TY - JOUR
T1 - Redundancy, Resilience, Repair: Infrastructural Effects in Borderland Spaces
AU - Boyle, Edward Kieran
AU - Shneiderman, Sara
PY - 2020/8/15
Y1 - 2020/8/15
N2 - This paper develops a dialogue between recent scholarship on Asian borderlands, infrastructure, and Sino-Indian geopolitical competition. The idea of “infrastructural effects” helps articulate how the ideational and material terrain on which competition between India and China occurs can be understood as an uneven Himalayan borderland through which the two states are both separated and connected. Drawing upon the polyvalent meanings embodied in the concepts of redundancy, resilience, and repair, we use these terms as organizing tropes through which to develop our analysis of infrastructure's position at the intersection of the material and the social. With an empirical focus on Northeast India and Nepal, we highlight how the varied effects of temporality, materiality, and spatiality shape the discourses and practices of infrastructure in borderland spaces.
AB - This paper develops a dialogue between recent scholarship on Asian borderlands, infrastructure, and Sino-Indian geopolitical competition. The idea of “infrastructural effects” helps articulate how the ideational and material terrain on which competition between India and China occurs can be understood as an uneven Himalayan borderland through which the two states are both separated and connected. Drawing upon the polyvalent meanings embodied in the concepts of redundancy, resilience, and repair, we use these terms as organizing tropes through which to develop our analysis of infrastructure's position at the intersection of the material and the social. With an empirical focus on Northeast India and Nepal, we highlight how the varied effects of temporality, materiality, and spatiality shape the discourses and practices of infrastructure in borderland spaces.
U2 - 10.5749/vergstudglobasia.6.2.0112
DO - 10.5749/vergstudglobasia.6.2.0112
M3 - Article
SP - 112
EP - 138
JO - Verge: Studies in Global Asias
JF - Verge: Studies in Global Asias
SN - 2373-5058
ER -