ABSTRACT
Boundaries and borderlands are clearly 'central' to new discourses and debates about globalization, the construction of scale, governance, de- and reterritorilialization, inter- and trans-stateness, re-conceptualizations of sovereignty and the future of nation-states. Boundaries have often been artificially superimposed on the human landscape, creating different human topographies, altering political and social relations in space, and influencing the way people view cultural, ethnic and political identities. In both cases, political territoriality is greatly influenced by contingent, fluid sets of relations, past and present political and social formations, and by regional geopolitics. The Kachin and the Karenni are among the 'ethnic minorities' in Burma, having both suddenly found themselves in 'minority status' only in 1948, when their territories were incorporated into the Union of Burma. The political boundary influences Karenni lives and identity in ways that are much more clear-cut than for the Kachin.
