Assembling the Sino-Myanmar borderworld

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile grand schemes of economic corridors and interregional connections are drawn on paper, the highways, railroads and pipelines need to cross the terrestrial and lived borderworlds. The rhetoric and policy agendas of both China and Myanmar signify the states’ power to execute the relevant cross-border connectivities. The article demonstrates how in the lived borderworld between China and Myanmar, at the section of the border between Dehong Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province and Kachin State, respectively, the state is not such a single, unitary and abstract actor that by default determines the cross-border dynamics. The latter emerges within the complex and uneasy assemblage of motley components ranging from human agents with diverse goals to material artifacts and abstract notions, some associated with the state and others not. Applying assemblage as a methodology and a mode of thinking, the article examines these participants on their own terms – based on how they connect to and participate in the heterogeneous and uncomfortably composed borderworld.