The IAFOR
Academic Review
Volume 1 | Issue 4

In this edition
Crossing the Boundaries of‘Home’
Owning Multiple and Complex
Belongings in the Borderlands:
An Auto-ethnography
Place, Memory, Identity – Oral
History in the Borderlands
The Hostess at the Border: an
emergent anachronism
Frontiers in Google Maps:
Commodification and territory inthe borderlands

Perspectives from theBorderlands
ISSN: 2188-9570

THE IAFOR ACADEMIC REVIEW

3

CONTENTS

15

9

1-2

9-14

20-22

Editorial Committee

Owning Multiple and

The Hostess at the

Introduction

Complex Belongings

Border: an emergent

An introduction to thein the Borderlands: An

anachronism

latest edition of The IAFOR Auto-ethnography

Elena Knox, The University

Academic Review byKathleen Fairbanks Rubin, of New South Wales,

Michael Liam Kedzlie

USA

Australia

3-8

15-19

23-29

Crossing the Boundaries Place, Memory, Identity

Frontiers in Googleof ‘Home’– Oral History in the

Maps: Commodification

Sansanee Chanarnupap,

Borderlands

and territory in theThaksin University,

Holger Briel, Xi’an Jiaotong borderlands

ThailandLiverpool University, China Timothy Erik Ström, RMIT

THE IAFOR ACADEMIC REVIEW

20

23
University, Melbourne,
Australia
30-34
Table of References

Cover ImageRoyal Engineers Soldier
Serving with the United
Nations
Photographer: Cpl Richard
Cave LBPPAImage © Crown Copyright2013
Image 45156815.jpg fromwww.defenceimages.mod.uk

The IAFOR Academic Review
Volume 1 | Issue 4

Editorial Committee
Rev. Professor Stuart Picken – Chairman of the IAB
Dr. Joseph Haldane – IAFOR Executive Director
Mr. Michael Liam Kedzlie – IAFOR Research andPolicy Manager
IAFOR Cultural Studies, Arts & Humanities &Literature Conference Chairs & Advisory Board
Professor Baden Offord – Director and Professor,
Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin
University, Australia
Professor Donald E. Hall – Herbert J. and Ann L.
Siegel Dean, Lehigh University, USA
Dr. Thomas French - Ritsumeikan University, Japan
Professor Myles Chilton - Nihon University, Japan
IAFOR Publications © Copyright 2015

ISSN: 2188-9570 (online) www.iafor.org

Editorial Committee Introduction
homeland, nor does it take away from migrants’ability to contribute to and be loyal to their hostcountry. Chanarnupap argues that integration ofThai migrants into Australian society, while
maintaining their Thai-ness and ties to Thailand area salutary corrective to the calls for a ‘one nation,
one culture, one language, one state, one citizenship’that has been part of contemporary white Australianpolitical discourse and that the perception of having
two homelands does not arguably pose a category ofrisk or crisis for the country of new settlement.

One of the central missions of The International
Academic Forum or IAFOR is to provide avenues
for academics and researchers to be international,
intercultural and interdisciplinary. One of the ways
in which we do this is through our in-housemagazine Eye, our various conference proceedings,
our Journals, and now beginning in 2015 are our
special editions of the IAFOR International
Academic Review. In this edition of the IAFOR
International Academic Review we the editorialcommittee bring together a selection of the mostinteresting contributions from our Conferences withrespect to the discussion of the Borderlands. The
Borderlands incorporates a conscious rejection of theimplied inevitability and racial hierarchy of Turner’s
concept of the frontier. It is the contested
boundaries between colonial domains andtranscends the geographic, metaphoric and thehistoriographic. The papers selected by the editorialcommittee for this special edition certainly reflect
the international, intercultural and interdisciplinary
approach that lies at the heart of both IAFOR and
Cultural Studies.

Contributor Profiles
Sansanee Chanarnupap from Thaksin University,
Thailand advances the argument in her paper‘Crossing the Boundaries of ‘Home’ that belonging,loyalty and sense of attachment are not parts of azero-sum game based on a single place.
Chanarnupap considers that ‘Home’ is notnecessarily a singular place. Home may be lived in
the tension between the given (where we were born)
and the chosen (where we migrated), then and now,here and there. When examining and comparing theconnections between young Thai skilled migrants inAustralia and at home in Thailand Chanarnupap
suggests that migrants continue to retain strong
bonds of emotion, loyalty and affiliation with thehomeland. Ties to their homeland have led thesetrans-migrants to live dual lives, speak two
languages, and have homes in two countries. The
paper considers that when migrants live their lives
across national borders, they may challenge a longheld assumption about membership and belonging.
The lived experiences of Thai Australians suggestthat migrants will not simply cut their ties to1Kathleen Fairbanks Rubin, in her personal autoethnography Owning Multiple and Complex
Belongings in the Borderlands recounts the process ofdeveloping her own agency out of a borderland lifeworld formed amongst multiple geographic sites.
Fairbanks Rubin uses self-reflection and research to
make explicit a functional in-between to discover the
space where she belongs. Through Gloria
Anzaldúa's work, literature from border and cultural
studies, identity formation and her own qualitative
research, Fairbanks Rubin analyzes the complexitiesof this space. Her presented narratives illustrate aspectrum of belonging and of alienation,
unpredictable and frequent mobility, andunrecognized loss. As a child she recalls crossing theborder from the U.S. to Mexico daily to attend
school, learning differing cultural rules anddeveloping a tolerance for ambiguity and living in
Mexico City at age nine, she fluctuated between
being Mexican and an expat. At thirteen, and nearlya Mexican teen, Fairbanks Rubin moved to the U.S
and for two years added a rural, Midwestern, US
identity before returning to my birthplace in urban
California. This early life experience of theborderlands manifested in her adulthood, a reflexive
and sudden awareness of an encompassing image: aninternal convivial borderland ambiance around andbetween my distinct cultural identities. Fairbanks
Rubin considers that this holistic redefinition gave
open access to her border person identity andmindset, making available a rich and ample resourcefor bridging political, social, organizational andindividual boundaries in all aspects of her life.
Fairbanks Rubin’s story and its analysis offer’s analternative to categorical identity norms with asingle belonging place. She concludes that bysharingthese
possibilities
contributes
tounderstanding the knowledge base, abilities andskills available to other border people and to theincreasing numbers of those with multipart cultural
identities in a globalized world.

only of a chronic and controlled performance andembodiment, is anachronistically emerging at thevanguard of futuristic design. She is being
embedded in a new episteme, as our most advanced
humanoid machines are shaped in her familiar
image.

In his paper Borderlands - Exploring Commonalities
and Overcoming Challenges in Sarawak Holger Brielreminds us that most national borders are different
from natural borders. National borders are inherited
borders, but always constructed - not given - undercertain historic conditions and with specific agendas
in mind - economic, political, or cultural and all ofthese are constituted by specific narratives, whichhamper transit and crossings for many others. Briel
gives us the example of the border between Sarawak
and Kalimantan, a place where documentation isrequired for many a potential traveller. Using an oral
history methodology to underpin his study, Brielpoints out places such as Sarawak and Kalimantan
highlight the importance of oral heritage when there
exists a cultural setting where much history andknowledge is traded down in oral form. Hispresentation focuses on their existing sharedinherited border, one imposed on the people living
along it by foreign powers, now long gone, who had
specific colonial and economic agendas and how thenarratives created and analysed create counternarratives to repeated official histories expounded on
both sides of its border.

Timothy Erik Ström a doctorial student at RMIT
University in Melbourne, Australia contextualizes
the Borderlands within his paper Frontiers in Google
Maps: Commodification and Territory in the
Borderlands. Strom sees Google Inc., the developerof Google Maps as a very powerful multinational
corporation who can generate a vast majority of theirprofits from advertising. He considers that Google
have commodified language by creating a global
linguistic market which provides the revenue stream
for their expanding array of products. For example
Google Maps is a hugely influential website, withapparently has one billion unique users per month.
Strom’s paper examines the ‘borderlands’ of Google
Maps in two respects; firstly by examining how thecompany depicts disputed borders and secondly byanalysing their policy and using examples from
Google Maps itself, his paper problematizes how
Google presents different maps to different users.
Strom argues that—despite the company’s claims—
Google Maps are not ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’, butrather their maps are fundamentally political. From
this Strom considers the ‘borderlands’ in a more
figurative sense. He reasons that with Google Maps
pushing the frontier of cyberspace further into
embodied space, the corporation is therefore leading
the charge in terms of reterritorialising both spaceand cyberspace, and thus pulling them both into thecircuits of capital accumulation.

The Hostess at the Border: An Emergent Anachronism
by Elena Knox of The University of New South
Wales writes on the Actroid range of robotic
androids was launched in Japan. Elena Knox is amedia/performance artist as well as researcher whose
works propose and disrupt embodiments of gender,interrogating how women are performed andperform themselves in the varied media and contextsof our age. Knox writes that despite the 1970 Mori
theory of the so-called Uncanny Valley, Actroids aredesigned to appear and behave as humanlike as
possible so as to render them as familiar as possible,
thus presaging a future of belonging, of an ethically
viable sociocultural identity that is also a reinscription of stereotypically gendered cultural
narratives and attributes, of the machinic 'women.'
Her paper posits that as a distilled marker ofcosmopolitan hospitality, 'hostesses' are also
gatekeepers at borders with respect to the locally andglobally marginalized and argues that hospitality is
the basis of all culture, but cannot exist. In thissense, paradoxically, they are 'human'. According toKnox the routinely gendered hostess figure, capable2

Crossing the Boundaries of ‘Home’SANSANEE CHANARNUPAPTHAKSIN UNIVERSITY, THAILAND
In Nations Unbound, Basch, Glick-Schiller, and Blanc
define transnationalism as the processes by which
migrants “forge and sustain multi-stranded social
relations that link together their societies of origin andsettlement” (1994, p. 7). Transnationalism emphasises
the fact that many migrants today build social fields thatcross-geographic, cultural, and political borders.
Migrants who develop and maintain multiple
relationships – familial, economic, social, organisational,
religious, and political – that span borders are called‘trans-migrants’ (Basch et al., 1994, p. 7). Trans-migrants
take actions, make decisions, and develop subjectivities
and identities embedded in networks of relationships thatconnect them simultaneously to two or more nationstates. However, Guarnzo and Smith (1998) haveinsisted on the continuing significance of nation-states inunderstanding transnationalism. Questioning the conceptof trans-migrants as unbounded, free-floating social
actors, Guranzo and Smith suggest that we underline theboundedness of transnationalism by reference to theopportunities and constraints found in particular
localities
wheretransnational
practices
occur.
Transnational practices cannot be construed as if they
were free from the constraints and opportunities that
contextuality imposes.

Introduction
This paper is based on an anthropological andsociological study of migration experience focusing on
the transition period during which Thai overseas students
become skilled migrants, as well as the way that Thaiskilled migrants live in Australia. I employed two major
qualitative research techniques in my fieldwork:
participant observation and in-depth interviewing fromthe Year 2007 to 2009. Twenty-five Thai skilledmigrants in Melbourne who initially came to Australia
for further education and then applied for Australianpermanent residence after graduating generated the coredata for the study. Thai people in Australia constitute a
mixture of students, working people, housewives, andvarious other smaller demographic groupings. I havefound that general observation and social interaction withthese groups can help to contribute a much greater
understanding of migration experiences in the broader
Thai community in Australia. In addition to theAustralian-based research I also undertook interviews ofseven families of key informants in Thailand toinvestigate the migration experience across thegeographic range of this diasporic sociality.

International migration trans-nationalises both sending
and receiving societies by extending relevant forms ofmembership beyond the boundaries of territories. The
concept of transnationalism points to a growing and evermore routinised recognition of a people’s multiple
attachments. The assumption that a person will live hisor her life in one place, according to one set of nationaland cultural norms, in countries with impermeable
national borders, no longer holds. When settling in a
new city, many migrants rely on mutual links and sustain
strong ethnic networks across borders, while establishingsocial and economic ties with their local community.
Many migrants end up belonging simultaneously to twosocieties as ‘trans-migrants’. In fact, ethnic andcommunity networks represent one of the mostinnovative and interesting features of present-day
internationalmigration
patterns.
Transnational
relationships between migrant communities and their
homelands are seen as part of wider international
networks (Levitt, 2004).

Photo by David Burke (Creative Commons)

Theoretical Orientation
My theoretical perspective is framed around the notionof ‘transnationalism’. I view transnational activities as
involving the flows of ideas, information, people andculture, which transcend one or more nation-states. The
lives of many individuals in the contemporary world
increasingly transcend single localities and single nations.
International migration mostly takes place withintransnational social networks that link families andcommunities across long distances (Faist, 2000).

