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- Convenors:
-
Theodoros Rakopoulos
(University of Oslo)
Leandros Fischer
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- Discussant:
-
Olga Demetriou
(University of Durham)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel traces vernacular statecraft, seen as the performance of practices historically belonging to abstract institutions, by non-state actors we encounter in the field (brokers, experts, "influencers", voters, etc), reviewing grassroots statecraft to understand how interpersonal states work.
Long Abstract:
Who are building the languages of the state in contemporary societies? And how can we engage them ethnographically? The riddle on the state’s presence for anthropologists continues, in an era where we cannot decide whether we are experiencing the neoliberal aftermath of the acclaimed state’s roll back or if we are witnessing a pandemic-induced more interventionist role for the state. This panel calls for reviewing the various ways in which we can trace state functions in the everyday, performed not necessarily by state agents, but by other constituents of what Gramsci defined as “civil society”. Some of these facilitations for the smooth performance of the state can be done by “experts”: Brokers, middlemen, advisors as well as journalists, academics and paramilitaries are one example of such “experts”. An attention to patronage and clientelism covered some of that pre-neoliberal personification of state function, while a current attention to bureaucracy covers yet another. However, other modes of everyday state functions can be built up from below in less “professional” and more arbitrary ways – in the emic lexicon of statism or patronage, or in the vernacular languages of nationalism, race, or gender. We thus aim to trace and analyse this demotic existence of statecraft (the performance of tasks and practices historically belonging to abstract institutions by the non-state functionary people we encounter in the field). Our goal is further to put into dialogue these formations of grassroots statecraft in order to comparatively understand how personal and interpersonal states work in contemporary contexts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the opposition between social assistance and politics from the perspective of a small informal settlement in Dakar, Senegal to examine the way that claims are made and what counts as politics is potentially transformed.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers the opposition made between social assistance (la sociale) and politics from the perspective of a small informal settlement in Dakar, Senegal. It is a distinction firmly insisted on by residents and those seeking to help them (politicians, development workers, other wealthy individuals) alike. Specifically, the paper examines the tension between 'la sociale' as a mode of giving rooted in values associated with kin, hospitality, and neighbourly mutual support, and politics (politig) which is characterised by vote-buying and dependence, calculation and falsehoods. An analogous ethnographic insistence on the distancing from, or denial of politics is found elsewhere. Matei Candea (2011) was told at his first meeting with administrators of bilingual teaching in Corsica not to ‘confuse education and politics,’ while the Arab Bedouins Andrew Shryock (2008) worked with took offence at his interest in studying ‘the politics of hospitality.’ Taking up arguments in these texts and others (Scheele 2019; Yarrow 2008) on the productive tension between politics, development and the state on the one hand and civil society, education and hospitality on the other, this paper argues that it is precisely within the tension between 'la sociale' and politics that claims are made and what counts as politics is negotiated and potentially transformed.
Paper short abstract:
Not only do state institutions govern by enabling others, by activating and facilitating (changed) behavior and actions of citizens, companies, consumers. I show how a diverse set of actors work towards enabling others, including state institutions.
Paper long abstract:
As the successor of the welfare state, the enabling state became increasingly popular in research, politics, and consulting. For some, it is a guiding principle and desirable paradigm, for others a cornerstone of neoliberal critique and some use it in a merely descriptive sense. The dominant feature these different usages have in common is that the enabling state describes a change in policy orientation that can be summarized under privatization and individualization of responsibility. Tasks that for quite some time were seen as belonging to state institutions are actively assigned to non-state actors via an enabling of these actors.
My ethnographic research focusing on sustainability transformations of three European post-industrial cities shows that not only do state institutions work towards their goals by aiming to enable others, but that this mode of governance has spread. Through the concept of enabling governance practices, I analyzed how different actors, among them local initiatives, NGOs in Brussels, international city networks, or local and EU-European administration, work towards the proposed goal of sustainability transformation in/of cities by enabling others, including state institutions. In light of current challenges, a diverse set of actors try to enable themselves by enabling others.
Based on ethnographic data collected in Malmö (SWE), Essen (GER), Almada (PRT), Brussels (BEG), and beyond I will demonstrate different ways enabling is being done and discuss what this means for current sustainability efforts, transformations of statecraft and how this relates to commons and practices of commoning.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores tactical uses of cultural intimacy in Limassol, Cyprus, as articulated in everyday citizen-state encounters involving informal practices. It illustrates a process of domestication of the state in which cultural intimacy and fictive friendship are instrumentalized.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents results from long-term ethnographic research in Limassol, Cyprus, to explore tactical uses of cultural intimacy, as articulated in everyday citizen-state encounters involving informal practices. It illustrates a process of domestication of the state in which cultural intimacy and fictive friendship are instrumentalized on the street-level. My interlocutors often distinguished between three types of exploitations of “the system” (i.e. the state): a friendly favor, an “I do not want to look like the bad guy in the “parea” (group of friends)” favor, and a favor that involves an exchange. The “malakas of the parea” (stupid loser among the buddies) then, refers to a person who abides by state regulation and therefore misses out on the fruits of informality. This view challenges traditional understandings of patron-client exchanges in the context of bureaucracies and statecraft. The paper illustrates how these types are expressed and articulated in daily citizen-state encounters and focuses on processes of sense-making on the side of citizens. “Fictive friendship” also dwells in the domain of cultural intimacy, and refers to uses of language that informalize formal relationships in an attempt to transform “bad guys” into “good,” that is, domesticate them. The paper concludes with a novel view of cultural intimacy as a tactical toolbox, which may be deployed tactically by citizens.