AnthroState Talk XI: Thursday 4 May: Good Governance and Open Spaces by Marielle Risse

Abstract
“Good Governance and Open Spaces” explores a central question that developed from my work on houses and neighborhoods in Oman: how do the federal and municipal government structures create pleasant, well-used public areas within the southern Dhofar region? First I situate my work on housing within three common paradigms: the “happy” city, the Islamic City and the bifurcation within some large, modern Arabian Peninsula cities. Then I discuss how Oman’s financial situation means certain elements (such as lighted walking paths) are possible while others (lavish corniches with water features) are not. Lastly I explain how the government has concentrated on a few basics such as trash pick-up and a few amenities such as shelters in scenic areas, leaving many open spaces for citizens and residents to use as they see fit. The result is an unspoken pact in which residents use open areas as they like within certain self-imposed guidelines which prevents harm to the land. When this pact is broken, the government slowly steps in to restore balance.

AnthroState Talk X: Thursday 6 April: Investigating the state from below: street-level non-bureaucrats in Turkey by Elise Massicard

Abstract
The Turkish state has often been considered in the literature as a strong and unified entity, and as a sovereign body largely impermeable to social demands. This talk will present a collective project aimed at reconsidering this idea of the Turkish state, and at studying in depth its links to society (Aymes, Gourisse, Massicard (eds.), Order and Compromise, Brill, 2015). It will also discuss individual research carried out in this framework and devoted to muhtars - the lowest level elected officials in Turkey, recently published as Street-Level Governing. Negotiating the State in Urban Turkey. This book provides an ethnographic study of the everyday state, starting from the premise that the "margin" of state administration is not peripheral at all, but instructive as to how it functions. At the intersection of everyday life and the exercise of power, muhtars offer a personalized point of contact between citizens and state institutions, which produces contracting effects in terms of government. Drawing on this research, the talk will address more general methodological challenges - especially about working on the blurred boundaries between state and non-state -, and discuss the choice and use of conceptual frameworks.

AnthroState Talk IX: Thursday 2 March: This thing, or where dwells the sovereignty of the state? by Livnat Konopny Decleve

Abstract
I will be presenting a paper I am working on based on fieldwork and interviews with Jewish radical left activists who left Israel following their dissent over Israel's policy and their disillusionment with the possibility to make a change. Exploring the interplay between emotions and political stances, the paper demonstrates how these activists perceive the presence of the state as deeply rooted in their bodies and psyche.
Contrary to the literature which describes state power as vertical, this article points to the horizontality of sovereign power and shows that dissidents refer to it using the term 'this thing'. 'This thing' is described as a complex array of practices, emotions, and physical expressions and experiences, which surpass the state and its mechanisms of control. 'This thing' is found not only in the state policy to which the dissidents oppose but also in their means of resistance.
In the talk I'll present some concerns I have trying to debate with Michel Foucault's conceptualization of subjectification and dissent, and Hardt and Negri's work on the Multitude and Empire.

AnthroState Talk VIII: Thursday 2 February: David Wengrow and David Graeber’s Dawn of Everything by Klāvs Sedlenieks

Abstract
Klavs offered us a comprehensive and lucid presentation on Graeber and Wengrow’s new history of humanity, with a particular focus on their book’s tenth chapter entitled “Why the State Has no Origin.” He summarised Graeber and Wengrow’s dissatisfaction with the existing theories of state due to which either some states do not appear to be states or the application of the concept of state is derived teleologically from the fact of complexity. What do we lose out on by overlooking periods where states collapse, or disregarding institutions that work on a temporal, even seasonal basis? Graeber and Wengrow instead focus on power, through violence, information, and charisma, the three of which can come together in the modern state, but do not necessarily need to cohere in the future. Even though the reading opened possibilities for the future, hinging on the freedoms to disobey orders, to move away, and the ability to recast social ties, we wondered why in the present moment the state could so have embedded itself as to make us seem “stuck” with it. A focus on the margins, territorial or social, where the state’s reach is less certain, could offer insights here.