In sum, the transnational perspective used in this paper
focuses on two issues. First, transnational processes need
to be understood beyond the borders of a particular3need to select diverse strategies of action on a day-to-day
and situation-by-situation basis, adapting to particular
circumstances. As they are bilingual, speaking both Thaiand English, they have to learn ‘code-switching’ inlinguistics and cultural practices to speak and behave
appropriately in a number of different arenas. The
extensiveness, intensity and velocity of networked flows
of information and resources between migrants and their
homeland may alter the way people do things in local
societies (Thai, Australian, and Australian-Thaisocieties). One major transformation, which could be
described in this paper is the perception of having two
homes.

nation-state and transnational activities involve the flowsof ideas, information, people and culture that transcend
one or more nation-states. Second, while transnational
processes extend beyond the borders of a particularnation-state, these processes are shaped by the sociocultural and institutional practices of a particular nationstate. Transnational practices, while connecting
collectivities located in more than one national territory,
are built within the confines of specific socio-cultural,
economic, and political relations at historicallydetermined times (Guarnizo & Smith, 1998).

Background of the Australian-Thai
Community

Where is home?

Thai people in Australia constitute a mixture of students,
working people, housewives, and various other smaller
demographic groupings. Generally, settler arrivals fromThailand are not recognized as refugees or asylum
seekers. Rather they are most likely seen as people
voluntarily seeking a better life. The 2011 Australian
Census of Population and Housing counted 45 464
Thai-born people in Australia, compared to 30 554 in2006 Census, 23 600 in 2001 Census, and 18 939 in
1996 Census. The Thai community in Australia has been
increasing significantly.

“Where are you from?” is a question frequently asked of
the research participants. When they were asked thisquestion most did not have a difficulty in giving astraightforward answer about their origins and affiliation.
It can be argued that Thailand is culturally relevant topeople who still call themselves Thai. But whenparticipants were asked, “Where is home?” most repliedthat they, “have two homes”. Participants held dualorientations: to Australia where most were citizens and inwhich all were residents, and to Thailand, where they
maintained familial and social ties.

I conceive of the Australian-Thai community as adynamic meta-network which has many sub-networks
interconnecting within it; ranging from interpersonal ties
to social organizational ties, from virtual encounters toreal-life interactions. Participants have Thai social
networks that could be used to connect them with otherThais for various reasons at various times. They haveused these networks since the time of their arrival toconstruct their own personal world and livelihood.
Although networks might be concentrated on otherThais, participants also have external contacts that could
connect them to broader Australian society. The Thai
community is neither a closed nor exclusive community.

Almost all participants, no matter whether they weredual citizens or not, felt that in some sense they belonged
to both Thailand and Australia, but they typically had astronger sense of belonging to Thailand as they wereborn in Thailand, most had lived in Thailand longer thanthey had in Australia and their significant others (I.e.
parents and siblings) were still living in Thailand. Theireveryday life in Australia was also well integrated in Thai
community networks. Their attitude toward Thailand as
their primary home was therefore hard to change andThailand remained, if you like, their ‘eternal home’.
It was interesting when participants were going toThailand. They always said in interviews, “I am goingbaan (home)”. Likewise, when they asked other Thais
whether or not they planned to visit Thailand they often
said, “Are you going back home this year?” They tended
to use the word “home” to refer to Thailand and they
together understood that the term “home” used in theirconversation signified Thailand.

Thai migrants are embedded in networks ofrelationships, which give their lives meaning, provide
social support, and create opportunities. The advantage
of being tied to multiple networks is that one could gain
access to a wider range of resources. People tend to besatisfied when they believe that they can receive and givesomething of value. This is essential to the willingness tocooperate voluntarily and encourages behaviors thatfacilitate productive social interaction. It encourages Thai
migrants to invest themselves in groups, networks andinstitutions.

Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that Australia
was less important for them or they did not have acommitment to their place of settlement. Belonging,loyalty, and sense of attachment are not parts of a zerosum game based on a single place. Australia was seen as a‘second home’, a home of residence where they lived
their lives independently. While participants havemultiple attachments that modern technology has
facilitated, such multiple attachments do not necessarily
hamper integration in the country of settlement.

While manipulating ethnic linkages overseas, participantsalso maintain regular contact to Thailand, acrossinternational borders and between different cultures andsocial systems. Through their connections to both
Australian and Thai societies, Thai migrants haveexperienced cultural differences. As a consequence, they4

Participants revealed that when they were in their initial
phase as international students in Australia, they mostly
regarded Thailand as their only home. Understanding
home for them at that time was less about where they areliving and more about where they are from. However,after my participants have lived independently inAustralia and become attached to it, they began to see
Australia as more than just the place where they studied
and worked.
For them, their Australian home has offered shelter,security, and a stable environment as well as the privacy
to establish and control personal boundaries. Their
Australian homes also provided a space for Thai culture
to be presented in Australian multicultural society. By
this time, participants had built an independent
household outside their family dwelling. In Westerncontexts it is common that young people reach a point intheir life when it is appropriate for them to leave theirfamily home (Mallett, 2004). However, my participants
continued to maintain strong ties and bonds to theirbirth family in Thailand. The argument for this is thathome is not necessarily a singular place. Identifying a
new place as a ‘second home’ beyond just a house one
lives in takes time. Home may be lived in the tension
between the given (where they were born) and the chosen(where they migrated), then and now, here and there.

Photo by (Creative Commons)

Where will we live?
When asked my participants about their future plan,
whether or not they planned to return to Thailand
permanently at the time of their interview, mostanswered that they were not sure about their future, but
for now they had no plans to move back to Thailand,
they preferred to live in Australia as their new
independent life was now very much valued. Someparticipants revealed that their lives were now settled andthey did not want to restart their professional life in
Thailand. Some have married, built a house and madetheir own families in Australia.

It is worth noting that there were no instances in myresearch of participants discussing their home as a ‘homeof ancestors’. This finding differs from Somerville (1992)
who argues that home is an ideological construct that is“not just a matter of feelings and lived experience but alsoof cognition and intellectual construction: people may
have a sense of home even though they have noexperience or memory of it” (p. 530). This was apparent
when I visited or talked to some of my participants’families in Thailand that their ancestors were not Thais.
For example, the ancestors of some participants werefrom China. Their family members in Thailand havepracticed some of Chinese traditional ways in their daily
lives. Many spoke Chinese at home. These participantstended to have no business or attachment to theirancestral homeland. Kin ties to the home of ancestors
become less important after a number of generations(Chee-Beng, 2007).

In some cases, my participants had been seriously
tempted to return to Thailand permanently. For
example:When mother of Natwadee (Pseudonym, Female, Aged33) was very sick, Natwadee was depressed. She went
back to Thailand to nurse her mother where she hadtime to think about moving back to Thailand. After her
mother passed away she finally decided to return toAustralia and live her life there.
In another situation, a beloved niece of Somjit(Pseudonym, Female, Aged 33) was killed in a car
accident in Thailand. Her parents and siblings deeply
mourned the death of their child. Somjit was sad and felt
guilty that she could not stay beside her family andcomfort them. She mentioned to her Thai husband about
moving back to Thailand permanently but her husband
discouraged her from making a big decision when her
emotions were not stable. Somjit and her husband are
now still living in Australia.

In addition, participants appeared to think of themselves
not only as citizens of a given nation-state (Thai,
Australian or dual citizen) but also as global citizens.
However, it did not follow that they were thinking of‘the globe as home’ when the question of “Where ishome?” was discussed. My research suggested thatparticipants were conscious of being part of the global
community but this does not necessarily mean that they
will conceive of the world as home. The way most of myparticipants thought about home was appealing to fixed
notions of society or culture.

Initially, almost all participants revealed at the time ofinterviews that they had no plans to return to Thailand
permanently. Two participants, however, finally moved
from Australia and went back to settle again in Thailand.

5had greatly decreased. While they retained a right toenter Australia at any time, Australia was no longer seenas their actual country of residence. If home is grounded
less in the place but more in the activity that occurs in
the place, it can be assumed that in the near future
Sureeporn and Pitak will not feel attached to Australia
anymore. Also, Sureeporn and Pitak may no longer betrans-migrants, as they do not maintain multiple
relations that span international borders.

Sureeporn (Pseudonym, Female, Aged 30) returned toThailand to assist her family business. Her parents came
to Australia and talked to her seriously about her life andher future. At that time she had just resigned from her
casual job and was looking for a new job. She reported
that she could not convince her parents that she had abetter life in Australia, so her parents persisted andeventually she decided to return to Thailand. She packed
some of her belongings to go to Thailand, but left mostof her stuff with her Thai housemate in Australia. She
expected that if things in Thailand were not going well,
she could come back to Australia again. After six
months, she reported to me that her life in Thailand was
satisfactory; her life in Thailand was neither perfect nor
was it miserable. As a middle class person in Thailand
she had access to considerable social and economic
resources and could enjoy a high standard of living.
However, in Australia she was able to enjoy a substantial
degree of independence which most participants found to
be a highly precious aspect of their Australian experience.
Indeed, this participant was searching for an opportunity
to set up her own business in Thailand; she was thinkingof establishing an educational and tour agency to bringThai tourists to Australia. It can be argued that seeking
to have her own business rather than remaining within
her family business shows her desire to retain the
independence that she discovered while she was inAustralia.

For participants who still remained in Australia, almost
all reported they were not sure about their future,whether or not they would stay in Australia for the rest of
their lives. Such tentative ideas about the future only
gradually resolved themselves in the lives of myparticipants, some returning to Thailand to live and somecontinuing to live in Australia. So long as they continue
to retain strong bonds with their significant others in
Thailand it seems highly probable that many of them willcontinue their transnational participation, moving backand-forth across the international borders between
Thailand and Australia.

Discussion
The examination of the connections and relationshipsthat continue between young Thai skilled migrants andtheir families in Thailand has suggested that migrants
continue to retain strong bonds of emotion, loyalty andaffiliation with the homeland. Ties to homeland have ledthese trans-migrants to live dual ways of life, speak two
languages, and have homes in two countries. Thailand
still remains an ‘eternal home.’ Meanwhile, Australia isseen as a ‘second home’, a home of residence where they
live their lives independently.

Another case was Pitak (Pseudonym, Male, Aged 32).
He resigned from his fulltime job as a room manager inan Australian factory and then returned to Thailand withhis non-Thai (Japanese) wife and a baby daughter. He
stated that after having a baby he had changed his mind
about staying in Australia and he expressed concern
about his baby daughter’s future. In Australia there wereno other sources of support so his wife needed to resignfrom her job in order to take care of the baby. She took
on almost all the responsibilities of the home singlehandedly. He and his wife had to manage all their issues
by themselves. Also, he believed that there were limited
opportunities to become an entrepreneur in Australia.
Meanwhile, in Thailand childrearing is shared among
members of the extended family and others such asneighbours. His parents could support him and his
family financially, emotionally and socially; he could havea healthy family life in Thailand. After moving back toThailand, within six months he got a job as a senior staff
member in a big international company in Thailand. His
non-Thai wife also got a part-time job from her ethnic
community networks in Thailand. From these (Japanese)
community networks she was able to build up some newfriendships in Thailand.

When migrants live their lives across national borders,
they may challenge a long-held assumption about
membership and belonging. Some might ask; if people
stay active in their homeland, how will these migrants
contribute to the country where they settle? The lived
experiences of Thai participants suggest that migrants
will not simply cut their ties to their eternal home, nordoes it take away from migrants’ ability to contribute toand be loyal to their host country. Participants havemultiple attachments that modern technology has
facilitated. Rather than a problematic dual loyalty, thispaper argues that multiple attachments tend to nothamper integration in the country of settlement.
Australian society appears to these Thai migrants as acollection of ethnic communities attempting to unite
around a set of core values. Officially, it has no governmentapproved national identity and all cultures are described as
equal. How these Thais show that they have integrated
into Australian society is primarily to share somecommon values while not abandoning what differentiates
one from others.

In both Sureeporn and Pitak’s cases, they could enter toAustralia at any time as they were also Australian
citizens. However, their travels between Thailand andAustralia, as well as their international telephone calls,
6the Thai community. It is a perfectcombined sense of the familiar and theforeign. I feel I’m not lost in Australia. I
found that attachment to Thai-nesshelps guide me to know what to do andhow to negotiate easily with others bothThais and non-Thais.

Australian multiculturalism means that:As a nation Australia recognises,
accepts, respects and celebrates linguistic
and cultural diversity. Australia accepts
and respects the right of all Australians
to express and share their individual
cultural heritage within an overriding
commitment to Australia and the basic
structures and values of Australiansociety. All Australians have a reciprocal
obligation to respect the right of others
to do the same. These overriding
principles
aretheConstitution,
parliamentary democracy, freedom ofspeech and religion, English as thenational language, the rule of law,tolerance, acceptance and equality
including equality of the sexes.

