Himalayan Highways: STS, the Spatial Fix, and Socio-Cultural Shifts in the Land of Zomia

Murton, Galen

doi:10.1163/15691497-12341278

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In recent years, socio-spatial theory has inf luenced conceptualizations of the region in many ways. For example, Jason Cons speaks of "sensitive space," Iftekhar Iqbal of "crossroads," Karin Dean of "Thirdspace" and "territorialities," Patterson Giersch of "geographical scales," Willem van Schendel of "place-making," and Galen Murton of a "spatial fix" (Cons 2016;Iqbal 2014;Dean 2005;Giersch 2010;van Schendel 2015;Murton 2013). Such attempts share a concern about space and place as social concepts, as human constructions rather than as physical givens, and understand them as historical and political processes.…”

Section: Spatial Metaphorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing Spaces between India and China

Schendel¹

2021

Yunnan–Burma–Bengal Corridor Geographies

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How can we think productively about the sweep of land connecting China's southwest, Myanmar's north, India's northeast, Bangladesh, and the Bay of Bengal? In its entirety, this region is rarely the focus of academic inquiry, even though the production of knowledge about some parts has been increasing rapidly. Stretching from the waterlogged environment of the world's largest river delta to the snowtopped slopes of the world's highest mountain range, and from the exceptionally heavy monsoons in the west to much lower-and long-term declining (Tan et al. 2017)-rainfall in the east, it is the home of a range of agro-ecological topographies and the meeting point of three of the earth's biodiversity hotspots. 1 So what is the point of considering this physically and environmentally varied zone as a single region, tentatively referred to as the "India-China corridor"? 2 Paradoxically, it is its persistent diversity that sets it apart from surrounding regions. First, the region's environmental variety has contributed to its always having been politically fractured. It was never under single common rulealthough, for a short while, British imperial designs came close. 3 As a result, local forms of sovereignty and territoriality developed out of long histories of political fragmentation and cultural variation, and these persist today. Second, the postcolonial states-India, Bangladesh, 4 Burma/Myanmar, and China-view their sections of it primarily in terms of security. After the mid-twentieth century, they interdicted economic connections across their borders, thwarting infrastructural upgrading and regional growth. 5 And third, the region has long been marginalized geopolitically. State elites considered it to be a problematic and unmanageable periphery in which local wars, ethnic confrontations, and drug lords f lourished; where resources were hard to exploit; and where state control was haphazard and expensive. As a result, it turned into a political geography of silence and erasure (Grundy-Warr and Sidaway 2006).

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Section: Spatial Metaphorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing Spaces between India and China

Schendel¹

2021

Yunnan–Burma–Bengal Corridor Geographies

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“…Paudel (2022), using conjectural approach, and drawing on a research project of more than five years, argues that the Himalayan BRI infrastructure is not just a driver of uneven development emanating from capitalist growth and spatial fix, but can be a generator of new domain of political articulation and a new terrain of accumulation. Similarly, in Murton's (2013) view, infrastructural developments in trans-Himalaya driven by the spatial fix challenges the historical relation between center and periphery and state and subject. Paudel and Rankin (2022) argue that in view of growing competition between powers in Asia, infrastructural projects in Nepal are likely to create new waves of capital accumulation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal: Potential impacts and implications

Prasai

2023

Human Geography

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The Belt and Road Initiative is emerging as a global phenomenon with a potential of bearing on almost all nations on Earth in different ways. In this context, this article, generally, is an attempt to demonstrate that impacts and implications of the BRI in Nepal will be governed by important national (Chinese) and international factors. Specifically, it argues that factors that have high developmental potential for Nepal include China's persistent rise and concomitant creation of the multipolar world, China's upholding of its international polices and the BRI principles, reproduction of the BRI experiences of other countries in Nepal, China's continuous pursuit of its socialism-aspiring path of development, its potential embarkment on a predominantly socialist path in the future. It argues that China’s future embarkment on a predominantly capitalist path can have ambivalent impacts ranging from highly appropriative to highly supportive. Likewise, the US–China conflict can also have ambivalent impacts ranging from boosting of Nepal’s negotiating power between the two powers to compromising of Nepal’s sovereignty and stability. The US–China conflict can also push China to treat Nepal as strategically highly important and, therefore, as a favored nation, pouring massive investments. It shows that the Chinese investment will enhance Nepal’s status vis-a-vis the US, the EU and India by cutting down its age-long dependencies on them; and will be conducive to the geographically-distributed development and capital accumulation.

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“…Indeed, water as a material substance needs to be considered in view of how in some contexts, the people affected by water stress “live in a relational world where all human and other‐than‐human entities are interdependent” (Stensrud, 2016, p. 11). The experience of water stress in this context is therefore also the intersection of “radical difference” (De La Cadena, 2015) with state production projects which in the Himalayas, have multiplied in the recent decades, from the building of roads (Demenge, 2013; Murton, 2013, 2017), the development of hydro projects (Huber, 2019; Murton, Lord, & Beazley, 2016; Orlove, 2017), heavy militarization (Bhan, 2013; Gagné, 2017), state management of natural resources in minority areas (Bhan & Trisal, 2017; Yeh, 2013) and the promotion of tourist activities (Sherpa, 2012; Yeh, 2014b, p. 265). These changes are taking place in a situation where communities often find themselves marginalized in relation to the state (Gagné, 2019a; Gergan, 2017; Murton, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The materiality of ethics: Perspectives on water and reciprocity in a Himalayan Anthropocene

Gagné

2020

WIREs Water

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In the Himalayas, water is seen by some as intricately linked to humans and produced through ethical actions. Its materiality, as a lack or excess of rain or snow, as healthy or receding ice, as destructive hail or flash flood, is a reflection of humans' moral attitude and an outcome of a process of reciprocity that links humans to nonhumans, the land, and divine beings. This perspective departs from the conception of water seen through development projects and from studies about climate change, which tend to objectify water through an epistemology that isolates nature from culture. Water as the materiality of ethics is examined by drawing on cases from Ladakh and Zanskar in the Himalayas and by reviewing studies from other parts of the Himalayas. In particular, water as the materiality of ethics is analyzed through three perspectives: how water is produced as people interact with a sacred geography, how snowy peaks are produced as objects of morality through affective attachment and encounters, and how water is produced as part of multispecies assemblages. A review of an ontology of water defined by reciprocity is important considering the significant changes currently taking place in the Himalayas and which are brought about by climate change and state production through large‐scale development projects. It can enrich our understanding of their implications for the cultural life of the often marginalized peoples of the Himalayas and contribute to narratives about the Anthropocene. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented Human Water > Rights to Water

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Himalayan Highways: STS, the Spatial Fix, and Socio-Cultural Shifts in the Land of Zomia

Cited by 8 publications

References 17 publications

Framing Spaces between India and China

Framing Spaces between India and China

The Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal: Potential impacts and implications

The materiality of ethics: Perspectives on water and reciprocity in a Himalayan Anthropocene

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