2.

Diskuter hvordan antropologer fruktbart kan studere staten eller former for
statsbygging. Bruk minst fem av arbeidene på pensum i utformingen av besvarelsen.

Emnekode: SOSANT1200 – Politisk Antropologi

Semester: Vår 2022
Kandidatnummer: 126
Antallord: 2738
Emnekode: SOSANT1200 – Politisk Antropologi
Kandidatnr: 126

Introduction:

The word state invokes a reified, coherent, unified and singular entity, this image of the state as
an authoritative apparatus above society is produced, reproduced, maintained and legimitized
through a variety of mechanisms and techniques. Chief among them is the trivial and routinized
bureaucratic procedures and practices. An anthropological study of state formation and it’s
reproduction would enable us to study the most minute and mundane details of these
bureaucratic practices that affects people lives, regulate them and subject them to hierachies of
power. It will also allow us to study the state from the localities and margins it tries to
encompass. I will further draw on some empirical studies to show that when seen from the
perspective of people residing in the margins of state, a whole web power-relations, fissures,
cleavages and contradiction intrinsic to state formation, that is absent in an official and unified
narrative of state and that runs counter to that unified and coherent image, will come to the
surface.

State and Bureaucracy:

The reification of the state as a unified and singular entity hides the repressive and ideological
mechanisms through which this particular image of the state is produced. These mechanisms are
multiple and complex, one of them is the state bureaucracy. It is through bureaucratic rituals and
procedures that such a unified imagery of the state is maintained, the seemingly rational and
neutral bureaucratic practices connects the ideology of the state to the very quotidian events and
details of life. It is through such mundane practices that subjects are formed, a particular notion
of the body is produced and subjected to a regime of power, ordered and regulated. Ferguson and
Gupta (2002, p.982) use the metaphor, vertical encompassment which entails both the superiority
of the state as the authoritative entity which is seen above society and simultaneously
incorporates localities such as community, family within it. Ferguson and Gupta further argue
that this vertical ecompassment with it’s associated imagery of the state is intrinsic to the
operation of bureaucratic practices (2002, p.983). It is here that an anthropological study of state
and state formation finds salience. Ethnography studies people’s lives in their ordinary and

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mundane practices and activities and since bureaucratic procedures permeate our social practices
and regulate the most banal practices of human communities. Gupta and Ferguson contend
(2002, p.985) these bureaucratic practices shape how bodies are oriented, lived and interact and
even form a particular perception of the subject. Such a “practice-oriented” notion requires an
ethnography of the state.

Ferguson and Gupta in their ethnography of a state-sponsored program, that is, the Integrated
Child Development Service Program(ICDC), popularly known as Anganwadi aimed at
enhancing the welfare of children show how “vertical encompassment” is embedded in the very
routinized bureaucratic practices (2002, p.984). Here reigns a form of governmentality in the
Foucauldian senes, Foucault argues modern states “has integrated in a new political shape and
old power technique which originated in Christian institutions. We can call this power technique
the pastoral power” (1982, p.782). According to Foucault, this power has abandoned it’s
otherworldly aim, and it’s orientation toward saving souls and is aimed at the populaton’s health,
welfare, security and protection in this world. Foucault argues that this concern with welfare of
the population incorporates the pastoral power in a variety of new public institutions in a nation-
state (1982, p.783-4). The surveillance exercized by the bureaucratic apparatus of modern state is
the expansion of the pastoral power and the associated surveillance that Foucault ascribes to a
plethora of institutions under the modern state, through which an image of state is shaped.

