State/Meaning
STATE/MEANING
What does the state mean to different people at different times? This project explores the normative meaning attaching to the institution of state across time/space. It starts from the notion that the state can be seen, at a minimum, as a moral, immoral, or amoral entity. Some communities regard the state as such (not necessarily a specific state, but the state principle) as the highest expression of collective identity. Some view the state as a hindrance to the full expression of the relevant political community. Others see it as an instrument that can either benefit or harm their collective interests, but does not possess inherent negative or positive valence. Understanding how different people see the state has a bearing on a range of fundamental questions of social theory - including where political legitimacy comes from (and how it can and cannot be acquired), how states can or cannot be built, why and how people come to trust (or don’t) political institutions. The project is under construction. Below is a working paper, along with a few sources on which the work done so far is based. More to come.
WORKING PAPER
Karlo Basta, “Inverting the Ontology of Nationalism Studies: How Cultures of State Shape Nationalism and Why It Matters”, paper presented at the the 2018 Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, Columbia University
The paper develops an embryonic analytical framework for thinking about the conceptual differences among cultures of state. It provisionally outlines a threefold typology according to which the state can be viewed as either a moral, amoral, or an immoral entity. The state seen as a moral entity is the symbolic (and revered) embodiment of the political community (nation). This understanding applies to a number of otherwise quite different ideologies, ranging from republicanism to fascism. The state as an amoral entity projects an instrumental image of the basic political organization – its role is to provide material benefits for the relevant social aggregates (nation, ethnic group, demos, etc.). When seen as an immoral entity, the state is viewed as inherently harmful to the relevant community which it encases. Such a view of statehood can be found, for very different reasons, among anarchists in strands of political Islam. The paper foregrounds the interplay of these different visions of statehood, and suggests ways in which they influence both nationalist conflicts and strategies of conflict management.
Valuable sources on the varieties of the state idea:
Abrams, Philip. 1988. “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977).” Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1): 58–89.
Bevir, Mark, and R. A. W. Rhodes. 2010. The State as Cultural Practice. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1994. “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field.” Sociological Theory 12 (1): 1–18.
Dyson, Kenneth H. F. 1980. The State Tradition in Western Europe: A Study of an Idea and Institution. Oxford: Martin Robertson.
Gupta, Akhil. 1995. “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State.” American Ethnologist 22 (2): 375–402.
———. 2015. “Viewing States from the Global South.” In State Theory and Andean Politics: New Approaches to the Study of Rule, edited by Christopher Krupa, David Nugent, and Christopher Krupa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hallaq, Wael B. 2013. The Impossible State : Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament. New York [N.Y.]: Columbia University Press.
Loveman, Mara. 2005. “The Modern State and the Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power.” American Journal of Sociology 110 (6): 1651–83.
Mitchell, Timothy. 1991. “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics.” The American Political Science Review 85 (1): 77–96.
Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick. 2016. Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Nettl, J. P. 1968. “The State as a Conceptual Variable.” World Politics 20 (4): 559–92.
Steinmetz, George. 1999. State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.