Michel-Rolph Trouillot - The Anthropology of The State in The Age of Globalization

The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization Close Encounters of the
Deceptive Kind
Author(s): MichelRolph Trouillot
Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2001), pp. 125-138
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/318437
Accessed: 05-07-2016 17:32 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
The University of Chicago Press, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological

Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology
This content downloaded from 189.137.199.99 on Tue, 05 Jul 2016 17:32:51 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
C u r r e n t A n t h r o p o l o g y Volume 42, Number 1, February 2001
䉷 2001 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2001/4201-0005$2.50
German government when in fact he had never set foot

there, having been born and raised in Germany. The
French and U.S. governments routinely expel “aliens”
CA✩ FORUM ON THEORY IN whose school-age children are citizens by birth.
Less amusing still is the encounter between one Tu-
ANTHROPOLOGY renne Deville and the U.S. government in the 1970s. At
the news that the Immigration and Naturalization Ser-
vice was to send him back to Haiti, Deville hanged him-
self in his prison cell. Deville’s suicide is no more dra-
The Anthropology of matic than the wager of hundreds of Haitian refugees
who continue to dive—both literally and figura-
the State in the Age tively—into the Florida seas, betting that they will beat
the sharks, the waves, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Are these encounters with the state? In all three cases,
of Globalization 1 we see a government—or a government agency—telling
people where they should or should not be. If, as James
Scott (1998), among others, argues, the placement of peo-
ple, including their enforced sedentarization, is a major
Close Encounters of the feature of statecraft, the encounters I have just described
do seem to be cases in which state power was wielded
Deceptive Kind to enforce physical placement.
My three stories speak of borders—of the space be-
tween centralized governments with national territorial
by Michel-Rolph Trouillot2 claims, where encounters between individuals and state
power are most visible. Yet millions of encounters of the
same kind also occur within national or regional bound-
aries: a car owner facing state emission laws in Califor-
nia, a family facing school language in Catalonia, India,
or Belize, a couple dealing with a new pregnancy in
Sociocultural anthropology often arises from the banality China, a homeless person deciding where to sleep in San
of daily life. I will start this essay with three banal Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, or New York, a Palestinian in
stories. the Occupied Territories having to decide which line to
In January 1999, Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in ec- cross and when, or a citizen of Singapore or Malaysia
onomics, on his way to a conference in Davos, was having to conform to prescribed behaviour in a public
stopped at the Zürich airport for entering Switzerland building.
without a visa. Never mind that he was carrying credit Behind the banality of these millions of encounters
cards and his U.S. resident green card. Never mind that between individuals or groups and governments we dis-
he claimed that the organizers had promised him a visa cover the depth of governmental presence in our lives,
delivered to the airport. North Americans and Western regardless of the regimes and the particulars of the social
Europeans can, of course, enter Switzerland without a formation. The opening sentence of Ralph Miliband’s
visa, whether or not on their way to a conference, but (1969:1) opus on the state still rings true: “More than
Sen uses his Indian passport. The Swiss police were wor- ever before men now live in the shadow of the state.”
ried that he would become a dependent of the state, as One can even argue that the penal state has actually
Indians are likely to be. The irony of the story is that increased in size and reach in a number of countries since
Sen was on his way to the World Economic Forum, the Miliband wrote—notably in the United States, with the
theme of which that year was “Responsible Globality: increase of prison space and the routinization of the
Managing the Impact of Globalization.” death penalty.
Less amusing but just as banal is the story of the 14- This, however, is only one side of the story. Indeed,
year-old “Turk” who was sent back to Turkey by the while signs of the routinization of governmental pres-
ence in the lives of citizens abound everywhere, this turn
1. This essay was prepared for the Close Encounters Conference of of century also offers us images of governmental power
the Department of Cultural Anthropology of Stanford University challenged, diverted, or simply giving way to infra- or
on April 9–10, 1999. A revised version was presented at the col- supranational institutions. From Chiapas and Kosovo to
loquium “Resilience or Erosion? The State Under Attack from
Above and Below” of the Centre d’Etudes de Relations Interna- Kigali and Trincomale, separatist movements have be-
tionales, Paris, June 15–16, 2000. I thank participants in both meet- come increasingly vocal on all continents. Further, and
ings for their comments, as well as Benjamin Orlove, Gavin Smith, on a different scale, analysts increasingly suggest that
and the anonymous referees for this journal. Gwen Faulkner and globalization renders the state irrelevant not only as an
Clare Sammells provided useful research assistance. I owe special
thanks to Kay Warren for her encouragement.
economic actor but also as a social and cultural con-
2. Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, tainer. They point to the significance of practices that
Ill. 60637, U.S.A. reject or bypass national state power—such as the “new”
125
126 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 42, Number 1, February 2001
social movements—or to the power of trans-state organ- to turn this unanalyzed given into an object of study.3
izations from NGOs and global corporations to the World Indeed, is there an object to study?
