“Do you know what the borders are? Greece ends on this blue line. If I take a step, I am somewhere else. Or, I die”
‘The Suspended Step of the Stork’, Theo Angelopoulos (1991)
Studying borders and boundaries is an exploration of the relationship between notions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, ‘Self’, and ‘Other’. However, despite the seemingly dual and opposite nature of the familiar and unfamiliar, the creation of borders and boundaries is a continuous dialogue between mobility and enclosure, communication, exchange, interaction, separation, exclusion, fragmentation, and diversity. These are coexisting and interactive social and cultural processes that always occur in a historically defined and changing socio-political and economic context of structurally organized, asymmetric power relations.
The analysis of social phenomena and cultural processes concerning borders and boundaries is a beneficial and constructive interdisciplinary observation field. From the perspective of Social Anthropology, Oral History, Literature, Minority, Refugee, and Migration Studies, it highlights the multiple meanings and significant depictions of intimacy and diversity.
In this conceptual and analytical framework, the “Club for the study of Borders, Culture and Diversity” attempts to approach theoretically, empirically, and interdisciplinarily the ‘challenge’ of borders and boundaries, that is, their creation, dissolving, and functional expansion and reproduction. The Club’s ultimate goal is to promote actions through which the participating researchers can acquire the necessary conceptual and methodological tools and the skills to study borders and boundaries.