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The Social Optics of Space

Visibility and Invisibility in the Borderlands of Borneo

Gettysburg College

The aim of this article is to show, through a detailed ethnographic case, how social space can be viewed as consisting of superimposed layers. Building on theoretical frameworks of Lefebvre and Foucault in terms of their approaches to space, power, and visibility, the article looks at the Kelabit people, a small, indigenous group whose homelands lie in the interior highlands of Borneo along an international frontier. Examining various facets of the Kelabit social life, and focusing on different forms of social optics that can be identified in Kelabit social spaces, the article shows how concerns about visibility, surveillance, privacy, and control are intimately linked in this community, both with regard to life in the rural borderlands—where transnational movement and migrants pose new dilemmas in terms of community belonging—and in terms of the relationships within and between rural and urban Kelabit.

Key Words: visibility • social optics • borders • the state • Internet • Kelabit • Borneo

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