Edges of Care

Living and Dying in No Man’s Land

Noam Leshem

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English

University of Chicago Press
16 April 2025

Regional studies; Human geography

A firsthand look at the lives of those who reside in no man's land—the violence they endure and their immense resilience.

""No man's land"" invokes stretches of barren landscape, twisted barbed wire, desolation, and the devastation of war. But this is not always the reality. According to Noam Leshem in Edges of Care, the term also reveals radical abandonment by the state. From the Northern Sahara to the Amazon rainforests, people around the world find themselves in places that have been stripped of sovereign care. Leshem is committed to defining these spaces and providing a more intimate understanding of this urgent political reality.

Based on nearly a decade of research in some of the world's most challenging conflict zones, Edges of Care offers a profound account of abandoned lives and lands, and how they endure and sometimes thrive once left to fend for themselves. Leshem interrogates no man's land as a site of radical uncaring: abandoned by a sovereign power in a relinquishment of responsibility for the space or anyone inside it. To understand the ramifications of such uncaring, Leshem takes readers through a diverse series of abandoned places, including areas in Palestine, Syria, Colombia, Sudan, and Cyprus. He shows that no man's land is not empty of life, but almost always inhabited and, in fact, often generative of new modes of being. Beautifully written and evocative, Edges of Care reveals the unexamined complexities and political dynamics hidden within and around places governed by callous indifference.

By: Noam Leshem
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 426g
ISBN: 9780226835976
ISBN 10: 0226835979
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 16 April 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: States of Uncaring Part I: Entry Points Chapter 1: Ruined Land with Barbed Wire Chapter 2: Contours Part II: Abandoned Lands Chapter 3: Gestures of Uncaring Chapter 4: Rock Bottom Part III: Beyond Care Chapter 5: Exposures Chapter 6: Left to Die Chapter 7: Disorders Chapter 8: Man’s Land? Part IV: Wild Country Chapter 9: Terra Fantastica Chapter 10: Kings of No Man’s Land Chapter 11: States of Nature Epilogue: Care Returns Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Noam Leshem is an associate professor of political and cultural geography at Durham University. He is the author of Life After Ruin: The Struggles of Israel’s Depopulated Arab Spaces and is the co-creator of Portraits of No Man’s Land, a series of visual stories and documentaries produced with Google Arts & Culture in 2019.

Reviews for Edges of Care: Living and Dying in No Man’s Land

"""In this beautifully written history of “no man’s land,” Noam Leshem exposes and interrogates different forms of sovereign abandonment characterised by violence and carelessness. Yet by taking the reader on a journey linking the production of space to inhumane policies and practices, Edges of Care also provides an urgently needed direction for a more caring society. It is a must read."" -- Neve Gordon, co-author of 'Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire' ""Eschewing liner narratives, Edges of Care takes the reader through a fascinating journey of no-man’s lands. Zigzagging between zones of conflict as diverse as World War I, the Korean DMZ, Chernobyl and contemporary Gaza, Leshem finds people abandoned by the state and exposed to the harms that emerge from a politics and culture of 'uncaring.'"" -- Roland Bleiker, University of Queensland, Australia"