Indeed, the cultural expectations of the Australian-Thaicommunity are negotiable, flexible and open tocompromise. The individual or community assessment of
whether or not actions are acceptable or unacceptable,
desirable or undesirable is most likely negotiated in thespace that is formed between Thai and Australian social
values. In other words, under the pluralistic name of‘Australian multicultural society’ the freedom of
expression to be a Thai may need to be balanced against
behaving in a way deemed acceptable to the others nonThai Australians. When acting subjects are emplaced
both ‘here’ and ‘there’ and the ‘flexible’ Thai identities
participants
practice
dependedoncontingent
circumstances in the different social spaces in which they
are acting. These Thai migrants prefer to be seen as
peaceful Australian citizens, as they believe that they arewelcome in this pluralistic society.

(Source: DIAC, Fact Sheet 6: theevolution of Australia’s multicultural
policy)These official government policy positions do notcorrespond to the sentiments of some sections of thedominant Anglo-Celtic Australian population. However,the Australian Government is currently committed toensuring that all Australians have the opportunity to be
active and equal participants in Australian society, free tolive their lives and maintain their cultural traditions.
Immigrants are therefore not assimilating by force, but
forming ethnic communities, in which the language andculture of origin can be maintained and transferred to thenext generation.

To them, Australian multiculturalism did not lead tosocial fragmentation or segregation. Although networksof many Thais might be concentrated among otherThais, they also have external contacts that could connect
them to broader Australian society. The Thai community
in Australia is neither an overly closed nor exclusive
community. The Thai community manages to put itself
into the wider Australian society. The exposure to thebroader Australian society can facilitate network building
with non-Thai social sectors. Such interactive
mechanisms thus elaborate how the Thai community is
inextricably intertwined with the larger setting in which
it exists.

Attachment to Thai-ness is to give participants the selfconfidence to interact much more dynamically andcreatively within an Australian multicultural society.
Participants are also, for example, speaking English,
wearing modern clothes, paying tax, obeying the law of
the land, and respecting the elected parliamentary
representatives, democratic political structures andtraditional values of mutual tolerance and concern tointegrate themselves to mainstream society.

Again, to them, Australian multiculturalism did not
produce the mobilisation or a claim to group rights as if
standing outside a common set of values (i.e. universal
human rights and democratic concepts). They are not an
example that defines group rights as sovereign rights.
They are an example that recognises the unalterably
multi-ethnic character of Australia and secures enough in
its multicultural values.

Tanapoom (Pseudonym, Male, Aged 41) said,
Australia is a country of immigration.
There are diverse ethnic groups inAustralian society. Cultural diversity canbe seen as central to Australian national
identity. Bear in mind that this ispositive and make Australia attractive. I
have experienced and learned ways oflife of the British, Italian, Chinese,
Vietnamese, and so on. This also
influenced me to integrate myself into

The integration of Thai migrants into Australian society,while maintaining their Thai-ness and ties to Thailand,
are a salutary corrective to the calls for a ‘one nation, one
culture, one language, one state, one citizenship’. Thesemigrants do not arguably pose a category of risk or crisis
for Australia.

7tolerance between different groups but continualinteraction, engagement and civic participation.
Accordingly, in the Australian context there must be
commonalities, notably the English language, as well as
the space within the concept of ‘Australian-ness’ fordiverse Australians to express their cultural identities.
Australian-ness may not be seen as a singular, but
encompassing the collective contribution diverse
communities make to the country. Australian-ness itself
will be changed over time, not solely as a result of new
immigration, but many other social forces such as theinfluence of mass media, cultural consumption, andcosmopolitanism. The culture of migrants is also changed
as the forces of localisation and globalisation impose
themselves.

Suggestion
In the age of globalisation, the diversity driven bytransnational migration and ongoing transnational ties
are now coming to be regarded as unsurprising,commonplace, and unquestioned. As increasing numbersof migrants live parts of their lives across nationalboundaries, the question is no longer whether this isgood or bad. Rather, the challenge is to look outside thenation-state box to figure out how individuals who live
between two cultures can best be protected andrepresented and what the host society should expect fromthem in return (Vertovec, 2005; Levitt, 2004; Modood,
2006).
Integration is one of those concepts that most people
desire but it is not easy to define. In this diverse society,the population have different traditions but also share acommon space together. It is therefore necessary to have a‘shared’ understanding of what ‘integration’ is or what itmeans to live in a society where people come from different
backgrounds. If we agree that integration is not about
assimilation into a single homogenous culture nor living in asociety of separate enclaves, and then between those two
extremes there is a great range and diversity of types ofintegration.

In the politics of social integration, this paper suggests
thatAustralia
cancontinuetomove
towards more robust anti-discrimination policies, anddevelop policies that tend to see multiculturalism as acondition of social order and security. Calling for
improving opportunity and greater interaction between
people of different backgrounds as the strategy would
lead us towards an Australia where our ethnic origin does
not determine our destiny.
Full references are found in the Table of References
section.

The Crick Report, ‘The New and the Old: the report of thelife in the United Kingdom’ (2003), indicated that
integration means not simply mutual respect and8Owning Multiple and Complex
Belongings in the Borderlands: An Autoethnography
KATHLEEN FAIRBANKS RUBIN, USA
during childhood and multi-disciplinary analyses of theeffects on belonging and identity provide clarity on
behavioral responses. Next I describe how theseexperiences prepare me for adult reflexive action resulting
in naming myself a border person, development of theconcept of a border person mindset and borderland
communication strategies. I show how this is analogous
to the process Anzaldúa experienced as she moved
toward a new mestiza consciousness and continued
writing out paths for living life in the borderlands.
Emphasis in her later work highlights the importance oftransforming personal history into spiritual activism andis similar to an auto-ethnographic process. Anzaldúa’s
work lays the foundation for recommending continued
research on alternatives to coercive assimilation, apractice which deracinates and silences cultural origins
not conforming to the majority.

This auto-ethnographic journey recounts how
discoveringborderpersonhood
elucidates
thesatisfactions of owning multi-sited cultural belongings
while learning to survive and thrive in borderlands. Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing thatseeks to describe and systematically analyze personal
experience in order to understand cultural experience(Ellis, C., Adams, T.E., & Bochner, P., 2011).
“Reflective and engaging, focused on creation andmaking something happen, and providing means for
movement and change, auto-ethnography is more than amethod. [I]t is a way of living and of writing life
honestly, complexly, and passionately” (Holman Jones,
S., Adams, T.E., & Ellis, C., Eds., 2013).
Most people looking at me and listening to me talkEnglish conclude I am a typical American. Light brown
hair, now grey, blue eyes and the small freckles sprinkled
over my easily sun-burned skin give no clues to what lies
beneath. It has taken me years to unravel the depths of
how I came to be different from most Americans. WhenI speak Spanish similar questions arise, however, there is
a common word in Spanish, fronteriza, which
communicates who I am. Naming myself a borderperson, in English, in 1988 and incorporating borderland
living into life and work in organization development
gives me words to describe my differences to people on
the northern side of the US/Mexico border.

To the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz life-world means
the world into which we are born, the one from which
we receive assumptions about everyday life (Wagner,1970). I expand his definition to include parts ofadditional life-worlds I acquired as a child.
I was born into my first life-world, in Santa Barbara,
California to middle-class white Anglo Saxon protestantparents. I have no siblings. By the time I was five we
lived in three different houses, in two cities and travelledby car across the deserts of California, Arizona andTexas, to arrive in El Paso, where my father began workfor the U.S. government. Multiple moves continued until
I returned to California to attend university.

In early 1991 when I read Gloria Anzaldúa’s
Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), I knew I’d found akindred spirit. Her accounts helped me feel less alone
and more grounded in what, to heartlanders, is an
unfathomable identity. Exhortations of inclusivity,
mediating divides (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 85); defining
mental nepantilism and cultural collisions and the need
to be “healed so that we are on both shores at once”(Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 78) supported my own feelings andideas. In spite of our differences, her philosophy helped
resolve confusion around my tolerance for ambiguity,
identity and belonging.

Narrative I: Immersion in the Borderlandsof El Paso/Juarez
Too young by state law to enter first grade in El Paso,
my mother finds a school for me across the border in
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Every morning weboard the street car that crosses the border into Juarez,
get off, and walk several blocks to my school. My motherdrops me off and doesn’t return until five o’clock. I spend
lunch and siesta time, from noon to three, with aclassmate’s family. I’m a five-year-old in a new culture, I
don’t know anyone. I don’t speak Spanish. My motherand father are across the border. I spend much of the first

Many of us have multipart cultural identifications, somecall them identities. For us, just one identity doesn’t workand a two part hyphenated alternative may not describe
us either. Narratives of living in three different cultures9three months crying. To comfort and quiet me, theprincipal sits me up on her desk in front of the sixth
grade class she teaches. She looks into my blue eyes,
smiles and pinches my cheek with thumb and forefinger
and says “¡ay, que chula!” (Oh, how cute!) and I cry evenharder. Yet by the end of the school year, I speak, read,
write and do math in Spanish, but not in English. And,
I’ve had an indelible Mexican “home-stay” experience
with the Iglesias family that took me into their home andlife.

Over the next three years I live in four new homes and go
to four new schools as we move to Phoenix, Arizona,
Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, Bakersfield and Redding,California.
When I am nine, we move to Mexico City. At first,
being a Mex-Pat is like playing on a checkerboard withmissing squares. Small town casual to cosmopolitan
Mexico City, public transportation and taxis, new history
to learn, excavations of the indigenous past to ponder,
Catholic churches everywhere, a confluence of many
cultures and an automatic change of social status.

Analysis: What a Five Year Old Can Learnin the Borderlands

As an employee of a joint Mexican-American
government commission, my father is assigned achauffeur-interpreter and a “red card,” a sort of get-outof-jail-free card, to be shown in case of any difficultywith Mexican officials. Privileged white-skinned
Americans in Mexico with government connections andeconomic capacity automatically moves us—me—into
upper- middle-class society.

Events themselves have their impacts, but as they occur
within space and time and culture, they also occur withina developmental matrix of experience and capacity within
an individual. To better understand what happened tome and my sense of belonging, I contextualize my earlychildhood experience within developmental psychologicaltheories of attachment.
At age five, I was frightened and abandoned by mymother when she left me in a situation where thefledging underpinnings of my first life-world suddenly
didn’t apply. I learned fragments of a new life-world anddiscovered alternate ways of eating, living, speaking,thinking, and of managing my feelings of fear andabandonment. Within a few months, I began to belong
in a second life-world.

My formal education continues in three successive private
schools, half day in English and at least a half day in
Spanish, required by the government. My mother and I
live in eight different rented houses and apartments indifferent sections of the city while my father works “outin the field” and comes to the city two days a month toreport to headquarters. During school vacations, wetravel by bus to spend time with him in outlying rural
locations.

But my relationship with my mother changed. I lost trustin her and distanced myself from her, especially in
Mexican settings where I felt she was the foreigner and I
wasn’t. Teachers and an unfamiliar family offered refuge.
I developed my sense of attachment not only to them,but to the culture, language, and customs in which I
experienced a supportive and safe “holding environment”(Winnicott, 1960), a space necessary for child soothing
and internal emotional regulation and the eventual abilityof “connecting well” as an adult (Kegan, 2001). At thesame time, I managed the hurt and anger of separationfrom my mother by cutting myself off from heremotionally and substituting an air of independence(Karen, 1990).

I have casual associations with expat children in Girl
Scouts, YWCA and Episcopal Church activities. The
one constant in this life of changing cultures, living
spaces and schools is the Lopez family that we meetroller skating in Chapultepec Park. They and their two
daughters my age are our connection to “normal”
Mexican lower middle-class life, weekend excursions andholiday celebrations. When I leave the commercial street
in an old part of the city and walk through huge wooden
doors into their enclosed neighborhood I escape into
welcome warmth, unconditional acceptance and lack ofpretention, just like I did with the Iglesias family in
Juarez. It’s a relief to leave the responsibilities of expatness for a while. Here I am just one of the kids playing
tag on smooth stone slabs between rows of single story
living units. We compete with radios playing popular
tunes, women talking as they hang up laundry, dogs
lazing in the sun and flowers blooming in pots outside
doorways.

My father, from then on, endearingly, referred to me as ahalf-breed or mongrel because of my facility to move
between cultures. Speaking two languages andfunctioning in two cultures served to help me develop
agency. I felt strong and capable because of my skills.
Adults asked me to interpret for them. As I managed
novelty, fear and aloneness I formed an emotional
defense template of appearing independent and selfsufficient.

