WEBVTT - Push the Frontier 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:14.040 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind From Housetopworks dot Com. 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.439 In the morning, the emissary mounted his horse and rode west. 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.279 He left the towers and the markets behind him, trading 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.680 cramped streets and oppressive oculence for the world outside the 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:29.920 city walls. He passed beneath the gates barbed portcullis, crossed 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.040 the moat, and passed the morning amid the varied towns 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:37.560 that composed the empire. The people noted the insignias upon 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.760 his coat and knotted as he rode past. Children and 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.000 dogs ran along beside him till he passed beyond their 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:48.600 meager worlds as well. By afternoon, wide fields of cultivated 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.720 crops opened up around him, stretching to the horizon. Mines 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:57.160 and logging operations popped the hills by dust. He arrived 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:01.200 at those ragged flags that marked the Empire's edge, engaged 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:05.320 out on a darkening world. Law it's an unconquered home. 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:09.319 To people's alien in language and thought, all manner of 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:13.559 death and liberation, so you could team and writhed within 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:18.840 the gloaming. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.400 My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick and 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:24.360 Robert I assumed that that reading was supposed to evoke 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:27.560 a certain feeling. Now, what was that you were going for? 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:30.640 I wanted to evoke the feeling of the frontier, of 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:35.440 traveling from the center of a civilization to the outer 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:39.280 boundaries of it. Now, specifically, we talked about the literary 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:43.200 style of J. M. Kutzi, who wrote the book Waiting 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:46.040 for the Barbarians, which we've both read, right, yeah, yeah, 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.920 one of my favorite books. And uh I was thinking 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:51.000 about doing a quote from it to kick this off, 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:52.800 but I thought, well, well, I don't know, just kind 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:56.960 of cobble something together that that invokes Waiting for the 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.920 Barbarians and serves our purpose directly. So this is like 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.440 synthetic Coatsy by you. Yeah, yeah, and I'm you know, 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:05.560 and I Coatsy is one of those guys that dig enough. 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:07.640 There's probably a little bit of synthetic Coatsy and a 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:11.280 lot of things I write. Uh well, definitely, uh, definitely 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:13.680 an influential writer. Well, you could do worse than to 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:15.960 have that. But of course today that means we're going 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.519 to be talking about frontiers, and I guess we should 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:22.399 just explain why this idea came up. So just recently, 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:26.040 Robert Christian and I went to the c t E 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.800 two conference in Chicago, and we're talking about the eighteen 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:34.200 ninety three Chicago World's Fair, the World's Columbian Exposition. And 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:37.120 one of the topics that I was researching that we 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.960 didn't end up incorporating into our presentation, there was this 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:44.600 presentation that was delivered in in Chicago in the eighteen nineties, 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:47.440 usually reported as being delivered during the World's Fair in 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:52.800 eighteen ninety three by the historian, the American historian Frederick 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.600 Jackson Turner, and it's known as the Frontier Thesis. The 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:59.160 the essay itself is the significance of the frontier in 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.240 American history. You And that got us thinking about the 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:08.200 idea of frontiers, what what a frontier means, what it represents, uh, 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:10.400 what kind of flaws are there in the idea of 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:13.160 a frontier. And so that's what we wanted to explore uday. 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.880 Eventually we will get to that essay by Turner and 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:21.560 talk about it's it's meaning, it's influence, and some criticisms 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.640 of it, but we also wanted to explore more generally 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.440 the idea of the frontier, especially also how it fits 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:30.560 into what's known as world systems theory. Yeah, we wanted 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:32.760 to go deeper than just sort of the the basic 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.840 idea frontier. I feel like earlier generations you had Western 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:39.080 movies and Western fiction and that was kind of the 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:42.720 go to model, and certainly all that stuff still around, 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.920 but I think more and more younger people probably have 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.800 that Game of Thrones vision. Right right, there's the wall, 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:52.520 that's the frontier on one side, barbarians and white walkers 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:56.119 on this side. You know, some semblance of order. Yeah. 