Visions in Leisure and Business Volume 17 Number 3 Article 4 1998 Boundaries as Barriers and Promoters: Constructing the Tourist Landscapes of Finnish Karelia Anssi Paasi University of Oulu Petri J. Raivo University of Oulu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/visions Recommended Citation Paasi, Anssi and Raivo, Petri J. (1998) "Boundaries as Barriers and Promoters: Constructing the Tourist Landscapes of Finnish Karelia," Visions in Leisure and Business: Vol. 17 : No. 3 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/visions/vol17/iss3/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ScholarWorks@BGSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Visions in Leisure and Business by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@BGSU. BOUNDARIES AS BARRIERS AND PROMOTERS: CONSTRUCTING THE TOURIST LANDSCAPES OF FINNISH KARELIA BY DR. ANSSI P AASI, PROFESSOR AND DR. PETRI J. RAIVO, PROFESSOR DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY UNIVERSITY OF OULU LINNANMAA FI-90401 OULU, FINLAND ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION Boundaries have become significant foci of Boundaries have become increasingly sig­ interdisciplinary research during the last nificant foci of social and cultural research decade, but their roles have not been dis­ in the last 10 years or so, largely in response cussed very often in the context of tourism to the collapse of the rigid global geopoliti­ which, in fact, is crucially linked with many cal division between the eastern and western contemporary tendencies such as the open­ blocs, and the simultaneous increase in eco­ ing of borders between formerly closed nomic and human (refugees, migrants, tour­ realms of the world or flows of capital and ists) flows has made the changing roles of people. This paper analyses the historical boundaries particularly topical. Where bor­ and geographical roles of the Finnish­ der research has by tradition been a special Russian border in relation to tourism. The area of political geography, it has now be­ border was strictly guarded and almost en­ come increasingly an interdisciplinary field. tirely closed in Soviet times. It was a taboo Furthermore, boundaries are understood not that interested many foreign visitors to Fin­ merely as physical entities but also as meta­ land. It interested the Finns as well, because phorical and symbolic elements (18, 16). on the other side was the ceded area of Karelia that had been part of Finland before State boundaries in particular have for a the war but which was now totally inacces­ long time, at least from the beginning of the sible to foreign visitors or former residents. current century, been understood as fixed, It was also the transformation zone of stable and concrete entities which divide the imagined cultural landscapes. When the global space into bounded units and which physical border shifted westward after the change mainly as a consequence of conflicts war, so did the Karelian cultural landscape between territorial powers (28). They have and its representations. Since the collapse of been understood as the key markers of sov­ the Soviet Union the border has become ereignty-not only physical markers but much more open and tourism has increased also symbolic and cultural ones. The exis­ enormously. tence of national identities and the continual 30 legitimation and signification of boundaries by a space offlows, to employ the concepts have thus been understood as two sides of of Castells (4 ). This flow rhetoric is persua­ the same coin. Much scientific research has sive and has been used increasingly in many also contributed to this state-centred outlook contexts. The space of flows, it is often ar­ on the world. As far as the acceptance of gued, will reduce the roles of the 'sover­ nation and state as given are concerned, Ag­ eignty' and 'identities' of states and chal­ new talks about methodological nationalism, lenge national identities and boundaries. noting that this idea has lain behind both Side-by-side with these tendencies, nation­ mainstream and much radical social science alism and ethno-regionalism, linked with the (1). Methodological nationalism also effec­ flows of displaced people and refugees, are tively implies a view of the world as a grid creating new boundaries and challenging the of territories with more or less exclusive relations between existing social and physi­ boundaries. cal spaces. In many cases this has given rise to conflicts and the drawing of new bounda­ Following the radical changes in the global ries between social groups, 1.e. re­ geopolitical landscape, boundaries are now territorialization. increasingly being interpreted as vanishing elements in spatial transform rather than sta­ In spite of the new interest in all kinds of ble physical lines. This will, as many schol­ 'flows' across boundaries in the contempo­ ars have argued, reduce the meanings of rary world, scholars have not paid much at­ state boundaries and sovereignty and, fi­ tention to the roles of boundaries from the nally, lead to de-territorialization and re­ perspective of tourism. Besides its immense territorialization, i.e. changes in the func­ economic role in the contemporary world, tions and meanings of boundaries. These tourism is a field where border crossings notions are commonly associated with the occur on all spatial scales, frompersonal and works of the well-known philosophers local to global, fromsub-national boundaries Deleuze and Guattari, who developed them to international ones. In this context borders to describe the effects of capitalism on pre­ may be landscape elements of value for vious fixed orders of class, kinship and tourism as such ( e.g. ideological or cultural space, but they have become much-used borders) or they may be just obstacles that metaphors for cultural, social and spatial manifest themselves as 'friction' restraining change in the current geopolitical literature movement. A few authors have evaluated (18). the meanings of borders for tourism and cross-border shopping the last few decades, Much of the re-/de-territorializing discourse but as shown by Timothy (29, 30; see also is linked with the ideas of globalization or 3 ), the mapping of the links between tourism the economic, cultural and environmental and borders has been a marginal topic for transformation of the global space. Scholars both political geographers and tourism re­ are not unanimous about the meanings of searchers. this phenomenon or its effects on global­ local relations and on boundaries, but the This paper aims to provide some theoretical new rhetoric reflects changes in global ac­ and concrete ideas for border studies in con­ tivity spaces. This rhetoric often represents nection with tourism and to serve as a back­ boundaries as symbols of a past world char­ ground to a discussion of the arguments that acterized by the space of places that will be have been put forward regarding the 'disap­ replaced by a dynamic world characterized pearance of boundaries' (and nation-states) 31 in the current world. Some theoretical per­ cultural and economic contexts. It is also spectives will be discussed that might be crucial to approach borders historically, useful for multidimensional boundary stud­ since their meanings are not stable but ies. The key argument is that instead of un­ change as the contexts change. derstanding boundaries as fixed lines, we should understand them as more multidi­ To illustrate these points, we will analyse mensional phenomena. the historical development and geographical roles of the Finnish-Russian border in rela­ Boundaries are not only lines but meaning­ tion to tourism. The meanings of this border ful, historically-contingent symbols and in­ have varied greatly in the course of the years stitutions which are in many ways sedi­ both in Finland and in Russia, and the pre­ mented in social practices and discourses, vailing, dominant interpretations have pro­ and which manifest themselves on different vided different possibilities fortourism. Be­ spatial scales, from personal and local to fore World War II it was the ultimate barrier global (17, 18). This means that an under­ and dividing line that separated the East standing of the contemporary meanings of from the West and essentially eliminated specific boundaries requires several 'keys' tourism but, since the collapse of the Soviet which are linked with economics, politics, Union, it has become much more open and administration and governance as well as tourism has increased markedly. with legislation and local and national/local attitudes/identities. All these elements re­ flect power relations in complicated ways. FINNISH-RUSSIAN BORDER LAND­ Boundaries may be simultaneously histori­ SCAPES AND TOURISM BEFORE cal, natural, cultural, political or symbolic WORLD WAR II phenomena and each of the above elements may be exploited in diverging ways in the The Finnish-Russian boundary and border construction of territoriality and the ideas of area are located partly in the area of Karelia, borders as prohibiting and allowing spatial where the western and eastern cultures meet. interaction-including tourism. Its location has changed many times as a consequence of territorial disputes. From Borders may exist as one part of the 'discur­ World War II onward this border was the sive landscape' of social power which ex­ longest ideological boundary between a tends itself into the whole of society and is western capitalist state and the Soviet Un­ produced and reproduced in various social ion. Finnish-Russian border areas have for