Respuesta :
Geography plays a significant, fundamental role in shaping outcomes in human societies.
Among other geographical elements, borders have significant implications"they are not
only geographical figures, but also political creatures. Against previous theories that have
studied border effects along with institutional differences mostly about economic
implications, this thesis considers how sub-national borders with weak jurisdictions affect
cultural, political, and economic phenomena using data from South Korea. Unlike
international borders and intra-national borders in a federal state, this thesis suggests borders
in a unitary nation have less economic effects, but more cultural and political effects. It will never be answered unambiguously what determines human society the most.
Needless to say, numerous elements will synthetically form a way for people to live.
However, it seems obvious that among other elements geography plays a significant,
fundamental role in shaping outcomes in human societies.
" It is natural that geographical
features provide the foundation of countries; where a nation is physically located influences
patterns of endogenous lifestyle and who are the neighbor countries for the nation is likely to
set up exogenous international relations (Gottmann 1951, 154).
# These circumstances imply
that geographical conditions have effects on countries’ history and culture. Not only for
countries but also for individuals, geography determines many aspects of people’s sense of
self; for instance, depending on the place where a person is born or grows up, he or she will
have a different cultural identity, different nationality, and different institutional services for
his or her lifetime.
This suggests that geography has shaped a wide variety of the many aspects of human
life over time and that outcomes affected by geography impact human behavior. In this sense
that geography and human beings mutually affect each other, borders appear to be worth
examining because they are not only physical, geographical figures, but also political However, not all borders have the same significance; some borders offer important
ramifications while others do not create distinguishing implications.
" Theoretically,
international boundaries between two or more countries appear to have greater substantial
effects on political, cultural, and economic outcomes than do boundaries within countries.
The fact that national boundaries are disjointed points to autonomous countries partitioning
jurisdictions enables them to have relatively large potential effects. On the other hand, subnational borders seem to be less influential because they are more purely administrative
boundaries. Nonetheless, intra-national borders would have bifurcated characteristics
depending on type of government!whether it is a unitary nation or a federal state!since
borders within federal states, like the United States, also function as fairly powerful
jurisdictional borderlines.
Thus, existing theories on border effects could be classified as follows:
Table 1.1. The gap between existing theories on border effects.