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:59.280 I think the frontier is often considered well in in 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.160 the in the or metaphorical reading and one very straightforward 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:05.920 literal reading, you could just say it's the it's the 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:10.680 agreed upon boundary of a civilization. But in the more 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:14.240 metaphorical reading you could say, well, it is where the 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:20.400 idea of civilization ends. It's where the laws cease to apply. Right, Yeah, 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.479 there is there's a quote here that I had to 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:27.440 pull out from Corman McCarthy's Blood Meridian. He says, here, 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:32.360 beyond men's judgments, all covenants were brittle, which uh, which 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:34.680 which is telling? And that's certainly a work of a 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:39.520 frontier chaos for you. Yeah, and Blood Meridian, I think 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:42.480 very well captures a lot of the popular idea of 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:45.360 the frontier. And then it's a place where there are 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:49.919 few checks on people's will to power and there is 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:54.200 little in the way of you know, moral civilization. I mean, 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:56.039 part of part of what you might say there is 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:59.360 that that's just Corman McCarthy's influence coming through. But yeah, 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:03.760 it's a ace of of betrayal, of individualism, of of 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:08.960 struggle for power, of violence. Uh what else would you say? Well, 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.120 all these things, certainly, but but yeah, I want to 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:14.479 make sure we're also hitting on the positive aspects, you know, 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:18.200 the idea of freedom, liberation, you know, just going off 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.279 the grid right, right when everyone probably has at some 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:25.600 point in their life fantasized about that, right like all 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.680 these modern technologies I need. I'm gonna I'm gonna move 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:31.600 to a cabin, I'm gonna have physical books, I'm gonna 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.560 read them and listen to vine or something. Right. Uh, 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:38.159 And that in a sense is is is not that 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:42.000 different from the frontier notion. But but what's going on 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:46.480 on Twitter, Like you gotta disconnect from all of that, right, 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:50.320 that's the you're getting further away from from the the 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:54.360 the the center of of modern digital digital civilization. Now, 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.520 this is the popular idea of the frontier. The the 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:01.280 actual fact of the frontier maybe of very different beasts 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.120 than how it's conceived in these both dark and positive 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.839 romantic visions. Yeah, as always you can you can point 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:12.520 to examples of either, but it's probably gonna more or 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:15.000 less even out depending on whose side you're on, too, 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.640 because it's the frontier. Is is an idea that of 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:20.839 course has two sides, and you can be an individual 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:25.960 that is is born into the civilization side of frontier 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:30.880 or into the the wild side of frontier, and it's 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.200 going to be a very different experience. We'll get into 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:35.880 all that as we explain right and now. Of course, 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:37.960 one of the funny things might be that you could 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:41.000 have different perspectives on which side of the frontier is which. 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:43.560 Right now, the person who's living on the side that 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:49.520 has more technology, more economic power, greater wealth, more population 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:53.279 density and cities and civic infrastructure, that person probably thinks 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:55.839 they live on the civilized side and the other side 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:58.560 is wild. But you could very well turn it the 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:01.039 other way around and say, you know, here on our side, 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:04.640 of the frontier. We have simple, well organized communities that 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.839 operating cooperation, and the people on the other side have 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:12.440 this kind of technological pandemonium. And whatever side you're on, 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.680 you can likely look look across the boundary and say, well, 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.520 those people have totally the wrong religion. I don't know 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:21.520 what they're thinking. We have the right one. Uh, they 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:25.160 should be more like us, right, So maybe that frontier 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.080 needs to be pushed forward a little bit. Yeah. Another 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:30.440 thing worth stressing before we move forward is, of course 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:34.520 that frontiers of of one sort or another have always existed. 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:38.400 So the Wild West was not the first frontier, Uh, no, 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.320 more than like the frontier of the Roman Empire was 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:43.920 the first frontier. Like it, It's as long as you've 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:49.360 had civilizations and human communities, you've had these boundary points. Yeah. 