Bank and the International Monetary Fund as concrete The anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown answers this
signs of that relative decline. question with a resounding no that should give us food
Thus this century opens on two sets of contradictory for thought even if we disagree with its extremism. In-
images: The power of the national state sometimes troducing Meyer Fortes’s African Political Systems in
seems more visible and encroaching and sometimes less 1940, Radcliffe-Brown (1995[1940]:xxiii) wrote:
effective and less relevant. This paper explores how as
In writings on political institutions there is a good
anthropologists we can make sense of this tension and
deal of discussion about the nature and origin of the
fully incorporate it into our analysis of the state. To do
State, which is usually represented as being an en-
so, we need to recognize three related propositions: (1)
tity over and above the human individuals who
State power has no institutional fixity on either theo-
make up a society, having as one of its attributes
retical or historical grounds. (2) Thus, state effects never
something called “sovereignty,” and sometimes spo-
obtain solely through national institutions or in govern-
ken of as having a will (law being defined as the will
mental sites. And (3) These two features, inherent in the
of the State) or as issuing commands. The State in
capitalist state, have been exacerbated by globalization.
this sense does not exist in the phenomenal world;
Globalization thus authenticates a particular approach
it is a fiction of the philosophers. What does exist is
to the anthropology of the state, one that allows for a
an organization, i.e. a collection of individual hu-
dual emphasis on theory and ethnography.
man beings connected by a complex system of
If the state has no institutional or geographical fixity,
relations. . . . There is no such thing as the power of
its presence becomes more deceptive than otherwise
the State. . . .
thought, and we need to theorize the state beyond the
empirically obvious. Yet this removal of empirical
boundaries also means that the state becomes more open One could call this death by conceptualization inasmuch
to ethnographic strategies that take its fluidity into ac- as Radcliffe-Brown conceptualizes the state into
count. I suggest such a strategy here, one that goes be- oblivion.
yond governmental or national institutions to focus on To be sure, this answer carries the added weight of
the multiple sites in which state processes and practices both empiricism and methodological individualism. Yet
are recognizable through their effects. These effects in- Radcliffe-Brown is not simply saying that “army” is
clude (1) an isolation effect, that is, the production of merely the plural for “soldiers.” Nor is he saying that
atomized individualized subjects molded and modeled the state does not exist because we cannot touch it. Gov-
for governance as part of an undifferentiated but specific ernmental organizations have different levels of com-
“public”; (2) an identification effect, that is, a realign- plexity even if for the sake of functionality, when not
ment of the atomized subjectivities along collective lines for the sake of functionalism. Thus, a generous reading
within which individuals recognize themselves as the of Radcliffe-Brown, which would prune out the added
same; (3) a legibility effect, that is, the production of philosophical baggage of his school and times, still leaves
both a language and a knowledge for governance and of us with a powerful answer. The state is neither some-
theoretical and empirical tools that classify and regulate thing out there nor a necessary concept. Each and every
collectivities; and (4) a spatialization effect, that is, the time we use the word, words such as “government”
production of boundaries and jurisdiction. This essay is would do the conceptual job, and they would do it better.
an exploratory formulation of this strategy. I do not agree with this answer, but it seems to me
that anthropologists cannot continue to ignore it. Rad-
cliffe-Brown’s answer to the state question contains a
warning that anthropologists should keep in mind. Since
Thinking the State the state can never be an empirical given, even at the
second degree (the way, say, particular governments can
Exploratory though it may be, this exercise requires a be thought to be), where and how does anthropology en-
conceptual baseline. First we need to determine at what counter the state, if at all? What can be the terms of our
level(s) best to conceptualize the state. Is the state a analytical encounter with the state? What can we pos-
“concrete-concrete,” something “out there?” Or is it a sibly mean, for instance, by an ethnography of the state?
concept necessary to understand something out there? In an important article, Philip Abrams revives Rad-
Or, again, is it an ideology that helps to mask something cliffe-Brown’s warnings. Abrams provides a sophisti-
else out there, a symbolic shield for power, as it were? cated demonstration of the reasons for rejecting the ex-
Unfortunately, sociocultural anthropologists have not istence of the state as an entity and raises some serious
given these questions the attention they deserve. In a doubts about the analytical purchase of the state concept.
major review of the anthropology of the state, Carole He writes (1988:76):
Nagengast (1994:116) wrote: “Insofar as anthropology
has dealt with the state, it has taken it as an unanalyzed 3. Anthropological attempts to look at institutions of the national
given.” Interestingly, Nagengast’s own treatment of the state ethnographically since the publication of her review include
state in the context of her assessment does not attempt Gupta (1995), Heyman (1998, 1999), and Nugent (1994).
t ro u i l l o t Close Encounters of the Deceptive Kind F 127
The state . . . is not an object akin to the human tions of the state as a privileged site of both power and
ear. Nor is it even an object akin to human mar- struggle. Gramsci’s insistence on thinking state and civil
riage. It is a third-order object, an ideological project. society together by way of concepts such as hegemony
It is first and foremost an exercise in legitimation. and historical bloc is fundamental to this approach. I read
. . . The state, in sum, is a bid to elicit support for Gramsci as saying that, within the context of capitalism,
or tolerance of the insupportable and intolerable by theories of the state must cover the entire social for-
presenting them as something other than them- mation and articulate the relation between state and
selves, namely, legitimate, disinterested domination. civil society. One cannot theorize the state and then the-
orize society or vice versa. Rather, state and society are
Contrary to Radcliffe-Brown, Abrams admits an object bound by the historical bloc which takes the form of the
for state studies, the very process of power legitimation specific social contract of—and, thus, the hegemony de-
that projects the image of an allegedly disinterested en- ployed in—a particular social formation. “A social con-
tity—“the state-idea.”4 As stated, Abrams’s state-idea is tract is the confirmation of nationhood, the confirmation
not immediately conducive to ethnography, but it does of civil society by the state, the confirmation of sameness
provide a warning that balances Radcliffe-Brown. Some- and interdependence across class boundaries” (Trouillot
thing happens out there that is more than government. 1997:51). Yet even that phrasing needs to be qualified
The question is what. lest it seem to reinforce the 19th-century homology of
Theorists have provided different answers to this ques- state and nation.
