Borders, histories, existences : gender and beyond / Paula Banerjee.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction. Histories and Historians of Borders -- Sect. I. Borders and their Pasts -- 1. Aliens in the Colonial World -- 2. Borders as Unsettled Markers: The Sino-Indian Border -- 3. The Line of Control: Kashmir -- Sect. II. Life on the Border -- 4. Circles of Insecurity: The Border People -- 5. Negotiating Differences: The Indian State and its Women in the Borderlands -- 6. Mobile Diseases and the Border -- Sect. III. Law and the Border -- 7. Border Laws and Conflicts in North-east India.

This is a historical work on borders and bordered existences, with special emphasis on the gender dimensions of these existences. The book is replete with the experiences of women geographically located on borders who, the author argues, define those borders as well as themselves. The work spans a wide canvass from critical feminist theory to a study of the security/insecurity of vulnerable communities living along borders. Borders are often sites of exclusion and inclusion in the context of South Asia; they symbolize control and the urge to challenge and transcend that control. Resistance results in greater efforts to control. The medium of control changes over time but what remains constant is the fact that the control of borders necessitates control of bodies. Historically, border studies have suffered from simplification of the issues on the one hand, to collusion with forces that privilege a few, on the other. In this book the author portrays how states construct borders and try to make them static and rigid. She goes on to discuss how bordered existences, such as those of women, migrant workers and people afflicted with AIDS, destabilize these apparently rigid constructs