What contribution can Anthropology make to the study of the state

Question 1

What are the 4 points

Answer 1

Reified entity
Cultural concept
Power relations within it
Small scale opinions is the best bit about anthropology for the state

Question 2

What is the argument

Answer 2

Anthropology is able to draw on traditional geographic and political science theoretical conceptions of the state to integrate the theory and its distinctive fieldwork

Question 3

What are the 5 ethnographic examples

Answer 3

Abu Lughod Bedouin Women
Obeid 2010 lebease border town -> occupants of a nation state are not necessarily its citizens
Jansen 2014 desire for the state Sarajevo
Harvey and Knox 2012
Cohen 1989

Question 4

What is meant by the state as a reified entity

Answer 4

though it is an abstract concept, it is made real by governments, by people’s understanding of it

Question 5

What is the reference for the reification of the state?

Answer 5

Gupta and Ferguson 2006

Question 6

What, according to Jones et al 2004, does territory do?

Answer 6

Makes the state legible

Question 7

What does sovereignty do to state legibility

Answer 7

it gives it a location

Question 8

Following agamben, how does sovereignty make the state real?

Answer 8

IT gives it an exception

Question 9

How do we understand sovereignty following Elden 2009?

Answer 9

As a bounded space under a group of people

Question 10

When is the imagined community

Answer 10

1983

Question 11

Who imagines the nation state?

Answer 11

Those who perceive themselves to be a part of it, even though no one in that group is ever going to meet everyone else within this group

Question 12

What is the link to the next paragraph from Anderson 1983

Answer 12

Social construction

Question 13

What can anthropology be particularly well placed to acknowledge about the social construction of the state

Answer 13

Its eurocentricity; exposing other forms and imaginaries even through its classical approaches just as Evans Pritchard

Question 14

What does Beneditct anderson argue about nationalism?

Answer 14

Historically modern, but perched by many to be old and timeless

Question 15

What does Marston 2004 say about nationalism?

Answer 15

Needs to be seen as a determinant of the state, rather than an artefact of it

Question 16

What needs to be integrated into the essay at one point, perhaps during the cultural construction paragraph?

Answer 16

Weberian understanding of the state

Question 17

What is the Weberian understanding of the state?

Answer 17

The state is law and administration exercising domination over a territory

Question 18

What is important to acknowledge about the Weberian conception of the state?

Answer 18

That it is naturally not going to be homogenous

Question 19

What is the third paragraph?

Answer 19

The state and power relations

Question 20

What does Marston 2004 say about power and the state?

Answer 20

That the state is not a source of power but its effect; an arena for power

Question 21

How are ethnographies brought into the power paragraph?

Answer 21

How power varies based on where in state you are.

Question 22

What does Harvey and Know 2012 look at

Answer 22

Peru

Question 23

What does Anderson 2016 argue about borders?

Answer 23

That they produce, rather than reflect states

Question 24

What is the final paragraph?

Answer 24

Appraisal of the small scale and how anthropology is adept at analysing it

Question 25

What does the state work to do?

Answer 25

To naturalise the link between territory and those who inhabit it

Question 26

What does anthropology need to look to other disciplines to do?

Answer 26

See how the small scale can be integrate into macro understandings of the nation state

Question 27

What is worth bringing in in the final paragraph?

Answer 27

Territorial trap

Question 28

What are the three idea’s of Agnew’s territorial trap?

Answer 28

1) State as a container for society
2) Domestic foreign polarity
3) Territory as a fixed unit of sovereign space

Question 29

What is ethnicity grounded in?

Answer 29

Othering and relative positioning

Question 30

What is the division in ethnicity that Eriksen identifies for conflict?

Answer 30

Primordialism vs Instrumentalism

Question 31

Who is an insturmnetalist (remember vitas) §

Answer 31

Chandra 2004

Question 32

What is the insturmentalist view point?

Answer 32

Instrumentalists believe that ethnic conflict is to arise only when the ethic identities themselves are politicised

Question 33

In conflicts, what do the Instrumentalists such as Chandra argue that we need to look beyond?

Answer 33

ethnic identity

Question 34

What does the intrusmentalist viewpoint fail to do?

Answer 34

Explain why people mobilise along ethnic lines

Question 35

Who is a primordialist?

Answer 35

Vahannen 1999

Question 36

What is the primordialist position?

Answer 36

Conflict arises from differences in ethnic identities

Question 37

What do primordialists assert inevitably happens in ethnically diverse states?

Answer 37

conflict

Question 38

what idea somewhat undermines the instrumentalist approach?

Answer 38

The stickiness of ethnicities

Question 39

When speaking about the reification of the state, what is a useful perspective to draw on?

Answer 39

common ideological and cultural construct’ but acknowledges that the state manifests itself through institutions that are empirical and visible