
Borderland Infrastructures
Trade, Development, and Control in Western China
Alessandro Rippa(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 1. December 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
282 pages
978-1-041-17633-6 (ISBN)
Description
Across the Chinese borderlands, investments in large-scale transnational infrastructure such as roads and special economic zones have increased exponentially over the past two decades. Based on long-term ethnographic research, Borderland Infrastructures addresses a major contradiction at the heart of this fast-paced development: small-scale traders have lost their historic strategic advantages under the growth of massive Chinese state investment and are now struggling to keep their businesses afloat. Concurrently, local ethnic minorities have become the target of radical resettlement projects, securitization, and tourism initiatives, and have in many cases grown increasingly dependent on state subsidies. At the juncture of anthropological explorations of the state, border studies, and research on transnational trade and infrastructure development, Borderland Infrastructures provides new analytical tools to understand how state power is experienced, mediated, and enacted in Xinjiang and Yunnan. In the process, Rippa offers a rich and nuanced ethnography of life across China's peripheries.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Academic
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-041-17633-6 (9781041176336)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2025
Routledge
€0.00
Available for download

E-Book
10/2025
Routledge
€0.00
Available for download

Book
09/2020
Amsterdam University Press
€186.40
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
Alessandro Rippa is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at Tallinn University and freigeist Fellow (2020-2025) at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich.|Willem van Schendel, Professor of History, University of Amsterdam and International Institute of Social History, the Netherlands. He works with the history, anthropology and sociology of Asia. Recent works include A History of Bangladesh (2020), Embedding Agricultural Commodities (2017, ed.), The Camera as Witness (2015, with J. L. K. Pachuau). See uva.academia.edu/WillemVanSchendel.
Content
Introduction, Part I - PROXIMITY, Chapter 1: Connections, Interlude, Chapter 2: Bridgehead, Coda, Part II - CURATION, Chapter 3: Dependency, Interlude, Chapter 4: Heritage, Coda, Part III - CORRIDOR, Chapter 5: Control, Interlude, Chapter 6: (Il)licitness, Coda, Conclusion, Bibliography, Index