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- Convenors:
-
Saana Hansen
(University of Helsinki)
Florence Ncube (University of Johannesburg)
Send message to Convenors
- Chair:
-
Madeleine Reeves
(University of Oxford)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 23 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
This panel asks how state–citizen relations are refashioned and affectively entangled in contexts where planning futures remains challenging and state care provisions are limited and unequally distributed. How, when the state is also feared and distrusted, can it still serve as carer-in-chief?
Long Abstract:
This panel investigates how state–citizen care relations are dismantled and reconstituted during uncertain times. Some argue that states generally do less vis-a-vis citizens’ welfare and that ‘the resources they are able to extract and distribute are becoming smaller’ (Sharma & Gupta 2006). Others claim the role of the state is likely to diminish, with non-state organisations replacing its core functions. Furthermore, as the literature on state affects shows, states are often experienced through fear and violence (e.g., Laszczkovski & Reeves 2018).
This panel complicates such views by empirically investigating and analytically examining the Janus-faced nature of the state, illustrating how the state nevertheless reproduces its authority and portrays itself as a distributive authority, that is, as ‘carer-in-chief’ (Holbaard 2021). This panel builds upon the anthropology of the state, showing how the state operates at different levels and is constituted through people’s everyday encounters with frontline state agents. Although the state is often defined and experienced as cold and coercive, this panel is motivated by recent anthropological attempts to redefine public services beyond their dysfunctionality in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South (Biershenk & Olivier de Sardan 2014, Gupta 2012).
We welcome papers that consider how affects circulate in ground-level encounters and interactions between state agents and their ‘clients’, constituting ‘the substance of politics’ (Stoler 2004). Submissions can also scrutinise how state authority is reproduced by mobilising and distributing resources the state does not itself supply, such as aid, family resources, or mobility rights.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 23 July, 2024, -Nina Haberland (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the shifting relationship between state and citizens in the wake of neoliberalization in post-socialist Tanzania and shows how citizens, despite their ambivalence towards it, incorporate the state into their lives.
Paper long abstract:
As many other formerly socialist countries, the years after the demise of Tanzania’s socialist era called Ujamaa were characterized by processes of privatization, decentralization of the government as well as drastic cutbacks on state expenditure, especially in the social sector. The state’s withdrawal and the division between state and civil society are commonly portrayed as consequences of such transitions of economic liberalization. In recent years, however, scholars have put into question the state’s retreat (Ferguson and Gupta 2002) as well as the dichotomy between state and society (Vetters 2018) and show instead that especially citizens belonging to marginal communities constantly interact with the state instead of keeping it away (Street 2012; Dubois 2017; Koch 2019).
Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Northern Tanzania, this paper explores the shifting relationship between state and citizens in post-socialist Tanzania. Drawing on daily encounters at a social welfare office, I show how welfare officers and their clients renegotiate responsibilities of care in the wake of neoliberalization and, by doing so, establish, blur, and cross boundaries between public and private realms. Posing their matters in front of local state agents, citizens not only claim the state to care for them but incorporate it into their lives. These interactions are characterized both by closeness and immediacy as well as ambivalence, control, and mistrust. Such ‘hope for and against the state’ (Jansen 2014) shows the dynamic relationship between state and citizens as well as citizens’ desire for the state, especially during uncertain times.
Florence Ncube (University of Johannesburg)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the two-faced nature of state care as exercised by the Rwandan state in its pursuit of maintaining national security by hunting ‘traitors’ living ‘freely as exiles abroad’. The central question in this study is how does pursuing exiles guarantee national security, if at all?