tion, which I will not survey here. For the purposes of As institutionalized in degree-granting departments in
this paper, let me only say that my own evolving view a context in which faith in progress was unquestioned,
of the state starts with the “enlarged” notion of the state 19th-century social science built its categories on the
first put forward by Antonio Gramsci. I also find ex- assumption that the world in which it was born was not
tremely fruitful Nicos Poulantzas’s reworking of Marx only the present of a linear past but the augur of an
and Gramsci. I continue to gain also from various writers ordained future. For most of its practitioners, the world
such as Ralph Miliband (1969), Louis Althusser may not have been eternal, but the referents of the cat-
(1971[1969]), Paul Thomas (1994), James Scott (1998), and egories—if not the categories themselves—used to de-
Etienne Balibar (1997).5 All this is to say that I do not scribe that world were eternal. Thus the conflation of
claim to provide an original conceptualization. Rather, state and nation was naturalized because it seemed so
I hope to make a contribution to an ongoing dialogue obvious within that present—evidence to the contrary
with an eye to the kind of research best performed by notwithstanding. But what if the correspondence be-
sociocultural anthropologists (see also Trouillot 1997). tween statehood and nationhood, exemplified by the
Most of the writers I have mentioned have insisted claimed history of the North Atlantic and naturalized
that the state is not reducible to government. In Mili- by its social science, was itself historical?6 Indeed, there
band’s (1969:48) words, “what ‘the state’ stands for is a are no theoretical grounds on which to assert the neces-
number of particular institutions which, together, con- sity of that correspondence, and there are some historical
stitute its reality, and which interact as part of what may grounds for questioning it.
be called the state system.” Miliband’s overly sociolog- If we suspend the state-nation homology as I suggest
ical treatment of that system needs to be backed by Pou- we should, we reach a more powerful vision of the state,
lantzas’s and Gramsci’s more elaborate conceptualiza- yet one more open to ethnography, since we discover
that, theoretically, there is no necessary site for the state,
4. Since the state is an ideological projection, the purpose of state institutional or geographical. Within that vision, the
studies is to decipher this exercise in legitimacy—the processes state thus appears as an open field with multiple bound-
behind the idea of the state and its cultural acceptance. aries and no institutional fixity—which is to say that it
5. Gramsci’s enlarged view of the state, inseparable from concepts
such as hegemony, civil society, and historical bloc, offers the fun- needs to be conceptualized at more than one level.
damental point of departure that, in the context of capitalism, the- Though linked to a number of apparatuses not all of
ories of the state must cover the entire social formation because which may be governmental, the state is not an appa-
state and civil society are intertwined. The intellectual and political ratus but a set of processes. It is not necessarily bound
implications of that starting point cannot be overestimated. See
Bucci-Glucksman (1975), Macchiocci (1974), Thomas (1994), and by any institution, nor can any institution fully encap-
Trouillot (1990, 1996). Miliband launched the Marxist critique of sulate it. At that level, its materiality resides much less
Leninism and its implication that seizing control of government in institutions than in the reworking of processes and
meant seizing control of state power. That critique, implicit in relations of power so as to create new spaces for the
Gramsci, arose timidly in the ’60s and grew in the ’70s, especially
in England and France. For Miliband, although government is in- deployment of power. As I have put it elsewhere (Trouil-
vested with state power, the state is not reducible to government. lot 1990:19), “At one level the division between state
Further, the leadership of the state elite includes individuals who and civil society has to do with content. . . . At another
are not in government proper but often belong to the privileged level it has to do with methodology in the broad sense.”
classes. Miliband barely cites Lenin, but the critique is evident. He
also suggests (1969:49) that the study of the state must start with I will return later to the particular consequences of
the preliminary problem that “’the state’ is not a thing, that is,
does not, as such, exist.” On Poulantzas’s contribution, see Thomas 6. For a critical assessment of the state-nation homology, see Trouil-
(1994) and Jessop (1985). On Althusser, see Resch (1992). lot (1990:esp. 23–26).
this position in the age of globalization. First, however, ries of fundamental changes in spatialization, many of
I need to make explicit what I mean by “globalization.” which are both captured and obscured by the word “glob-
alization.” Changes in the spatialization of markets—the
market for capital (both financial and industrial), the
market for labor, and the market for consumer
A Fragmented Globality
goods—create overlapping spatialities that are not syn-
chronized but together help to give the world economy
If by “globalization” we mean the massive flow of goods, its current shape. The world economy now looks like a
peoples, information, and capital across huge areas of the Triad (Ohmae 1985)—a triangle with three major re-
earth’s surface in ways that make the parts dependent gional centers as its poles, one in North America (the
on the whole, the world has been global since the 16th United States and Canada), one in Asia (with Japan at
century. To acknowledge these earlier global flows is not the epicenter), and one in Western Europe (with Ger-
to claim that there is nothing new under the sun. Rather, many as the epicenter).9
the reference to a massive empirical record of global A major change is in the dynamism of international
flows helps us, first, to expose what I call “globalitarism” investments. The magnitude of foreign direct invest-
as a dominant ideology of our times and, second, to insist ment—for instance, capital deployed from one country
on the political and scholarly need to establish a critical into branches and subsidiaries located in another coun-
distance from that ideology. try—was reportedly US$317 billion in 1995, dwarfing
If we approach globalization naively as the recent records from all past eras. Further, in spite of some yearly
emergence of “a world without boundaries,” we find our- fluctuations, notably in 1992 and in 1998 after the Asian
selves repeating advertising slogans without knowing crisis, the long-term rise seems continuous. Indeed, for-
how we ended up doing so. We overlook the fact that eign direct investment is becoming the primary form of
words like “global” and “globalization” in their most exchange across state borders, a place traditionally oc-
current use were first broadcast most aggressively by cupied by commerce, and is thus influencing more than
marketing agents and marketing schools. Masaki and ever the rhythm and direction of international
Helsen (1998) locate what they candidly call “the glob- exchanges.
