Mary Louise Pratt sees sites of inter-cultural encounter as contact-zones: "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power."  In a contact zone, pre-existing or established borders are suddenly fragile. 

Historically speaking, contact zones often emerge when people literally cross borders into territory they have never visited before and do not call home. When the visitors encounter the inhabitants, they find themselves in a contact zone. Many readings in Beyond Borders explore what kinds of human relationships emerge as people in contact zones grapple with each other's differences. Are the relationships inevitably characterized by inequality, oppression, and otherness? Can we ever account for exchange, mutual transformation, and hybridity? Is there ever a middle ground in which worlds overlap and then give rise to new, shared systems of meaning?

In Beyond Borders:  See Mary Louise Pratt, "Arts of the Contact Zone"; Rita Dove, "Arrow"; and Jack Jackson, "Comanche Moon."

In Beyond Borders Online:  See Web Research Activities, "Democracy, Difference, and Globalization."

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