ABSTRACT
Borderlands are geographical places demarcated and defined by state-designed boundaries. Borderland communities, lying on the margin of more than one state, are thus existing in different development modes and terms of governance. Borderland ethnographies also often provide interesting stories of alternative voices and views of state relations, history, culture, and identity that deviate from what has been defined by the state. Although governance has been a catchword in the academic world, especially in public administration and development literature, not many have applied this to the study of borderlands. For those who have, they have mostly attended to state behavior. Borderland governance immediately involves inter-state relations, transborder interactions, compatibility and incompatibility, value and ideological differences, power asymmetry, identity shifts, and constant mobility. Borders necessarily breed differences and asymmetries. Besides the asymmetries that states and state relations entail and bear, border differences also assume an asymmetry and dynamics of identity.
