States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State (Politics, History, and Culture)

428 Pages·2001·32.65 MB·English

by  Thomas Blom Hansen

STATES OF IMAGINATION
Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State
Edited by Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat
Duke University Press Durham and London 2001

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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction: States oflmagination i
Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat
I STATE AND GOVERNANCE
"Demonic Societies": Liberalism, Biopolitics, and Sovereignty 41
Mitchell Dean
Governing Population: The Integrated Child Development
Services Program in India 65 ~T*r+\>\\/\ u\ ftUfni/ jy&\
Akhil Gupta
The Battlefield and the Prize: ANC's Bid to Reform the
South African State 97
Steffen Jensen
Imagining the State as a Space: Territoriality and the
Formation of the State in Ecuador 123
Sarah A. RadclifFe
II STATE AND JUSTICE
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission:
A Technique of Nation-State Formation' 149.
Lars Buur
Reconstructing National Identity and Renegotiating Memory:
The Work of the TRC 182
Alerta J. Norval
Rethinking Citizenship: Reforming the Law in Postwar Guatemala 203
Rachel Sieder
Governance and State Mythologies \n Mumbai 221
Thomas Blom Hansen
III STATE AND COMMUNITY
Before History and Prior to Politics: Time, Space, and
Territory in the Modern Peruvian Nation-State 257
David Nugent
Urbanizing the Countryside: Armed Conflict, State Formation,
and the Politics of Place in Contemporary Guatemala 284
Finn Stepputat
In the Name of the State? Schools and Teachers in an Andean Province 313
Fiona Wilson
The Captive State: Corruption, Intelligence Agencies, and
Ethnicity in Pakistan 345
Oskar Verkaaik
Public Secrets, Conscious Amnesia, and the Celebration of
Autonomy for Ladakh 365
Martijn van Beek
Bibliography 391
About the Contributors 415
Index 417
vi CONTENTS
PREFACE
The ideas that led to the conception of this volume grew out of the intellectual
environment of the research program Livelihood, Identity and Organization
in Situations of Instability, which materialized thanks to the Danish Council
for Development Research, the Centre for Development Research in Copen
hagen, Institute of Anthropology at Copenhagen University, and International
Development Studies at Roskilde University. The LIVELY program brought
together researchers from a variety of academic fields in an effort to synthe
size ongoing theoretical and empirical work on violent conflict, migration,
and popular culture. Because these subjects converged on the culture of states
yet challenged the idea of the state as something given and immobile, we
conceived the idea of an international seminar on the States of Imagination
in the postcolonial world and invited a number of prominent and talented
scholars for the event.
The idea of States of Imagination was enthusiastically received, and the
seminar, which took place in Copenhagen in the midst of winter 1998, elicited
a collection of fascinating papers, most of which appear in this volume. We
are grateful to the participants of this seminar for contributing to an intellec
tually stimulating seminar and for challenging and refining the common
approach that now emerges from the volume. We would also like to express
our appreciation of the support and inspiration we have received from our
colleagues in the LIVELY program: Karen Fog Olwig, Bodil Folke Frederik-
sen, Preben Kaarsholm, Henrik Rtfnsbo, Ninna Nyberg S0rensen, and Fiona
Wilson, as well as Peter Gibbon, Poul Engberg-Pedersen, Jan Ifversen, Karuti
Kanyinga, Thandika Mkandawire, Afonso Moreira, Kirs ten Westergaard, and
other good colleagues.
Finally, we would like to thank our secretary, Annette Smedegaard Chris
tiansen, for working hard with us throughout these years, as well as the two
anonymous reviewers for Duke University Press for their encouraging and
constructive suggestions, which have improved the final product.
viu PREFACE
INTRODUCTION States of Imagination
Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat
... as if every man should say to every man, I Authorise and give up my Right of
Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that
thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner.—Thomas
Hobbes, Ltviathan
The state has once again emerged as a central concern in the social sciences.
It has also been rediscovered by practitioners of development and powerful
international agencies such as the WorjdBank (1997), which now advocates
"good governance" by lean and effective structures of government. However,
in the vocabulary of World Bank economists the state and its institutions re
main strangely ahistorical entities, a set of functional imperatives of regula
tion arising from society but devoid of distinct characters and different his
torical trajectories. In this influential train of thought the state is always the
same, a universal function of governance. In the 1970s, theories of the capi
talist state also privileged the state's functions in reproducing labor and con
ditions for accumulation of capital over its forms and historicity. Also, when
Evans, Ruschemeyer, and Skocpol (1985) "brought the state back in" as an
actor in its own right, their conceptualization of state revolved around certain
assumed core functions and historical tasks that every state presumably had
to perform.
The current rethinking of the state occurs at a juncture where the very no
tion of the state as a regulator of social life and a locus of territorial sover
eignty and cultural legitimacy is facing unprecedented challenges. Ethnic
mobilization, separatist movements, globalization of capital and trade, and