Border Materiality and Infrastructure: Comparative Ethnography in Urban Spaces

• Applicant: Dr. Annett Bochmann
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521092157

A view on the global political order shows the existing diversity between state borders. In this context, the sociological research project investigates the meaning and power of socio-materiality in urban border spaces, which are aspects that were hardly explored in the literature so far. To fill this research gap, the project integrates findings from border studies, science and technology studies, and urban studies. Thus, materiality and especially different types of infrastructure are added to the research agenda as central dimensions for the constitution of state borders. The project assumes that borders are not only results of state control practices, but a product of multiple, also intertwined relations of state and non-state practices. Thus, on the one hand, state regulatory practices will be analysed, and on the other hand, infrastructures that emerge through the border situation, as for example border economies or transnational cooperation. The relationship between different types of infrastructure is understood as an indissoluble and tense interplay, which the project aims to grasp theoretically and explore empirically. In doing so, the project focuses on the socio-material connections of infrastructures, i.e., the links between border objects and social practices (Star 2010, Latour 2006). According to praxeological materialism, an ethnomethodologically informed ethnography will be carried out, which allows to analyse borders in situ and in terms of a doing border. The project examines two urban border spaces in Asia and Europe. In these urban areas, border infrastructures and related actors have a particularly high presence. Thus, the comparative approach offers dense analyses of the complexity of borders as well as insights exceeding the individual case. The research project pursues an analytical-foundational problem definition, which allows for theoretical and methodological contributions beyond the empirical results. Through this project, we will (1) gain a better understanding of the socio-material character and power relationships of different infrastructures regarding the constitution of borders as well as (2) empirical insights about the power of materiality on social practices and vice versa. (3) Finally, the project will also document methodological reflections about conducting comparative ethnographies for contrastive cases.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants