Rather than becoming more “flat,” in Mr. Friedman’s telling, the world increasingly looks like a steeplechase course. According to the geographer Elisabeth Vallet, there are more than 50 border walls (using the word broadly) in the world today; 15 were built last year alone. It may seem paradoxical that an age of globalization should see an increase in wall building, but the political scientist Wendy Brown suggests that the two phenomena are curiously intertwined. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyDo walls work? Today’s walls similarly function as political placebos, seeming to produce effects, if only masking larger symptoms.

Source: New York Times November 04, 2016 11:49 UTC