Awards

• Short-listed for Pushkin House Russian Book Prize 2022 (United States)

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9780674979482

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Reviews

In this rich and wonderfully written book, two giants of twentieth-century socialism meet in the cities, forests, and along the rivers of northeast Asia to show how much is at stake for so many in competing visions of a postsocialist future. Careful readings of everyday economy and ecology also show just how hard it is to manage systems so practiced at evading full state control. -- Bruce Grant, New York University Where the edges of Russia and China meet is perhaps the world's most politically unknown but consequential borderland. Franck Bille and Caroline Humphrey provide the missing picture of how multicultural peoples carry on a burgeoning trade that is transforming life along this vast frontier. The authors show that despite different historical imaginations and personal stories on both sides, variant forms of capitalism-mafia and state-help weave friends, foes, and kin across the border. -- Aihwa Ong, author of <i>Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life</i> The relations between Russia and China are usually discussed through a top-down approach-the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of a Putin and a Xi Jinping. Bille and Humphrey on the contrary turn to the ordinary lives of people living on and working across the border between Russia and China. This is a beautiful exploration of the daily reality of these border lives, revealing tensions, relations, and emerging trends that our top-down approaches have missed entirely. -- Michael Puett, Harvard University For centuries, Russia and China have confronted each other along one of the longest, most important but least understood land borders in the world. On the Edge is a fascinating ethnographic study of life in this border region today that works on two levels, offering a highly focused and personalized consideration of cross-cultural and transnational interactions across a remote borderland while at the same time providing valuable insights into the dynamics that both impel and complicate the evolving Sino-Russian relationship. -- Mark Bassin, Soedertoern University

In this rich and wonderfully written book, two giants of twentieth-century socialism meet in the cities, forests, and along the rivers of northeast Asia to show how much is at stake for so many in competing visions of a postsocialist future. Careful readings of everyday economy and ecology also show just how hard it is to manage systems so practiced at evading full state control. -Bruce Grant, New York University Where the edges of Russia and China meet is perhaps the world's most politically unknown but consequential borderland. Franck Bille and Caroline Humphrey provide the missing picture of how multicultural peoples carry on a burgeoning trade that is transforming life along this vast frontier. The authors show that despite different historical imaginations and personal stories on both sides, variant forms of capitalism-mafia and state-help weave friends, foes, and kin across the border. -Aihwa Ong, author of Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life The relations between Russia and China are usually discussed through a top-down approach-the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of a Putin and a Xi Jinping. Bille and Humphrey on the contrary turn to the ordinary lives of people living on and working across the border between Russia and China. This is a beautiful exploration of the daily reality of these border lives, revealing tensions, relations, and emerging trends that our top-down approaches have missed entirely. -Michael Puett, Harvard University For centuries, Russia and China have confronted each other along one of the longest, most important but least understood land borders in the world. On the Edge is a fascinating ethnographic study of life in this border region today that works on two levels, offering a highly focused and personalized consideration of cross-cultural and transnational interactions across a remote borderland while at the same time providing valuable insights into the dynamics that both impel and complicate the evolving Sino-Russian relationship. -Mark Bassin, Soedertoern University

In this rich and wonderfully written book, two giants of twentieth-century socialism meet in the cities, forests, and along the rivers of northeast Asia to show how much is at stake for so many in competing visions of a postsocialist future. Careful readings of everyday economy and ecology also show just how hard it is to manage systems so practiced at evading full state control. -- Bruce Grant, New York University

A wonderfully illuminating book, filled with insights about the frontier between Russia and China and the peoples who live in and alongside the border zones. Beautifully written and immaculately researched, this is an important book that draws on the past and present-and has obvious implications for the future. -- Peter Frankopan, author of <i>The Silk Roads: A New History of the World</i> In this rich and wonderfully written book, two giants of twentieth-century socialism meet in the cities, forests, and along the rivers of northeast Asia to show how much is at stake for so many in competing visions of a postsocialist future. -- Bruce Grant, New York University Where the edges of Russia and China meet is perhaps the world's most politically unknown but consequential borderland. Franck Bille and Caroline Humphrey provide the missing picture of how multicultural peoples carry on a burgeoning trade that is transforming life along this vast frontier. The authors show that despite different historical imaginations and personal stories on both sides, variant forms of capitalism-mafia and state-help weave friends, foes, and kin across the border. -- Aihwa Ong, author of <i>Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life</i> Relations between Russia and China are usually discussed through a top-down approach-the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of a Putin and a Xi Jinping. Bille and Humphrey on the contrary turn to the ordinary lives of people living on and working across the border. A beautiful exploration of the daily reality of these border lives, revealing tensions, relations, and emerging trends that top-down approaches have missed entirely. -- Michael Puett, Harvard University For centuries, Russia and China have confronted each other along one of the longest, most important but least understood land borders in the world. On the Edge is a fascinating ethnographic study of life in this border region today that works on two levels, offering a highly focused and personalized consideration of cross-cultural and transnational interactions across a remote borderland while at the same time providing valuable insights into the dynamics that both impel and complicate the evolving Sino-Russian relationship. -- Mark Bassin, Soedertoern University [A] sparkling book...which transported me to familiar and new places. -- Peter Frankopan * The Spectator * Enlightening...Bille and Humphrey record the results of their studies and visits to this border, taking in a number of themes, including environmental protection, indigenous peoples, cross-border trade, migration, friendship and neighborly attitudes. Each chapter reveals much about the borderlands, and much about the policies and histories of these two giants, which once shared a ruling ideology. -- Katie Burton * Geographical * A close examination of a stretch of the Amur where Russia and China stare at one another in a fragile friendship. [Bille and Humphrey] approach their topic through the perspective of the people who live there and make the river border work or, in some cases, not work. -- Jack Weatherford * Mekong Review *

Author Information

Franck Billé is Program Director at the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author and editor of three books about East Asia, including Sinophobia: Anxiety, Violence, and the Making of Mongolian Identity. Caroline Humphrey is Fellow of King’s College, University of Cambridge, and founder of the university’s Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit. She is the author of several books about the anthropology of Inner Asia and recently edited and contributed to Trust and Mistrust in the Economies of the China–Russia Borderlands.

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