Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia

by Madeleine Reeves

In Central Asia s Ferghana Valley, where Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan meet, state territoriality has taken on new significance in these states second decade of independence, reshaping landscapes and transforming livelihoods in a densely populated, irrigation-dependent region. Through an innovative ethnography of social and spatial practice at the limits of the state, Border Work explores the contested work of producing and policing territorial integrity when significant stretches of new international borders remain to be conclusively demarcated or effectively policed.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Madeleine Reeves follows traders, farmers, water engineers, conflict analysts, and border guards as they negotiate the practical responsibilities and social consequences of producing, policing, and deriving a livelihood across new international borders that are often encountered locally as chessboards rather than lines. She shows how the negotiation of state spatiality is bound up with concerns about legitimate rule and legitimate movement, and explores how new attempts to secure the border, materially and militarily, serve to generate new sources of lived insecurity in a context of enduring social and economic inter-dependence. A significant contribution to Central Asian studies, border studies, and the contemporary anthropology of the state, Border Work moves beyond traditional ethnographies of the borderland community to foreground the effortful and intensely political work of producing state space."

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology

312 pages, Hardcover

First published March 4, 2014

Reviews

[Harriet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me when I fetishise a surface by wearing a hat

[Matthew Petti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reeves does firsthand anthropology in the Ferghana Valley — an ancient and storied region that got carved up between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan after the Soviet collapse — during the early years of state formation. Establishing the border on the ground was a long process that locals experienced as intrusive.

People who used to be neighbors within the same empire suddenly found themselves having to get visas (or more likely, pay bribes) to access their pastures or go to the market. Russia, which used to their imperial motherland, was now suddenly a minefield of residence permits and immigration raids. A Kyrgyz man told Reeves that he realized the Soviet Union had really fallen when Russians started calling him "darkie" and "illegal."

At the same time, people clung to their new nation-state identity as a source of protection. They could now deploy the border, their ethnic kin, and even the myriad American development NGOs whenever there was some conflict over things like orchards or wells. Hey Tajik neighbor, this water is Uzbek water, you see. They did not necessarily complain that there was a border—their problem was that the border stopped (or didn't stop) the wrong people and goods.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book for anyone interested in studying the state. Based on fantastic ethnographic research.