Presentations by Streams

The past two decades have witnessed a powerful return of geographic and spatial imaginaries as well as categories such as ‘peripheries’ and ‘margins’ as sites for theorizing nation and community-building. These regions and territories—whether literal or metaphorical—are understood as capable of producing insights that counterbalance hegemonic narratives stemming from the metropolis or centre. This panel focuses on emic and local perceptions of peripherality, asking how individuals relegated to geographic and/or social margins have long challenged these classifications and divisions through local tropes of righteousness, the heroic past, and honor. These vernacular moralities and historical imaginaries play a central role in mediating belonging and collective identities, while enabling communities to make claims on symbolic and material resources otherwise reserved for historical-cultural hubs or monopolized by absolute and relative elites. History knows many examples of ‘backwater’ regions that became frontiers for new utopias, while erstwhile outlier groups came to be viewed as guardians of national traditions or bearers of radical moral imaginaries promising to transform society. How does the designation of a place as ‘an outpost,’ ‘heartland,’ or ‘backwater’ change over time? How do competing national and political projects reshape local identities, communal boundaries, and life-worlds? What happens when utopian projects collapse and ‘pioneers’ become ‘backwoodsmen,’ ‘provincials,’ or simply ‘survivors’? How are the labels of ‘marginality’ and ‘backwardness’ subverted to assert cultural authenticity and moral virtue? How are belonging and community boundaries (re)negotiated in social and geographical peripheries? And what role do changing ideologies or constructions of ‘the cosmopolitan centre’ play in relation to these meaning-making processes?