Paper long abstract:
The paper explores the experiences of former soldiers who served in, but deserted from the post-conflict Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) and went into exile. It seeks to understand the state – army deserter interactions and the affective relations they engender. In South Africa, Rwandan army deserters contend with multiple struggles for survival. An important reason is that they are under surveillance by the Rwandan state which perceives them as a threat to Rwanda’s national security. In protecting Rwandan migrants from harm that is sanctioned by their government, the South African government has, on several occasions, fallen out with the Rwandan government for deploying agents who hide behind the camouflage of South African violent subcultures to perpetrate violence against Rwandan exiles. I argue that as the Rwandan state ‘exercises care’ for national security, it constructs fear, instability and uncertainty for its army deserters in self-imposed exile in South Africa. An ethnography conducted in Cape Town and Johannesburg over a period of eighteen months reveals that the military to post military transition of Rwandan army deserters is complicated because these former soldiers believe that they are being ‘hunted’ by their government and cannot plan for the future. I use Vigh’s (2010) notion of ‘social navigation’ as a lens to analyse my empirical study in showing the interactivity between the care for national security and the social forces present in the spaces in the army deserters live.
Key words: paradox, state, care, army deserter, exile
Leonie Benker (Freie Universität Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on historical-ethnographic research, this paper examines the shifting focus of the Museveni regime's legitimisation narrative from an emphasis on liberation to an emphasis on care, and analyses the underlying affective dynamics in the context of current generational conflict in Uganda.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the shifting focus of the central legitimisation narrative of the Museveni regime from an emphasis on liberation to a foregrounding of care. This changed focus, I argue, is closely linked to demographic developments in Uganda and generational conflicts that are currently brewing in the country. Since coming to power, President Museveni and his ruling party NRM have relied heavily on a particular account of Uganda's recent history to justify their continued claim to power. At the centre of this narrative lies their seizure of power in 1986, which is presented as a heroic act of liberation and a pivotal moment in Uganda's postcolonial history. The narrative is thus primarily aimed at a population that experienced and remembers the brutal dictatorships of Museveni's predecessors Obote and Amin. However, with an average age of 16, most Ugandans living today were born after 1986. For these generations, this story lacks an affective connection to their own lived experiences and therefore does not resonate with them. I argue, therefore, that coupled with the increasing frustration of young Ugandans over their general marginalization, the waning popularity of the liberation narrative poses a serious threat to the country's rulers and has forced them to reconceptualize it as a story about the regime's unique and enduring responsibility to care for the wellbeing of Uganda(ns). Drawing on extensive historical-ethnographic fieldwork, I analyse the details and affective dynamics of this narrative shift and explore how it is received by the Ugandan public, particularly young people.
Tanja Hendriks (KU Leuven)
Paper short abstract:
Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Malawian civil servants in disaster contexts, I suggest that the use of humour in state-citizen encounters enables civil servants to acknowledge the inadequacy of their work and the arbitrariness of state care, without losing face and authority.
Paper long abstract:
As one of the poorest countries in the world, the contemporary Malawi state relies on external funding to cover roughly 40% of its budget, with many state services provided by or through non-state organisations. This situation is exacerbated during regularly recurring times of disaster, when additional humanitarian aid is needed to support its population, but also the state itself, to execute its tasks. The Malawi Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA) is charged with the overall coordination of disaster governance and humanitarian responses, but a large part of the funding and resources to do so are provided by donors and non-state actors. Moreover, the available resources are always far less than what is needed and also much less than what is demanded by (disaster-affected) citizens. Despite this increasingly desperate situation, I noticed that disaster aid distributions are often marked by humorous exchanges. In this paper, I use humour as a lens to explore interactions between DODMA civil servants and Malawian citizens during times of disaster. I suggest that in using humour in these at times tense encounters, citizens are able to criticise the state and the situation they find themselves in, while civil servants are able to acknowledge and express the inadequacy of their work and the arbitrariness of the state’s ability to provide care, without themselves losing face or authority. This argument is based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Malawi with DODMA civil servants at both national and district level between 2019 and 2024.
Marlene Persch (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores care practices of Ghanaian prison officers in the context of ambivalent representations of juveniles between compassion and distrust. It shows how officers negotiate their relation to inmates and expectations towards a welfare state by providing food leftovers to the inmates.
Paper long abstract:
A common theme in public discussions about Prisons in Ghana is prisoners‘ low daily food ration. High ranking Ghanaian officials and prison administration PR-strategies often aim to elicit compassion from the public to mobilise donations for the welfare of inmates. While state resources are insufficient to feed prisoners, ethnographic data from a male juvenile prison in Ghana has shown that prison staff provide inmates with additional portions of food. Inmates, who regularly attend vocational training provided by officers in workshops are often given leftover food from prison staff working with them or officers buy rice and vegetables for inmates to cook a meal. However, officers‘ practices of care are not in the context of feelings of compassion, rather in conversations with me, prison staff describe inmates as not trustworthy or as „chameleons“.
