On Edge - On Edge: China's Frontiers in a Time of Change

The conference “On Edge: China’s Frontiers in a Time of Change” will bring together a multi-disciplinary group of scholars from Switzerland and institutions around the world to advance research on the dramatic socio-material transformations that have reshaped China’s western borderlands. Shifts occurring in the new millennium will comprise the immediate backdrop to discussion and the focus of most papers, a number of solicited papers will provide a longer historical perspective to place changes in deeper perspective. In seeking to move away from standard tropes of frontiers as sites of geopolitical tension and national boundary practices, this conference will explore new frameworks that seek to expand our understandings of frontiers as spaces of connection, interaction, and dynamism informed by, but hardly limited to, their relations to formal national boundaries. The aim of this conference is to propose new ways of discussing relationships within, between, and across various frontier regions in western and northern China. Fieldwork-based research shows that these borderlands are multilayered global spaces of interaction rather than merely ‘marginal’ or ‘peripheral’ spaces - the terms in which their positionality is usually cast in the geopolitical logics of the nation-state. Combinations of innovative conceptual frameworks, historical and contemporary perspectives, first-hand research experience shared by all the invited speakers and discussants, and the varied disciplinary backgrounds of the group promise to create an output with a potential to have a significant impact across diverse academic communities.The workshop is conceived as a retreat, a focused ‘time-space’ to offer the opportunity for a small group of junior and senior scholars to join in intensive discussions assessing each paper with the aim of developing the assembled essays into a journal special issue or edited volume. Methodologically, the format of the workshop combines indoors and outdoors sessions. By combining mental and bodily movement in two outdoor sessions, the conference aims at creating an energizing setting for conceptual debates and development of collaborative projects.