Anthropologies of Modernity: Foucault, Governmentality, and Life Politics

289 Pages·2005·1.22 MB·English

by  Jonathan Xavier Inda (Ed.)

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Anthropologies of Modernity
Inda,AnthropologiesofModernity 0631228268_1_pretoc FinalProof page ii 26.5.2005 7:30am
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Anthropologies of Modernity
Foucault, Governmentality, and Life Politics
Edited by Jonathan Xavier Inda
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(cid:1)2005byBlackwellPublishingLtd
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Anthropologiesofmodernity:Foucault,governmentality,andlifepolitics/editedbyJonathan
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1. Political anthropology—Philosophy, 2. Politics and culture. 3. Culture and globalization.
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgments viii
Analytics of the Modern: An Introduction 1
Jonathan XavierInda
Part I Colonial Reasons
1 Colonial Governmentality 23
David Scott
2 Foucault in the Tropics: Displacing the Panopticon 50
Peter Redfield
Part II Global Governance
3 Graduated Sovereignty in South-East Asia 83
Aihwa Ong
4 Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography
of Neoliberal Governmentality 105
James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta
Part III Technico Sciences
5 Performing Criminal Anthropology: Science,
Popular Wisdom, and the Body 135
David G. Horn
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Contents
6 Science and Citizenship under Postsocialism 158
Adriana Petryna
Part IV Biosocial Subjects
7 Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality 181
PaulRabinow
8 Flexible Eugenics: Technologies of the Self in the Age of Genetics 194
Karen-Sue Taussig, Rayna Rapp, and Deborah Heath
Part V Necropolitical Projects
9 Life During Wartime: Guatemala, Vitality, Conspiracy, Milieu 215
Diane M. Nelson
10 Technologies of Invisibility: Politics of Life and Social Inequality 248
Joa˜oBiehl
Index 272
vi
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Notes on Contributors
Jo˜ao Biehl is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University.
James Ferguson is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford
University.
Akhil Gupta is Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at
Stanford University.
Deborah Heath is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lewis and Clark
College.
DavidG.HornisProfessorofComparativeStudiesattheOhioStateUniversity.
Jonathan Xavier Inda is Assistant Professor of Chicana/o Studies at the Uni-
versity of California, Santa Barbara.
Diane M. Nelson is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke
University.
Aihwa Ong is Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley.
AdrianaPetrynaisAssistantProfessorofAnthropologyattheGraduateFaculty
of New School University.
Paul Rabinow is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California,
Berkeley.
Rayna Rapp is Professor of Anthropology at New York University.
PeterRedfieldisAssociateProfessorofAnthropologyattheUniversityofNorth
Carolina, Chapel Hill.
David Scott is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.
Karen-Sue Taussig is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Medicine at the
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks go to Gerardo Aldana, Jo˜ao Biehl, Jim Ferguson, David Horn,
Diane Nelson, Aihwa Ong, Adriana Petryna, Peter Redfield, and Ann Stoler.
They all contributed greatly to the development of this volume. I would also
like to express my gratitude to Jane Huber, my editor at Blackwell, for her
enthusiastic support of the project. Finally, I am quite grateful to the Ford
Foundation. I began this book while on a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship.
The editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to
reproduce the copyright material in this book:
1 David Scott, ‘‘Colonial Governmentality,’’ pp. 23–52 from Refashioning
Futures.Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,1999.(cid:1)1999PrincetonUniver-
sity Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
3 Aihwa Ong, ‘‘Graduated Sovereignty in South-East Asia,’’ pp. 55–75
fromTheory,Culture&Society17(4).London:Sage, 2000.(cid:1) Sage Publications
Ltd.
4 James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta, ‘‘Spatializing States,’’ pp. 981–1002
from American Ethnologist 29(4). (cid:1) American Anthropological Association,
2002.
7 PaulRabinow,‘‘ArtificialityandEnlightenment,’’pp.407–16fromMario
Biagioli (ed.),The ScienceStudies Reader.New York/London:Routledge, 1999.
(cid:1) Zone Books 1992.
8 Karen-Sue Taussig, Rayna Rapp, and Deborah Heath, ‘‘Flexible Eugen-
ics,’’ pp. 58–76 from Alan H. Goodman, Deborah Heath, and M. Susan Lindee
(eds.) Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture
Divide. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Copyright (cid:1) 2003 The
Regents of the University of California.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their
permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any
Inda,AnthropologiesofModernity 0631228268_4_intr FinalProof page 1 26.5.2005 6:26am
Analytics of the Modern:
An Introduction
Jonathan Xavier Inda
This book is intended as a reflection on the question of modernity. It has two
general orientations. One is anthropological. What this means, simply put for
now,isthreethings.First,itmeansthattheessaysgatheredheretreatmodernity
not in abstract terms but tangibly as an ethnographic object. Their aim, in other
words, is not to come up with some grand, general account of modernity but to
analyze its concrete manifestations. Second, it means that these essays examine
thematerialization of the modern not just in the West, as tendsto bethe case in
most disciplines, but worldwide. Indeed, the bent of the volume is determinedly
global, its empirical sites ranging from Italy and Ukraine to India, Brazil, and
French Guiana. Finally, to be anthropological in orientation means that at the
stakeintheanalysisofmodernityisthevalueandformoftheanthroposorhuman
being (Collier and Ong 2003; Rabinow 2003). Said otherwise, the book is
centrally concerned with the modern constitution of the social and biological
life of the human.
The other orientation of the book is Foucauldian. This means that the intel-
lectual point of departure for the essays in the volume is the work of French
philosopher Michel Foucault. Particularly central to these analyses of modernity
are Foucault’s (2000) reflections on modern government. In these reflections,
theterm‘‘government’’generallyreferstotheconductofconduct–thatis,toall
thosemoreorlesscalculatedandsystematicwaysofthinkingandactingthataim
to shape, regulate, or manage the comportment of others, whether these be
workers in a factory, inmates in a prison, wards in a mental hospital, the inhab-
itants of a territory, or the members of a population. Understood this way,
‘‘government’’ designates not just the activities of the state and its institutions
butmorebroadlyanyrationalefforttoinfluenceorguidetheconductofhuman
beingsthrough acting upon their hopes,desires, circumstances, or environment.
Sketched out in these reflections is thus a particular approach to analyzing
modern political power – one that treats the state as only one element, albeit a
ratherimportantone,inamultiplenetworkofactors,organizations,andentities
1