriality: territoriality as a strategy operating in a socially emptiable space, and territoriality as it unfolds in its actuality. It argues that such framework provides insights on the multi-scalar and place-specific power relations that define the social context in which the Durand Line unfolds, offering important tools for the assessment of boundaries' role in the reproduction of society's contradictions and inequalities. The flexible territoriality of the Durand Line is defined by its simultaneous, and more or less successful, attempt at ordering space across multiple dimensions .     

The Unlearning Organisation

Business innovation involves multiple, often-repeated phases of idea generation, evaluation, development and implementation. This article focuses on the first of these, idea generation. The author describes a technique for converting our existing knowledge, learning and experience – often the main barrier to innovation – into the raw material for innovation. Illustrating the argument with examples of cases where the technique has been successfully applied, he concludes by setting out five steps 'which make up the unlearning process'.     

Trade Facilitation and Export Diversification

This paper shows that improved trade facilitation can help promote export diversification in developing countries. We find that 10 per cent reductions in the costs of international transport and domestic exporting costs (documentation, inland transport, port and customs charges) are associated with export diversification gains of 4 and 3 per cent, respectively, in a sample of 118 developing countries. Customs costs play a particularly important role in these results. Lower market entry costs can also promote diversification, but the effect is weaker (1 per cent). We also find evidence that trade facilitation has stronger effects on diversification in poorer countries. Our results are highly robust to estimation using alternative dependent and independent variables, different country samples, and alternative econometric techniques. We link these findings to recent advances in trade theory that emphasise firm heterogeneity, and trade growth at the extensive margin.