Alessandro Rippa / Research Group Leader
Rachel Carson Center
Leopoldstr. 11a, 4. OG
80802 Munich
Room: 420
Phone: +49 (0) 89 / 2180 - 72371
Email: alessandro.rippa [at] rcc.lmu.de
Alessandro is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, and Project Director at the Rachel Carson Center.
Alessandro is a social anthropologist interested in issues surrounding infrastructure, borders, globalisation, conservation and the environment, particularly in the contexts of the China-Burma borderlands and the Italian Alps. He is the author of Borderland Infrastructures: Trade, Development, and Control in Western China (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and a co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands (2018).
Alessandro obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in 2015, and held positions at LMU Munich, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Tallinn University. He is the PI of the Environing Infrastructure project.
Professional Appointments
2020-2025. Freigeist-Fellow and Project Leader. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich.
2019-. Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, School of Humanities, Tallinn University (currently on leave)
2018-2019. Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Asian Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder. The postdoctoral position was part of the project “China Made: Asian Infrastructures and the ‘China model’ of Development” funded by The Henry Luce Foundation.
2015-2018. Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The postdoctoral position was part of the European Research Council Starting Grant Project “Remoteness & Connectivity: Highland Asia in the World” (Starting Grant 637763 Highland Connections).
2014. Visiting Fellow, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The position was funded as part of the Competence Network Crossroads Asia fellowship scheme.
Publications
Books
2020. Borderland Infrastructures: Trade, Development and Control in Western China. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
2015. Cuore dell’Eurasia: Il Xinjiang dalla Preistoria al 1949 [Heart of Eurasia: Xinjiang from Prehistory to 1949]. Milano: Mimesis Edizioni. ISBN: 978-88-5752-789-5.
Edited Volumes and Special Issues
2021. “Archive.” Roadsides, Collection no. 005.
2020. “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the Ground.” Political Geography (edited with Gustavo Olivera, Galen Murton, Tyler Harlan and Yang Yang)
2019. “Under Construction: Visions of Chinese Infrastructure.” Made in China Journal 4(2) (edited with Tim Oakes)
2018. Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands. London and New York: Routledge (edited with Alexander Horstmann and Martin Saxer)
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
2022. “Infrastructures and B/Ordering: How Chinese projects are ordering China-Myanmar border spaces.” Territory, Politics, Governance, DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2022.2108892. (with Karin Dean and Jasnea Sarma)
2022. “From guest traders to live streamers: Hospitality and technology in Yunnan’s gemstone market.” Social Analysis 66(1): 44-63.
2022. “Imagined Borderlands: Terrain, Technology and Trade in the making and managing of the China-Myanmar border.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12429.
2021. “Hunting, Rewilding, and Multispecies Entanglements in the Alps.” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2021.1939398.
2021. “Archive: An Introduction.” Roadsides 5: 1-5. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.26034/roadsides-202100501
2020. “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground.” Political Geography (with Gustavo Olivera, Galen Murton, Tyler Harlan and Yang Yang)
2020. “Mapping the Margins of China’s Global Ambition: Economic Corridors, Silk Roads, and the End of Proximity in the Borderlands.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 61(1): 55-76.
2020. “Building Highland Asian in the 21st Century.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 6(2) (with Galen Murton and Matthäus Rest)
2019. “Road Animism: Reflections on the life of infrastructures.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 9(2): 373-389 (with Matthaüs Rest)
2019. “Zomia 2.0: Branding Remoteness and Neoliberal Connectivity in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, Laos.” Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale 27(2): 253-269. [among the top 10% most downloaded papers on Social Anthropology in 2018-19]
2019. “Development for all? State schemes, security and marginalisation in 21st-century Kashgar.” Critical Asian Studies, 51(2): 274-295 (with Rune Steenberg)
2018. “Cross-Border Trade and “the Market” between Xinjiang (China) and Pakistan.” Journal of Contemporary Asia,49(2): 254-271.
2017. “The Amber Road: Cross-border trade and the regulation of the Burmite market in Tengchong, Yunnan.” TRaNS: Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia 5(2): 243-267 (with Yi Yang)
2017. “Centralising Peripheries: The Belt and Road Initiative and its role in the Development of the Chinese Borderlands.” International Journal of Business Anthropology 7(1): 1-21.
2016. “Oltre il Khunjerab: Violenza, Confini e rappresentazioni dello Stato tra Xinjiang (Cina) e Pakistan [Across the Khunjerab: Violence, Borders, and Representations of the State between Xinjiang (China) and Pakistan.” Quaderni Asiatici113: 83-108.
2014. “Re-Writing Mythology in Xinjiang: The Case of the Queen Mother of the West, King Mu, and the Kunlun.” The China Journal 71: 43-64.
Book Chapters
2021. “Environing the Tourism Frontier: Infrastructure, Nature and the State in China’s Dulong Valley.” In: M. Mostafanezhad, C. Azcarate, and R. Norum (eds.), Tourism Geopolitics: Assemblages of Power, Mobility and the State. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press (with Roger Norum)
2021. “From Boom to Bust – to Boom Again? Infrastructural promises and the politics of suspension at the China-Laos borderlands.” In: M. Chettri and M. Eilenberg (edited by), Development Zones in Asian Borderlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 231-251.
2018. “Old Routes, New Roads: Proximity across the China-Pakistan Border.” In: Horstmann, A., Saxer, M.,Rippa, A. (eds) Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands. London and New York: Routledge, 114-126.
2018. “Asian Borderlands in a Global Perspective.” In: Horstmann, A., Saxer, M., Rippa, A. (eds) Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands. London and New York: Routledge, 1-13 (with Martin Saxer and Alexander Horstmann)