Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

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.

Borderlands --- Ethnology --- Fergana Valley --- Politics and government. --- Ethnic relations. --- Cultural anthropology --- Ethnography --- Races of man --- Social anthropology --- Border-lands --- Border regions --- Frontiers --- Farghona Valley --- Farghona Wodisi --- Fargʺona vodiĭsi --- Fergana Basin --- Fergana öröönü --- Fergana Oydungu --- Ferganskai︠a︡ dolina --- Ferganskaya dolina --- Ferghana Valley --- Vodii Farghona --- Anthropology --- Human beings --- Boundaries

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

With fresh and provocative insights into the everyday reality of politics in post-Soviet Central Asia, this volume moves beyond commonplaces about strong and weak states to ask critical questions about how democracy, authority, and justice are understood in this important region. In conversation with current theories of state power, the contributions draw on extensive ethnographic research in settings that range from the local to the transnational, the mundane to the spectacular, to provide a unique perspective on how politics is performed in everyday life.

Ethnology --- Asia, Central --- Ethnic relations. --- Politics and government