After three years, my father is transferred to theprovincial city of Guadalajara. The three of us live in only
two different houses. For the first time in Mexico I havea family home. The only Protestant American in a
Catholic school, I continue the back and forth-ness, thefitting-in, between a new group of expats and Mexican

Narrative II: Four Mex-Pat Years: Mexico
City and Guadalajara
10classmates. Sara Chavez and her sisters, daughters of a
Mexican army general, and I ride a city bus to school
every morning. Before we leave, Mrs. Chavez makes thesign of the cross over us and says a prayer to the Virgin of
Guadalupe to keep us safe.

Narrative
MichiganIII:

Birthright?

Northern

I start high school the next year in a small city threehours south of the Canadian border. For the first time I
meet my father’s brother and a young second cousin who,along with me and my mother, carry the family name of
Fairbanks ancestors who were early settlers to that area.
Soon after we arrive I am walking down the main street
and a lady stops me, looks me in the eye. “You’re a
Fairbanks,” she says. “You have the same eyes as yourgrandfather.” I am astounded. At a family reunion I meet
relatives that grew up with my father. I’m beginning tothink I belong here.

Analysis: Re-Thinking Mex-Pat Life
Educational psychologists and sociologists offer insight
into events that occurred during those years. Crossing
social and language boundaries felt seamless, natural andsatisfying. I flowed from one circumstance to another, inwhat La Framboise, Coleman, & Gerton (1993, p. 399)
called alternation, which assumes it is possible to know
and understand two different cultures and to alter
behavior to fit particular social contexts.

However, for the next two years, I am as miserable andout of place as I was in first grade in Juarez, feelings
exacerbated by missing my father’s presence and support.
I know nothing about being an American teenager. No
one wants to know anything about me or Mexico and I
have no past with them. After two years of outsider pain,
I decide—against my mother’s wishes—to change
schools. Since we now live in the tiny burg close to thecherry orchard where my father was born, I choose anearby high school and don’t say a word about Mexico or
my past life. I know the language now and how to dress.
I am accepted by the smaller school’s insiders almost
immediately. During the next two years, I am a very
happy, successful rural northern Michigan teenager: I
play in the marching band, I am voted a cheerleader,
editor of the yearbook, have a football star boyfriend, a
job as a ‘soda jerk’ in the local drugstore and I get good
grades. I work in our cherry orchard in the summers, andwithout mentioning it to classmates, I’m an interpreter
for Mexican migrant workers. As soon as I graduate, I
leave for Southern California.

Expats were exclusive, cliquish, preferred speaking
English and seemed jealous that I had no American
accent in Spanish. Or did that fact imply a lower status in
their eyes? Mexicans were surprised and pleased that an
American could and would sound so Mexican. Or was it
the power of my privilege?
Buckingham (2008, p. 1) points out tensions I noted
between an expat identity over which I had no choice anddesire to be closer to middle-class Mexicans whom I
assumed were similar to me in important ways and werethe majority culture. I practiced border crossing betweensocial, religious and cultural groups, even ones thatconflicted (Canclini, 1992, p. 214) as if, like Giddens
wrote, they were fluid, not fixed (Buckingham, 2008, p.
9).
I used power manipulations inherent in both expat and
Mexican societal constructs that were bolstered by theconfidence and protection I assumed my father’s position
afforded me. Spanish language itself supported
internalizing class distinctions by mandating to whom
was owed the deference of formal forms of address.
When I spoke to the maid, for example, I would tell her
what to do or not do using grammatical forms for what
Mexican society deemed to be lower classes. I sensed that
if I acted in a more egalitarian way I could be ignored. If
I acted “too Mexican” with expats, I’d lose connection
with them. If I was perceived by Mexicans to be a usual
expat I wouldn’t fit in with them. Zigmunt Bauman(2008, p. 8) might suggest that I was practicing lessons in“rational conduct,” keeping options open rather than risk
gaining an identity that fit so tightly, options would begiven up in advance.

Analysis: Re-Visiting a Teenage Mind
To make sense of these four years, in other thanadolescent memories, I looked for explanations. The firsthigh school community was a tightly supervised andpoliced traditional community with restrictions on
movement and change. Members were masters at
keeping insiders from deviating from their norms and at
excluding outsiders (Bauman, 2008b, p. 21). Mex-Pat
privileged status of race and class opened no doors here.
During the first three years we lived in rented housingthat was seen as less desirable than owning your own
home; a Mexican, one of the Mexico City Lopez sisters,
lived with us. The only Mexicans the locals knew were
migrant laborers that came in the summer and left when
the cherries were picked. And, we were associated with afarming community rather than an urbanized area. I was
marginalized and relegated to lower status. Unlike my
Mexico experience, there was no possibility of alternation
or escape to a more comfortable space. The apparent
independence of demanding a change seems like arepetition of the survival response I used in first grade toDuring this comparatively settled last year of living as a
Mex-Pat in Guadalajara, my mother decided I was
becoming “too Mexican” and we returned to the States,
to Michigan, where my father was born and raised. It is
two years before he leaves Mexico, retires and joins us in
Michigan.
11

protecting each one from exposure to possible harm or
rejection. Like in a video, I watch myself keep my
Mexican life-world responses from appearing in the
midst of discussions with rural Michigan friends. I makesure my involvement with the Jewish community does
not break norms in Anglo groups and that my early white
Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) learnings and Mexican
identifications don’t alienate my Jewish in-laws orAfrican-American neighbors and friends. And, while
doing organizational consulting I interact credibly withdiverse staff groups in community agencies, schools,
prisons and industry.

cover hurt. When a past identity didn’t work, I tookcharge and substituted an air of independence for the
relationships from which I was alienated.
Michigan was a completely new experience: a native
father, early settler great-grandparents, family
resemblance, and blood relationship to a number of
locals. I had legitimate claims to birthright here. Using
these facts, expertise in fitting-in and determination, I
soon became a full-fledged member of a second closed
community. I was ecstatic—for a while. What I didn’t
realize was that I had deceived myself. I was unaware
then of what I had given up. To fit-in, to belong, to join,maybe even to win, I gave up some of my selves. At my
fiftieth class reunion, I asked if any classmates knew I’d
lived in Mexico. They didn’t. I so tightly closeted myprior identifications that no one there knew the MexPat, the border person, the South Westerner, or the
Californian. I followed the community rules to achieve
what I thought I wanted. At the same time I gave up thefreedom of choice to show all of myself. I fit-in to thepoint that others, and I, too, believed I belonged. I evenfelt a twinge of guilt when I left what everyone else called“home.”

Reflections on these complications and complexities in
my journaling, results in a sudden awareness of analternate encompassing image: a convivial internalborderland ambiance around and between sometimes
conflicting identities. I visualize an open mindscapewhere more than a categorical, solitary identity is
accepted. I see me, as a border person, living my life
among and between cultural identities. I breathe a sigh ofrelief and smile with pleasure and record this event. In
naming this belonging space, I feel integrated.
“Completa.” As Anzaldúa wrote after releasing la
Coatlicue (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 51).

Externally, I assimilated. Underneath, I longed for my
Mexican self to be visible. I left for California, nearer
Mexico, and friendlier to Spanish speakers. The choice I
made at this crossroad, an Anzaldúan encrucijada(Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 80), was a major step to owning andaccepting “multiple belongings,” (Bauman, 2008b, p. 24)
and a reflection of the effect on me of constant change
and mobility.

The First Time I Call Myself a Border
PersonIn California after graduate school and between careers,marriage into an orthodox Jewish family, children andtraveling, questions of belonging continue. I notice the
comfort of being in border areas on several continents
and of living near and crossing the US/Mexico borderoften. In journal writing workshops, I continue efforts tomake meaning out of my life experiences and examine
feelings of belonging enough to imagine what real
belonging might be like. I acknowledge the accumulated
pain and disappointment of years of trying to fit in. I
conclude that fitting in is not enough for me. Yet I’m still
unwilling to pledge allegiance to any one group or
culture.

Fig. 1For years prior to this epiphany, I suffered Coatlicue
states (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 46-7). They were as
wrenching as the images of Coatlicue herself. In place ofher head, two rattlesnakes face each other, as if in
combat. I'd argue with myself about who I really was
because I was stuck in a categorical definition of identitythat didn't hold all of my selves. Coatlicue wears anecklace of human hearts. My heart seemed to enclose
hurts of so many people I had no power to help. I was
sensitive to their pain and felt like I had no recourse to
make a difference. Coatlicue's hands extend outward. I
reached out my hands to the world around me, looking
to connect, and found myself misunderstood. My fears of
being alone and in the darkness of that fear felt likeI think about the cultures in which I was immersed as achild. I experience new cultures, notably African
Americans, with whom I’m engaged at work and in our
ethnically and racially mixed neighborhood. I consider
my usual behaviors, both in business and socially. I
picture how I keep expressions of each cultural identity
separate from the others. I see myself vigilant, on guard,
12

A BORDER MINDSET INCLUDES

certain death, like the skulls Coatlicue bears. Evil
wriggles in Coatlicue's skirt of snakes like evil in theworld. These states were also brought on by others'
reactions to my chameleon-like behavior that confusedthem when they were unsure of where I stood. My longstanding addiction to fitting-in everywhere and anywherecontributed to intermittent bouts of identity crises. Not
belonging anywhere dragged me down into depressions
without the reward of “crossing” into “knowing”(Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 48). On this occasion, out of thechallenges I faced and what I learned from the process, I
formed a new way of perceiving myself. I became what
Anzaldúa would label a nepantlera, a person who, in spiteof and because of the difficulties, learns to live inbetween
to survive and then, thrive in the borderlands.

••

Comfort with ambiguity
Acceptance of multiple world views•
Search for synthesis

BORDERLAND COMMUNICATIONCOMPETENCIESINTERGROUP
INTERPERSONAL
Demonstrate intergroup RESPECT - CHECK OUT
meaning
Express intergroup EMPATHY - Balance
INTERACTION & TIME

Acting On the Vision
Becoming comfortable with this new self-concept, I
continued to play openly with border ideas. Participatingwith the Association of Borderlands Studies and theColegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Baja California,
Mexico, I found kinship with border person scholars.
These nepantleros, from several continents, include
Anthony I. Asiwaju (Nigeria/Benin), Francisco Oda
Angel (Spain/Gibraltar), Oscar J. Martinez and Jose
Manuel Valenzuela (US/Mexico). I identified a borderperson mindset and communication competencies anddeveloped an experiential learning exercise to teachbridging skills between departments within organizations(Rubin, 1992). I drew upon personal interviews and myown professional experiences, as well as Brent Ruben’s
work on communication theory (Ruben, 1976) andMartinez’s detailed analysis of people living in the
US/Mexico borderlands (Martinez, 1994).

Build NETWORKS - ASCRIBING VALUE: nonjudgmental
Plan for dealing with CULTURAL “ACCIDENTS”
Fig. 2

Anzaldúan Process
In order to live life as a border person, I went through aprocess analogous to what Anzaldúa describes in her
work (Anzaldúa, 1987). The following demonstrates how
her border theories generalize to my race, gender,
ethnicities, sexual orientation and age.
I was birthed, as a border person through an arrebato, aprecipitous snatching away of one life-world for another;
being inbetween without knowing what that constitutes;
experiencing psychological blocks and addictions;experiencing depressing Coatlicue states, eventually
arriving in nepantla, the borderlands, tolerating
ambiguity in this inbetween place that will be home;negotiating, understanding and living inbetween cultures;
and, finding ways to resist societal pressures to assimilate,or to align myself exclusively with one group or belief
system (Anzaldúa, 2003).

This borderlands model is what Giddens might call a
consciously built self-reflexive identity project(Buckingham, 2008, p. 9). A border mindset includes
comfort with ambiguity, acceptance of multiple world
views and a desire for synthesis, a predisposition to accept
mingling rather than rejection. To communicate withclarity in the borderlands both an intergroup andinterpersonal focus is important. It is paramount to showrespect and empathy for each individual as a member ofthe group (gender, sexual orientation, work group, raceor mixed race, etc.) with which they identify as well as forthem as an individual human being. Interpersonally it iscritical to be aware of and minimize assumptions, tobalance interaction time, to be non-judgmental and know
how to manage cultural accidents when they occur.

But just surviving and living in the borderlands is notenough. Anzaldúa uses the story of Coyolxauqui’s
dismemberment as a metaphor for the importance oftransforming the past by re-membering. It is a processthat requires courage to dust off memories, re-examine
them, then reconstruct exiled emotions to reintegratethem. Excavating one’s past prepares borderlanders tomove into spiritual activism (Keating, 2006, p. 5-11).

13

Autoethnography promotes examination of fragmented
life events and sequences them to create a coherent
narrative. This gift of uncovering the raw materials fromwhich we’ve made ourselves allows for the ultimate
upgrade. It brings us into the present, ready for newly
imagined and constructed futures.

