Memory, Everyday Bordering Experiences, and Tourism

The northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, sharing a geopolitically contested border with China, has since 2014 seen rapid infrastructural development, including last-mile roads and tourism infrastructure to firmly claim India’s political space against China. The project explores how state tourism strategies, involving new Buddhist tourist circuits and attracting outside private capital, are making the local communities with past cross-border economic and spiritual connectivities to negotiate, adapt and re-work their memories and futures. It does so by examining the borderwork conducted by the state, community actors and tourists, and the role of memory in transforming culture and identities, at a tense intersection between geopolitics, culture, religion and political space. The project relies on ethnography and draws on political geography (border studies), critical geopolitics and memory studies.