Anu Lounela and Tuomas Tammisto convene a panel on the temporalities of state formation and frontier dynamics at the Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society held on August 29–30, 2019 in Helsinki. The deadline for paper proposals is on the 1st of April.
The panel explores temporalities of state formation in the frontier areas where economies are growing rapidly at the expense of their natural environments. Frontiers are experiencing rapid transformations shaped by new dynamics involving investors from China and other countries. The pace of change is fast, with high-tech special economic zones, extractive mining and large-scale agro-industrial land concessions contributing to the complexities of state formation These processes and especially their fast pace raise questions of about time. We welcome papers that explore the temporalities and temporal trajectories of state formation and commodification of nature. Panelists can explorethe commodification of nature in relation to various “boom and bust” cycles, the temporal dynamics of frontiers that are opened, closed and often re-opened and how time figures in state formation and related corporate activity. Panelists can look at the long histories preceding current processes as well as the imaginations of and plans for the futures evoked by different actors.