Abstract

The theme and indeed title of this Conference is “Thinking beyond Borders: Global Ideas, Global Values.” It is a theme in keeping with numerous developments both within and between countries, nationalities, ethnicities and groups of people in general, that militates against old fashioned and traditional notions of nation state and geopolitical, social, cultural and linguistic boundaries founded on some of the basic ingredients of nationhood, nation-making, and nationalism. To think beyond borders is therefore to give voice to global ideas and global values of the sort that transcend national, regional, municipal borders and thereby embrace truly international, world-wide, and universal beliefs and mores. But not everything is as simple or straightforward as this may suggest.