The bridge that divides: local perceptions of the connected state in the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan–China borderlands. Issue 3 (2nd July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Parham, Steven
• Is Part Of: Central Asian survey. Volume 35:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 351
• Page End: 368
• Publication Date: 2016-07-02
• Subjects: Kyrgyzstan -- Gorno-Badakhshan -- Xinjiang -- Central Asian borderlands -- post-Soviet border control -- China minorities; Asia, Central -- Periodicals; 958.005
• DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2016.1200873
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0263-4937

Abstract

ABSTRACT: 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.