Madeleine Reeves's Border Work is an exceptional contribution to the study of state, borders and state spatiality in Central Asia. The book explores borders and state making in the Ferghana Valley where three Central Asian states – Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – meet, and where they once were parts of the same Soviet state.
The book investigates how the “new international boundaries in former Soviet Central Asia come to take on material form in daily life: in practices of narration, of classification, of mapping; in the building or dismantling infrastructure; in mundane and exceptional enactments of exclusion and belonging” (p. 6). In doing so Reeves provides a rich and detailed multi-site ethnography that captures how the contemporary Central Asian state is produced, reconstructed and perceived. The detailed exploration and localisation of borderlands, people, mobilities and immobilities, and movements of the bodies across borders allow readers to follow the complex story of what the author defines as “border work.”
Reeves defines border work as “the messy, contested, and often intensely social business of making territory ‘integral’” (p. 6). In doing so she reveals how the post-Soviet state reality and spatiality are not bound simply geographically or based on the ethnics patiality but represent the “chessboard” border. This rich ethnographical account, rather than heavily-imbued state-centric approach, allows Reeves and her readers “to make sense of the way in which forms of governance are sustained through the spaces of institutional and legal uncertainty, without resort to paradox (the “strong weak state”) or an overwhelming distinction between power and resistance” (p. 244). This productive approach allows for expanding the analysis to the spaces or as Reeves calls them “gaps” – the “sites where a particular mode of governance can flourish” – where a “state” can “exceed” its “own legitimate authority” (p. 244). In the book the “thick description” of the borderland livelihoods is intertwined with the much needed theoretical discussion and conceptualisation of post-Soviet Central Asia. The book provides an invaluable contribution to this growing field of study by providing the critical and lucid illustration of the argument – how borders are always multiple, how territorialisations and impersonations, perceptions and daily practices in the borderlands produce and reproduce the state-making, which is far from being a rigid finished project.
The book consists of six chapters, “Locations,” “Delimitations,” “Trajectories,” “Gaps,” “Impersonations,” and “Separations.” The first chapter introduces the space where the fieldwork was conducted – Batken in Kyrgyzstan. It also analyses the multiplicity of borders and living in the borderland. In Chapter 2 Reeves takes us through the rich historical narrative and analysis to show that “for much of the twentieth century the Ferghana Valley has been subject to attempts to overcome a perceived excess of socio-spatial complexity through the delimitation of borders and the relocations of populations” (p. 67). It is an important exploration of the state-making and state spatialisation during the early Soviet period, the process that drew the borders, created states and nations, and correlated the state and its territory with the dominant ethnicity of a particular state.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on mobilities across borders. The former focuses on the labour migration to Russia and uncertainties of illegality statuses. It fleshes out a very rich and detailed picture of illegality, abuse and maltreatment of migrants in Russia combined with Reeves’ ethnography and a very detailed survey data conceptualising these complex inter-relations. Chapter 4 explores the movement through the borders in Ferghana. Here, ethnography presents the account of transborder trade and the movement of the goods across borders. This ethnographic account questions if borders and borderlands can help analysts in their investigations “about state (re)composition in Central Asia” and “whether a critique of the cartographic view might not also point us to a more fundamental critique of the lines we draw between ‘state’ and ‘society’” (p. 168). Both chapters provide excellent approaches with the suggested frameworks and insightful, rich ethnographies and narratives. Chapter 5 focuses on border guards and state impersonation, exploring “how do some mundane practices remain mundane, and others come to be imbued with stately significance?” (p. 173). The final chapter analyses the conflicts and events on the border though the exploration of the ways in which “a border” gets “materialized.”
This study will be of great interest for students of state-making, borders, spatiality, power and mobility in Central Asia and beyond. Moreover, the beauty of the book is in its ability to engage its readers and allow them to travel through the fieldwork sites, to “see” the Ferghana Valley and its borders, and to follow the exceptionally sophisticated conceptual picture Reeves unfolds. It is also an invaluable critical study for the students of the space and state-making.
