Concreting the frontier: Modernity and its entanglements in Sikkim,India |
| |
| Institution: | 1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina State University, 1911 Building, Campus Box 8107, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA;2. Departamento de Ecología Humana, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional-Unidad Mérida, Km 6 antigua carretera a Progreso, Colonia Cordemex, CP 97310, Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico;3. Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos, El Colegio de Michoacán, A. C., Cerro de Nahuatzen 85, Fracc. Jardines del Cerro Grande, CP 59300, La Piedad de Cabadas, Michoacán, Mexico;4. Department of Anthropology, Purdue University, 700 W. State Street, Suite 219 West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA;1. Department of Geography, King''s College, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK;2. School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, Bennett Building, University Road, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK;1. Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Fellow, Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University, Finland;2. Visiting researcher, Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal, Canada;3. Associate researcher, Department of Contemporary Studies, Institut Français du Proche-Orient, Lebanon |
| |
| Abstract: | Sikkim is a geopolitically sensitive frontier state in India sharing borders with Bhutan, China and Nepal. As distinctions between urban and rural dissolve across the Himalaya, concrete narrates the transformation of these landscapes and the assemblages that hold them together. Using Cloke and Jones’s (2001) notion of ‘dwelling’ we explore Sikkim's concrete manifested in tourism, hydropower and housing to make four arguments. First, concrete is central to the way development is conceived and enacted in Sikkim and offers a critical reading of the ways landscape is imagined, reproduced and politicised. Second, concrete foregrounds the ways peoples' aspirations are materialised in the built environment of a ‘remote’, yet geopolitically significant territory. Third, concrete is an integral component of Sikkim's political culture, part of the assemblage of incongruent elements that undergird the state's dependency. Finally, concrete has further entangled Sikkim within India, producing a loyal border state out of a recently independent polity. |
| |
| Keywords: | Concrete Development Assemblage Dwelling Geopolitics India |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