alization imperative” in the search for new marketing Within this foreign direct investment, the major trans-
strategies.7 Scholarly analysis needs to go beyond the fers have moved away from manufacturing to target
slogans, clichés, and narratives that sustain these strat- “nonproductive” assets such as real estate, tourism, de-
egies. These tropes not only silence the histories of the partment stores, banking, and insurance (Weiss 1997:8).
world but also veil our understanding of the pre- Among the leading countries, only Japan’s foreign in-
sent—including their own conditions of possibility—by vestments remain relatively high in manufacturing. The
hiding the changing story of capital. Changes in the com- major profits, national and transnational, are now in rent
position and spatialization of capital are crucial in shap- form, notably in the financial markets. As many trans-
ing the uniqueness of our present. In this essay, I reserve national holdings involved in manufacturing become, in
the word “globalization” for the conflation of these fact, “financial groups with an industrial concentration”
changes.8 (Chesnais 1994:61–66), the logic of finance capi-
Capitalism has always been transnational. Crossing tal—which, both Marx and Keynes warned us, is very
political borders is inherent in its historical trajectory. close to the logic of usury—becomes the dominant logic
Indeed, some analysts have long suggested that capital- of the system. The fragility of unregulated financial mar-
ism is necessarily prone to cross borders inasmuch as it kets combines rumors of immediate doom with hopes
must find new places to integrate into the sphere of cap- of extravagant profits. Indeed, quick profit anywhere, by
ital (Luxemburg 1951[1914]). Today as in the past, most any means, a goal inherent in the logic of capital itself,
firms that operate in more than one country have a dis- becomes the explicit ethos of managers. At the same
tinguishable home base. What is new is not the inter- time and for the very same reasons, capital does not
nationalization of capital as such but changes in the spa- move freely across borders. Rather, the spatial distribu-
tialization of the world economy and changes in the tion of capital is increasingly selective. Most world ec-
volume and, especially, the kinds of movements that onomic movement and especially foreign direct invest-
occur across political boundaries. ment occurs between or within the poles of the Triad.10
Indeed, present world history is characterized by a se-
9. In 1970, 64 of the world’s top 100 corporations were based in the
7. Both “globalization” and “global village” date at least from the United States. The United Kingdom was a distant second with 9,
1960s, with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Marshall McLuhan empha- followed by Germany, Japan, and France. By 1997, 29 corporations
sizing respectively the universal status of the North American on Fortune’s top-100 list were based in Japan, 24 in the United
model of modernity and the technological convergence of the world States, 13 in Germany, and 10 in France.
(Mattelart 2000). 10. The capital invested tends to come from six countries: the
8. Economists do not fully agree on the list of changes that make United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and
up globalization. I have tended to rely on the more critical observ- the Netherlands, more or less in that order. More important, the
ers. François Chesnais (1994) and Serge Cordelier (2000) provide investments reach mainly the same countries with the notable ad-
two accessible summaries and Linda Weiss (1997) one of the most dition of China. Of the US$317 billion invested across state bound-
brutal critiques of globalization. See also Adda (1996a, b), Reich aries in 1995, US$194 billion stayed in the North Atlantic (in the
(1992), Sassen (1998), Wade (1996). United States, Canada, and the European Union). Outside of the
Outside of the Triad, exchange tends to take the minor big business and their allies. There as here the debate
form of subcontracting. continues about the number of citizens who will fall on
That global exchange remains concentrated among a the bad side of the gap. Still, the public acknowledgment
few countries, mainly in the North Atlantic, China, and that populations within the same industrialized coun-
Japan, is one of many aspects of a third major feature of tries are headed in different directions is a new feature.
our times—the increasing concentration of economic To make matters worse, academic, political, and cor-
power. Exchange occurs primarily between the same porate leaders in most of the world have joined in what
countries, between firms of the same sectors, between Linda Weiss (1997, 1998) calls “the political construction
branches of the same firm. Far from moving toward more of hopelessness,” telling citizens that they cannot do
open markets, the world economy has witnessed in the anything about the social consequences of globalization.
