States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial StateThomas Blom Hansen, Finn Stepputat The state has recently been rediscovered as an object of inquiry by a broad range of scholars. Reflecting the new vitality of the field of political anthropology, States of Imagination draws together the best of this recent critical thinking to explore the postcolonial state. Contributors focus on a variety of locations from Guatemala, Pakistan, and Peru to India and Ecuador; they study what the state looks like to those seeing it from the vantage points of rural schools, police departments, small villages, and the inside of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Focusing on the micropolitics of everyday state-making, the contributors examine the mythologies, paradoxes, and inconsistencies of the state through ethnographies of diverse postcolonial practices. They show how the authority of the state is constantly challenged from the local as well as the global and how growing demands to confer rights and recognition to ever more citizens, organizations, and institutions reveal a persistent myth of the state as a source of social order and an embodiment of popular sovereignty. Demonstrating the indispensable value of ethnographic work on the practices and the symbols of the state, States of Imagination showcases a range of studies and methods to provide insight into the diverse forms of the postcolonial state as an arena of both political and cultural struggle. This collection will interest students and scholars of anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, political science, and history. Contributors. Lars Buur, Mitchell Dean, Akhil Gupta, Thomas Blom Hansen, Steffen Jensen, Aletta J. Norval, David Nugent, Sarah Radcliffe, Rachel Sieder, Finn Stepputat, Martijn van Beek, Oskar Verkaaik, Fiona Wilson |
Contents
1 | |
I STATE AND GOVERNANCE | 39 |
II STATE AND JUSTICE | 147 |
III STATE AND COMMUNITY | 255 |
391 | |
About the Contributors | 415 |
417 | |
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activists Afrikaner agencies anganwadi workers apartheid areas argues Asha authority biopolitical Buddhist bureaucratic Cape Cape Town central century Chachapoyas citizens citizenship colonial commission conflict constituted context crime cultural Dawood Ibrahim democratic discourse economic Ecuador effects elite emerged ethnic everyday Fiestas Patrias formation forms Foucault geographic GHRV governmentality groups Guatemala Hindu human rights ICDS idea identity imagination Indian indigenous institutions Ladakh ladinos leaders liberal Mayan ment military modern movement Muhajir Mumbai Muslim nation-state negotiated Nentón Nkabinde officers organizations Pakistan party past Peru police political popular population postcolonial practices province Reconciliation reform regime region relations resistance riots role rule SATRC Secretariat Sendero Shiv Sena Sindhi social society South Africa sovereignty space spatial Srikrishna strategy structures struggle surveillance Tarma teachers territory tion town transformation truth village violence Western Cape