Distant places
The idea of remoteness was of course important in the creation of area studies as these
were faraway places that needed to be understood better in the world centres of power.
Distance was both a physical reality and a cultural metaphor, and area studies offered
geographies of long-distance knowing. Half a century later, technologies of communi-
cation have changed the picture. Distance is no longer quite the tyrant it once was, and
an acute awareness of the shrinking of the world has spread widely, if unevenly, around
the globe. This is true not only between regions of the world but also within them
[for the tremendous shortening of travel times in the Burma ^China borderland since
the mid-1980s, see Porter (1995, pages 36 ^ 40)]. Much is being written about the ways
in which new technologies of transport, media, and digital networking forge new
communities both locally and globally and how these can be studied adequately only
by looking at networks that are not contained within the bordered territories of states
and areas. Distance is no longer understood primarily in geographical and cultural
terms. It is increasingly seen as a social attribute: certain groups of people have better
access to technologies to overcome distance than others.