The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization

2001 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel‐Rolph Trouillot
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Anthropology Of The State

scholarly journals The State as God: On Bourdieu's Political Theology

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-77
Author(s):  
Victor L. Shammas
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
The State ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Anthropology Of The State ◽  
The Invisible

Bourdieu’s anthropology of the state can be interpreted as a form of political theology, premised on a panentheistic conception of the state, which is transcendental to social reality while simultaneously being lodged in all social matter. The state is a Leviathan that imposes a horizon of meaning beyond which social agents rarely, if ever, move. The anthropologist must transcend the doxic structures of the state by engaging in a labor of anamnesis, enacting a bringing-to-consciousness of the invisible and occluded operations of the state in its deployment of symbolic power, which serves to naturalize a series of dominant (yet arbitrary) categories, concepts, and representations. Bourdieu’s ontological vision can be summarized in the concise formula, ‘state = society = God.’ A guiding methodical imperative for sociologists of the state-as-divinity is extracted from Bourdieu’s lectures on the state: the Deus Absconditus Principle, which mandates detecting and uncovering the veiled divinity of the state in all aspects of social reality. It is the task of the anthropologist to channel, interpret, and challenge the panentheistic state.

scholarly journals Land, development and the political class: In a translocal ‘Londoni’ village

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-235
Author(s):  
Ashraf Hoque
Keyword(s):  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Land Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Anthropology Of The State ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This article expands Akhil Gupta’s (1995, American Ethnologist, 22(2), 375–402) thesis of ‘blurred boundaries’ between ‘the state’ and ‘society’ in South Asia to incorporate the impact of historic labour migrations, which complicate established conceptions of the state in Bangladesh. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an area of high migration to the UK, the article draws attention to a class of transnational politicians, and their intra-class conflicts of interest, in shaping local-level politics. The article supports Faguet’s (2017, Modern Asian Studies 51(6), 1668–94) contention that the decentralisation of local government has led to the emergence of vernacularised political economies that operate in the shadow of the state, which are also intrinsically facilitated by it. It suggests that state actors appropriate symbols, offices and resources, together with traditional authority and kinship dynamics, to create an idiosyncratic polity. Aspiration towards power that might lead to the occupation of state offices are determined by either the aspirant’s status as a British citizen (Londoni) or through intimate social and economic connections to Britain through kinship (gushti) networks. The article thus makes a broader contribution to the existing literature on the anthropology of the state, transnational politics and the nexus of power, money and migration in postcolonial contexts.

scholarly journals Introduction

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateusz Laszczkowski ◽  
Madeleine Reeves
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
State Power ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Anthropology Of The State ◽  
The Everyday

The aim of this special issue is to bring a critical discussion of affect into debate with the anthropology of the state as a way of working toward a more coherent, ethnographically grounded exploration of affect in political life. We consider how the state becomes a 'social subject' in daily life, attending both to the subjective experience of state power and to the affective intensities through which the state is reproduced in the everyday. We argue that the state should be understood not as a 'fiction' to be deconstructed, but as constituted and sustained relationally through the claims, avoidances, and appeals that are made toward it and the emotional registers that these invoke. This article situates these arguments theoretically and introduces the subsequent ethnographic essays.

Intimate bureaucracy and home encounters

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-132
Author(s):  
Rachel Humphris
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
The State ◽  
Anthropology Of The State ◽  
To Receive ◽  
At Home

This chapter looks specifically at ‘home encounters’ and how they became the dominant mode of interaction with the state for mothers identified as Romanian Roma. Encounters between subjects and objects of state care have been explored through many different literatures including social work, geography, anthropology of the state, social policy and urban studies. In particular the emotional framing of encounters has been most recently explored through two sets of literature that have developed separately, namely the anthropology of the state (Reeves 2014) and social policy (Crawford and Flint 2015; Lawson and Elwood 2014; Stenson 2013). Making links between these bodies of literature allows us to think beyond strict dichotomies of the ‘state’ and ‘community’ to how boundaries emerge and are made significant. It also allows us to ask questions around the costs and injuries of these new forms of governance. This chapter shows not only that processes such as bordering and gatekeeping services take place within the home, but that the nature of these processes – and therefore the reproduction of the state – take on different forms and complexities because they take place within the home, informing who is deemed morally legitimate to receive care.

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