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- Convenors:
-
Filippo Zerilli
(University of Cagliari)
Gérald Gaillard (Université des Sciences et Techniques de Lille)
- Stream:
- Relational movements: States, Politics and Knowledge/Mouvements relationnels: États, politiques et savoirs
- Location:
- TBT 311
- Start time:
- 4 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Présenté au nom de la commission de d'Anthropologie Théorique. Après les travaux sur la globalisation et flux transnationaux, l'Etat-Nation revient sans que la réflexion anthropologique suive. L'anthropologie s'est attachée aux populistes. Nous réfléchirons sur l'Etat et son démantèlement.
Long Abstract:
Panel submitted on behalf of the Committee for Theoretical Anthropology (Chair: Petr Skalnik, Vice President Aleksandar Bošković).
The state in all its forms.
After the waves of studies on globalizations and transnational flows on which we will refereed to the synthesis of Jonathan Friedman in Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology edited by McGee and Warms (2013), the theme of the Nation State is back into the political and social turmoil without that anthropological reflection had followed. Anthropology had instead attached itself to the analysis of the various national populist. Next to those works (of which the Neo Nationalism in the EU and Beyond edited by Banks and Gingrich, Berghan, 2009, was the precursor), we mostly have the publication of monographs mostly on African states with most often an approach in term of political science (the last published been on the Guinea-Bissau state Um Caso de difícil democratização Álvaro Nóbrega, Lisboa, 2016). Indeed, the last overall review about the state and its metamorphosis was that proposed during seven hundred pages the seminar that Pierre Bourdieu dedicated to the theme (On the state. Cours de Pierre Bourdieu Collège de France (1989-1992), Paris, 2012). Without closing the panel to conventional approach or case studies (ethnography), we suggest to those, whom such a panel might interest to reckon on the new faces of the state, about what the state and its faces are the current product as well as its possible dismantling and today uses. The languages of the panel will be both English and French (and not close to Spanish, Portuguese or German).
Accepted papers:
Session 1Veysel Erdemli (University of Birmingham)
Paper short abstract:
This study aims to understand the factors that have delayed both the emergence and development of Georgian associations. This study is mainly based on the researcher's extensive fieldwork in Turkey and Georgia.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to understand the factors that have delayed both the emergence and development of Georgian associations. A thorough understanding of the main factors that affect the emergence and development of ethnic associations and their aims and objectives as well as activities provide vital formation for understanding and analysing ethnic organisations' roles among their respective communities ( Vermeulen, 2006: 13-14). In this sense, the study evaluates the main factors that account for the late emergence and development of the Georgian associations by dealing with the question of why these associations emerged relatively later - more than 80 years after their immigration - than other Caucasian ethnic groups, such as Circassians, in Turkey.
This study is mainly based on the researcher's extensive fieldwork in Turkey and Georgia, which includes: in-depth interviews with executive and ordinary members of associations; participant observation of the selected associations' events and programmes; as well as visiting other Georgian associations located in the different cities of Turkey.
The structure of the paper is as follows: A brief information is given about the legal framework of the Georgian associations in the context of Turkish law, which is followed by an overview of Georgians' associational activism. The paper then discusses the main host-country related factors that have had influence on the association-building process among Georgians in Turkey.
Lorenzo Urbano (Politecnico di Milano)
Paper short abstract:
In this contribution, I want to argue that conspiracy theories act as a rhetorical instrument for subaltern and antagonistic groups to re-write State-making processes and the history of the Nation-State itself as the product of hidden, occult forces that shape our political and social world.
Paper long abstract:
Nowadays, conspiratorial thinking and theorizing is often seen as endemic in grassroots political discourse. These sweeping narratives of suspicion are usually dismissed by institutionalized actors as pathological, irrational, potentially dangerous.
Through a retrospective on my ethnography inside a local section of Italy's Five Stars Movement, a party on the (fuzzy) border between political and civil society, I want to argue that far from being political delirium, conspiracy theories are an (hyper)rational way of rethinking power relations, hegemonic representations, and narratives by and about the State. In an increasingly globalized context, in which the power dynamics that shape everyday life are virtually impossible to read by single individuals, conspiracism re-frames the actions of the State as the result of powers, interests, influences that are actively hiding, distracting the larger public by putting on a show to mask their real objectives. Constructing an intricate map of relations, events, actors, conspiracy theories allow disenfranchised groups to rationally "explain" their marginality, their alienation towards institutions and the State itself. Piercing the veil of deception that separates reality from fiction, conspiracy theories aim to expose the modern (neoliberal) State as a fraud.
