![]() | Beyond Lines of Control Aggarwal brings the insights of performance studies and the growing field of the anthropology of international borders to bear on her extensive fieldwork in Ladakh. She examines how social and religious boundaries are created on the Ladakhi frontier, how they are influenced by directives of the nation-state, and how they are shaped into political struggles for regional control that are legitimized through discourses of religious purity, patriotism, and development. She demonstrates in lively detail the ways that these struggles are enacted in particular cultural performances such as national holidays, festivals, rites of passage ceremonies, films, and archery games. By placing cultural performances and political movements in Ladakh center stage, Aggarwal rewrites the standard plot of nation and border along the Line of Control. Ravina Aggarwal is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Smith College. She is the editor of Into the High Ranges: The Penguin Anthology of Mountain Writings and the editor and translator of Forsaking Paradise: Stories from Ladakh , by Abdul Ghani Sheikh. She was a founding editor of the journal Meridians . |
![hidden image for function call](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/1x1.png)