Where lived experience of surroundings is shifting, visceral, and immersive, interpretation of social spaces tends to be static and remote. "Space" and "place" are also often analyzed without grappling much (if at all) with the social, political, and historical roots of spatial practice. This volume embarks upon the novel strategy of focusing on movement as a way of understanding social spaces, which offers a means to get beyond biases inherent in the social science of space. Ethnographic studies of social life in settings as varied as nomadic Mongolia and island Melanesia, as distinct as contemporary Tokyo and war-torn Palestine, challenge Western assumptions about the universality of "space" and allow concrete understanding of how life plays out over different socio-cultural topographies. In a world that is becoming increasingly "bounded" in many ways - despite enormous changes wrought by technological, ideological, and other social developments - Boundless Worlds urges a scholarly turn, away from the purely global, toward the human dimension of social lives lived in conditions of conflict, upheaval, remapping, and improvisation through movement.

Where lived experience of surroundings is shifting, visceral, and immersive, interpretation of social spaces tends to be static and remote. "Space" and "place" are also often analyzed without grappling much (if at all) with the social, political, and historical roots of spatial practice. This volume embarks upon the novel strategy of focusing on movement as a way of understanding social spaces, which offers a means to get beyond biases inherent in the social science of space. Ethnographic studies of social life in settings as varied as nomadic Mongolia and island Melanesia, as distinct as contemporary Tokyo and war-torn Palestine, challenge Western assumptions about the universality of "space" and allow concrete understanding of how life plays out over different socio-cultural topographies. In a world that is becoming increasingly "bounded" in many ways - despite enormous changes wrought by technological, ideological, and other social developments - Boundless Worlds urges a scholarly turn, away from the purely global, toward the human dimension of social lives lived in conditions of conflict, upheaval, remapping, and improvisation through movement.

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Lost in ‘Space’: An Anthropological Approach to Movement
Peter Wynn Kirby

Chapter 2. Against Space: Place, Movement, Knowledge
Tim Ingold

Chapter 3. Spatiality, Power, and State-Making in the Organization of Territory in Colonial South Asia: The Case of the Anglo–Gorkha Frontier, 1740–1816
Bernardo A. Michael

Chapter 4. Embodying Spaces of Violence: Narratives of Israeli Soldiers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Richard Clarke

Chapter 5. This Circle of Kings: Modern Tibetan Visions of World Peace
Martin Mills

Chapter 6. A Weft of Nexus: Changing Notions of Space and Geographical Identity in Vanuatu, Oceania
Carlos Mondragón

Chapter 7. At Home Away from Homes: Navigating the Taiga in Northern Mongolia
Morten Axel Pedersen

Chapter 8. Toxins Without Borders: Interpreting Spaces of Contamination and Suffering
Peter Wynn Kirby

Chapter 9. Movements in Corporate Space: Organizing a Japanese Multinational in France
Mitchell W. Sedgwick

Chapter 10. Making Space in Finland’s New Economy
Eeva Berglund

Conclusion: Onward Bound: Ethnographic Perspectives on Space, Movement, and Context
Peter Wynn Kirby

Visual Appendix: Movement Studies
Christian Grou and Tapio Snellman

Notes on Contributors
Index