AnthroState Talk VII: Thursday 12 January: The State in the Crossfire II

Abstract
1. As we’ve seen in previous presentations and discussions, the boundaries between state and non-state are ever more blurred. How does this affect our fieldwork as we pursue an anthropology of the state?
2. What obstacles do we run into when we study the state and (how) can we overcome them?
3. What texts/theories do you draw on for understanding the state/ your particular field site?

Continuing with our discussions on the state, we focused on fieldwork in situations of potential conflict and/or violence and discussed issues that arise related to access to research interlocutors; ethics; personal safety; and the constraints imposed by funding. While researching interfaces between the police and the groups they target in an attempt to reduce crime, for example, is it possible to gain and maintain trust on both sides when accompanying police in their house visits and project funding requires gaining the perspective of both sides within the same town? How to avoid being seen as a representative of the state? In contexts of more widespread violence, trade-offs need to be made between the ethics of putting interlocutors at risk in the quest for data and in both cases issues of personal safety also need to be addressed.

These talks took place on Zoom.

AnthroState Talk VI: Thursday 1 December: Understanding the University anthropologically by Daniele Cantini

Abstract
Daniele challenged us to reconsider how we normally think about the anthropology of education being solely about education when it may also be a prism to look at the workings of the modern state. Education constitutes another of its pillars next to for example the army and bureaucracy. The university is a central institution in the functioning of the state, funded to provide it with workers (and we made links with feminist critiques of how the domestic sphere produces workers for capitalism). But education is also seen as a right, and the funding and contents of which are also politically contested between government and society which produces its own private universities. The blurred boundaries between state, civil society, and the private sector discussed last month were clear here. The link between knowledge and power also becomes evident when we view universities as playing fields for legitimacy and critique, with hierarchies of disciplines and of universities in which quality may not coincide with prestige. The university is an institution to be understood within its social context, providing social spaces for the construction of identity and as such it also provides a window into how society is “made.” In the specific contexts of Daniele’s research in Egypt and Jordan, issues emerge, for example over who gets to speak in the name of Islam?
We also discussed our own role as academics in higher education and our reluctance identified by Bourdieu to work on the conditions of our own production. So, whatever your area of research, the anthropology of education is of interest to us all!

AnthroState Talk V: Thursday 3 November: The State in the Crossfire I

Abstract
1. Why does the state occupy your mind - why do you wish to study the state?
2. In what ways does the state occupy the minds of your interlocutors?
3. What is the connection between their interests and yours as a researcher?

The state is constantly in the crossfire of our enquiries because even when we try to ignore it, to study for example, informal relations or acts of citizenship or when it appears to be absent in the field, the state becomes a point of reference for these analyses. We search for the boundaries between state, civil society, and the private sector, question the difference between the government and the state, trying to forge connections between theories and models and the imaginings and performances of the state we encounter in the field. We empathise with our interlocutors’ anger over state intrusions into their private lives, its lack of accountability and violent practices and with their expectations for service delivery and the upholding of human rights. We also conduct research studying up to discover the value of multiple perspectives and experience the relational nature of the state from the inside. We study categorizations and political subjectivities and discover that some people see us as representatives of the state. We juggle with the tensions between our academic goals and the interests of our interlocutors: how do we deal with them, how far can we delve into the unspoken, to what degree should we become involved? The conversation continues...

AnthroState Talk IV: Thursday 12 May, 4 PM (CET): Provocative Policing: Colonial Legacies and States of (in)security in Turkey by Deniz Yonucu (Newcastle University)

Abstract
How can we understand the state security apparatus as a provocative force—one that incites counterviolence, perpetual conflict, and ethnosectarian discord? Drawing on her recent book, Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul (Cornell University Press, 2022), Yonucu presents a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on affect-and-emotion-generating provocative policing techniques and their divisive urban dimensions. Situating Turkish policing within a global context and combining archival work and oral history narratives with ethnographic research, she will demonstrate how counterinsurgency strategies from the Cold War and decolonial eras continue to inform contemporary urban policing in Istanbul.

