The Kachin are a nation divided territorially and made into minorities
in modern China, Myanmar and India by the imposition of the so- called
?international? boundaries. The Ph.D. thesis studies the Kachin
construction, maintenance and protection of their territorial and
symbolic spaces against state practices of territoriality and
socialization in Myanmar and China. While the State in China has
focused on subtle socialization through positive discrimination,
education, popular media and promotion of ethnic material culture, the
State in Myanmar has opted for coercive methods and homogenization.
The Kachin, virtually deprived of their territorial places in the
strict politico-geographical definition of the term, rely increasingly
on their (now cross-border) social space constituting family and
kinship networks and their expressions of ethnicity. The latter has
evolved into a self-conscious awareness of being a nation of six tribes
in three countries. The study draws on inter-disciplinary literature
in political geography and anthropology, history, political science
and International Relations on symbolic and territorial spaces and
boundaries.
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