The Anthropology of Borders:Origin and Development,Objects and China's Context
Nation-states in the modern world define their respective territorial boundaries through the demarcation of national borders,and as a result the corresponding frontiers have become important cultural spaces in many countries.In reality,borders do not simply distinguish the geographic spaces of two countries,but also affect the human societies in these spaces as well as the formation of corre-sponding civilizations.Academic focus on the daily practices in frontier societies is an important area of study in the anthropology of borders.Judging from the origin of this discipline,the concern of the academic community over the frontier regions has shifted from a sense of salvation and survival of frontier societies in the face of external shocks to an active development of the understanding of na-tional wholeness in response to changes in China's neighboring countries as well as the world land-scape,thus enabling the integration of frontier studies with anthropological theories and research methods;as a result,China's anthropology of borders with its own identity began to take shape.The discussion of the research objects of the anthropology of borders starts from specific frontier practices.Based on the basic fieldwork methods of anthropology for studying,recording and interpreting human society and culture,this paper discusses the research interests and practical paths of the anthropology of borders from four aspects:borders,regions,frontier societies,and human-land relations.Since China entered the new era,China's anthropology of borders in its development on the one hand has recorded and objectively presented the rich cultural implications of frontier societies,devoting itself to the holistic representation of the national culture;on the other hand,it has much practical significance in responding to our national construction and decisions.Therefore,creating a rich field ethnography of the borderlands,thinking about the humanistic path of modernizing borderland governance,revea-ling the deeper connotations of the consciousness of the community of the Chinese nation,and build-ing a modern civilization for the Chinese nation based on understanding the space of Chinese civiliza-tion have become the realistic missions of the anthropology of borders in China,while creating more approaches and possibilities for Chinese and international academic practice in terms of intellectual production.
the anthropology of bordersorigin and developmentChina's contextmodern civiliza-tionborderland governance
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