Framing Spaces between India and China

Which approaches do historians and other social scientists use to analyze social processes in the spaces between Yunnan and the Bay of Bengal? And how can these approaches contribute to scholarly critiques of state centrism? To explore these questions, this chapter examines some metaphors that researchers employ to frame these spaces. It distinguishes four types: structured, liquid, spatial, and sensory metaphors. It argues that these metaphors need closer scrutiny but that they can act as useful antidotes to the ways in which “India” and “China” (and “Myanmar” and “Bangladesh”) routinely get framed in scholarly debate and policy discourse.