Paper short abstract:

I explore the place of marginality in a massively state-centric world, arguing that contemporary idioms of marginality converge around the (territorial) imaginary of the modern state. Ethnographic examples are drawn from the borderlands of north-eastern Borneo.

Paper long abstract:

A substantial anthropological literature treats margins as dynamic and unstable sites in which the imaginary of the modern state is manipulated and evaded. Another body of literature has explored the proliferation of state-centricity by treating the state as the 'great enframer' of contemporary lifeworlds. Bringing the latter approach to bear on the former, I argue that contemporary idioms of marginality increasingly converge around the imaginary of the modern state. Where studies of Southeast Asia have historically documented a variety of marginalities, most famously in upland-lowland relations, these seem to be shifting toward a common form grounded in a territorialised state imaginary. Drawing on fieldwork among the Tidung and adjacent peoples of the north-eastern Bornean borderlands, I explore how marginality is conceptualised in a borderland idiom through precisely the same discourse that is relayed by central government officials and embedded in policies of 'developing from the margins.' Far from manipulating or evading 'the state,' these peoples demonstrate a deep affinity with it through a performance of marginality which corresponds to a hegemonic state imaginary. This state-centric conceptualisation of marginality informs similarly state-centric political projects, such as demanding the expansion of Indonesian bureaucracy in the form of regional autonomy. Finally, I examine the state-centricity even of more radical contemporary discourses of marginality. Specifically, I consider a millenarian Tidung historiography, according to which their history has been stolen and hidden by several states, the return of which would result in the establishment of a just Bornean state.