In this paper I discuss how images of a caring state are re-/produced by analysing ambivalent representations of inmates between compassion and distrust. My focus is on care practices of officers: By providing extra food to inmates, prison staff negotiate (1) care relations to juveniles and (2) their expectations of a welfare state. Understanding prison staff’s work in terms of care, rather than in terms of dominant discussions of punishment, offers the opportunity to analyse prisons as part of the welfare state. Furthermore, this paper presents an account of African state actors that goes beyond recurring negative stereotypes such as brutality and disregard for human rights, but rather as caring state actors.
Aino Korvensyrjä (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
How is “the state” staged as a care provider in Germany, even when attempting to deport? The paper interrogates the humanitarian and merit-based integration narratives of the so-called Duldung from the perspective of migrants obliged to cultivate indifference to everyday threats of state violence.
Paper long abstract:
For decades, the German asylum system has been a site of coercive social control coupled with public performances of care. The administrative suspension of deportation (Duldung) has been the main technology to this end, except for the Syrians in 2015 and Ukrainians in 2022, who were issued residence permits. Duldung is not a residence permit, but a form of precarious, unlawful stay after a deportation order, expiring when the obstacle to deportation disappears. Drawing on fieldwork with people in this situation, conducted between 2015 and 2022, the paper discusses the Duldung practice as a site where “the state” is staged as a care provider, even when attempting to deport. The main reason for the growing use of Duldung after 2015 was missing identity documents – that is, immigration authorities could not enforce the deportation but continued trying. Yet many policymakers and practitioners (social workers, lawyers, NGOs, volunteers) discussed Duldung as humanitarian care and a stepping stone to selective, state-facilitated “integration” requiring merits. For the people holding a Duldung, acquiring minimal social benefits, access to the low-wage labour market under deportation threat and, in the best case, conditional regularization, required indifference to the regular threats of violence by the immigration authority and savvy in navigating them. The paper examines the productivity, potentials, and pitfalls of this indifference as an embodied attitude or affect.
Swetlana Torno (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores a particular case of state-citizen care relations, namely the Soviet social contract, its historical transformations and reverberations in the present. Empirically, it studies the mobility of Tajik older adults seeking an old age pension in Russia and its multilayered dimensions.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on transnational mobilities, old age security and welfare system entanglements on the territory of the former Soviet Union. More specifically, it sheds light on the mobility of elderly people from Tajikistan and their transgenerational citizenship practices with the aim of securing an old age pension in Russia. Termed as the ‘Soviet pension’ in Tajikistan, this opportunity goes back to an agreement among the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) dating back to 1992. The deal granted CIS citizens access to the pension system of other member states and guaranteed the retirees recognition of their Soviet employment history on the territory of the country where they reside. More recently, this agreement is mobilized by Tajik senior citizens on a larger scale to get hold of an old age pension in Russia, which in most cases is significantly higher than their retirement pay in Tajikistan opening up new sources of livelihood and consumption avenues. This paper explores the multilayered dimensions of old age pension mobilities on the territory of the former Soviet Union that speak to questions of transnational social protection, state’s daily operations, and the exploitation of former colonial subjects, and reflects on the specificities and ambiguities of state-citizen care relations in the post-soviet case. It is based on ongoing ethnographic research in Tajikistan (since Aug 2022, 4 months in total) on the relational dynamics of mobility of Tajik older adults across spatial, temporal and gendered scales.
Aishwarya Chandran (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India)
Paper short abstract:
Based on fieldwork in a state-run childcare institution for the protection of underage mothers/pregnant children in India, the paper investigates how the logics of incarceration, welfare, and morality coalesce in the processes of institutional care.
