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Vox Borders: Nepal/China

The video tracks the materialization of the border between Nepal and China which runs through
the Himalayas and how that affects the Bon community living there. It is the only video in the
series that gives a peek into how life was like before borders were drawn up by modern states.
Prior to the conceptualization of borders as lines in the sand and containers of sovereign
territories, borders did exist in the form of natural barriers: ice-covered terrains, large rivers or
high mountain ranges. In the case of the Bon community in Nepal, the Himalayas – home to
Earth’s highest mountain peaks – provided their ancestors and themselves with a natural border
from government, control and forced assimilation. And this border worked: The Bon community
was able to maintain their culture, language, tradition and ways of life. This exemplifies what
Paasi (in Johnson et al., 2011) has written about how bordering reflects and also allows for the
expressions of identity. That identity was preserved even as new state boundaries were
established, with people choosing to identify themselves as Tibetan rather than Nepali or
Chinese. This is due to the fact that Bon people are stateless and thus have not developed a
national identity in relation to the state. It is also interesting to note that their Tibetan identity is
not homogenous: each of the twenty-five families in the community has a distinct identity.

After the modern states of Nepal and China were created, their border along the Mustang region
remained de jure. This allowed nomadic yak grazers from Nepal to travel deep into Tibet, which
essentially constituted border crossing without being subjected to any border rituals (Parker &
Vaughan-Williams, 2012). In fact, their survival depended upon the free movement of their yak
herd, thus showing how some human mobility is closely related to non-human animal mobility.
Despite this, animal subjects have been largely ignored in mobility studies, even in the broad
conception of mobility by Sheller and Urry (2006) which concerns movements of non-human
objects, capital, images and information.

China’s economic growth since the 1990s led to a desire to “project its influence and protect its
borders” (Vox, 2017, 6:40), resulting in the building of a fence on its border with Nepal. The fact
that “China now had the money, technology and geopolitical motive to start taming this region”
(Vox, 2017, 6:47) essentially implies that borders do not exist naturally but need to be
constructed given specific economic, social, technological and political conditions. Borders then
need to be performed in order to have meaning (Parker & Vaughan-Williams, 2012) though the
construction of military facilities, surveillance infrastructure and the regular presence of border
guards. At the same time that such performances help materialize the border, the border also
becomes the “political stage for the performance of control” (Amoore & Hall, 2010, p. 303).
However, the performance of control by the Chinese government reaches beyond its border and
into the sovereign territory of Nepal, where surveillance from watch towers and random
detention of people are routine. While the bordering practice of marking bodies as (il)legitimate
in places far from a state’s border has been the norm (Johnson et al., 2011), it is not the same as
detaining bodies, with or without reasons, by border agents.

The materialization of the border in a region where state borders were irrelevant for a long time
has undoubtedly had widespread and profound impacts. Firstly, border construction is gradually
transforming the region’s landscapes. Secondly, the border interrupts movement of people and
animals, thus threatening their livelihoods. Thirdly and as a result of the second, the border
brings about a change of lifestyles among the Bon community, with people opting out of the
nomadic way of life for other occupations. These changes coincide with the building of roads as
trade routes linking the countries of China, Nepal and India through the Himalaya mountains.
For the indigenous people living in remote areas of the Himalayas, the roads make their lives
easier but also introduce them to yet another border: modernity. It is sad to see how the nomadic
yak grazers went from being self-sufficient and sustainable to being poor and deprived overnight
because they do not have cash to buy things. Their example points to the barriers of entry into
modernity and into a cash-based economy. Money, means of transportation and language are
among the things they would need to be able to enter this border. While integration into
modernity provides these people with apparent benefits, it also presents them with many
challenges, one being how to preserve the culture they have worked so hard to maintain.
 References

Amoore, L. & Hall, A. (2010). Border theatre: On the arts of security and resistance. Cultural

Geographies, 17(3), 299-319.

Johnson, C., Jones, R., Paasi, A., Amoore, L., Mountz, A., Salter, M. & Rumford, C. (2011).

Interventions on rethinking ‘the border’ in border studies. Political Geography, 30(2), 61-
69.

Parker, N. & Vaughan-Williams, N. (2012). Critical Border Studies: Broadening and deepening

the ‘lines in the sand’ agenda. Geopolitics, 17(4), 727-733.

doi:10.1080/14650045.2012.706111

Sheller, M. & Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning A,

38(2), 207-226.

Vox. (2017). Building a border at 4,600 meters [Video file]. Retrieved from

https://www.vox.com/a/borders/nepal-china