Search

The rewilding of Alpine landscapes has often triggered the expansion of wildlife populations and the 'return' of previously near extinct species. Among those, the wolf has generated much debate and is a frequent object of contention between mountain communities and environmentalist groups. This paper aims to reorient such polarising debate by foregrounding multispecies entanglements through the experience of wildlife hunters in an Italian Alpine valley. In doing so, I show that the core issue lies in socioeconomic ruptures and the ongoing disenfranchisement of mountain communities, rather than with rewilding per se. To this end, I argue, the return of 'wild' animals becomes contentious not because of the threatening or formidable nature of such creatures; but rather because it signifies the abandonment of the mountain, connoting a process that equates to the ultimate un-domestication of a familiar space – a point of no return for mountain communities' social and cultural livelihood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, the Yunnan-Myanmar borderlands in Kachin State have become a major investment frontier for large-scale agribusiness. Chinese private capital, supported by state-led opium substitution programs, has turned thousands of hectares of forests into plantations. As in many such cases across Southeast Asia and beyond, this rapid development has come at the expense of local communities and displaced persons relying on these lands for their livelihoods and refuge. Caught between Chinese market expansion, and an ongoing war between the Myanmar Army and the Kachin Independence Organization/Army (KIO/KIA), plantations have become sites of often overlooked confrontations, compromise, and conflict operating behind the more spectacular politics of the grand infrastructures like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in this region. Moving across plantation sites, armed bases and border markets; and building on interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs, Kachin leaders, and farmers, the paper explores how plantations have transformed not only environmental space but also social-political dynamics of Kachin State in ways, we argue, that are more difficult to reverse than previous or ongoing military territorialization. In doing so, we aim to localize and contextualize the plantation as a key force rapidly transforming Asian borderworlds, over which broader socio-political struggles, environmental transformations, nature loss, connectivity and developmental become imbricated with bordering space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is expected to be a "game-changer" for Pakistan's struggling economy. In China's Yunnan province, the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor promises to revive old forms of connectivity across the region. While both projects feature prominently in Xi Jinping's signature project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), neither is particularly new. The BCIM dates back to the Kunming Initiative of 1999, while the CPEC was initiated in the early 2010s. Following the development of both projects over the past decade, this paper shows some of the effects of economic corridors on local trade. It argues that, despite claims of inclusiveness, openness and mutual benefit, such projects often achieve the opposite. In Xinjiang, security concerns have curbed opportunities for Uyghur and Pakistani traders to carry out cross-border trade. In Yunnan, a stricter border regime is favoring well-connected elites over local actors who had been engaged in local trade for decades. I thus argue that the corridor-ization of trade along China's frontiers has brought the end of what I call proximity: the advantages intrinsic to a certain geographical, cultural and historical closeness that used to afford business opportunities to borderland communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade of development schemes has been experienced very differently by various groups within the city of Kashgar in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. The recent exacerbation of social inequalities, stratification, and tensions in Kashgar is a structural consequence of two phases of government policies: an accelerated formalization of the economy and remodelling of the city-scape as part of modernistic development implemented before 2014, followed by a phase of strong securitization. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork between 2009 and 2017, this paper analyzes the situation, reactions, and strategies of different groups of Uyghur residents of Kashgar to cope with the changing socio-economic and political environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant part of China-Pakistan cross-border trade falls within the category of shadow economy. Most Pakistani traders in Xinjiang cannot afford to ship containers through the Khunjerab Pass and rather carry the goods purchased in China with them on the daily buses to Sost, Pakistan, thus avoiding customs duties. This form of border economy, though falling outside of the regulatory regime, is far from being informal. Rather, it is based on a network of contacts on both sides of the border and made possible by the particular institutional and infrastructural setting of the area. Based on long-term fieldwork in both Xinjiang and Pakistan, this article shows the complexity of these transactions, their transnational nature and the performativity that characterises them. It also highlights the role of online technologies and social networks in the cultivation of those relations, and the ability of traders to navigate often-changing norms and the flows that characterise the market. Eventually, the article suggests a new definition for "the market" as it emerges from the experience of traders in Xinjiang. For them the market is neither simply based on trust, social relations and the continuous flow of information; nor does it correspond to the global, culture-free market economy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]