Making Borders: Surveys, Space and Knowl

Drawing borders—around spaces, peoples, populations, property, and states—has been a major part of the creation of the modern world. Borders continue to be flashpoints of international conflict and sites of state violence. This class examines how borders have been constructed and produced at different historical moments, through imperial and international regimes, and in different places around the world. We’ll look at maps, surveys, censuses, plebiscites, passports, and international commissions to consider what borders are and the ways in which they can be manifested and shaped. We’ll reflect on how state officials and soldiers, as well as anthropologists, social scientists, and historians, have created borders in space and around aspects of social life. Borders are produced politically, but they are also literally made by particular technologies and made real through everyday acts and experiences. What techniques are involved in drawing borders, and how have these techniques shaped borders themselves? To put it crudely, how have decisions made in drawing a border affected what is later done at that border? Borders are more than lines on a map or territorial expressions: they bound the contours of political communities, they mark points of surveillance, and they help to create subjects and identities. Ultimately, this class aims to give students the historical skills to think about how borders and spaces are produced materially and politically, how knowledge about space is created and constructed, and how populations and resources are entangled within border regimes, through a range of concrete case studies. The use of these studies will open up further topics related to borders in fields such as legal history, the history of science, settler colonialism, and nationalism.