| ID | 147193 |
| Title Proper | Bridge that divides |
| Other Title Information | local perceptions of the connected state in the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan–China borderlands |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Parham, Steven |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought profound changes to the borderlands of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Xinjiang. In eastern Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan region, present-day weaknesses in territorial control of the post-Soviet state’s edges are directly wedded to borderlanders’ memories of Soviet-era practices of bordering, perceived locally as both systemically stronger and cognitively more beneficial to local lifeworlds than contemporary ‘Chinese penetration’. Across the border in Xinjiang, a formerly distant state has been brought into borderlanders’ locales and inscribed into everyday lifeworlds through novel manifestations of the state, which significantly affect cross-border interaction. By comparing how borderlanders on both sides of this frontier themselves choose to characterize border processes between ‘their’ states in the initial two decades of connections to Xinjiang, I explore how and why Kyrgyz and Tajik/Pamiri borderlanders voice strong opinions about what it is they feel has changed in these administrative-territorial homelands. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork on both sides of this frontier, I argue that the gradual bridging of this formerly sealed border has led to neither the development of a new trans-frontier identity nor locally established trans-frontier networks but, instead, reconfirmed borders between China and Central Asia. |
| `In' analytical Note | Central Asian Survey Vol. 35, No.3; Sep 2016: p.351-368 |
| Journal Source | Central Asian Survey Vol: 35 No 3 |
| Key Words | Kyrgyzstan ; Xinjiang ; Gorno-Badakhshan ; Central Asian Borderlands ; Post-Soviet Border Control ; China Minorities |