The Angangwadi centers takes care of children, teaches them, cooking meal for them and
supervising their medical care and maintaining records. The figure of a village-level state worker
can aptly manifest a paradox in “vertical encompassment”. Their presence in the village made it
difficult to see the state as an entity above the village community, yet as marginal representative
of state they provide a concrete example of state’s verticality and encompassment. Anganwadi
workers, more than any other villagers experienced state as an organization above them, which is
concerned with surveillance and regulation, even as they themselves functioned as agents of state
surveillance. Encompassment and verticality is embedded in the daily practices of ICDC
program. The workers were subjected to surprise inspection visits from superior officers. Their
concern was to what extent the Anganwadi workers collected data on the population. In other
words, the officer’s surveillance was aimed at the surveillance exercized by the villager-level

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workers. Gupta and Ferguson argue that this regulation cannot be explained in functional terms
but the aim is to embody the hierarchy and encompassment of the state (2002, p.984-5).

According to Foucault, the eighteenth century invented a “synaptic regime of power”, a regime
of power that could be exercized within the social body rather than from above. This required
that the individual regulate himself. This could only be achieved by a constant process of
“disciplinary obervation and surveillance”. Since surveillance and monitor is impossible at all
times and by an external force, if any notion of such surveillance is meant to be effective, it must
be internalized. This form of surveillance proliferate in a host of state instutitutions. The purpose
is to create individuals that could be anaylzed, judged, categorized, rewarded and punished
according the the standards set by the institutions. This individualization is successful by “minute
record keeping” of every individual (Lewellen, 2003, p.189-90).

Anganwadi workers are subjects of such a process of individualization. They are responsible for
generating statistics, through a variety of registers. A register for children attendance in the
centers, a nutrition register, a register for the biographical date of children another to keep
records of all death, register for pregnant women another register for the outcome of pregnancies.
A travel log on why the Anganwadi workers were missing. An Inspection Register in which a
Supervisor recorded his-her impression of the Anganwadi functioning. Thus a mechanism of
self-monitoring and and self-discipline is built through these registers. The function of
recordkeepings are twofold. They are instruments of measuring the effectiveness of the program,
as well as, instruments of surveillance of Anganwadi workers. Surprise inspections were devices
of maintaining “vertical encompassment”. The superior officers travelled to districts to establish
control over lower geographical space such as localities, disctricts and blocks and at the same
time inspect, discipline, reward and punish the local workers (Ferguson & Gupta, 2002, p.987).

The anthropological study of state formation deals with the most banal and mundane details of
everyday life, power functions through -and is embedded in- bureaucracy’s seemingly benign
and banal proceduralism that influence our most mundane daily practices. And through such
disciplinary mechanisms that permeate banal daily practices a discourse or representation of the
state -vertical encompassment- is reified. The etnographic details of the Anganwadi workers
show us the state is experienced by them as an omnipotent authority, through such bureaucratic
devices like recordkeeping and inspection. While they themselves are agents of that authority on

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a local level. Anthropology plays a crucial in studying, reconsidering and sheding a critical light
on these banalities and their role in state formation, and establishing sovereignty in the margins.

State, colonialism and neoliberalism:

State formation follows different trajectories based on the historical context of a particular state.
The birth of nation-states in the periphery of the world system which had gone through a period
of brutal colonization have always been fraught with problems. As these states continue to bear
the brunt of colonialism and it’s legacy. Gupta and Ferguson (2002, p.988-90) argue in a
globalized world with increasing connections and the burgeoning power of transnational
organization the sovereignty of states in Africa due to their precarious situation could be easily
challenged by these organizations. Ferguson and Gupta extends the concept of governmentality
on a global scale, this include not only the regulation and discipline mechanisms of WTO and
IMF but also transnational alliance of activists, grassroot organizations and voluntary
organization supported by a complex network of international and transnational funding. Here,
the functions of a state is outscourced to NGOs and other non-state agencies. These powerful
institutions of global governance like WTO and IMF are above nation-states. They have a
vertical superiority to nation-states as nation-state has toward the localities it encompasses.

