The Periphery Perspective: Global China from the Borderlands with Ale Rippa

Alessandro (Ale) Rippa joins Juliet and Erik on the podcast to talk about how he uses China's borderlands as a starting point to understand the Chinese state, global engagements like the Belt and Road Initiative, and Chinese development. They discuss Ale's experiences working in China's border regions in Xinjiang and Yunnan, how borders are zones of connection and disconnection, China's historical support for the Communist Party of Burma, and much more.

Alessandro Rippa is associate professor at the University of Oslo's Department of Social Anthropology. His research centers on China's borderlands as lenses for studying infrastructure, global circulations, and the environment. He is PI of a new ERC Starting Grant project entitled, "Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropology for the Anthropocene". 

Featured work: 

• "Imagined borderlands: Terrain, technology and trade in the making and managing of the China-Myanmar border." 2022. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography .
• "Borderland Infrastructures: Trade, Development, and Control in Western China." 

Recommendations:

Ale:

• Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia edited by Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky (2023)
• Keep an eye out for the upcoming special issue of The China Quarterly on Chinese infrastructure

Erik:

• Scribd.com for eBooks and audiobooks
• Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell (2020)
• Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell (2021)

Juliet:

• Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China's Rise by Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri (2021)
• Sinica Podcast: Sinica at the Association for Asian Studies Conference, Boston 2023: Capsule interviews