But there's another dimension to conspiracism about the State, a dimension that operates diachronically, instead of synchronically. If the State is fundamentally a fraud, its entire history must be as well. So, parallel to the explaining of current events is the construction of conspiratorial genealogies of the State, searching deep in its roots for the same signs of deception and manipulation.
Trupti Hallikeri (Karnatak University Dharwad)
Paper short abstract:
The movements of nationalism, anti- nationalism and pseudo- nationalism co-existent in a democracy are dealt in the backdrop of nationalism in the state - India.
Paper long abstract:
As is evident by the title itself, this paper addresses certain pertinent questions in the context of the Indian sub-continent such as: what exactly could be nationalism? How could we differentiate between nationalism and anti-nationalism? Could pseudo-nationalism be confused with nationalism? Could the above mentioned notions anti-nationalism and pseudo-nationalism co-exist in a democratic state? In the periphery of the questions raised above, this paper attempts to unravel the movement of nationalism.
Samuel Shapiro (Université Laval)
Paper short abstract:
Nous utiliserons une ethnographie du Parlement du Québec pour réfléchir à l’État, les formes d’organisation politique et l’intégration de l’État à des dispositifs de plus en plus complexes. Nous interrogeons la relation entre l’État et le(s) « lieu(x) du politique » de Marc Abélès.
Paper long abstract:
Doing fieldwork at the Parliament of Quebec, I have often confronted questions about the relationship between institutions and the state. In response to this panel's querying the usages, dismantlement, transformations and aspects of the state, I advocate a view of the (nation) state as one form of political organization amid a broader reappraisal and reassessment of the isomorphic relationship between state and sovereignty as the bedrock of modern politics. If anthropology has long analyzed non-state forms such as tribes, and a more recent trend has analyzed forms of international governance, few anthropological analyses have analyzed sub-state actors beyond the framework of the sovereign states of which they are politically and legally a part and beyond movements for greater autonomy or political independence. My goal is to analyze such "constituent nations" as political actors in their own right in order to complement work on sovereign nation states and international institutions and arrive at a view of the (nation) state as one amongst a variety of political actors in an increasingly complex political and legal context. If such an analysis may not seem to place the nation state at the centre of its analysis, it does still respond to fundamental interrogations about what Marc Abélès calls "the place of the political" and the wider, evolving contexts in which nation states exist today. As such, I contribute to anthropological reflection on "places of politics" that coexist alongside the nation state that, unlike many international institutions, share its executive/legislative structure.
Gérald Gaillard (Université des Sciences et Techniques de Lille)
Paper short abstract:
A travers l'exemple des turbulences de l'Etat bissauguinéen et d'éléments comparatif, nous proposerons à la critique, une théorie de l'instabilité Etatique en Afrique.
Paper long abstract:
La Guinée Bissau compte plus d'une vingtaine de langues et surtout des identités et cultures dont les différences sont encore très très marquées : Mandingo, Fula, Balantes, Bijogos, gens de Casamance, lusophone d'origine cabo-verdiennes ou encore euroafricaine.
La colonisation portugaise les avait administrativement unifiés mais il revint à la longue guerre d'indépendance de permettre à une nation et à une langue commune (le kriolo) de véritablement émerger.
Nonobstant, la Guinée Bissau connut une longue période d'instabilité chronique depuis son indépendance, puis entre juin 1998 et mai 1999, une guerre contre le Sénégal et son propre président. C'est ensuite jusqu'à très récemment que le pays vécut avec la réalité d'un orage politique absolument constant.
Nous partirons d'une situation nationale qui sera très très brièvement relatée pour à travers cet exemple, élargir notre propos à une théorie générale des guerres et des instabilités en Afrique subsaharienne.
La conférence fournirait l'occasion de confronter cette/notre théorie à l'appréciation de nos collègues anthropologues, historiens, sociologues, sociologues...
Ma communication se tiendra en français.