Sovereignty

About: Sovereignty is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25909 publications have been published within this topic receiving 410148 citations.

Security and Migration in the 21st Century

Abstract: Acknowledgements vi 1 Understanding security and migration in the twenty-first century 1 2 Migration, citizenship and the state 29 3 Migration, expulsion and the state 47 4 Armed conflict, flight and refugees 68 5 Migration, torture and the complicit state 87 6 Migration and data: documenting the non-national 108 7 Economy and migration 132 8 Foreigners, trafficking and globalization 155 9 Sovereignty, security and borders 176 Notes 192 Bibliography 199 Index 211

The state as a gang: Conceptualizing the governmentality of violence in contemporary Nicaragua

Abstract: This article explores the nature of state violence in contemporary Nicaragua. It begins by considering the premise that Latin America has undergone a ‘crisis of governance’ during the past decade, due to the rise of multiple forms of non-state violence, proposing a means of visualizing how forms of ‘state sovereignty’ and ‘social sovereignty’ can viably coexist. With reference to the example of Nicaraguan youth gangs, it then explores the underlying basis of forms of ‘social sovereignty’, focusing in particular on the role played by their violent practices in the constitution of different modes of social ordering. It then uses the analysis developed in relation to gangs heuristically to consider the transformation of state governmentality in Nicaragua, before offering some concluding thoughts about what this might imply for future anthropological explorations of the state’s role in contemporary landscapes of violence.

Regimes of Sovereignty: International Morality and the African Condition

Abstract: Theorists of the `African state' and Africa's external relations frequently focus on the causes, consequences, and repercussions of its failures. They are justified in their appreciation of `failur...

Aztec State Making: Ecology, Structure, and the Origin of the State

Abstract: It has become increasingly difficult to account for state formation solely in terms of ecological variables. It is suggested that consideration of prestate political structure and the interplay of ecological variables and political dynamics (political ecology) would enhance our understanding of why and how states emerge. The Aztecs provide a case for examination. [Aztecs, ecology, political competition, state origins] THE STATE IS A POWERFUL, COMPLEX, PERMANENTLY INSTITUTED SYSTEM Of centralized political administration. It exercises sovereignty in carrying out basic political functions (maintaining territorial rights, maintaining internal order, making and executing decisions regarding group action), and its authority in these matters is buttressed by sovereignty in the use of force within its jurisdiction (Keesing 1976:348; Sahlins 1968:4-7; Yoffee 1979:14-17). States are characterized by administrative complexity; administrative personnel are hierarchically ordered and specialized by administrative tasks (Johnson 1973:1-4; Wright 1978:49-68). The numerous attempts to explain why states emerge in some times and places but not others have been dominated by two contrasting approaches: the ecological and the structural. The first, based on the work of Julian Steward, relates state formation to the problems and/or opportunities presented to a human population by its environmental setting. In this approach, population growth and its resulting pressures provide the dynamic for state formation, and at least the initial stages are said to be promoted by the ecological benefits that the state confers on its general population. The second approach, growing out of the Marx-Engels tradition, regards state formation as a process generated by particular sociocultural orders. Certain types of societies (stratified societies, for example) are said to possess an internal dynamic that exerts pressure for state formation even when the relationship between the human population and its environment is stable. In this approach, the focus is less on a human population as a whole and more on social components and their interactions. Of these two approaches, the first has received a greater share of attention and has been elaborated more fully. As a result, some of its difficulties are now evident. The structural approach has been less thoroughly explored. This paper has three objectives: to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ecological approach to state formation in its current form; to suggest how a greater em

Sovereignty and Governmentality: From the Problematics of the "New World Order" to the Ethical Problematic of the World Order

Abstract: The constitution of (inter) national political order is undisputedly a creation of power. But how? And can raising the central question of power, once more, cast any new light on the condition of (inter) national politics now that the question of (inter) national order as such has been so forcefully re-posed in the aftermath of the ending of the Cold War and the dissolution of the postwar order?1 I think the answer to this second question is, "yes it can," and that that answer serves to clarify the first. If we look outside of the canon of international political theory, I also think we can find an understanding of power that will afford some new interpretive purchase upon contemporary (inter) national politics. This understanding is made available in Continental European philosophy, specifically in the work of Michel Foucault.