State/Sovereignty/Territory
Graduate Seminar Last Taught: Spring 2024
This course provides a rigorous introduction to the anthropology of the state. Focusing primarily on key theoretical interventions within anthropology and cognate disciplines, the course introduces a set different ways to understand the exercise and accomplishment of rule. Course readings are oriented around a series of key questions and debates in both historical and contemporary discussion of state power. Namely, the course asks:
The course explores different ways that these questions have been engaged in Marxian thought, post-structural critique, and other schools of critical social theory. Though course readings are primarily theoretical in content, the course is targeted broadly at students interested in carrying out ethnographic and/or historical qualitative research on questions related to politics, power, and rule.
This course provides a rigorous introduction to the anthropology of the state. Focusing primarily on key theoretical interventions within anthropology and cognate disciplines, the course introduces a set different ways to understand the exercise and accomplishment of rule. Course readings are oriented around a series of key questions and debates in both historical and contemporary discussion of state power. Namely, the course asks:
- What is the state?
- What does it mean to examine “state formation” historically and ethnographically?
- What different forms (states?) might a state take?
- What is state power and how does it work?
- How might one understand and trace everyday experiences of and encounters with the state?
- What is the relationship between sovereignty, violence, and legitimacy?
- What is territory and how is it lived?
The course explores different ways that these questions have been engaged in Marxian thought, post-structural critique, and other schools of critical social theory. Though course readings are primarily theoretical in content, the course is targeted broadly at students interested in carrying out ethnographic and/or historical qualitative research on questions related to politics, power, and rule.