1980s and ’90s the emergence of “private markets” that Once-unequivocal assumptions that citizens of Western
dominate its most important exchanges. democracies had some control over the fate of their
Likewise, we have not witnessed the global integration
neighborhoods, their towns, or their children are now
of the price of labor that some optimists promised in the
being questioned.11
1960s. On the contrary, the world labor market has be-
We are far from the idyllic vision of a global village in
come more differentiated. It is differentiated by region,
which everyone is connected to everyone else. Rather,
with the highest prices in the North Atlantic and the
lowest in most of Asia, Latin America, and, especially, our times are marked by an increasing awareness of
Africa. It is also differentiated within countries. Only at global flows and processes among fragmented popula-
a lower level, that of consumer products, is the global tions. World histories and local histories are becoming
economy moving, at great speed, toward a single inte- both increasingly intertwined and increasingly contra-
grated market. And even there, a few industries account dictory. Homogenization is at best superficial.
for most of that integration. To be sure, a few corporations from the United States,
In short, globalization does not mean that the world Japan, Italy, and France now seem to share global cultural
economy is now integrated into a single space. Rather, control through the distribution of entertainment and
it means that that economy is developing three contra- clothing. The planetary integration of the market for
dictory but overlapping modes of spatialization: (1) in- consumer goods does link the world’s populations in a
creased, though selective, flexibility of capital, mainly web of consumption in which national ideals are becom-
financial capital, within or between the poles of the ing more similar even as the means to achieve them
Triad, (2) differentiated labor markets within and across elude a growing majority. The integration of that market,
national borders, and (3) increased but uneven integra- the speed of communications, and the oligopolies in me-
tion of consumer markets worldwide. dia and entertainment help to project the same image of
A major socioeconomic consequence of these overlaps the good life all over the world. In that sense, we are
is global polarization. This polarization takes many truly witnessing for the first time, especially among the
forms. Between sellers and buyers, we are witnessing the youth, the global production of desire.
rise of world oligopolies: a few firms now control the At the same time, this global production of desire does
world market for most major commodities. Polarization not satisfy the cultural needs of specific populations. In
has also increased between countries. Gone are the de- fact, it acerbates tensions because of the social polari-
velopmentist dreams that assumed all countries to be on zation noted above, the limited means available to satisfy
the same path. A majority of countries and some con- those new desires, and the always-specific discrepancies
tinental chunks (notably sub-Saharan Africa) are becom- between global models and local ones. Further, there is
ing poorer every day. Even more important, what hap- no global culture model to attenuate those discrepancies,
pens there is becoming irrelevant to the world economy.
in part because there is no agreement on long-term
Given the declining significance of geopolitics in the
meanings. Indeed, with the demise of the Soviet bloc,
post–cold war era, this means quite concretely that
North Atlantic societies in general and the United States
chunks of humankind are seen by world political and
in particular find it increasingly difficult to generate a
economic leaders as superfluous. The global map in-
unified meaning and purpose to social life for their own
creasingly has large black holes.
citizens, let alone agree on an ideal that they can sell to
Polarization occurs also within borders, even in the
North Atlantic. According to former U.S. Secretary of others (Reich 1992, Laidi 1993). In short, within and
Labor Robert Reich (1992), one-fifth of the population of across state boundaries, polarization and entanglement
the United States is doing increasingly well while the now create new ways of perceiving distance—temporal,
remaining four-fifths are on a downward path. Socialist- spatial, social, and cultural—thus shaping a new horizon
oriented programs are slowing down similar trends in of historicity that I call “a fragmented globality.”
Europe, but they are under serious political attack from
11. Right-wing populism feeds on this despair, silencing the fact
North Atlantic, only China’s share (US$37.7 billion) was signifi- that social polarization is not something handed down to us by an
cant. Latin America as a whole received about as much as Sweden anonymous world market but the partial and predictable result of
alone. China was Japan’s second-largest trading partner and Japan conscious political decisions made by North Atlantic states since
China’s largest trading partner. the Reagan-Thatcher era.
Changing Containers onomic or in other walks of life. Indeed, the number of

sovereign states has more than quadrupled between 1945
It is against the background of this fragmented globality and the end of the last century. Yet, the kinds of inter-
that we may best evaluate changes in the effectiveness vention national governments perform have changed—at
of the national state as a primary site for economic times considerably. For instance, as Terry Turner (n.d.)
exchange, political struggle, or cultural negotiation. Fur- acutely notes, we can see in retrospect that since the end
ther, we need to assess these changes with a sober aware- of World War II military intervention within the North
ness that the national state was never as closed and as Atlantic has become obsolete as the means to capture
unavoidable a container—economically, politically, or the leadership of the capitalist world economy.14 More
culturally—as politicians and academics have claimed recently, changes in the composition and spatialization
since the 19th century. Once we see the necessity of of capital have rendered government interventions in in-
the national state as a lived fiction of late modern- ternational commerce both less necessary and less
ity—indeed, as possibly a brief parenthesis in human his- effective.15
tory—we may be less surprised by the changes we now Most crucial for sociocultural anthropologists, the na-
face and be able to respond to them with the intellectual tional state no longer functions as the primary social,
imagination they deserve.12 political, and ideological container of the populations
These changes cannot be measured quantitatively on living within its borders. To be sure, it was never as solid
a single scale. Even if we were to reduce states to gov- a container as we were led to believe. However, in the
ernments, a quick comparison of Iran, Mexico, India, North Atlantic at least and, to a lesser extent, in the
France, Iraq, and the United States within and across American states that saw the first wave of decoloniza-
their recognized borders suggests that one cannot mea- tion, it often secured the outer limits of political struggle,
sure governmental power on a continuum. Thus claims economic exchange, and cultural negotiation. More im-
of the declining relevance of the state along globalitarist portant, their performance notwithstanding, national
lines are at best premature if only because they presume governments were often expected—and often pre-
such a continuum.13 Rather than unilinear, the changes tended—to act as cultural containers. Now, neither cit-
are multiple and, as I have suggested, sometimes con- izens nor governmental leaders expect the state to play
tradictory (see also Comaroff and Comaroff 2000). I will that role effectively.16
note only a few of the most significant ones. This is in part because of governments’ inability (es-
First, and directly related to globalization as defined pecially in the South) or unwillingness (especially in the
here, the domains of intervention of national govern- North Atlantic) to deal with the increased inequality
ments are rapidly changing. Second, and quite important ushered in by globalization and, more important, the cit-
for sociocultural anthropologists, national states are now izenry’s perception of that inability or unwillingness. It
performing less well as ideological and cultural contain- is also, relatedly, because of the increased inability of
ers, especially—but not only—in the North Atlantic. national governments from Iran and China to France and
Third, new processes and practices which seem to reject
the United States to play a leadership role in the shaping
or bypass the state form—such as the new social move-
of cultural practices, models, and ideals. Further, almost
ments—are creeping into the interstices thus opened.
