Ardener, Edwin. 2012. Remote Areas: Some Theoretical Considerations. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (1): 519-533.

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Ardener’s reflections on remote areas are derived from observations and experiences in Cameroon and Scotland. Nevertheless, they are perfectly suited to describe much of what I see in the Himalayas and the Pamirs.

Remote areas are event-rich, not event-poor {Ardener 2012@531}, and rather the history of remoteness merges “historically into the universal history of political states” {Ardener 2012@524}. Ardener gives a list of characteristics of remote areas:

1. Remote areas are full of strangers. Not only because it is difficult to become “one of them”, but also the attract all kinds of rambling strangers.
2. Remote areas are full of innovators. Because the next boom is always on the way
3. Remote areas are full of ruins of the past. Because of boom and bust and their event-richness.
4. Remote areas are in constant contact with the world. [Yes, they are, I would say. But not universally, and not homogeneously, but along the arteries of trade and exchange I call pathways.]

In addition, Ardener write that remote areas are full of rubbish, that the strangers are entrepreneurs, the incomers are entrepreneurs, etc. {Ardener 2012@527-531}.

Written in 1987 and republished by HAU in 2012, this is a very visionary and precise description of ‘remote areas’, the imaginations they trigger, and the connectivity on which they rely.