ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the implications of border talk for the political and the sub-political relationships between the border and its residents, authorities, developers, and activists. In the context of this case at the Salween River-border, the policing of citizenship, the management of cultural and national identities, and the maintenance of local structures of authority and resource distribution are complicated by the imposed specter of large-scale river development. Border talk represents part of the discursive governance of the political border; it both influences the way that the political border is remade and also opens up possibilities for how the political border is remade or undone. To make the arguments, it draws on data generated through 12 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, both at and away from the border. Because the river is a border, much of the everyday riverine livelihood activities are entangled in the institutional functions and maintenance of the border.
