2020/05/15 by Townsend Middleton · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #South Asian Studies and Conflicts #Global Security and Public Health #Anthropological Studies and Insights
paper · doi:10.1080/00141844.2019.1705369
openalex publication_date 2020/05/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/28
This article rethinks the relationship between connectivity and security through an ethnography of India's notorious Siliguri Corridor – the ‘Chicken's Neck’. This narrow stretch of territory funnels myriad goods and bodies between India's ‘mainland’, its North-East, and beyond to China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Southeast Asia. Pipelines, railways, smugglers, migrants, and militants all pass through this tight space. Vital yet vulnerable, the corridor demands circulation and security. This article explores how these fraught imperatives structure – and constrain – chokepoint life and movement. It turns attention to chokepoint pragmatics: the everyday ways of getting through and getting by in the constricted arteries of the present. Chronicling how traffickers and regulators alike ‘work’ the corridor to il/licit ends, the analysis shows how chokepoint pragmatics play upon and ultimately produce connective insecurity. As logistics reformats life across the planet, chokepoint ethnography here reveals the dynamics that render us connected – yet vulnerable – like never before.