This discription unearthes the vulnerable conditions of many nation-states after gaining
independence and decolinization. This vulnerability subject them to new regimes of power
imposed by transnational organization like the IMF and WTO and powerful First World states.
The subjugation of these states by the IMF’s regulatory and disciplinary policies causes an
erosion of sovereignty from these states, that one can only termed as a process of
“recolonization”. African states are only nominally in charge and are ran by IMF (2002, p.992).

An example of a country in a precarious situation after decolonization that find itself, caught up
in a series of complex global processes of domination, is Papau New Guineu. In a new wave of
neoliberal reform spearheded by transnational organizations like the World Bank countries were
encouraged to open up to global market. Due to World Bank pressure countries were made to lift
restrictions on mining, and, therefore a host of regulations to protect labor, environment were
lifted (Kirsch, 2014, p.5).

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After independence, Papua New Guinea pursued economic development through colonial policy
of resource extraction. In line with such policies, the post-colonial government of Papua New
Guinea approved the Ok Tedi mining project in 1975 (Kirsch, 2014, p.19). The tailings and
waste rock discharged from the mining into the Fly River polluting it from the mine to the sea.
(Kirsch, 2014, p.15). The consequences of the pollution to communities living downstream has
been catastrophic destroying their way of life, their sources of water is polluted, the fish
population is reduced. The pollution disrupts the whole ecosystem killing plants and trees
(Kirsch, 2014, p.34-5).

As noted, World Bank encouraged countries to open themselves for international capital to invest
in mining. This process caused “export dependency” in Third World countries, which retards
economic development in domestic industrial and manufacturing sectors (Lewellen, 2003, 207).
The process is also termed as “resource curse”, where the promise of profit from extractive
industry causes neglect of other sectors of economy (Kirsch, 2014, p.30-1). This form of
dependency has no exit strategy for PNG, as most of the governments revenue comes from
petroleum and mining (Kirsch, 2014, p.31-32)

The case of Ok Tedi mining shows that the state’s fundamental entanglement with transnational
organization and corporations puts it in a subordinate position. The erosion and decline of
sovereignty in this case happens through dependence. Kirsh (2014, p.32) likens the transnational
campanies to a “herd of rampaging elephants” where their interests align with that of the state,
destroying and wrecking everything on it’s way for more profit, including people.

A lawsuit was filed against the mining company and BHP as the main shareholder by the people
affected by the pollution of Ok Tedi river (Kirsch, 2014, p.85) Although, their was an intial
victory for the people, in subsequent proceedings they were down by the law (Kirsch, 2014,
p.122). Here, we see a form of power inherent in the structure of global political economy in a
neoliberal era, that Wolf describes as “structural power”. Structural power shapes the very social
condition of action, and renders some actions possible, and others impossible (1990, p.587).
Within the neoliberal world order, litigation is the only ground to fight for justice (Kirsch, 2014,
p.85). Structural power determines the very conditions of what could be done, it will only allow
actions (litigation) that does not disrupt the hegemonic order, and does not bring justice to the
oppressed. As Kirsch argues, “the underlying dilemmas associated with capitalist mode of

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production can never be completely resolved: they can only be renegotiated in new forms.”
(2014, p.3)

Anthropological anaylsis of state reveals that the ‘vertical encompassment’ of the peripheries
can be violent, where the margins of state and the people inhabiting them is seen as means for
the survival of state. As though, their existence is irrelevant to the function of state, at the same
time, they are deemed as something disposable for the operation of the state. Thus, ethnography
give us the privilege to study the state not from above but from below. From the perspective of
those in the periphery, from the perspective of those who are excluded behind the façade of
nation-state as a harmonious whole. It is through ethnography engagement and sensitivity and
living with the people that we could obtain such rich details of lives, not accessible to many
disciplines.

The people in the margin of state should not be studied in a isolated manner as Wolf maintains,
these communities should be studied not as autonomous and a closed microcosm but by
reference to a global system (Lewellen, 2003, 212). Because even a remote community like
Yonggom experience the presence of a state in alliance with global forces, transnational
organization like the World Bank, and transnatonal corporation (BHP). State encompassment of
peripheries is, therefore, not complete but faces resistance from periphery that defies
encompassment due to it’s violence, and, therefor, defies the image of a unified state.