everywhere both the correspondence between the state
Yet, fourth, statelike processes and practices also obtain
system and what Althusser (1971[1969]) calls the “ide-
increasingly in nongovernmental sites such as NGOs or
ological state apparatuses” has declined as these appa-
trans-state institutions such as the World Bank. These
ratuses increasingly reflect rather than deflect locally
practices, in turn, produce state effects as powerful as
lived social tensions, notably those of race and class.17
those of national governments.
To complicate matters, none of this means that na-
14. Ironically, the two big losers of World War II formalized this
tional governments have stopped intervening in the ec- new trend better and faster than their competitors. Japan and West
Germany reaped the benefits of having to renounce, both by choice
12. As part of their bold move to link economy, society, and the and by force, the threat of war. This argument does not invalidate
ideological-cultural tenets of neoliberalism in our times, Comaroff the benefits of a war machine in revamping a national economy,
and Comaroff (2000:318–30) provide a more ambitious summary of as both Reagan and Clinton administrations demonstrate.
the debate about state and globalization than I can here. 15. There are areas of great controversy, as the ongoing banana wars
13. There are other problems. These theses also rest on the illusion between the United States and the European Community suggest.
that the political is an analytically distinct sphere, a proposition Also, trans-state government interventions to remove trade barriers
long questioned by Talcott Parsons (1951:126) and explicitly re- tend to pressure the South much more than the North to remove
jected by most of the state theorists I have used here, notably Gram- its tariffs and protections.
sci. A second theoretical slip is the illusion that states are equiv- 16. The recent history of France makes the point. From Francis I
alent to governments. Since many of the kinds of intervention to Louis XIV to Napoleon, De Gaulle, and Mitterrand, French gov-
traditionally thought to be within the purview of governments are ernments have always taken seriously the role of the state as a
less easily achieved or simply impossible today, globalitarians con- cultural container. Against that background, the rate of decline of
clude that the state has declined. A third theoretical rejoinder to expectations in this regard in recent years is telling.
the declining-relevance thesis is that the state—and the interna- 17. The overall erosion of ideological state apparatuses in the former
tional system of states without which each state is, in turn, un- colonies is obvious. An overview of either the Catholic Church in
thinkable—are necessary conditions for globalization. Globaliza- France or the educational system in the United States from the
tion is inconceivable theoretically or historically without a number 1950s to the present could illustrate the point for the North
of strong states and especially a strong international state system. Atlantic.
The fiction of isolated national entities constructed by North Atlantic natives, in turn, both rejected and ac-
19th-century politicians and scholars no longer fits the commodated that daily presence. Thus, segregationist
lived experiences of most populations. practices notwithstanding, the commodification of ex-
Cracks in the fiction appeared soon after World War otic customs and products from Zen and yoga to Mao
II. In the North Atlantic, the declining relevance of war shirts and dashikis facilitated a guarded cultural accep-
as the path to global economic leadership meant a de- tance. Food played a major role in that process. Korean
cline in the use and effectiveness of nationalist rheto- vegetable shops in the United States and Arab groceries
ric—partly masked and delayed, especially in the United in France provided needed services. More important may
States, by the existence of the Soviet bloc. Elsewhere, have been the wave of “ethnic” restaurants that
the deep tremors experienced in Africa and Asia during swamped Paris, London, Amsterdam, and New York be-
the second wave of decolonization18 augured ill for the ginning in the 1970s and now brings couscous, curry, or
presumed national homogeneity. Where and how to es- sushi to inland cities once thought impermeable to Third
tablish the borders of the new African and Asian polities World cultural imports. The daily presence of the Other,
often proved an unforeseen predicament. Partition by de- mediatized, commodified, tightly controlled, yet seem-
cree in cases as varied as India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, ingly unavoidable—as Other—on the screen or on the
and French and German Togo exposed the artificiality street, is a major trope of globalitarist ideology. Yet this
and the use of power inherent in border-making prac- trope functions at least in part because it illustrates for
tices. Cases such as Algeria’s pieds noirs suggested that local populations the national state’s increasing diffi-
even the distinction between home and elsewhere was culty in functioning as a container, even in the North
not as easy as once thought. Atlantic.19
From the 1950s to the 1990s, the cold war, in spite of
its rhetoric, also brought home the relevance of events
happening in other regions of the globe. In North Amer- Toward an Ethnography of the State
ica, Vietnam—as later the taking of hostages in Tehe-
ran—played a key role in producing that understanding.
