Everyday Lives in Peripheral Spaces: A Case of Bengal Borderlands
Abstract
This article (part of a special section on South Asian border studies) is an ethnographic study of the daily lives and narratives of borderlands communities in the border districts of Cooch Behar and South Dinajpur along the West-Bengal–Bangladesh border. In order to emphasise the significance of borderland communities’ narratives and experiences to our understanding of borders, this paper explores the idea of borders as social spaces that are inherently dynamic. In attempting to understand the idea of borders through everyday lives of people living in borderland communities, this paper highlights tensions and contradictions between hard borders manifested through securitization practices, and the inherently dynamic social spaces that manifest themselves in people’s daily lives. Conceptually and thematically, this paper is situated within and seeks to contribute to the discipline of borderland studies.
Key Words: Borders, Social Spaces, Security, Bengal Borderlands, South Asia
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2021 Sampurna Bhaumik
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) that allows others to copy and redistribute the material, to remix, transform and bulid upon the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
- Artists may discuss alternative copyrights with the editors.