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:51.520 And one of the things to keep in mind is 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:53.480 that a lot of people think of the frontier and 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.520 they only think of the American frontier. You can barely 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:58.440 come up with another one. But I'm glad you mentioned 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:02.120 the Roman frontier was one situation where you had a 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:06.000 technologically advanced civilization that had an empire, and they had 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:08.280 the boundaries of the empire, and they were constantly trying 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.200 to push the boundaries and move them around, trying to 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:15.480 conquer new people's, conquer new lands, bringing more resources. And 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:18.240 so they very much had a frontier that is in 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:21.680 a lot of ways analogous to the American Western Frontier. 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:25.040 They all, but you can also think about the sort 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:29.160 of more contemporary frontiers to the American Western frontier, like 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:33.000 you might have seen in Australia or in South Africa 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.760 or in other places that where you had the remnants 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:41.040 of European imperialism pushing into lands that were already occupied 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.760 by other people. Right. And then of course, nowadays, with 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:48.959 with travel um such as it is, Uh, a frontier 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:52.920 is not always going to be as physical space, you know, 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:58.240 like you to to to disappear into a realm beyond 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:02.440 the domain of empire. Uh doesn't necessarily mean that you 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.760 just keep traveling west on foot. You can hop on 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.520 a plane and go somewhere else and uh, and that 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.920 factors into into all of this as well. So earlier 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.200 I mentioned that Robert, you wanted to talk about the 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:16.920 idea of frontiers in light of what's known as world 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:21.319 systems theory. Yeah, so what's the deal with this? Explain 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:25.320 this concept to me. Okay, so world systems theory is 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:31.880 an economically charged, macro sociological attempt to understand the movements 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.120 of history, you know. Okay, so no, biggie, Well no, 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:38.400 I this is the kind of thing that is always 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:42.680 very interesting and always bound to be in some sense wrong, 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.880 you know what I mean? Yeah, critics of this say 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:48.280 will often say, oh, well, this is too economic or 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:51.079 it's too reductionists. I mean, anytime you try and create 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:55.320 a broad theory or model for human behavior, human culture, 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:58.880 it's not gonna fit perfectly. Right. What I what you 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:02.240 might call world tote realizing theories. Maybe that's not the 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:04.040 West best way to put it, the West way to 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.040 put it, but the theories that try to explain how 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:11.960 everything in some domain of knowledge works. Usually those kind 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.040 of overreach and over generalized, but at the same time 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:17.720 they can have very interesting insights. So, so, what does 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:22.360 world systems theories say about explaining movements in world history? Well? 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:24.520 I turned to some of the writings of De Pao 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:29.720 University socio anthropologist Thomas city Hall for some additional info. 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.760 Here he has a two thousand and one UH paper 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:37.840 that came out World Systems Frontiers and ethnogenesis, incorporation, and 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:41.040 resistance to state expansion. Okay, that's a lot of abstract now, 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.199 all right, well let's boil it all down. So, setting 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:49.960 aside actual nation states, um world systems theory breaks down 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:54.240 the world to three basic components. You have the core, 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:57.800 the periphery, and the semi periphery. So the core is 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:00.679 the center of production and special is zation and it's 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.480 made up of strong states. Okay, so production and specialization 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:07.520 means that this is your economic center. This is where 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:11.280 your your goods and services mainly come from. But it's 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.000 where there's like manufacturing maybe, but also specialization would mean 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:19.720 it's where people have more specialized job titles. So instead 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:23.079 of being somebody who operates a homestead and does everything, 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:26.320 you might be somebody who has a very very specific 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:28.840 job that you're very good at that can be utilized 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:32.880 by or can be made use of by this economic 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:35.960 system to produce more and more goods. Right, and it 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:39.200 it basically lines up with our our intro fiction and 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:41.160 about the guy riding out from the center of empire. 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:44.720 But again this is this is something that that crosses 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:49.720 h traditional state boundaries. So from this point of view, 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:54.360 like the core would incorporate various nations. So for instance, 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:57.439 you look at a world map that's using world systems theory, 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.480 and the US and Canada are going to one and 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.800 they're going to be locked in with other Western nations. 