International Encyclopedia of Geography

The frontier is one of the most fascinating concepts in geography. It is a border, yet not a well-demarcated line but a fuzzy zone of transition, not a finished world but a world in sketch and a gate to the future. Because of its conceptual openness and relation to exploration, the frontier has been in partnership with imperialism and evokes the ancestry of an oppressive term. Arguably, however, the frontier is simultaneously a better allusion to the ceaseless flows that shape societies and thus a refined notion to analyze the transformations that are the concern of human geography.