Description
Book SynopsisThe 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 institution
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“This outstanding volume contains an excellent introductory discussion of current trends of thinking and research on the state. The first-rate articles by a mix of well- and less-known scholars are sophisticated, nuanced, and accessible.”—George Marcus, author of Ethnography Through Thick and Thin
“With its wealth of empirical description coming from all parts of the postcolonial world, this book is an immensely valuable contribution to the new ethnography of the state. Hansen and Stepputat have put together a richly varied but carefully organized and theoretically productive set of studies.”—Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: States of Imagination / Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat
I. State and Governance
“Demonic Societies”: Liberalism, Biopolitics, and Sovereignty / Mitchell Dean
Governing Population: The Integrated Child Development Services Program in India / Akhil Gupta
The Battlefield and the Prize: ANC’s Bid to Reform the South African State / Steffen Jensen
Imagining the State as a Space: Territoriality and the Formation of the State in Ecuador / Sarah A. Radcliffe
II. State and Justice
The South African Truth and Reconcilliation Commission: A Technique of Nation-State Formation / Lars Buur
Reconstructing National Identity and Renegotiating Memory: The Work of the TRC / Aletta J. Norval
Rethinking Citizenship: Reforming the Law in Postwar Guatemala / Rachel Sieder
Governance and State Mythologies in Mumbai / Thomas Blom Hansen
III. State and Community
Before History and Prior to Politics: Time, Space, and Territory in the Modern Peruvian Nation-State / David Nugent
Urbanizing the Countryside: Armed Conflict, State Formation, and the Politics of Place in Contemporary Guatemala / Finn Stepputat
In the Name of the State? Schools and Teachers in an Andean Province / Fiona Wilson
The Captive State: Corruption, Intelligence Agencies, and Ethnicity in Pakistan / Oskar Verkaaik
Public Secrets, Conscious Amnesia, and the Celebration of Autonomy for Ladakh / Martijn van Beek
Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index