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:06.880 So it's less observant of things like national boundaries and 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.720 more observant of centers of economic production and trade. Maybe 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:14.280 they're less hip to the idea of nations and boundaries 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:16.319 and they're just trying to figure out how the system works. 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:19.719 So if they're just watching stuff flow around, this might 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.880 be the system they land upon. Right, So that's the core. 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.760 The periphery specializes in raw materials, and this is composed 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:31.080 of weak states, and the semi periphery is the intermediate area. Okay, 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.000 so you might think of this as the core. The 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:37.240 group we just talked about sort of exploiting the resources 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:41.040 of these other of the periphery states, and then the 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:45.400 semi periphery states are somewhere in between. So Hall and 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:49.160 others have also added additional rules to this world systems. 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:51.960 They argued Day back to at least Neolithic times. Core 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.880 periphery structures are a major locust point of social change, 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.959 and all of the systems evolved and have several dynamics 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:02.960 cycles involved in them. Okay, but if we said that 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:07.320 this is less observant of national boundaries and is thinking 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:10.839 more about economics, how do frontiers play into it? All? Right, well, 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:14.560 this is where frontiers coming to play. So various dynamics 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:18.440 cycles dictate the expansion and contraction of world systems. According 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.280 to Hall, these systems pulsate. Core states rise and fall, 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:26.079 and there's a typical process typical but not universal, in 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:31.400 which a semi peripheral marcher state displaces or conquests after 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:35.520 a dominant core state. So you've got up and comers. Yeah, yeah, 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:37.400 So we see this cycle over time of like, uh, 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:39.720 you know, here the Dutcher in power, then the British 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.240 or empower, the u s or empower you know, the 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.319 colonial flow of of of wreaths of modern history. And 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:48.720 I want to quote Hall here. He says thinking of 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.719 a frontier as a membrane is helpful from a global perspective. 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:56.800 A frontier is relatively narrow and sharp, but from nearby 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:00.320 it is a broad zone with considerable internal spatial and 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:05.760 temporal differentiation. It's a permeability varies with the direction of flow. 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:08.920 And the things moving through it, types of goods, groups, 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.679 and individuals. A frontier is the results of an often long, 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:18.160 complex and highly political process of negotiation. Okay, I think 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:20.000 that's a good point to make, because when you think 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.480 of a boundary line, to think of a line, a 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:27.760 line is something of what infinitely small width, uh, ideally 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.160 and in geometrical terms. But that's not really what a 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.880 frontier is. A frontier is more of a zone. Uh. 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:38.240 It's an intermediate state between different between different areas where 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:42.480 different principles apply. And in this zone you have a 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.440 kind of uh. Well, for one thing, he says, it's permeable, 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:47.760 so things move back and forth between it. But you 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.840 also have a mingling of the application of different principles. 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.440 It might be a place where in some sense the 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:58.280 wild principles apply and some other sense the civilization principles apply, 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:03.240 or the principle of different people's might mix. Yeah, and again, 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:06.840 it's just it's not that Game of Thrones idea of 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:09.960 the wall and just two distinct things on either side. 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.040 We see this more and more, I think, uh, with 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:19.720 contemporary events as powers try to see how a border 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:22.960 wall between the US and Mexico would work. Realizing well, 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:27.320 this is not Game of Thrones. The Again, a border 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.440 of frontier is a membrane um and when you try 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.680 and apply just a you know, a wall scenario to it, 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:37.400 various problems began to emerge. Yeah. Well, I think it 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:41.240 usually comes from an oversimplified understanding of what that border 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:44.240 means and the lack of understanding of how important it 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.960 is that that border is not actually a physical barrier, 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.240 because you know, wildlife moves back and forth, People move 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:54.920 back and forth for totally legitimate reasons. Uh. You know 0:15:55.200 --> 0:16:00.600 that that in physical reality is just a landscape. Yeah. Now, 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:02.840 he he talks a little bit about the frontiers in 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:06.560 US history and defines them as areas with population densities 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:09.320 less than two persons per square mile. And then he 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.280 also and he's paraphrasing a couple of other writers here, 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:14.960 but he's also refers to them as quote zones of 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:19.000 historical interaction where no one has an enduring monopoly on violence. 