Introduction: States of Imagination
21 Nov 2001-
About: The article was published on 2001-11-21. It has received 167 citations till now.
Citations
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TL;DR: Lund et al. as mentioned in this paper discussed the role of public authority and local politics in Africa and proposed the Twilight Institutions, a set of institutions that can be used to reorder society.
Abstract: 1. Twilight Institutions - An Introduction: Christian Lund (International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 2. Twilight Institutions. Public Authority And Local Politics In Africa: Christian Lund (International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 3. The Politics Of Vigilance In South-Eastern Nigeria: David Pratten (Oxford University). 4. Reordering Society. Vigilantism And Sovereign Expressions In Port Elizabeth's Townships: Lars Buur (Danish Institute for International Studies and Research Associate, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg South Africa). 5. Negotiating Authority - Between Unhcr And 'The People': Simon Turner (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen). 6. "It Was Satan That Took The People": The Making Of Public Authority In Burkina Faso: Sten Hagberg (Uppsala University). 7. Dealing With The Local State. The Informal Privatization Of Street-Level Bureaucracies In Senegal: Giorgio Blundo (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille). 8. Decentralization, Local Taxation And Citizenship In Senegal: Kristine Juul (Institute of Geography and International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 9. Contested Sources Of Authority. Re-Claiming State Sovereignty By Formalizing Traditional Authority In Mozambique: Lars Buur (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen) and Helene Maria Kyed (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen and International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 10. Statemaking And The Politics Of The Frontier In Central Benin: Pierre-Yves Le Meur (Groupe de recherche et d'echanges technologiques, Paris and IRD, Montpellier). 11. Decentralization, the state and conflicts over local boundaries in North-Western Ghana: Carola Lentz (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz). 12. Strong Bar, Weak State? Lawyers, Liberalism And State Formation In Zambia: Jeremy Gould (University of Helsinki).
654 citations
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TL;DR: The authors surveys anthropological and other social research on bureaucratic documents and argues that documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves.
Abstract: This review surveys anthropological and other social research on bureaucratic documents. The fundamental insight of this literature is that documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves. It explores the reasons why documents have been late to come under ethnographic scrutiny and the implications for our theoretical understandings of organizations and methods for studying them. The review argues for the great value of the study of paper-mediated documentation to the study of electronic forms, but it also highlights the risk of an exclusive focus on paper, making anthropology marginal to the study of core bureaucratic practices in the manner of earlier anthropology.
353 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors use ethnographic participant observation, a method largely neglected by political geographers, to highlight discrepancies between elite and everyday political geographical imaginations, which is parallel to, but not a replacement of, textual analyses informed by critical social theory.
243 citations
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TL;DR: The authors argue that a shift in the scale of analysis of the nation-state, from national and global scales to the finer scale of the body reveals processes, relations, and experiences otherwise obscured.
227 citations
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216 citations
References
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TL;DR: This assumed isomorphism of space, place, and culture results in some significant problems. as mentioned in this paper argues that differences between cultures come about not from their isolation from each other, but because of their connections with each other.
Abstract: This assumed isomorphism of space, place, and
culture results in some significant problems. First,
there is the issue of those who inhabit the border,
what Gloria Anzaldua calls the “narrow strip along
steep edges” of national boundaries. The fiction ofconclusion that a focus on people who live in the borders between dominant societies or nations (and here
borders is also a metaphor for people who identify, culturally, with more than one group) makes clear the fact
that differences between cultures come about not because of their isolation from each other, but because
of their connections with each other. Such a conclusion also suggests that along with difference comes the
hierarchies of power. Culture is not only a concept that expresses difference between peoples, but also a
concept that masks the uneven power relations between peoples, and these uneven power relations can
only exist through connection, rather than isolation.
2,870 citations
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TL;DR: This article argued that governmentality has a characteristically "programmatic" form, and that it is inextricably bound to the invention and evaluation of technologies that seek to improve government power.
Abstract: This paper proposes some new ways of analysing the exercise of political power in advanced liberal democratic societies These are developed from Michel Foucault's conception of ‘governmentality’ and addresses political power in terms of ‘political rationalities’ and ‘technologies of government’ It draws attention to the diversity of regulatory mechanisms which seek to give effect to government, and to the particular importance of indirect mechanisms that link the conduct of individuals and organizations to political objectives through ‘action at a distance’ The paper argues for the importance of an analysis of language in understanding the constitution of the objects of politics, not simply in terms of meaning or rhetoric, but as ‘intellectual technologies’ that render aspects of existence amenable to inscription and calculation It suggests that governmentality has a characteristically ‘programmatic’ form, and that it is inextricably bound to the invention and evaluation of technologies that seek to g
2,488 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors attempt to do an ethnography of the Indian state by examining the discourses of corruption in contemporary India, focusing on the practices of lower levels of the bureaucracy in a small north Indian town as well as on representations of the state in the mass media.
Abstract: In this article I attempt to do an ethnography of the state by examining the discourses of corruption in contemporary India. I focus on the practices of lower levels of the bureaucracy in a small north Indian town as well as on representations of the state in the mass media. Research on translocal institutions such as “the state” enables us to reflect on the limitations of participant-observation as a technique of fieldwork. The analysis leads me to question Eurocentric distinctions between state and civil society and offers a critique of the conceptualization of “the state” as a monolithic and unitary entity. [the state, public culture, fieldwork, discourse, corruption, India]
1,694 citations
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TL;DR: The state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice as discussed by the authors, but the mask which prevents us from seeing political practice as it is, it is itselfthe mask that prevents our seeing political practices as they are.
Abstract: The state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. It is itselfthe mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is. There is a state-system: a palpable nexus of practice and institutional stucture centred in government and more or less extensive, unified and dominant in any given society. There is, too, a state-idea, projected, purveyed and variously believed in in different societies at different times. We are only making difficulties for ourselves in supposing that we have also to study the state - an entity, agent, function or relation over and above the state-system and the state-idea. The state comes into being as a stucturation within political practice: it starts its life as an implicit construct: it is then reified - as the res publica. the public reifkation. no less - and acquires an overt symbolic identity progressively divorced from practice as an illusory account of practice. The ideological function is extended to a point where conservatives and radicals alike believe that their practice is not directed at each other but at the state; the world of illusion prevails. The task of the sociologist is to demystify; and in this context that means attending to the senses in which the state does not exist rather than to those in which it does. When the state itself it is danger', Lord Denning said in his judgment yesterday, "our cherished freedoms may have to take second place. and even natural justice itself may have to suffer a setback'. 'The flaw in Lord Denning's argument is that it is the government who decide what the interests of the state should be and which invokes 'national security' as the state chooses to define it'. Ms Pat Hewitt. director of the National Council for Civil Liberties, said yesterday'. The Guardian. 18.2.77 ttt**
1,623 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that resistance should be used as a diagnostic of power, and show what the forms of Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin women's resistance can reveal about the historically changing relations of power in which they are enmeshed as they become increasingly incorporated into the Egyptian state and economy.
Abstract: Resistance has become in recent years a popular focus for work in the human sciences. Despite the theoretical sophistication of many anthropological and historical studies of everyday resistance, there remains a tendency to romanticize it. I argue instead that resistance should be used as a diagnostic of power, and I show what the forms of Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin women's resistance can reveal about the historically changing relations of power in which they are enmeshed as they become increasingly incorporated into the Egyptian state and economy. [resistance, power, Bedouins, women, the state, Egypt]
1,580 citations