Table Of ContentThe state is frequently conceived as a universal, although one B A
Contesting the State
r n
apparently extraordinarily difficult to define. It often appears in u
g
academic discourse and, especially, in the popular imagination c e
e l
a The Dynamics of Resistance and Control
as an abstraction, usually nebulous, grasped as pervasive – a K
H
spectre to be feared. In this book, distinguished scholars from a
p o
around the world take issue with this purported universality, f b
e
a
exploring alternative imaginings of the state, of power and of re r
r t Edited by Angela Hobart and Bruce Kapferer
global processes at the margins.
Taking an anthropological perspective based in diverse
ethnographic contexts outside Europe and North America, if
not beyond their controlling influence in globalizing realities,
this volume reveals different complexes of power, as well as
processes that are external to power and often against it (contra
Foucault, and as Pierre Clastres has famously argued).
C
The authors stress not only the different structures of
institutional power, but also the persistence or transmutation o
of local kinds of power and their relevant cosmologies into
n
contemporary globalized settings. They find innovative kinds
t
of modernity, reconfigurations that have effects that cannot be
e
reduced to over-generalized and often intensely Eurocentric s
concepts of power and the kinds of subjectivities realized by t
i
them. In this, the volume opens up the diversity of experiences
n
of the state and offers new directions for its study.
g
Angela Hobart is Director of the Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona,
t
Switzerland, and a Research Fellow, Medical Anthropology Department, h
University College London, UK.
e
Bruce Kapferer is Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at S
Bergen University, Norway, Adjunct Professor at James Cook University,
t
Australia and Honorary Professor at University College London, UK.
a
t
Cover image: A detail from Nebuchadnezzar by William Blake, c.1795. Photo: Tate Photography.
e
In association with
The Centro Incontri Umani,
Ascona
Contesting the state
Sean Kingston Publishing
www.seankingston.co.uk
Canon Pyon
In association with
The Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona
© 2012 Angela Hobart and Bruce Kapferer
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means
without the written permission of Sean Kingston Publishing.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The moral rights of the authors and editors have been asserted.
Ebook ISBN 978-1-907774-69-0
Contesting the State
The Dynamics of Resistance and Control
Edited by Angela Hobart and Bruce Kapferer
Sean Kingston Publishing In association with
www.seankingston.co.uk The Centro Incontri Umani,
Canon Pyon Ascona
ACKNOWLEDgEMEN TS
The conference ‘Contesting the State: the Dynamics of Order and Resistance’
was hosted at the Centro Incontri Umani (cross-cultural centre) Ascona.
The Centre supports projects that assist in the pursuit of human dignity and
human diversity. The fragility of the quest for human dignity and ‘freedom’ is
epitomized by this volume, which discusses diverse socio-political processes
across the globe, ranging from Africa and the Middle East, to Europe, Asia and
South America. The book went through a number of transformations. Sadly,
Professor Keith Hopkins died soon after the conference in Ascona. We still
remember with delight his pleasure eating spaghetti in the piazza, while gazing
at small Ticino boats gliding through the calm blue waters of Lake Maggiore,
aglow with the last rays of the descending sun. We want to express our
gratitude to all the participants whose probing chapters make up this book.
We would like to thank Sean Kingston especially for his patience, competence
and meticulousness in bringing the book to publication.
Saddam Hussein presented himself as descended from Nebuchadnezzar,
the founder of the Neo-Babylonian empire (see Dawod’s chapter), a figure that
William Blake brings to life in his etching (on the cover). Is Nebuchadnezzar
a tyrant, a boundless despot, a figure who shows that in political life no sharp
division can be made between ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’? Machiavelli’s prince is half
man, half beast, mezzo uomo e mezzo bestia, who in political games follows
the patterns of the lion and the fox. Focusing on the Machiavellian aspects
of power politics inherent in formal institutions of control and order ignores
their transformational potency; it also fails to capture the dignity, modesty,
anguish, wisdom, laughter and aesthetics of the people at the grass-roots level.
There are local kinds of dynamics of power and relevant cosmologies that may
interpenetrate contemporary settings. That is a theme picked up in many of
the chapters in this book that explores alternative imaginings of the state, of
power configurations, and of global processes. As Ernest Cassirer said in The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1996:111):
Man is not limited by this immanent boundary in his perception and action,
but ventures to fly beyond them. So man comes to share in a new heaven
and earth.
Angela Hobart
Bruce Kapferer
CON TEN TS
Contributors ix
Introduction Forces in the production of the state 1
Bruce Kapferer and Christopher C. Taylor
Chapter 1 The phenomenology of a stateless society 21
Non-dualism, identity and hierarchical anarchy among
the Nuer
T.M.S. Evens
Chapter 2 society against the tyrant 55
Power, violence and the poetics of an Amazonian
egalitarianism
Joanna Overing
Chapter 3 tribalism and power in iraq 87
Saddam Hussein’s ‘house’
Hosham Dawod
Chapter 4 an altered state? 125
Continuity, change and cosmology in Rwandan notions
of the state
Christopher C. Taylor
Chapter 5 Post-war realities in sri Lanka 147
From the crime of war to the crime of peace in
Sri Lanka?
Bruce Kapferer and Roshan de Silva Wijeyeratne
Chapter 6 The hindu epics, theatre and the indonesian state 161
Violence and cosmic regeneration – a Balinese perspective
Angela Hobart
Chapter 7 The death of divine kingship in nepal 195
Nepal’s move from autocratic monarchy to fragile
republican state
Bal gopal Shrestha
viii
Chapter 8 expectations of the state 225
An exile returns to his country
Laurie Kane Hart
Chapter 9 Diametric to concentric dualism 261
Cosmopolitan intellectuals and the re-configuration
of the state
Jonathan Friedman
Index 291
CON TRIBU TORS
Hosham Dawod is Head of Institut Français du Proche-Orient in Iraq
(IFPO), and a researcher in social anthropology at the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France.
T.M.S. Evens is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
Jonathan Friedman is Directeur d’études, l’École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France and Distinguished Professor of
Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, USA.
Laurie Kain Hart is Edmund and Margiana Stinnes Professor of global
Studies and Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology,
Haverford College, USA.
Angela Hobart is Director of the Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona,
Switzerland, and a Research Fellow, Medical Anthropology Department,
University College London, UK.
Bruce Kapferer is Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at
Bergen University, Norway, Adjunct Professor at James Cook University,
Australia and Honorary Professor at University College London, UK.
Joanna Overing is Professor Emeritus, Department of Social Anthropology
and Researcher within the Centre for Amerindian, Latin American and
Caribbean Studies (CAS), University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Bal Gopal Shrestha is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK.
Christopher Taylor is an independent scholar.
Roshan de Silva Wijeyeratne is a Lecturer in Law at griffith Law School,
griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.