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:25.000 So you know, very blood meridian uh esque. Uh. Summation there. 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:27.960 But also in keeping with what you might say is 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.000 the history of political science, because how do you define 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:33.680 a government? What is a government? A government is often 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:36.440 defined as the thing that has a monopoly on the 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:40.360 legitimate use of violence. For zone, the people who can 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:44.600 use violence without anybody stopping them in an area that 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:47.920 that is the governing body the law side. It's you know, 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.160 it's like, hey, well, violence is kind of our thing. 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:54.840 Violence is at the tail end of any um, any commandment, 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:58.920 any law, like the laws, is eventually going to be 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:02.760 enforced with violence, at least it has the potential to 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:05.520 be if it must be right. But yeah, so here 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:09.400 at this border zone, you you see two overlapping areas 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:12.280 where and that doesn't always work so well because if 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:15.160 two different people are claiming to have a monopoly on violence, 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:18.480 then neither one actually has a monopoly, right, you have 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.120 a competition of violence or a free market of violence either. 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.359 So he points out that one of the American West 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.520 was an internal and contested frontier. Uh, there are other 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:32.240 sorts of frontiers as well, neutral frontiers, for example, and 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.040 he brings up Southeast Asia as an example of a 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:41.040 neutral frontier historically between the major cultures of China and India. 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:44.399 He says, quote it was both shaped by and shaped 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:48.560 the patterns of interaction of cores of these erstwhile separate 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.399 world systems. Okay, yeah, And if you think to to 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:56.959 East Asian cultures and you think of of the influences 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:01.360 of India and China, um, you know, intermingling. And certainly 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:03.639 it's it's not even as simple as that, because Buddhism 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:07.199 emerges from India and it becomes a major component of 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:11.200 Chinese civilization. But still, in a rough sense, you can 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.680 you can see these these two major cultures coming together 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:17.320 and as their waters meet, uh, it's kind of like 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:20.719 a brackish area of salt and fresh and taking on 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:24.600 all these uh these diverse uh and and fascinating culture. Right. 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:28.359 But of course the springs up another important aspect of 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:32.879 frontiers which often might get overlooked, which is the people 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:36.399 who have less power, who dwell within the frontier zone, 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:41.159 who often are not treated very well by the idea 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:44.000 of a frontier overlapping with where they live. Oh yeah, 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:46.840 to to say to say the least, uh yeah. Hall 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:50.040 points out that at this point in history, most indigenous 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:54.119 groups have experienced several waves of what he refers to 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:58.720 as incorporation, uh, incorporation into this this new culture and 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.480 incorporation that's that's sort of like when you fall under 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:05.560 the shadow of the monopoly of violence right and incorporation 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:09.479 itself UH can lead to several different possibilities, and they 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:15.120 range from genocide and cultural side to assimilation transformation into 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:19.480 a minority group. But at the same time, UH incorporation 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:23.439 itself is changing, so there are virtually no non state 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:26.760 societies left to incorporate in the world. So, in other words, 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:30.080 there are virtually no more frontiers, no new territories, no 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:36.000 new people, repeated incorporations of deluded human cultural diversity, and 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:40.000 the very frontiers that are vanishing were long the zones 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:45.160 of of ethnogenesis, of creativity, of new ideas emerging from 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:49.280 repeated interactions and often hostile conditions. So I refer to 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:51.199 this a little bit talking about UH. You know that 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:56.560 example of East Asian cultures and civilizations. Another great example 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:59.200 I think is when you look at Caribbean