Militarized borders have increased rapidly in the twenty-first century and come to be a global phenomenon. The high border wall built by the United States at its border with Mexico and the electrified fencing at the Hungarian border with Serbia are examples of the infrastructurally advanced Euro-American borders that have become icons of this phenomenon. Yet this tells only one part of the story of militarized borders: as I find in my research in the agrarian borderlands of India and Bangladesh, where the 4,096-km-long shared border has been steadily militarized over the past three decades, the border fence is only the most visible and spectacular element. Bits of barbed wire, halogen lights that shine all night, roving patrols by border security forces, restrictions on farming and fishing, and the enclosure of cultivable land for security encampments have all steadily turned vast areas of the Indian and the Bangladeshi borderlands into sites of national security. What might attention to the shifting materiality of an agrarian borderland reveal? In addressing such a question, this photographic essay foregrounds forms of militarization in agrarian borderlands and hopes to provoke a broader methodological and analytical debate about the visuality of borders in anthropological inquiry.

中文翻译：

---

农业边疆的铁丝网

军事化的边界在 21 世纪迅速增加，并成为一种全球现象。美国在墨西哥边境修建的高墙和匈牙利与塞尔维亚边境的电气化围栏是基础设施先进的欧美边境的例子，它们已成为这一现象的标志。然而，这只讲述了军事化边界故事的一部分：正如我在印度和孟加拉国的农业边界地区的研究中发现的那样，在过去的 30 年里，长达 4,096 公里的共享边界一直在稳步军事化，边界围栏只是最明显和最壮观的元素。铁丝网碎片，通宵发光的卤素灯，边境安全部队的巡回巡逻，对农业和渔业的限制，以及将可耕地用于安全营地的圈地，都在稳步将印度和孟加拉国边境的大片地区变成国家安全场所。对农业边疆不断变化的物质性的关注可能会揭示什么？在解决这样一个问题时，这篇摄影文章突出了农业边境地区的军事化形式，并希望在人类学研究中引发关于边界可视性的更广泛的方法论和分析辩论。