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Making Mountain Places into State Spaces: Infrastructure, Consumption, and Territorial Practice in a Himalayan Borderland

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  • Galen Murton

Abstract

This article looks at a trans-Himalayan borderland to see how new road development projects affect social and sovereign relationships across mountain landscapes between Chinese Tibet and Mustang, Nepal. Research asked about local experiences with new forms of motorized transport and popular consumption of Chinese-manufactured commodities to understand what factors led the Nepali state to undertake new bureaucratic projects in a historically peripheral space. Employing a dialectic framework of mobility and containment, a materialist-territorial analysis reveals how transborder infrastructure development affects trade relations and consumption practices in the Nepal–China borderlands and, in turn, how these dynamics condition state-making processes at social and geopolitical levels. Following the cross-scalar trajectory of one rural road project from local grassroots initiative to national development program to international transportation network, I argue that the economic interests of a place-based project with regional cultural connections set in motion an expanding presence of Nepali state apparatuses in a trans-Himalayan borderland space.

Suggested Citation

  • Galen Murton, 2017. "Making Mountain Places into State Spaces: Infrastructure, Consumption, and Territorial Practice in a Himalayan Borderland," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(2), pages 536-545, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:107:y:2017:i:2:p:536-545
    DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2016.1232616
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    Cited by:

    1. Tashi W. Gurung & Emily Amburgey & Sienna R. Craig, 2021. "Unsettling the American Dream: Mobility, Migration and Precarity among Translocal Himalayan Communities during COVID‐19," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(6), pages 1277-1300, November.
    2. Yi Cheng & Hui Liu & Dongmei Chen & Haimeng Liu, 2022. "Human Activity Intensity and Its Spatial-Temporal Evolution in China’s Border Areas," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-19, July.
    3. Bohao Cui & Yili Zhang & Zhaofeng Wang & Changjun Gu & Linshan Liu & Bo Wei & Dianqing Gong & Mohan Kumar Rai, 2022. "Ecological Risk Assessment of Transboundary Region Based on Land-Cover Change: A Case Study of Gandaki River Basin, Himalayas," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-22, April.
    4. Galen Murton, 2020. "Roads to China and infrastructural relations in Nepal," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(5), pages 840-847, August.

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