None of this means that the relevance of the state is
In the 1970s and ’80s, citizens throughout the North
declining, if by “state” we mean more than the apparatus
Atlantic discovered their partial dependency on foreign
of national governments. If the state is indeed a set of
imports after most OPEC countries assumed ownership
practices and processes and their effects as much as a
of their oil fields.
way to look at them, we need to track down these prac-
One can safely suggest, however, that geopolitical and
tices, processes, and effects whether or not they coalesce
economic changes on the world scene as such were less around the central sites of national governments. In the
crucial in breaking down the fiction of impermeable en- age of globalization, state practices, functions, and ef-
tities than the manner in which those changes were fects increasingly obtain in sites other than the national
brought home to ordinary citizens in the North Atlantic but never entirely bypass the national order. The chal-
and affected their daily lives. To give but one example, lenge for anthropologists is to study these practices, func-
the objective degree of U.S. involvement in Indochina in tions, and effects without prejudice about sites or forms
the 1960s was arguably less than that of Spain in 17th- of encounters. I will note the possibilities of this ap-
century Mexico, that of France in 18th-century Saint- proach by further sketching the state effects mentioned
Dominque/Haiti, or that of Britain in 19th-century India. at the beginning of this essay as grounds for an ethnog-
It might not have been enough to change the imagination raphy of the state.
of North Americans if not for the fact that television Nicos Poulantzas (1972) identified what he called the
made the Vietnam War a daily occurrence in their homes “isolation effect,” which I read as the production of a
just as it would later make the Iran-U.S. confrontation particular kind of subject as an atomized member of a
a matter of nightly routine. Even more than television, public—a key feature of statecraft. Through the isolation
refugees knocking at the door, new patterns of immi- of socioeconomic conflicts, notably class divisions, the
gration, and the reconfiguration of the ethnic and cul- state not only guarantees its own relative autonomy vis-
tural landscape in major North Atlantic cities brought à-vis dominant classes but also produces atomized, in-
the “elsewhere” to the home front. The speed and mass dividualized citizens who all appear equal in a suppos-
of global flows—including the flow of populations edly undifferentiated public sphere. In many societies
deemed to be different and often claiming that difference today the national public sphere is fractured differently
while insisting on acceptance—profoundly undermined
the notion of bounded entities, and not just on an ab- 19. There are plenty of other signs of the tension between the vis-
stract level. The barbarians were at the door, which was ibility of groups clearly marked as Others and the homogenizing
bad enough, but they were also claiming that “our” home claims of the state. The consolidation of “ethnic” votes in the
United States is among the most blatant. I have concentrated on
could be theirs. the North Atlantic here not because similar signs are lacking in
the South but because the fiction of homogeneous entities never
18. The first wave of decolonization occurred, of course, in the fully obtained in the South or in Eastern Europe. To put it otherwise,
Americas in the 19th century with the successive indepen- the peripheral state was never as competent in producing an iden-
dences of the United States, Haiti, the former Spanish colonies, and tification effect as the state in France, Britain, Germany, or the
Brazil. United States.
from when Poulantzas wrote. At the same time, the rel- —sometimes better—on that score and produce similar
ative increase in judicial power in almost all of the North if not more potent legibility effects. UNESCO or ILO
Atlantic countries suggests that individual atomization statistics are more reliable than those of quite a few na-
is accompanied by new forms of homogenization. Iden- tional governments. NGOs’ capacity to plan effectively
tity politics notably signals new configurations of the at the local and regional level all over the South and the
citizenry. The development of notions of universal hu- World Bank’s or the IMF’s power to envision and promote
man rights and the global spread of North Atlantic legal everywhere a future based on their assessment—
philosophy and practices—to cite only one example—are however questionable—of the present have now moved
producing isolation effects, North and South, at times a number of state practices away from the national. For
with the backing of national governments or with the better and for worse, these are all, analytically, statelike
still timid support of transnational statelike institutions. institutions.
In short, the isolation effect—including the masking of Since most state effects can be captured in part through
class divisions and the joint production of a public and
the subjects they help to produce, ethnographers are well
the atomized subjects that constitute it—still obtains,
positioned to follow this worldwide displacement of
but the processes and practices—and hence the
state functions and practices. To give one obvious ex-
power—that produce it are being deployed in unexpected
ample, we are well equipped to follow NGOs “on the
sites.
Following Poulantzas’s approach and terminology, we ground,” to evaluate their capacity to interpellate and
can identify a number of state effects that he did not the conscious acceptance or rejection of that interpel-
identify by name. To the isolation effect we can add, as lation. Kamran Ali’s ethnography of a family-planning
suggested earlier, an identification effect, a legibility ef- campaign in Egypt—which involves USAID, interna-
fect, and a spatialization effect. In all these cases we tionally funded NGOs, and the national govern-
observe a déplacement of state functions, a move away ment—suggests that one of the potential outcomes of
from the state system described by Miliband or even the campaign is the production of newly atomized “mod-
from the state apparatuses described by Althusser. State ern” subjects (Ali 1996, 2000). I read Ali as saying that
power is being redeployed, state effects are appearing in nongovernmental and governmental practices combine
new sites, and, in almost all cases, this move is one away in the production of quite new but quite “Egyptian” cit-
from national sites to infra-, supra-, or transnational izens. Similarly, NGOs attempting to reform “street
ones. An ethnography of the state can and should capture children” in Mexico City are also producing new but
these effects. Mexican subjects, with a different mixture of accom-
For instance, we may call an identification effect the modation and resistance on the part of the citizenry so
capacity to develop a shared conviction that “we are all shaped (Magazine 1999). Indeed, the extent to which the
in the same boat” and therefore to interpellate subjects emerging subjects recognize the statelike nature of non-
as homogeneous members of various imagined com- governmental organizations and institutions varies. Still,
munities (Poulantzas 1972, Balibar 1997, Scott 1998, there are indications that awareness of their role is
Trouillot 1997). This homogenizing process, once increasing.22
thought the fundamental purview of the national state, NGOs are only the most obvious cases begging for an
is now shared by the national state and a number of ethnography of state effects. We need to note, however,
competing sites and processes from region to gender,
that they fit within a more general movement of pri-
race, and ethnicity. Here again, identity politics helps
vatization of state functions (e.g., Hibou 1999) of which
redefine the national for better and—often—for worse.