Conclusions

Reconnecting life fragments through reflexive action to
make meaning from life experience is essential to owning
multi-sited cultural belongings. The use of
autoethnography, metaphor, and the creation of a newly
imagined personally coherent narrative promotes
acceptance and facilitates learning how to be in theinbetween. These strategies are critical to becoming aperson who reclaims and integrates an expansive capacity
to experience a simultaneous sense of belonging tomultiple cultural identities.

Issues common to border people, regardless ofidentifications or belongings, can only be addressed
within a framework that legitimizes multi-part,concurrent identities and belonging.
Finding and promoting additional alternatives toassimilation and its disconfirming invisibility is crucial.
Further research using Anzaldúan theories can formulate
more strategies for successfully navigating in-between
spaces. An example of one such strategy is a sciencecurriculum designed specifically for Chicano students(Aguilar-Valdez, LópezLeiva, Roberts-Harris, TorresVelásquez, Lobo, & Westby, 2013).

Full references to this article are found in the Table ofReferences section.

14

Place, Memory, Identity – Oral History in
the Borderlands
HOLGER BRIEL, XI’AN JIAOTONG LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY, CHINA
discussed here due to space restraints, the overall
SHARP project relates to such issues of memory,
memorialisation and the search for identity by specificallyanalysing production settings, processes, the training ofinterviewers, the interviews themselves and the collective
interpretation of this data via new media means anddebriefing events.

1. Introduction
Today, there exist many ways to explore political borders
including using such disciplines as geographical,
economic and historical studies. But what is absent frommany of these discourse, are the localised voices of those
directly affected by these borders on a daily basis – theborder dwellers. The oral or grassroots history
movement, which had stated in the 1960s and 70s in theUS, tried to address this shortcoming and began, aided
by cheap audio recording devices, to conduct interviews
and assemble data libraries. Nowadays, one can observe
an unprecedented intensification of media devices used totransmit one’s own thoughts to the multimedia world.
And the digital revolution has also had an important
impact on oral history. Were previous recordings limited
to aural archives, now additions to these archives were
mostly in a visual format, thereby adding an extra layer ofdata to be explored.

Interviewees would typically be older members of bothcommunities: the Turkish Cypriots in the north and the
Greek Cypriots in the south. Additionally, a member ofthe Armenian minority living in Cyprus was alsointerviewed. Of particular interest in the interviews werequestions about how individuals from the two Cypriot
communities interacted with each other in the events
leading up to the 1974 intervention/invasion of the island
by Turkish troops and how these events shaped people’s
lives and attitudes afterwards.

2.1. Cyprus and the OH project

The projects presented here make use of video interviewsin order to gather data. The regions explored werechosen according to their easy comparability. Both
Cyprus and Borneo are divided islands, their borders
were decreed by colonial powers long gone and theirpresent populations struggle with restless borders. And
while the islands are geographically and also culturally
worlds apart, the projects evidence that people’s daily
lives do have much in common and are in many ways
controlled by their respective borders. Examples to prove
this point are presented below.

The two interviews selected and discussed below wereconducted in the autumn of 2011 by one interviewer (theauthor) and a cameraman as pilots to be shared with theother interviewers. Interviewed were, George, a middleaged Greek Cypriot media worker and Ali, a retired
Turkish Cypriot contractor and now a second-handbookshop owner. The interviewer and the cameraman
were both non-Cypriots; the interviewer was of German
origin and the cameraman had a Serbian background. As
discussed in many ethnographic texts, the relationshipbetween ‘foreign’ interviewers and local respondents isalways fraught with difficulty. (3) At the same time, theforeignness of the researcher might also allow for answers
not readily provided to locals. The other projectinterviews were conducted by Greek and Turkish
Cypriots. Sometimes in English, sometimes in Greek
and sometimes in Turkish. Most of the interviews withGreek Cypriots were, in fact, conducted in English, as
were the interviews discussed below. Interestingly
enough, English was none of the participants’ native
language. Also, these were the first or pilot interviews
conducted for the OH project, and this explains why
there were still sometimes awkward moments when theinterviewers did not exactly know how to respond to agiven interview situation.

2. Cyprus
The Cyprus project used data from an Oral History(henceforth OH) Project conducted from 2009 to 2012
in Cyprus and partly funded by the European Union.
The so-called SHARP project (1) aimed at adding its
voice(s) to the cultural conversations taking place acrossthe island by making them public. Over 100 interviews
were conducted on both sides of the Green Line, which
since 1974 separates the northern Turkish Cypriot partfrom the southern Greek Cypriot one. Trouble between
the two communities had been brewing even before
Cyprus had gained its independence from Britain in
1960 and would still worsen afterwards.
Issues of identity, problematic relationships and differinghistorical accounts would continue to divide the two
communities even today. And while not explicitly
15

At one point, he wanted to cover another item, thebreaking AIDS crisis. However, he was asked, ‘Why do
you want to cover this? We have the Cyprus problem
which needs solving first!’
When responding to the last interview question aboutchanges taking place in Cyprus for some kind of reunification of the two halves, George can be seen andheard letting out a long and deep sigh, which might beinterpreted in two ways: a) as a sign of resignation, or b),
a sign that not everything is lost, but that in Cyprus,things take longer than in other parts of the world.
Photo by Dean Read (Creative Commons)

2.3. The Second Interview: Ali
Ali, an amicable Turkish Cypriot in his early 70s, is a
shop owner in the beautifully restored Büyük Han
Market in the Turkish northern part of Nicosia. He has
had many professions in his life – he worked as acarpenter and in construction, is a collector ofbooks andstamps and he is a sportsman. After his retirement, heopened a second-hand book and curiosity store in the
aforementioned Büyük Han. He is active in thecommunity and whenever one walks by his shop, one cansee many people inside it enjoying his hospitality.

2.2 The first interview: George
George is a seasoned Cypriot media worker in his early
50s. He grew up in Cyprus and then moved to the UK
and the USA for study and work. He returned to Cyprus,
working in the media industry and has numerous film
production and director credits to his name. Among thefilms he has directed is one, which deals with the Cyprus
crisis and the events of 1974. Right from the beginningof the interview, it becomes clear that he has an easy
rapport with the camera, having worked in front of andbehind the camera for many years. Judging by his
gestures and occasional frowns, he seemed a bit tired, if
not wary at first, but this turned into concentrated andwilling collaboration with the interviewer. Indeed, one
has the impression that he is relieved to tell his story(once again).

It is clear from the start that, just like George, Ali is also
comfortable in front of the camera. He jokes and laughs a
lot and is clearly enjoying himself. He proudly mentions
that he has been interviewed by foreigners many times
over and relishes the memories and this presentinterview.

He begins his story with life in the early 1970s but thenvery quickly moves onto the traumatic events of 1974. Herecounts his childhood memories of the war and ofhearing enemy airplanes passing above. After the end of
the war, the airportin Nicosia was closed for civil aviationand nowadays it is very rare to hear an airplane crossing
the sky over Nicosia. George states that he had forgotten
this episode until he went to London, and for the firsttime in a long while he was confronted by airplane noise.

Very early on in the interview, Ali comments on the factthat he is fluent in English, Turkish and Greek and thus
speaks all three of the island’s languages. This allows him
to position himself as an expert not just on his own
Turkish Cypriot ethnic background, but also as aninterlocutor for the two other official languages of theisland. He grew up in Limassol but moved to Istanbul
when he was 19 and then to Kyrenia (Greek: Κερύνεια,
Turkish: Girne) and Nicosia after his retirement. His
father and mother had remained in Limassol and then‘moved’ to Kyrenia. This was directly after the 1974 war
and their move was an enforced patriation (from what
had become Greek-Cypriot ‘territory’ to Turkish-Cypriot‘territory’). It is not surprising Ali uses the hyperbolic andsafe word ‘moved’, rather than 'flee' or something similar,
as this is one of his ways of coping with the difficult
political situation in Cyprus, then and now. He is also
keen to stress that he had good relations with the Greek
community. ‘If I want to buy something [at ahouse/shop], I was invited to the house.’ This in his eyes
was a sign of inclusion in the Greek community.

His statement is an ample reminder that specificmemories (autobiographical/traumatic) consist of both
psychical and social elements, which are oftentimes
combined, as in this case. In his answers, George dispels
the myth that all the people were mostly afraid ofthe‘Turks’. For him the fear of EOKA B, a Greek
Cypriot paramilitary shaped after EOKA A, which had
fought the British in the Cypriot anti-colonial struggle,
and which now exacted strikes against Turkish Cypriots,
was the scarier enemy. But he also acknowledged that the
belligerent events of 1974 had changed his life. However,
he also stated that many use these tragic events to theirown devices, oftentimes creating (ideological) barriers toinnovation and social progress in society. He exemplifies
this attitude when he tells the story of his return toCyprus in the 1980s working for CNN World Report.
16

Apart from being a gifted narrator and performer, Ali isalso a master of evasion. Asked whether he sees the ‘olddays’ of both communities living together peacefully
returning again, he replies: ‘This is a political question. Ialthough the personal memory dominates in two
accounts, suggesting that agency is at a prime for boththese interviewees, but an agency which is mostly
reduced to personal and less to institutionalisedinteractions.

keep away from that. ... I am a very good mathematician
and am also good at hunting.’ A while later he comesback to the subject, though: ‘We pay politicians to do
things for us. That’s it. We do not need to be involved. A
normal life is better.’ This statement speaks very clearly
to his politics, at least when talking to us. He stays awayfrom them, even implying that politics are ‘un-normal.’He also stresses the use of the word ‘happy’ whenreferring to himself, which appears time and again. And,lastly, he stresses that ‘if you have so many problems in
the past, you work on your body.’ Besides that, according
to his statements, you also withdraw further into yourprivate matters. He is proud of his body and mentions
that he has been a runner and still goes walking inTroodos, the highest mountain range and spanning bothparts of Cyprus. This last element is again a hint that hedoes not see Cyprus as a divided entity.

Both respondents were content with being interviewed attheir respective places of work, George in his office, Ali
in his shop and George in his office. George was able totell a story right away! perhaps also because the airplane
story was one he had recounted numerous times. Ali had
so many stories that it was hard for him to concentrateon any one in particular. It is remarkable that all three ofthem were not keen to speak directly about politics, with
George being more open than Ali. George stressed thefact that he did not leave Cyprus permanently, because
for him it was worth fighting for a solution on the island
itself and thus stay true to his roots. Ali did not explain
why he moved back to Cyprus following his retirement,
but his life on the island is ample proof that he considers
it his home. However, Ali refrains from speaking about
politics and sees his own body rather than the country of
his residence as a construction site. In all three cases, theinterviews revealed how much the Cyprus problem hasintervened in their lives and altered their life choices andattitudes. All three of them made their choices
accordingly: George came back to Cyprus and entered
the media field to perhaps affect some changes in thethinking of the population in the south; Ali came backrestricting himself to his own body and the book andtourism trade.

2.4. Analysis of the interviews
When analysing the interviews, it becomes clear that all
three individuals interviewed seemed to enjoy the tellingof their stories. They are experienced narrators and have
many elements of their stories readily available. They
view their speaking as empowerment and also as a bridge
between their professional and private selves.
Significantly, both stress that the old days were better, asentiment shared by the majority of the peopleinterviewed. This age group still remembers the ‘old days’
and they are aware of the fact that a common, shared life
had been possible for both communities before, whereas
this is not the case for the younger generation.
Retelling traumatic events has different implications fordifferent informers: some individuals might go quiet,
whereas others use the interview to cathartic effect in thatpain is extra-territorialised (Dawson, 1999). In our
sample the respondents acted in very different ways:
George told a story about his fear of hearing airplanes,
which is due to his experiences in the 1974 war, whereas
Ali refused to recall any traumatic experiences. In
George’s case, this retelling might have a cathartic effectto help overcome any trauma by cladding the experience
into a stock narrative and thus making it a manageablepart of oneself ’s history. In Ali’s case, any trauma
associated with the events was downplayed and evaded,
which is another, but perhaps not the healthiest, way ofmanaging it.
For both interviewees, one might apply the theory ofcompartmentalisation of events into different modes.
Portelli (1997: 24-27) stipulates that oral history
narratives generally adopt three different modes: theinstitutional, the communal and the personal. In oral
history narratives, each one of these is characterised by
the usage of a different personal pronoun: the third
person singular for the institutional, the first person
plural ‘we’ for the communal and the first person singular‘I’ for the personal. In our sample, all three modes appear,

It is fair to say that without the events of 1974, their lives
would have moved on different tracks but they havefound coping mechanisms and coherence systems to deal
with the ensuing changes: George in a more professional
capacity, Ali in a more private one. In all three,composure appears to have been achieved through theretelling of their stories, be it politically, apolitically or
artistically.

