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We need one more paper for the following panel “Enclaves, Fragments, Shards: Managing Borders across Spatial Discontinuities” Organizers: Franck Billé (Cambridge) and Jeffrey Twu (Columbia) Discussant: Sarah Green (Helsinki) Abstracts are invited from anthropologists, geographers and colleagues in related disciplines. Please email your abstract (250 words maximum) by April 7 to Franck ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>.uk) and Jeffrey ([log in to unmask]). Franck ============= Territorial enclaves have always aroused curiosity and fascination. As pieces of national territory located within another nation, they seem to run counter to a political imaginary of national integrity and spatial coherence (Jones 2009). They are frequently described as hangovers from the medieval era where ties of loyalty were the primary organizing principle of political space (Catudal 1979; Vinokurov 2007). The few enclaves that are found worldwide are viewed as messy (Reeves 2014), and “problems” to be resolved for their respective nations to achieve full status and equality (Whyte 2002). Most enclaves are in fact modern creations that speak to a core political concern viewing nation-states as cultural, ethnic, and linguistic homogenous entities (Vinokurov 2007). The republics of Central Asia, whilst occasionally attracting the moniker “Absurdistan,” have been deliberate attempts at bringing order to an ethnically diverse and linguistically amorphous region. Similarly, the ossification of numerous enclaves and counter-enclaves found across the India-Bangladesh border (Cons 2012) has sought to delineate religious and linguistic affiliations and map them unambiguously. Taking as its point of departure the dual nature of enclaves as exceptional political entities AND exemplary features of contemporary political mappings of space, this panel will explore the ways in which the size and territorial discontinuity of enclaves impact on practices of sovereign control. The presentations in the panel will look at how the political imagination of the nation-state as extending both upwards (airspace) and downwards is physically unenforceable at the scale of the enclaves, thereby creating disruptions between the surface and other layers of sovereignty. While cartographic discontinuities may be unambiguously inscribed at the surface through signs, gates or walls, the situation both above and below is far less clear. Indeed, the cartographic insulation of enclaves is belied by shared natural resources (water supply), and infrastructure (sewer systems, telephone cables) that enmeshes them into their surroundings and makes their very existence possible and sustainable. The conceptualization of enclaves as volumes rather than flat surfaces is also illuminating for the study of borders and border-making practices overall. Taking on board the recent volumetric turn in architecture and political geography (Adey 2010, Bridge 2013, Elden 2008, Weizman 2007) the presentations of the panel will ask to what extent lines of demarcation on the maps can be readily transcribed onto other dimensions of space. If principles of spatial organization in aerial and subterranean realms do not coincide with borders on the ground, but are precise and unambiguous nonetheless, this panel further questions the viability of territorial clarity by foregrounding the enmeshed, interwoven, and interdependent nature of “sovereign” enclaves at other spatial dimensions. Some of the questions addressed by the presentations will include: - Do territorial enclaves confirm, compromise, or reinvent the logic of cartographical demarcations? - If borders are not mere facsimiles transcribed from one spatial plane to another, how are they managed differently across spatial planes? And how does this difference in management impact imaginations of territorial integrity? - What are the strategies adopted by human populations inhabiting fragmented spaces such as enclaves? Are they necessarily victims of convoluted territorial arrangements, or can these spaces afford opportunities and access not available elsewhere? - Given the embeddedness of enclaves within an infrastructural network that does not abide by borderlines, to what extent do shared pipelines, sewage systems, and other underground utilities that sprawl across state boundaries challenge existing technologies of map-making? Might one argue that state cartography operates upon an antiquated logic of horizontal binarism, which fails to describe contemporary exploitations in spatial dimension previously inaccessible to humans? Do enclaves confirm or contest territorial assumptions in other spatial planes? References Adey, Peter. 2010. Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Bridge, Gavin. 2013. “Territory, now in 3D!,” Political Geography 34:.55-57 Catudal, Honore Marc. 1979. The Exclave Problem of Western Europe. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Cons, Jason. 2012. “Narrating Boundaries: Framing and Contesting Suffering, Community, and Belonging in Enclaves Along the India-Bangladesh Border,” Political Geography 35: 37-46 Elden, Stuart. 2013. “Secure the Volume: Vertical Geopolitics and the Depth of Power,” Political Geography 34:35-51 Jones, Reece. 2009. “Sovereignty and Statelessness in the Border Enclaves of India and Bangladesh,” Political Geography 28: 373-381. Reeves, Madeleine. 2014. Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vinokurov, Evgeny. 2007. A Theory of Enclaves. Lantham, MD: Lexington Books. Weizman, Eyal. 2007. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso Whyte, Brendan Richard. 2002. Waiting for the Esquimo: A Historical and Documentary Study of the Cooch Behar Enclaves of India and Bangladesh. 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