The borderland of civilizations as a research category in the sociology of borderland

Abstract

Current studies on the borderland territories suggest insufficiency of research tools, which, if applied, would improve the theoretical level of the conducted studies, particularly if that research would cover the borderlands of civilizations. Until now, the research on borderlands in Poland and elsewhere were dominated by the concepts of borderlands and trans‐borderness. In my opinion, to cover the full scope of social phenomena and processes, which appear on borderland and trans‐border territories, the new terms should be introduced: “borderlandness” together with the existing “borderland” and the “trans‐borderland” to complement with the “trans‐borderlandness”. In this paper I intend to present shortly the conception of the borderland applied in my research and, on this basis, I try to develop the concept of borderlandness as well as to stress its utility in the studies of borderlands, including the borders of civilizations.