Photo by Jpatokal (Creative Commons)17border. While Cyprus and Borneo might be described as‘cold borders’, as there rarely are any incidents, they still
inform people’s life on a daily basis. The project set out
to pave the way for collecting interviews from borderdwellers.

2.4. Conclusions from the Cyprus study
The series of interviews undertaken aimed at providing
an up-to-date snapshot of Cypriots and the interviewees’
views on the past and its relevance for the present. From
the two interviews discussed above, it became clear that
all three individuals were and still are affected by theevents of the 1960s and 1970s and that while individualcomposure has been achieved, closure on the other hand,
individually, communally or bi-communally, has not.
The remaining interviews speak to the same fact: all
respondents agree that the status quo is untenable (unless
one, like Ali, uses most of one’s intellectual defences to
expunge politics) and in need of change. Theinterviewers became better able to appreciate the fraught
process of reconciliation when they were introduced toindividualised life stories (Linde 1983; Frank 1995), notonly from their own community but from the ‘others’ aswell, thus creating a different perspective from theofficial records on both sides.

In order to facilitate the project, in January and February
2014, workshops on oral history were conducted in
Pontianak, West Kalimantan and in Kuching, Sarawak.
In these workshops, participants were trained inquestionnaire design, interviewee selection, interviewing
techniques, camera work and post- production skills. A
refresher will be held in January 2015 with the actual
project undertaken in February 2015.
In order to validate the preliminary questionnaires, 4
sample interviews were conducted and which aretranscribed in the Appendix. From the interviews, it
became that, just as in Cyprus, people do not officiallyreflect on the border much, but that it rather insinuates
itself into their daily lives in a creeping way (‘Seeing logo
of Republic of Indonesia’). People display little concern
for the political issues of the border and focus onpracticalities (‘I bought Baju Kebaya and hat and others
buy imitated bags, clothes etc.’; ‘More advanced, cleaner,more organised’). And just like in Cyprus, people longed
for a normalisation of border issues in order to facilitate
their lives and for less political interference. It is expectthat the full set of interviews will provide a moredifferentiated picture, but the overall tendencies, easierdealings with th other side and less politicising of theissues – would remain similar for both projects.

The interviews conducted during this project made it
clear that much of the Cypriot memory and identity
research work is still going on. All respondents were
trying to make sense of their own identity vis-a-vis thegeneral political situation in returning to individualised
events in their pasts. As there are other ongoing projects
scattered across the island, OH has of recent times,
become an important tool in working through memories
and collecting them. The next task will be to provide amore centralised way of accessing all these diverse
interviews and thus making it easier for future researchers
to access this much needed material. It is important to
involve the next generations, as they will become theguardians of this knowledge and should be given as many
narrations as possible to evaluate. Due to the technology
available today, especially video equipment and easystorage facilities, this job is becoming easier as time goesby. Yet, more training, motivational discourse andinstitutional support are all still required in order to get
projects such as the current ones off the ground, a task
the EU, UN and national governmental and nongovernmental institutions all need to work on together inorder to provide the grounds for success.

4. Conclusion
The results from the two projects are giving a diversified
picture of border life, in Cyprus as well as in Borneo.
People are intently aware of border issues, but their ideaof resolution is clearly settled in the practicalities of thehere and now. Perhaps a little less so in Cyprus, where
the memories of both sides living together in mostly
peaceful ways are still fresh, and an overall solution,either as a federation or as two separate states, is stillsought after. In Borneo, views are somewhat lesspoliticised and focus more on practical matters of dailylife.

3. Malaysia - Indonesia
Disclaimer: What follows are first heuristic steps into
this project, which is still ongoing at the point of thiswriting.

The projects also express the hope that these interviews
will contribute to individuals’ empowerment and their
better understanding of the historic processes, whichshaped and are continuing to shape their lives and theirethics in sharing an island. But both projects agree on
two things: 1. The border poses a problem and achallenge that require a continuous struggle in order tominimise its impact; and 2. Politics are unhelpful inachieving a solution to 1.

The border between Malaysia and Indonesia in Borneo
dates back to the time of the colonial conquests. It washere where Britain and Holland demarked their areas ofinfluence. Borneo, together with Malaysia and Indonesia
gained its independence from the colonial powers in theearly second half of the 20th century, the border remains
to this day, and the voices of the border dwellers areroutinely drowned out by the political wrangling over the18able to understand and portray people living along thisonce impenetrable border. And re readily acknowledges
that the willingness of his respondents was mostly due tothe fact that they felt he was one of them.

Notes
1. More information on the project and a sample of theinterviews can be accessed at www.sharpnetwork.eu.
2. Alev Adil, performing on 5 March 2012 at ARTos
Foundation, Nicosia.
3. As an example, consider Landolf Scherzer’s 2005 Der
Grenzgänger (The Border Rambler). In hisreportage, theauthor wanders the length of the stretch of land that
until 1989 used to be the German-German border.
Through his low-key and conversational narrative, he is

Full references to this article are found in the Table ofReferences section.

19

The Hostess at the Border: an emergent
anachronism
ELENA KNOXTHE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA
experential simultaneity of knowing and not-knowing
the ‘Other’.

In 2003 the Actroid range of robotic androids waslaunched in Japan. Its creators and vendors imagine thatthe ’bots will integrate into society, taking on
companionship, entertainment and hostessing duties. To
date, Actroids are modelled after young females, with the
exception of (near) exact copies of two male Professors
from Japan and Denmark, and a ‘brother’ released in
2011. Despite the theory of the so-called uncanny valley(Mori 1970), Actroids are designed to appear and behave
as humanlike as possible so as to render them as familiar
as possible, presaging a future of belonging, of ethically
viable sociocultural identity (Ishiguro 2007).

This conceptualization is advanced despite him having
stated elsewhere that “hospitality is culture itself” (2001:
16). Though Derrida and other poststructuralists
problematize conventional hospitality, in indeterminately
arguing for its effective impossibility the status quo ofexisting normative and oppressive power structures ispreserved.
An inherent entitlement or ‘appropriation’ is at the basisof the conceptualization.

Actroids’ familiarity is achieved via re-inscription ofstereotypically gendered cultural narratives and attributes,
as the machinic ‘women’ enact media campaigns andadvocacies that are reactionary and ideologicallysuperseded (Robertson 2010; Suchman 2007). The
routinely gendered hostess figure, capable only of achronic and controlled performance and embodiment, isanachronistically emerging at the vanguard of futuristic
design. She is being embedded in a new episteme, as ourmost advanced humanoid machines are shaped in her
familiar image.

To dare say welcome is perhaps to insinuatethat one is at home here, that one knows
what it means to be at home,…appropriating a space for oneself, a space
to welcome [accueillir] the other… (Derrida
1999: 15; emphasis in original)
Appropriation without violence is typically only possible
within a defined band of socially sanctioned privilege,
and statements such as Derrida’s elide and exclude the
Other(s) of and for whom they speak, assuring that thestatus of the Other remains stable. This allows
construction of Other, not as un-known or strange-er, as
Derrida seems to be saying, but as already constructed,
known-about and known-for. ‘Daring’ to welcome isframed as a masochistic, risky or altruistic andcommendable act whereas the prior and/or concurrent
act of appropriation is naturalized.

As a distilled marker of institutional hospitality,‘hostesses’ are also gatekeepers at borders with respect tothe locally and globally marginalized (Rosello 2001).
Derrida (2000) argues that hospitality is the basis of all
culture but cannot exist. Actroids embody this politicalimpasse in their robotic gesturing of hospitableness; thetrope’s endurance is symptomatic of a world in which
empathic sensibilities shift slowly—and sometimes
regressively—while technologies evolve quickly. In thissense, paradoxically, they are ‘human’.

According to Rosello (2001: 17), a postcolonial politics
of hospitality that revises these conventions in practice“might seek to limit the arrogance of the postcolonial
host”. In the context of this paper and its focus on thehostess, the colonial system has legitimized andcanonized

Conventional hospitality, defined in a Kantian sense,
adheres to strict boundaries and relies on national
structures for its propositions and protocols. In ‘Pera
Peras Poros: Longing for Spaces of Hospitality’, Dikeçdetails the inclusive mode of hospitality sought bysociologists Beck (1998) and Barber (1998) but speaks of“an oppressive aspect beneath its welcoming surface”(2002: 228). Derrida (2000: 5) warns of the intrinsic
conceptual impossibility of hospitality, of the impassivea redistribution of roles in which Monsieur
can afford to disappear (symbolically andphysically) while Madame, who must pickup the task of domestic care in his absence(including the reception of guests), [ensuresthat] the servile aspects of hospitality can bedelegated. (Rosello 2001: 133)
20

Hiroshi
Ishiguro
Laboratories(Advanced
Telecommunications Research Institute International)
website, the current iteration of the female Japanesegeminoid, Geminoid-F (2011), whom Ishiguro hopes
will become “common communication media foreveryday life” (Burrows 2011; Ishiguro 2014), has 16
degrees of freedom in order that it be cheaper, more
lightweight, and more easily applied to social
environments and installations. Its possibilities of
movement are thus delimited and likely to become as
iconographically familiar as the airline hostess’, themagician’s assistant’s, or the game show hostess’, forexample. Robertson describes this approach as
characteristic of ‘retro-tech’: advanced technology in theservice of traditionalism.

A self-declared host (Derrida’s “oneself”), in performing
but simultaneously outsourcing the welcoming gesture,rises above the polysemous dilemma of being at once
master and slave in his own domain, responsible for andassessable on providing the conditions of well-being ofanother. In relying upon the extant politics of power
within the established domain, the host delegates aspectsof the servile, deferential task as necessary andthe work has to be done by a subaltern, whofinds herself transformed into an excluded
third by the hospitable pact. It thus happensthat when the host welcomes you … he hasarranged for a system of hierarchicalredoubling: the host remains in charge of
the welcoming gesture, but he is no longer
responsible for the work… (Rosello 2001:
123)

The focus here on Japan is not arbitrary in that thesetting is well known as the “high temple of robot
technology” (Ambo 2007), and global uptake of its
innovations in the robo-tech arena is well documented.
As outlined by Robertson (2010) and others, theJapanese central government’s 2007 blueprint forrevitalizing and repopulating Japanese society includes
the official prime ministerial document Innovation 25:
Creating the Future, which states that by 2025, as a coreelement of a robot-dependent society, every household
should include a humanoid domestic robot i . The
document’s online précis illustrates the five key points ofthis decree with friendly-looking cartoons: one is a
Stepford Wives-esque picture of a pink humanoid robot
with a dress-shaped body, cooking, cleaning and caring
for children. Ostensibly relieving the housewife/domestic
subaltern from some of her ‘duties’ in the home, thegovernment’s professed ideal is that married women will
benefit from their new degrees of freedom to regain aninterest, flagging overall in Japanese society, inmonogamous procreation. Another of these cartoons is ofa large man being served by a slim, smiling airline hostessand communicating his wishes to her via prosthetic
earpiece: this subsection of the decree promotes the useof robotic translators and the development oftechnological systems of virtuality whereby citizens will“realize the world without leaving home” (seeGovernment of Japan 2007). There is ambivalence in the
document toward globalization that attests to Japan’s
history with regard to nationalism and immigration;
domestically, humanoid robots are

Embedded within colonial and also postcolonial
discourse and praxis as ciphers of hospitality, ‘hostesses’
to whom the work of the hospitable gesture is delegatedthus become representatively complicit in politics ofinclusion/exclusion that infuse both the domestic andcosmopolitan spheres. The persistence of this outmoded
version of ‘welcome’ in the public sphere is less related towelcoming than it is to cheerleading and team building,and therefore more aggressive in its ideology than might
be assumed. The hostess performing ‘welcome’, asignified hospitality, a closed openness, is symptomatic ofa lack of shift in the cosmopolitan sphere in terms of the
ethical responsibility for and provision of hospitality.
The persistent embodiment of a limited repertoire ofgestures, aesthetics and modes-of-being by certain
women performing welcome in media, arts and futuristic
design could be argued to derive at least in part from thepersistence of an anachronistic division of labour inrelation to the host/guest. This repertoire is passed on toandroid hostesses without rupture of the establishedperformative tropes, and thus the restrictive formal
aestheticization of this mode of labour is uncriticallyendorsed. Robertson, in ‘Gendering Humanoid Robots:
Robo-Sexism in Japan’, maintains thatmost roboticists reinforce in and throughtheir humanoids, by default arising fromindifference, quite unprogressive notions ofgender dynamics and the sexual division oflabour... (2010: 28)

regarded by the public as preferable toforeign laborers, ostensibly for the reason
that, unlike migrant and minority workers,
robots have neither cultural differences nor,in the case of (especially) East Asians,
unresolved historical (or wartime) memories
to contend with. …They carry no
inconvenient historical baggage. (Robertson
2010: 9)Robertson (2010: 29) raises the interesting metaphor of‘degrees of freedom’ in robot-building as a way ofillustrating the division. Degrees of freedom are corporeal
capabilities of motion along particular independent
planes. According to Robertson’s research the design ofthe female model of the Actroid (or geminoid) allowed
for 42 degrees of freedom and the male model (anaesthetically-accurate copy-version of its lead creator) for
50 degrees of freedom. However, according to the21familiar role and image, one does not necessarily
guarantee ethical treatment for the robots, their ‘gender’,or the workers they displace.