cultures, where 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:03.159 you see this this hostile coming together of all these 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:08.920 different elements, you know, colonialism, slavery, the eradication of indigenous people's, 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.000 all of this is horrible, and yet at the same time, 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:16.280 out of it you do see rich cultures emerge. I mean, 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.119 just just looking at Jamaica alone, you see all of 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:24.320 these these fantastic ideas and models and art forms, reggae music, 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:30.199 dub music, Rastafari cuisine, all the all the all the 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:34.440 all the attributes of any culture, but with each Caribbean 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:38.920 aisle it takes on a slightly different um, a different form. Now, 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:43.520 the idea of how frontiers work changing throughout history is 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.879 something I probably, I guess I haven't considered much before, 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:49.480 but that is really interesting because you can think about 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:53.560 multiple waves of this. For example, I think about the 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:58.280 first wave of human colonization of the planet. It's kind 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:00.480 of mind boggling to think of the fact that there 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.760 were times when humans were colonizing large swaths of land 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:09.520 that no had no humans in them already. That you 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:11.840 would arrive at a new place and it would be 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:15.760 populated by plants and animals, and that was what you 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:17.879 had to compete with. And so you could think about 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.160 there being a frontier of a kind there where you're 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:23.840 forging a true frontier into the wilderness. And when people 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:26.840 talked about the frontier of the American West, a lot 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:29.360 of a lot of the you know, the racist way 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:32.479 to formulate it would be we're just settling a wild land, 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:36.359 But in fact, the land was occupied by people, and 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:39.199 there was yeah, and there was a time when you 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:42.840 could settle much land that was not occupied by people, 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:46.959 and so that was a totally different frontier, uh world 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:50.240 system there where you're you're settling places that have no 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:54.880 human competition. It's literally primeval. Then you've got this other 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.160 system where where we think about this sort of sort 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.359 of the ideas of colonialism, where you might have a 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:03.800 society with a strong central government and a lot of 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:08.400 economic and technological power forging frontiers into lands that are 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.960 are already settled by people but who don't necessarily have 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:15.040 strong central governments and uh, you know, a lot of 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:19.639 economic and technological exchange, and and those two phases I 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:21.480 guess you might be able to say have brought us 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:24.960 mostly up to modernity. So one wonders if the idea 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:28.199 of the frontier makes any sense moving forward now that 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:31.359 we live in a world mostly with nation states that 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:36.080 have central governments. Well, it's Hall points out, you have, Yeah, 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:39.400 you have fewer and fewer external frontiers. Yeah, I mean, 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:42.000 certainly you can make the case for the space the 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:46.040 final frontier, etcetera, which is more like that original primeval 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:49.400 frontier hopefully, Yeah, or you know, you could also make 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:52.560 cases for like for the the the exploration and the 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:57.160 establishment of underwater habitats, etcetera. They're very sci fi answers. 0:22:57.200 --> 0:22:59.800 But he he points out that internal frontiers are now 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:04.199 more common than external, especially frontiers between zones of the 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:08.680 world system itself. Um, where it's where the core meets 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:12.440 the periphery or the semi periphery along For example, the 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:14.840 US Mexico border is one of the examples he brings 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:17.600 to mind. So we're constantly getting new divisions in society, 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:22.440 new frontiers forming more and more every day. UM. So, yeah, 0:23:22.440 --> 0:23:25.399 you can just look at this this sort of fracturing. 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:28.840 I don't want to say that in a cataclysmic sense, 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:33.120 like the fracturing of culture. Basically, as as uh, all 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:36.639 these divisions in society continue to make themselves known, you 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:41.800 kind of have individual frontiers that weave themselves throughout that system. 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:44.520 That's interesting. I guess I hadn't thought of it like that. 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:46.639 All right, Well, we're gonna do a quick break and 0:23:46.680 --> 0:23:48.480 when we come back, we will take a look at 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:56.119 the frontier thesis. All right, we're back. So if you 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:58.480 listen to our live episode that was recorded at C 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:00.600 two e two. Then the you know what we were 0:24:00.600 --> 0:24:04.320