Everyday Boundaries, Borders, and Post-Conflict Societies.

• Author: Dahiya, Deepika

By Renata Summa

Palgrave, 2021, 249 pages, [euro]74.89, ISBN: 9783030558178

Border disputes are a common source of political unrest and armed conflict throughout the globe, both in the present day and throughout history. Summa's book Everyday Boundaries, Borders and Post-Conflict Societies is a product that adopts a wide definition of postconflict boundaries, which focuses on how borders and boundaries are created, replicated, challenged, and diverted in postconflict societies by taking the everyday as a serious field of analysis. Summa's underlying objective here is to explain that the production of boundaries does not happen in the ways we usually think it does, nor where we usually expect it to happen. She conceptualizes a distinct type of analysis, which define boundaries not (only) by looking at the map or by taking into account how they were created and institutionalized (primarily) by the 'international community' and 'local' leaders seated at the peace table (p. 46).

The first chapter presents how boundaries are enacted and reemployed, altered, and displaced in the everyday of post-conflict societies looking with greater attention to the cases of Sarajevo and Mostar (p. 6). Here Summa argues that boundaries are related to the practices of demarcation and will not be restricted to solely geographical aspects or spatial features. They have been reorganized by peace agreements, which have restructured the society in ways that have assured the boundaries a more significant role in post-conflict socio-political lives (pp. 7-9).

Chapter 2 entitled 'Enacting Boundaries,' begins an effort to conceptualize the word boundaries, separating it from the concept of borders rather than using the terms interchangeably, and its usages in international relations. In this chapter, the author discusses that boundaries are considered here as practices of spatiotemporal demarcation and differentiation that may or may not involve geographical delimitations, may or may not be backed up by administrative or legal regulations, and may or may not be expressed materially (p. 32). She explained that boundaries are always in movement, take on new meanings and are enacted in a variety of ways over space and time. In fact, they can be understood as a much more fluid and dynamic category, which allows us to move away from the metaphor of the line. They should not be viewed as pre-given contours that restrict political life (pp. 38-40).

Chapter 3, 'The Place(s) of...