A focus on convenient, rather than inconvenient,historical baggage is perhaps typically and efficiently
Japanese, though obviously not limited to this locale or
set of histories. Unfortunately, though, current iterationsof humanoid robots do carry inconvenient historicalbaggage for those who find themselves on the lessprivileged side of inscrutably integrated cultural borders(and ceilings). ‘Conveniently’ for suppressing discourse
about these topics, some of these very citizens are‘lending’ their image or persona to the perpetuation of
the hostess trope. The gatekeeping of conventional
wisdoms by proxies/surrogates, specifically conventionallyattractive, young, female proxies and/or robots, is rife inJapan and despite ‘cultural differences’ can be seen tocorrespond to common images of hospitality all over the
globe.

Public discussion of the societal assimilation ofhumanoid robots rarely occurs without reference toMasahiro Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley (1970). A
literal translation of the German das Unheimliche being‘unhomely’, uncanniness might also be directly linked tobeing ‘not like/at home’ and therefore to the experienceof inhospitality. In English we have referred to a homely
woman as one who is aesthetically inappropriate forsociety outside the home. To be unhomely, then, out ofor inappropriate for the home, is also to be out of place,
unwelcome or conditionally tolerated, and non-agentic in
the public sphere. It is a liminal state that is becoming
populated by a host(ess) of female Actroids.

An android hostess obviously has a desirable capacity foralmost continuous menial work. In the advertisement for
Actroids that are ostensibly available for hire in a humanresources sense through animatronics company Kokoro(2014), there has been no promotion of male-genderedrobots doing these same types of continuous welcoming,
caring and menial roles.

The fourteenth Dalai Lama is said to have stated thatcompassion is the radicalism of our times. In ‘Toward a
Theory of Feminist Hospitality’, Hamington (2010: 21)
offers a vision of hospitality “that reflects a performativeextension of care ethics by pursuing stronger social
bonds, as well as fostering inclusive and non-hierarchicalhost/guest relations”. I suggest that this picture, which
yet exists within a cosmopolitical system of laws, limits
and defining signs, requires in addition to its dismantlingof certain hierarchies an investigation of the complex andrelatively disguised social bonds in which the fetishized
female is substituted for the male ‘welcome’ andpermission to participate in culture. If the hostess figure
is a distilled marker of domestic hospitality in cultures
both East and West, she can also be seen as a symptomof wider, persistent and treacherously transmissible
disorder, for instance as a gatekeeper for constitutional
reluctance to behave in an unconditionally hospitable way
to refugees and the poor. The insidiousness of thepersona, unhelpful to gender equality and unable to speak
for herself, and her concurrent generic attractiveness,celebratory ‘aura’ and surface compassion, render her
chronic and controlled performance of hospitality
profoundly questionable as she is further developed at thevery vanguard of humanoid simulation.

[Machine] capacities for action are createdout of sociomaterial arrangements that
instantiate histories of labor and more andless reliable, always contingent, future reenactments. (Suchman 2006: 653)
The fabricators and distributors of this commercial armof the Actroid venture, which is otherwise framed asacademic-scientific research into human presence andhuman–robot interaction (see Ishiguro 2007; 2014), is
Kokoro, a branch of Sanrio— brand giant famous for the
Hello Kitty franchise. Kokoro’s other significant line ofrobotics production is in animatronic dinosaurs for themeparks and exhibition displays. What company, then,better placed to corporealize an emergent anachronism
such as the Actroid? ‘Female’ worker Actroids are kawaii(cute), novel, and antediluvian in the gendered labourcodes they restate and reclaim. Publicized in their specificcultural context as “society heading in a natural direction”(Hasegawa and Collins 2010), they are presented in
official discourse as an innovative, twenty-first century
approach to fulfilment of a social utopian dream of aprivileged class. But by aestheticizing and deploying
Actroids uncritically and unprogressively in the hostess’

Full references to this article are found in the Table ofReferences section.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  

22

Frontiers in Google Maps:
Commodification and Territory in the
Borderlands
TIMOTHY ERIK STRÖMRMIT UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
From carving up empires to enclosing the commons, the maps
have long been caught up in creating, legitimising andrepresenting borders and territories. There now exists a body ofwork critiquing maps as cultural artefacts, scrutinising the rolethat values, social structures and power relations play in theirformation of meaning (Cosgrove, 1999; Harley, 2001).
Drawing from these studies, in combination with othercultural, social and political theories, I shall turn to the hugely
powerfulandnotably
understudied
cartographic
representation: Google Maps.

can lead to a bid in this global linguistic market (Levy, 2011,
pp.83-99).
As Frédéric Kaplan has noted, Google have managed to extend
the domain of capitalism into language itself, making words
into a commodity (2011). In doing so, they have found anincredibly profitable business model based on this linguistic
speculation. In commodifying symbolic communication,
Google have massively facilitated the global market’s pushdeeper into people’s everyday social relations and practices.
This can be understood as part of the neoliberal project that, inDavid Harvey’s words, means, ‘in short, the financialization of
everything’ (2005, p.33). All of Google’s projects—search,
Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps—can be analysed throughthis prism.

This paper draws from research that I am currently conducting
as part of a PhD at RMIT Melbourne, Australia, in the schoolof Global Studies. My thesis is centrally concerned with
Google Maps at the intersection of technology and ideology inthe context of globalization and capitalism. As this paper has
been prepared for the Asian Conference on Cultural Studies,
which in 2014 had the theme ‘borderlands’, it focuses on
Google’s portrayal of borders on their massively influential
world map. In doing so, this paper sketches a brief overview ofsome key themes of my research, assembled with the hope ofrising discussion.

In 2012 Google Maps claimed to have one billion unique users
per month (Google, 2012). The vastness of this number isworth reflecting on. To put it into some perspective, 200 years
ago there was less than a billion people on Earth, and only atiny proportion of them—princes, military elite, navigators andsome capitalists—would have used maps. Given Google Maps
unprecedented audience, I argue that how the multinational
corporation represents the world is very significant, for it
actively contributes to shaping the way an enormous number ofpeople imagine the world and their place in it. Also, as apractical wayfinding device, Google Maps affects social
practice with an enormous number of people regularly using
the cyber-spatial representations to facilitate their physicalmovement through space.

There are three components to this paper: firstly, I shall begin
by contextualising Google and explaining how they make theirmoney. Then, I will follow a traditional concern of map
makers and consider how Google Maps depicts disputed
borders between nation-states. By giving a string of examples,
this section will dispute Google’s continual claims of politicalneutrality. Lastly, I move onto consider borders in a more
figurative sense and discuss how the frontier of cyberspace has
been pushed into the embodied world.
GoogleDepicting the Borderland
Like most contemporary world maps, political borders are aprominently featured on Google Maps. They are visible on theoutmost level of zoom, where these frontiers between selfcontained nation-states are depicted by solid black lines. This
representation of global space is a rather conventional world
map: a standard north-up, Mercator projection subdivided intoa jigsaw of nation-states. From this outmost level of zoom,
national borders are visible all the way down to the innermost
level of zoom. Figure 1 depicts the apex of the ‘Golden
Triangle’, the borders between Thailand, Laos and Myanmar
at the maximum level of zoom.

Formed in 1998 in Silicon Valley, Google Inc. became one of
the world’s fastest growing corporations. As of May 2014
Google’s market capitalization was $382.47 billion (US),approximately the same as the UN estimate for the GDP ofVenezuela. Forbes Magazine ranks Google as the world’s fifth
most valuable brand, placing it below IBM and above
McDonalds; and it gives Google the world’s third highest
market value, sitting below Exxon Mobil and above Microsoft(2014). It is highly significant to note that at least 96% of
Google’s money comes from advertising (Kim, 2011). The vast
majority of their money is made by launching an automatedglobal auction every time someone enters a word into Google’s
search engine. Advertisers make bids on words that they want
their brand to be associated with. Any word—‘security’, ‘sex’,‘salad’ or ‘Schumpeter’—entered into Google’s search engine
23

In all cases we work to represent the “ground truth” asaccurately and neutrally as we can, in consistency with
Google's mission to organize the world's information andmake it universally accessible and useful (Boorstin).
In the latter half of this statement, Boorstin quotes Google’s
official mission statement. In my thesis I unpack this mission
statement in detail, for I see it as an ideological statement par
excellence. Every word of this totalizing statement is swollen
and dripping with value judgements, political implications, andcultural beliefs. While fully unpacking Google’s mission isbeyond the scope of this paper, I want to draw attention to thefact that this mission is bound up with the sci-fi sounding goalof creating artificial intelligence. Since the very beginning
Google’s founders ‘have been consistent in framing Google as
an artificial intelligence company—one that gathers massive
amounts of data and processes that information with learningalgorithms to create a machinelike intelligence that augments
the collective brain of humanity’ (Levy, 2011, p.385).
Furthermore, then seek to incorporate this learning machine
into the circuits of capital accumulation and thecommodification of everything.

Figure 1. The apex of the ‘Golden Triangle’. Captured
20/5/2014.
These straight lines meeting over the Mekong are a state
imposition of order over the ever-changing flow of a river. This
abstract geometry of power is reminiscent of Benedict
Anderson’s argument that maps function as a totalizingclassificatory grid (2006, pp.170-8). While in some respects
absurd, this example is again rather standard mapping
discourse. Google Maps might pride itself on being‘innovative’, digital and interactive but, as far as depicting the
majority of national borders go, it is rather conventional.

The second tier of Google’s hierarchy of values is ‘authoritativereferences’, to which the company seems to have a somewhat
ambiguous relation. In a policy post, Google claim: ‘While nosingle authority has all the answers, when deciding how to
depict sensitive place names and borders we use guidance fromdata providers that most accurately describe borders in treaties
and other authoritative standards bodies like the United
Nations’ (Boorstin, 2009). In another post, Google
dismissively dubs the as UN a ‘politicised organization’—asopposed to the corporations neutral, objective and legitimate
pretensions—thus justifying their rejection of UN naming
conventions or portrayal of national borders (McLaughlin,2008).

Google Map’s depiction of frontiers becomes interesting when
it represents disputed borders. These borderlands not only raise
the stakes politically, but they also reveal Google’s ideologicalclaims and offer an insight into how this map constructs
subjectivity. The corporation claims they ‘follow a hierarchy ofvalues’ which ‘inform our depictions of geopolitically sensitive
regions’ (Boorstin, 2009). Using this hierarchy, Google claim
to have reached the ‘optimal combination of neutrality,
objectivity, and legitimacy’ (McLaughlin, 2008). This string ofvalue laden words are key to understanding Google. The
corporation consistently frames itself as being able to transcend
culture and politics.

Neither do Google follow the naming conventions of any
single respected geographical society because they note that‘these organizations exist only in a handful of large, richeconomies, and many believe they do not represent the views
and values of other parts of the world’ (ibid ). In this strikingly
unreflective statement Google conveniently ignores the factthat they are a stupendously rich and powerful advertising
corporation based in Silicon Valley, USA. Essentially, this‘authoritative references’ tier is a loose attempt to justify
Google’s picking and choosing from various sources as they see
fit while simultaneously holding itself superior.

The most concise example of this was captured by Marissa
Mayer, Google’s former vice president of search products anduser experience, and a key spokesperson for the corporation.
She claimed to an audience at Stanford University: ‘Data isapolitical’. Mayer went on to explain that Google are ‘able toscientifically and mathematically prove’ which course of action
to take, and can therefore avoid politics (2006). However—torephrase George Orwell—the opinion that one’s belief isapolitical is itself a political opinion (2004, pp.4-5). Rather
than some form of cyber-positivism, Google’s motives are
inseparable from the dictates of profit maximization.

The third tier ‘local expectation’ is perhaps the most curious
part of Google’s approach to representing borders. Theinteractive and global nature of Google Maps enables thecompany to tailor their map to reflect the assumed opinion of
the user in question. They literally change the map depending
who is looking at it. Google Maps makes generalizations about
the supposed opinions of an individual, language group or
nation-state and can change their map reflect this.

