The Political Materialities of Borders : New Theoretical Directions

This collection brings questions of materiality to bear specifically on the study of borders; an approach that does not presume the material aspect of borders but rather explores the ways in which any such materiality comes into being. 

Materiality has long been tied to nationalism and capitalism. Space, architecture and visual art have offered particularly strong examples of how the material and ideological consolidation of the modern capitalist state takes place. While these, and other areas of production that fall under the purview of ‘the state’, are being scrutinised for their role as conduits between materiality and ideology, borders are curiously under-explored. Instead, border studies often seem to take borders as de facto material manifestations of state apparatuses that otherwise hover between materiality and ideology; nation-state ideologies, territorial claims and discourses of community. It is therefore as if the border marks the limit where the capitalist nation-state, contested and re-created at its centre, becomes fixed. 

Through ethnographic and philosophical explorations of the ontology of borders from the perspective of materiality, this volume throws light on the interaction between the materiality of state borders and the non-material aspects of state-making. This enables a new understanding of borders as productive of the politics of materiality, on which the state project rests, including in its multifarious forms in the post-nation-state era.

This collection will be of interest to students and lecturers in border studies, spanning social and cultural anthropology, human geography, migration studies, sociology, and international relations.