Paper long abstract:
The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, was passed by the Indian Parliament in 2015 to replace the rhetoric of juvenile delinquency, and focus on the ‘social re-integration’ of children at risk. The Act identifies children who are homeless, implicated in child labour, or victims of trafficking as ‘children in need of care and protection’ (CNCP). To this effect, childcare institutions (CCIs) have been set up to house these children till they become adults. Underage mothers – pregnant children under the age of 18 – find themselves in these institutions because they are either treated as victims of statutory rape, or because they tend to run away from home under fear of parental chastisement. Several young girls are also committed to these institutions by their parents as ‘punishment’ for being sexually active or to avoid the stigma of having a pregnant child at home. The paper reflects on the narratives of caregivers, social workers and administrative staff in one such institution to argue that care emerges as a mediation between discipline, punishment, and rehabilitation. The paper offers critical insight into how an economy of care is engendered by reconfiguring the relationship between the individual body, the family, and the law: the state takes on a quasi-parental role in its supervision of these individuals, and concomitantly, the family emerges as a quasi-judicial authority in matters pertaining to the arbitration of crime, morality, and sexuality, obfuscating the relationship between the realms of intimacy and law, and care and incarceration.
Yailin Laffita van den Hove (UCLouvain)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores former sugar-industry workers' ambiguous relations with the Cuban state, dealing with unmet material needs and moral expectations, while remaining dependent on the State's diminishing role as carer provider in an increasingly precarious context.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the complex relations between the Cuban State and its population amidst a multifaceted crisis and within the ongoing process of “rethinking the Cuban socio-economic model”. It focuses on the residents of a small town in eastern Cuba, following the dismantling of the sugar industry that once sustained it.
In past years, the Cuban government has undertaken measures that tend to shift responsibilities traditionally shouldered by the State onto the Cuban population. The recent revision of the "Código de las familias" exemplifies this trend, placing increased responsibility on relatives for the care of elderly or destitute individuals. Meanwhile, state policy has sought to reduce -and ultimately eliminate- subsidised goods provided through the state-provisioning system. Additionally, small private enterprises are now officially endorsed and encouraged. These have become particularly vital in importing food and goods for both population consumption and the functioning of local industries.
Such shifts mark a departure from the state's historical monopoly on economic and social domains. However, despite offloading some of its duties to private or individual entities, the state retains stringent control of these initiatives through inspections, fines, and administrative hurdles. Measures aimed at mitigating the crisis sometimes exacerbate its impact on a population unable to participate in the evolving economic landscape.
This paper highlights the citizens' ambiguous relations with the Cuban state, as they grapple with unmet material needs and moral expectations, while remaining dependent on the state's diminishing role as carer and provider, in an increasingly precarious context.
Arev Papazian (Central European University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at the regulation of fishing at Armenia’s Lake Sevan and explains the bottom-level state officials’ conflictual position between two forms of care with opposing effects by relating it to a deeper conflict over the legitimacy of the state to manage nature.
Paper long abstract:
Since 2020, the Armenian state has made its presence visible at Lake Sevan, a ‘national park’ with its own conservation law, through the introduction of a new regulatory system for the industrial fishing of whitefish. The regulation consists of the bureaucratization of the fishing economy and enhanced surveillance against ‘illegal’ fishing. The major official arguments attempting to rationalize the regulation are that the latter ensures the preservation of the fish stock for the fishers, for the future of their children, and that it protects the fish stock from the ‘fish thieves’, i.e. the same fishers, who drain the state’s and the citizenry’s resources. But this seemingly caring project of preservation is problematized by a grassroots questioning of the state’s rights over the ownership and distribution of natural resources. The counter-narrative articulated by fishers and some local state officials points to a coercive state that claims to distribute a resource it does not own in the first place: the fish.
Bottom-level bureaucrats and park rangers in charge of implementing the regulation oppose, through their practices, the official state’s coercion by disregarding violations and helping the fishers navigate the bureaucracy. But at the same time, they reproduce the state’s authority by adopting the care discourse about the future and the resources of the state and the citizenry. This paper explains the bottom-level state officials’ conflictual position between two forms of care with opposing effects by relating it to a deeper conflict over the legitimacy of the state to manage nature.