AnthroState Talk III: Thursday 31 March, 4 PM (CET): Encamped States: The State of the Camp in Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement by Stefan Millar (Max Planck Institute)

Abstract
In this presentation, I examine the role of states in the encamped context of Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, Kenya. Previous research focusing on refugee camps has largely side-lined the presence of states, tending to overemphasise the camp as an Agambenian ‘state of exception’ (1998). This is partly a consequence of the traditional role played by the UNHCR in managing such camps instead of the state, prompting some to define the UNHCR as a ‘surrogate state’ (Slaughter & Crisp, 2008) for refugees. However, as of 2016, the Kenyan state has been taking increasing responsibility for refugee protection in Kenya, forcing refugees to engage and negotiate with a previously distant state. In addition, refugees themselves can be representative of foreign states, acting on behalf of external states within the camp. To understand this complexity, I build upon approaches that emphasise how the state is constituted through relations (Thelen, Vetters & Benda-Beckmann, 2017), practices (Bierschenk & Oliver de Sardan, 2014), and sovereign claims (Bryant & Reeves, 2021). By drawing upon a range of ethnographic data from my fieldwork in Kakuma and Kalobeyei between 2018 – 2019, I detail the increasing presence of state actors in former UNHCR institutional roles, such as refugee registration and repatriation. The state becomes constituted at such sites of interaction and negotiation between refugees, humanitarian agents, foreign state agents, and the emerging state bodies involved in refugee affairs. Therefore, I utilise the conceptual framework of encamped states to argue the state in Kakuma is both categorised by its multiplicity and mobility: multiplicity, because of the variety of different states that can be represented within the camps; and mobility in the sense that state actors, their relations and practices are not fixed, but rather adaptable to changing political conditions within the camp and beyond.

AnthroState Talk II: Thursday 20 January, 4PM (CET): Questioning the Anthropology of the State: Reflections on Intersubjectivity in Danish Welfare State Policing by Mette-Louise E. Johansen (VIVE)

Abstract
In this talk, I will take up the concept of inter-subjectivity as an analytical starting point for the anthropological investigation of welfare state relationality. Based on six years of ethnographic fieldwork with Danish police officers engaged in various reformatory interventions, such as gang exit programs and counter-radicalization programs, I will discuss how interpersonal state encounters serve as drivers of welfare state interventions. I focus on a case in which a Danish gang exit program engages police officers and gang defectors in a project that focuses on belonging. The project implies that gang defectors cut off relationships to the gang environment, which often include ties of belonging to close friends and family relatives. During this process, the police officers become “significant others” placed in a position of trust, who can temporarily replace kin and social relations, and function as “hinges” to a new (non-criminal) and allegedly “better” social world. I will use the case of the exit program to show the inherently intimate aspect of the notion of belonging, in which kin and state relatedness are deeply rooted in interpersonal spaces and relationships.

AnthroState Talk I: Thursday 25 November, 4PM (CET): Writing the State, Anthropologically by Anouk de Koning (Leiden University)

Abstract
This talk uses my struggle to write anthropologically about the welfare state in Amsterdam/The Netherlands to reflect on the state of the anthropology of the state. In dealing with conundrums and divergent reactions to my attempts at writing the state, ranging from enthusiastic to damning, I was reminded of Marcus’ 2008 critique of what he called a neo-pluralist orthodoxy in anthropological approaches to the state. He argued that most anthropologists use an implicit theorisation of the state as one of a number of powerful actors, but rarely explicitly theorise the state and state powers. My own experiences trying to write about the welfare state point to a similar lack of explicit theorisation, combined with deeply dissonant views of and engagements with the state. In this talk, I will first set out two attempts at writing the state and the divergent reactions I/we received, and indicate why I think they point to an undertheorisation of the state combined with deeply ingrained moral positions vis-a-vis that ubiquitous yet elusive entity.