Frontier Encounters

Poverty and the maldistribution of land in core areas of developing countries, together with state schemes for the colonization of unruly frontiers, have forced indigenous peoples and settlers into an uneasy co-existence. Presenting material from various Asian and Latin American countries, Frontier Encounters examines factors that make for conflict and accommodation, studies the role of policy frames, and looks at promising mitigation strategies. The range of topics covered by the articles includes the texture of everyday-relations at the settlement frontier and the reconfiguration of ethnic hierarchies in tune with changing conquest cycles; settler land and resource use strategies; anti-settler riots and their politics; peace accords and what they can and cannot achieve as instruments for halting migration-induced violence; communal land titles as a promising avenue for conflict prevention and the empowerment of weak and defenseless groups; and the need for balancing indigenous rights advocacy with support and legal protection for disenfranchised parts of the settler population. Danilo Geiger has an M. A. in social anthropology from the University of Zurich, Switzerland and is a lecturer in political anthropology. His experience includes fieldwork in the Philippines and Indonesia and he is currently coordinating a four-year comparative research project on conflicts between indigenous communities and settlers in South and Southeast Asia.