Making and Unmaking Frontiers in Borneo

Based on ethnographic and archival research from inland and border regions of Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan), this edited volume explores frontier-making and unmaking through the interplay of state and capitalist forces, environmental change, and human and more-than-human relations.

The chapters critically examine the socio-environmental transformations associated with infrastructure development, resource extraction, and frontier expansion in Indonesian Borneo. Through case studies centring local perspectives and experiences, the chapters illustrate how frontiers are actively produced, contested, and reconfigured, highlighting the historically layered, agentive, and multispecies character of frontiers. Adopting a frontier-making and unmaking approach, the book offers a novel perspective on frontier dynamics, emphasising their temporal, relational, and more-than-human nature.

This volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students in anthropology, political ecology, human geography, Southeast Asian studies, and environmental humanities. Readers interested in environmental change, resource frontiers, and the social dimensions of development and conservation in tropical forest regions will also benefit.