Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World

379 Pages·2005·0.98 MB·English

by  Thomas Blom Hansen

Sovereign Bodies
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Sovereign Bodies
Citizens, Migrants, and States
in the Postcolonial World
Edited by Thomas Blom Hansen
and Finn Stepputat
princeton university press
princeton and oxford
Copyright © 2005 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton,
New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sovereign bodies : citizens, migrants, and states in the postcolonial world / edited by
Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-12118-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-691-12119-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Political anthropology. 2. Sovereignty. 3. Human territoriality.
4. Political violence. 5. Postcolonialism. 6. Power (Social sciences)
I. Hansen, Thomas Blom, 1958– II. Stepputat, Finn.
GN492.S68 2005
305.5(cid:1)122—dc22 2004054933
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Palatino
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
pup.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
List of Contributors ix
Introduction 1
Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat
Race, Law, and Citizenship
Territorializing the Nation and “Integrating the Indian”:
“Mestizaje” in Mexican Official Discourses and Public Culture 39
Ana María Alonso
Violence, Sovereignty, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Peru 61
Finn Stepputat
Sovereign Violence and the Domain of the Political 82
Partha Chatterjee
Death, Anxiety, and Rituals of State
Confinement and the Imagination: Sovereignty and
Subjectivity in a Quasi-State 103
Yael Navaro-Yashin
Naturing the Nation: Aliens, Apocalypse, and the
Postcolonial State 120
Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff
Sovereignty as a Form of Expenditure 148
Achille Mbembe
Body, Locality, and Informal Sovereignty
Sovereigns beyond the State: On Legality and Authority
in Urban India 169
Thomas Blom Hansen
The Sovereign Outsourced:Local Justice and Violence
in Port Elizabeth 192
Lars Buur
vi • Contents
Above the Law: Practices of Sovereignty in Surrey Estate,
Cape Town 218
Steffen Jensen
Postcolonial Citizenship in the Empire
Citizenship and Empire 241
Barry Hindess
Splintering Cosmopolitanism: Asian Immigrants and Zones of
Autonomy in the American West 257
Aihwa Ong
Virtual India: Indian IT Labor and the Nation-State 276
Peter van der Veer
Inside Out: The Reorganization of National Identity
in Norway 291
Oivind Fuglerud
Suspended Spaces—Contesting Sovereignties in
a Refugee Camp 312
Simon Turner
Bibliography 333
Index 363
Preface
This volume startedwith a conference held at Sandbjerg Manor in Den-
mark in December 2000 around issues of sovereignty and citizenship in
the postcolonial world. Many of the papers presented at the conference
are included in this volume (Chatterjee, Fuglerud, Hindess, Jensen,
Stepputat, Ong, Turner, and van der Veer). The conference was fruitful
and stimulating, and our discussions benefited from presentations from
Martijn van Beek, Luis Guarnizo, Ninna Nyberg Sørensen, Andre du
Toit, Fiona Wilson, as well as a large number of Ph.D. candidates pre-
senting work in progress at a number of workshops during the three
days. We would like to thank the Centre for Development Research in
Copenhagen and the Graduate School of International Development
Studies at Roskilde University for funding and supporting the confer-
ence. As always, the professionalism of Mrs. Inge Jensen, the Graduate
School administrator, was indispensible and highly valued by organiz-
ers and participants.
In the following years, the editors benefited from discussions with
most of the contributors, and we decided to consolidate the collection
by including a slightly broader range of contributions. Jean and John
Comaroff, Ana Maria Alonso, Yael Navaro-Yashin, Achille Mbembe,
and Lars Buur were willing to submit their contributions at relatively
short notice. These additions made the collection broader in scope but
also more ethnographically well-grounded. Aspecial thanks to Achille
Mbembe for organizing the seminar “Death, Bio-politics and Sover-
eignty” at the Witwatersrand Institute of Social and Economic Research
(WISER) in Johannesburg in February 2003. The discussions at that
seminar were important in reformulating and honing the Introduction
to this volume.
THOMASBLOMHANSEN
FINNSTEPPUTAT
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Contributors
Ana Maria Alonso is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University
of Arizona.
LarsBuuris Research Programme Coordinator at the Nordic Africa In-
stitute, Uppsala Sweden and Research Associate at Wits Institute for
Social and Economic Research (WISER), Johannesburg, University of
the Witwatersrand.
Partha Chatterjee is Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sci-
ences, Calcutta, and Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University.
Jean Comaroff is Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Professor of Anthro-
pology and Social Sciences, University of Chicago.
John L. Comaroffis Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of
Anthropology and Social Sciences, University of Chicago.
Oivind Fuglerud is Research Director, Norwegian Social Research, and
Associate Professor, Department of Social Anthropology, Oslo University.
Thomas B. Hansenis Professor of Anthropology, Yale University.
Barry Hindess is Professor of Political Science, Australian National
University of Australia, Canberra.
SteffenJensenis Research Fellow at Wits Institute of Social and Economic
Research (WISER), Johannesburg and Roskilde University, Denmark.
AchilleMbembeis Senior Researcher at Wits Institute of Social and Eco-
nomic Research (WISER), Johannesburg, University of Witwatersrand.
Yael Navaro-Yashin is Lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology,
University of Cambridge.
AihwaOngis Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies,
University of California, Berkeley.
Finn Stepputat is Senior Researcher, Danish Institute for International
Studies, Copenhagen.
Simon Turner is Senior Researcher, Danish Institute for International
Studies, Copenhagen.
Peter van der Veeris University Professor at Utrecht University.