State’s infrastructure and it’s victims:

Infrastructures cannot be seen as inert object, in their materiality divorced of any relation to the
wider social world. An anthropological study of infrastructure shows that infrastructures are a
window to a macrocosm of politics, society and culture, where rival political projects compete in
inscribing meaning on them. An anthropology of infrastructure in the post-Franco era in Spain
demonstrate that the infrastructures left behind from the authoritarian regime still haunts
Spaniards. What seems a smooth transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy hides the
schisms and contradictions in the process of state formation. Rubin (2018, p.215) argues in
response to the institutional neglect and oblivion of Franco’s crimes, a memory movement is
borne that wants to gain recognition for the suffering of the victims of the state violence.

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Although the Franco regime is gone but it continues to persist in the built enviroment and state
apparatus. Since infrastructures take material forms it outlast the regimes that built them. that is
why, Franco’s regime are sites “that the Franco dictatorship continues to exert governmental
power on everyday Spaniards”.

The official historiography divides Spain’s history into to periods, before and after the
dictatorship. As though there is a rupture between the two and the authoritarian era has no
temporal continuity. The memory movement challenges this periodization and maintain that the
past regime’s “material and infrastructural afterlives” continue to exert influence and shape
present and future Spain. Francoism not only persists in certain state institutions but also material
objects embedded in the urban and rural landscape, like streets names after Franco’s generals. Or
the budget assigned for the restoration of Franco’s monument is another sign of the old regime
exerting influence on present (2018, p.217-8).

The anthropological study of the memory movement shows that behind a unified and singular
notion of state lies fractures, schisms and unresolved conflicts. The remnants of the fascist era is
embedded in the state apparatus and infrastructures that turns them into a locus for struggle.
Accounts of the victims are non-existent in the official state narrative. As Rubin (2018, p.220)
contends the state continues to rely on the dictatorship’s legal infrastructure. The memory
movement, by compiling documents of the fascist era tries to rectify the errors in the documents
about those who were murdured which the state is unwilling to do on it’s own. They try to
delegitimize the state archive and replaced it with an alternative. In order to do justice to the dead
and reintegrating them to the political community.

Conclusion:

By looking to the margin of state, the reified and singular state with the ultimate authority is
challenged and destablized. Encompassment of the margins, involves other forces in alliance
with the state in a globalized age. As shown, the vertical encompassment entails violence,
schisms, conflicts and domination by bureaucratic and neoliberal disciplinary mechanisms. In
post Franco state formation, the margin is the neglected victims of fascism, the state deliberate
negelect is an attempt to tame this margin, to encompass it in it’s own narrative. Thus, state is

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not a fixed entity, it’s vertical encompassment of the margins is never fully completed but are
sites of continual contention and struggle for the oppressed which bust the myth of unified and
coherent state as the undisputed authority.

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Literature:

Kirsh, S. (2014). Mining capitalism: the relationship between corporations and their critics.

California: University of California Press.

Lewellen, T. C. (2003). Political anthropology: an introduction. Connecticut: Praeger

Foucault, M. (1982). Subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), p.777-795. 10.1086/448181

Gupta, A & Ferguson, J. (2002). Spatializing state: toward an ethnography of neoliberal

governmentality. American Ethnologists, 29(4), p.981-1002. 10.1525/ae.2002.29.4.981

Rubin, J. S. (2018). How Francisco Franco governs from beyond the grave: An infrastructural

apporach to memory politics in contemporary Spain. American Ethnologists, 45(2),

p.214-227. 10.1111/amet.12633

Wolf, R.E. (1990). Distinguished lecture: facing power – new insights, new questions. American

anthropologists, 92(3), p.586-596. 10.1525/aa.1990.92.3.02a00020