Google’s director of public policy is Bob Boorstin, a man with
noteworthy neoliberal credentials. He was formally President
Clinton’s national security speechwriter and the foreign policy
adviser to Robert Rubin. Regarding Google Maps, Boorstin
announced the first tier of Google’s hierarchy of values:

Liancourt Rocks is an illustrative and locally relevant example.
Named after a French whaling ship that almost ran agroundthere in 1849, this small rocky outcrop is about 432km northwest of Osaka. These rocks, and the surrounding waters, are a
disputed territory with both Japan and South Korea laying
claim to the island. So the question is: on whose side of the24border does it fall? Google Maps responses by saying, it
depends who is asking… Using Google.com, the ‘global’—read
American—version of Google, will deliver this result depicted
in Figure 2.1. Using Google.co.kr, with the .kr being thecountry code for South Korea, a user will see the island labelled‘Dokdo’ (Figure 2.2). Whereas using the Japanese
Google.co.jp, a user will see the rocks labelled ‘Takeshima’(Figure 2.3). What is more, the waters surrounding theseislands are also contentious. Google Maps and Google Maps
Japan agree that the body of water is called the ‘Sea of Japan’.
Whereas the Korean Google Maps labels it the ‘East Sea’.

Figure 2.3 Google.co.jp, ‘Takeshima’ 竹 島 , Captured
14/1/2014
Another example of the geopolitics of Google’s ‘local
expectation’ can be seen in a territory fought over in the 1962
Sino-India border dispute. Google.com depicts this disputed
territory with dotted lines, but labels it with the Indian name
Arunachal Pradesh, as opposed to its Chinese name, South
Tibet (Figure 3.1). Compare this with the Figures 3.2 and 3.3
to see how Google portrays the border on its Chinese andIndian versions of Google Maps.
Figure 2.1 Google.com, ‘Liancourt Rocks’, Image captured
14/1/2014.

Figure 3.1
Google.com
Sino Indian border, captured 15/5/2014

Figure 2.2 Google.co.kr, ‘Dokdo’ ‘독도’ Captured 14/1/2014

25

Figure 3.2 ditu.google.cn/
South Tibet, captured 15/5/2014

Figure 4(i): Google.com and Google.ru, the Crimean
Peninsular, captured 21/5/2014

Figure 3.3 google.co.in/maps, Arunachal Pradesh,
captured 15/5/2014
The recent situation on the Crimean Peninsular also features,with Google’s .com version representing the new border with adotted line (Figure 4). The line on the Russian Google Map isnotably not dotted, leaving no ambiguity as to who controls thepeninsular. Unfortunately, for the sake of this argument,
Google do not have a Ukrainian version of their maps tocompare.

Figure 4(ii): Google.com and Google.ru, the Crimean
Peninsular, captured 21/5/2014

Another example can be found in the South China Sea.
According to Google Map’s Chinese version, the contested sea
is circled by line, which appears to denote the Middle
Kingdom’s unambiguous ownership of the sea.

26

In 2012, the New York Times published an article with the
provocative title: ‘The First Google Maps War’ (Jacobs, 2012).
This article outlined a 2010 border dispute between Costa Rica
and Nicaragua. This dispute began when Google depicted the
Nicaraguan border a few square miles further south than theusually accepted international frontier. Explicitly citing
Google, a Nicaragua official took the opportunity to cross themouth of Rio San Juan and land in Isla Portillos. His
expedition was soon followed by another 50 soldiers. Costa
Rica protested and responded by sending 70 police officers into
the area. These tensions were not just the result of Google, theroots of this dispute go back to the mid-19th century (Jacobs,2012). While negotiations prevented a further escalation, this
episode captures the tangled histories and power relations thatcan make demarking borders on a map murky territory.

Figure 5:
15/5/2014

ditu.google.cn/

South

China

Sea,

Another problematic aspect of Google’s ‘local expectation’approach is that it feeds into what Eli Pariser called the ‘filter
bubble’. He is concerned that ‘personalization filters serve up akind of invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with ourown ideas, amplifying our desire for things that are familiarand leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark
territory of the unknown’ (cited in Bauman & Lyon, 2013,p.123).

captured

Google claim that they ‘work to provide as much discoverable
information as possible so that users can make their own
judgments about geopolitical disputes’ (Boorstin, 2009).
Google Earth does include some little notes that can be
opened with a click. For instance, a button on Liancourt Rocks
states: ‘Administered by Korea as Dokdo, claimed by Japan as
Takeshima’. Google Earth also depicts disputed borders in red,rather than yellow. However, the corporation’s apparently lofty
principle of providing enough ‘neutral’ information so people
can make up their own minds does not appear to translate to
the far-more-popular Google Maps.

Moreover, this line also runs on the east of the Taiwan, which
is notably not labelled as an independent country. In the caseof Taiwan, Google Map’s Chinese version even goes so far as
to remove the labels of major state institutions, such as the
Presidential Office in Taipei. Figure’s 6.1 and 6.2 show thedifference between Google’s Taiwanese and Chinese services.

The Frontier of Cyberspace
The implications of Google ‘local expectation’ leads me to turnaway from the map’s representation of political borders and to
consider the theme ‘borderlands’ in a somewhat more figurative
manner. The later half of the 20th century saw the exponential
rise of networked computers, which qualitatively intensified
the globalization process. By evoking the term ‘globalization’, I
am not implying it in a simplistic, economistic sense. Ourworld is neither ‘borderless’ or ‘flat’. Rather, I understandglobalization as referring ‘to the expansion and intensificationof social relation and consciousness across world-time andworld-space’ (Steger, 2013, p.15). In this sense, globalization isa material and symbolic process that is fundamentally
multidimensional and multiscalar. The spread of the Net had ahugely deterritorializing effect on cultures and social practices
around the world, with symbols and objects circulating theglobe at unprecedented levels. I argue that corporations like
Google have reterritorialized cyberspace, orienting as much of
it as possible toward capital accumulation.

Figure 6.1: Google.com.tw, Presidential Office Building,captured 21/5/2014

As Lev Manovich has noted, space is a key metaphor in new
media and networked computers (2001, pp.272-3). The term‘cyberspace’, first used by sci-fi writer William Gibson, is
illustrative (1984). ‘Cyber’ is derived from the Greek term for‘steersman’, implying someone who navigates through space.
Indeed, the persistent spatial metaphors permeate much of the

Figure 6.2: ditu.google.cn, Unlabelled structure, captured
21/5/201427

Web. Consider the names of some browsers—Netscape
Navigator, Internet Explorer, and Safari—these examples are
all framed in spatial terms, all conjure the image of anindividual user navigating through an unknown territory.

and 1,000 computers in several of Google’s massive data-farms(Figure 7). Hundreds of algorithms groom over the searchrequest, indexing and ranking it (Google, 2014a).
One crucial factor is where the person is searching from.
Thanks to the Pentagon owned GPS system, Google locatesthem with great accuracy in Osaka. They thus decide that theperson means this Rihga Royal Hotel, as opposed to the otherfive across Japan. It is their ‘local expectation’. The person’s
search term and physical movements are recorded by Google
and, in combination with their search history, they are profiledby the corporation’s pattern recognition algorithms and sold toGoogle’s advertisers in an attempt to manipulate the person’s
consumer habits. This intricate surveillance mechanisms allows
Google to efficiently launch contextual and targeted
advertisements at their users. It also provides the data for
Google’s machine learning algorithms to improve themselves
as part of the company’s quest to create artificial intelligence.

In the same novel, Gibson also used the term ‘cyberspace
cowboy’. Drawing on the American frontier myth, he used thisto refer to elite high-tech hackers exploring the wilderness ofthe Web. To take this image further, as in the 19th century
steam engines pushed the frontier of ‘civilization’ further into
uncharted territory, so in the late 20th century, search engines
pushed into the uncharted cyberspace, reterritorializing it along
commercial lines. Manifest destiny has been replaced by autopian, neoliberal technological determinism. Rouges, reappropriators and revolutionaries still move through thislandscape, but much of the terrain has been reorganized, withthe cowboy days being largely replaced by a sprawling rancheconomy.
This is where Google began, as the most successful searchengine to penetrate cyberspace. It functioned as a hugely
profitable tool for assisting people to navigate their way
through the imagined territory of the Web. Then, in the mid2000s, Google began to spill out into the offline world.
Initially, Google made their money from selling ads based onwhat one was searching for. Then with the advent of themobile Web, where one searches from is almost as important
as what one is searching for (Madrigal, 2012). At the end of
2012, at least 20% of Google’s queries are now ‘location
specific’, a number that is certainly much higher for mobile
users (Rushe, 2013).
And this is big business. The emergent ‘geo-services’ industry
currently estimated at generating up to US$270 billion ofrevenue per year, according to a Google commissioned report(Oxera, 2013). ‘Geo services’ include electronic maps, satellite
imagery, location based searches, GPS navigation and satellite
receivers. To put the staggeringly number into someperspective, geo-services are worth at least six times as much as
the global video games industry ($25 billion) or up to half of
the world airline industry ($594billion) (ibid, p.iv). As themost popular online map, Google Maps is at the forefront of
this industry, leading the corporation’s interweaving ofcyberspace and physical space. In so doing, it has created a sortof borderland between the two.

Figure 7: Inside a Google Data Centre, Council Bluff, Iowa,
USA (Google, 2014c).
Then, the results are blasted back halfway around the world
where the person’s mobile device translates the abstract code
into a image that the person recognizes as a map (Figure 8).
This whole process takes place at inhuman speeds and theresults are delivered in less than a second. Google Maps directs
the person to cross a bridge and then turn right. On route, they
pass a 7-Eleven, which features as a corporate landmark. 7Eleven is presumably a paid-up Google Maps advertiser with
its logo featuring prominently on the map. I say ‘presumably’ as
there is no way to tell, which businesses that feature on Google
Maps are paid advertisers and which are not. This violates partof point one of Google’s self-proclaimed philosophy, which
explicitly states that advertising must be clearly marketed(Google, 2014b). It seems this principle does not translate to
Google Maps.

I will now offer a solid, if hypothetical, example of a local
manifestation of this process in order to tease out the complex,
problematic and contradictory nature of this borderland and its
reterritorialization. Imagine a person walking through thestreets of Osaka on their way to the 2014 Asian Conference on
Cultural Studies. Rather than asking somebody for directions,the person runs Google Maps on their ‘smart phone’. They
navigate the Web to navigate the city, they access commercial
cyberspace in order to move through embodied space. The
person taps ‘Rihga Royal Hotel’ (the conference venue) into
Google Maps. What follows usually occurs within the pseudomagical realm of the technological ‘black box’.
The phone’s hardware and operating system translates the
person’s finger strokes into digital information, interfacing itwith the browser, and then emitting it wirelessly. This
information then jumps across the Pacific—via transoceanic
fibre-optic cables—to the US where it fires up between 700
28

cannot exist beyond politics because the map itself is anincarnation of politics. It is a visualization of a perspective of acontested historical process, one fundamentally connected withsubjectivity, power relations and social formations.
While making these bold claims, Google are expanding theircommercial power and profit margins. The corporation’s
influence and ambitions have spilt out from the Web andbegun to reterritorialize the embodied world. This has createda sort of borderland between the formal realm of cyberspace—with its algorithms and axioms, conformity and code—and theplace beyond software, our physical earth and social worlds; aplace of infinite complexity and order that we inhabit andembody.
And it is this paradox, the ability to mix the formalised withthe more messy—non-mathematical formalisms, linguistic,
and visual objects and codes, events occurring at every scalefrom the ecological to the erotic and political—which gives
computing its power effects, and which folds back into
software in its existence as culture (Fuller, 2008, pp.5-6).

Figure 8: Google Maps to this Rihga Royal Hotel, via 7Eleven (arrow added)
Wrapped up in this enterprise is a complex and cross-hatchedtapestry of time and space which are woven together throughthe hypothetical person’s use of Google Maps: social time andcyberspace; digital processing time and subjective sense ofplace; biological time and corporate ‘geo-services’; global
networks and local navigations. The everyday act of a personusing Google Maps to navigate to this conference is afascinating example of the multiscalar and multidimensional
dynamics of globalization.

In the 19th century coal was thrown into the boilers of steam
engines, providing the power for expansion at the frontiers of‘civilization’. In the 21st century, language is thrown into theboilers of Google automated linguistic market. This provides
the power for the search engine to reorganize the web and toreterritorialize the space beyond it, dragging as much of it as
possible into the circuits of capital accumulation. In this way,
Google Maps facilitates the global markets push deeper into
the social fabric of the embodied world.

Conclusion
While constantly claiming to have the ‘optimal combination ofneutrality, objectivity, and legitimacy’, the issue of Google
Map’s depiction of disputed territories clearly demonstrates the
farcical nature of Google claim for neutrality. Their map

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29

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