the rise of privately run prisons, the proliferation of pri-
The so-called new social movements have also become
sites for accumulating, redirecting, or deploying social vate armies in Africa and Latin America, and the pri-
and political power that often tries to bypass or challenge vatization of public enterprises worldwide are other ev-
national states, albeit with limited success.20 Many are ident manifestations. Only careful ethnographies will
both parochial and global, with multiple boundaries.21 tell us the extent to which these—or less visible emer-
Few see national borders as the main line of demarcation gent manifestations—produce state effects.
of their activities. Are national governments left only to guard their bor-
The national state also produces what I call a legibility ders—and quite ineffectively at that? The three stories
effect, following Scott’s (1998) development on legibility with which I started this paper suggest that government
practices. However, as Scott himself suggests, govern-
ments are not the only actors who “see like a state.” 22. Beatrice Pouligny (personal communication) reports that some
Haitians say in reference to NGOs: “yo fè leta” (literally, “they
Notably in the South, NGOs and trans-state institutions
make the state”), which in Haitian parlance suggests that they have
from the World Bank to the IMF now perform identified a site of power equal to and capable of challenging the
state but also the makings of a potential bully. (The same word can
20. Emily’s List and the Sierra Club in the United States and the mean “state” or “bully” in Haitian.) At least some street children
German Greens suggest that the capacity of social move- in Mexico seem to be aware of the social overlap and flows between
ments—feminist, ecological, or other—to avoid national-statelike the personnel of state agencies and that of NGOs, an overlap that
institutionalization is not as evident as once thought. is not unique to Mexico; I read Magazine as saying that the gov-
21. Thus, almost all separatist movements have branches outside ernmental/nongovernmental divide is not significant for the street
the geopolitical borders of the state they contest. children.
still performs this role.23 More important, regardless of counters that are not immediately transparent. We may
the relative effectiveness of governments at border pa- indeed have to revert to the seemingly timeless banality
trol, the national state still produces—and quite effec- of daily life.
tively among most populations—a spatialization effect.
Citizens all over the world may reject the slogan that all
nationals are in the same boat, but they remain aware
that “we” (however defined) do live in a place usually Comments
defined in part by a political border.
While the spatialization effect may also be produced
in other sites, national governments are less likely to let chris hann
go of their power in this domain. Indeed, with the spec- Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology,
tacular exception of the European Union—a truly in- Postfach 110351, 06017 Halle/Saale, Germany. 5 ix 00
novative and changing formation of which we cannot
even guess the long-term political consequences within This is a stimulating contribution. Political anthropol-
and outside of Europe—national states are likely to hold ogy as a specialized subdiscipline originated with the
on to their power to define political boundaries. First, in efforts of scholars like Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1940)
a context marked by the obvious incapacity of national systematically to explore political organization in con-
states to function as cultural containers, the protection ditions where nothing like the modern state existed. The
of borders becomes an easy political fiction with which problem is posed anew in an age when that modern state,
to enlist support from a confused citizenry. Second, the always a highly unrealistic ideal type, has been seriously
right to define boundaries remains a fundamental com- eroded. Political anthropologists have regularly been ac-
ponent of sovereignty to which national governments cused of ethnocentrism for basing so much of their the-
must cling in an age in which many state functions are orizing on a historically specific version of the modern
being performed elsewhere. To put it bluntly, national state. Yet most specialists have held onto the term, and
states produce countries, and countries remain funda- so indeed does Trouillot himself, appropriately “en-
mentally spatial. Hence, quite understandably, most hu- larged” and demystified by a galaxy of Western Marxists.
man beings continue to act locally most of the time, even I admire Trouillot’s substantive diagnosis of globali-
while many more now claim to think globally. Anthro- zation, which is historically informed and acutely sen-
pology’s challenge for this century may very well be to sitive to widening social inequalities. He draws useful
pay deserved attention to the tensions inherent in that distinctions and shows that consumption is the sole do-
contradiction. main in which strong claims for global integration may
The respatialization of various state functions and ef- approximate reality. On the whole he strikes a sensible
fects is taking place in a context already marked by the balance, though he may underestimate the continuing
differential respatialization of markets. These incongru- force of national states and exaggerate the exceptional-
ent spatialities inevitably produce tensions in the loca- ism of the European Union, at least as it currently func-
tion of state power and in citizens’ perception of and tions. The “daily presence of the Other” in the form of
reaction to its deployment. An anthropology of the state the efflorescence of ethnic restaurants does not, it seems
may have to make these tensions a primary focus of its to me, significantly undermine a national state such as
research agenda. These tensions will be found not only the British. Trouillot overlooks the extent to which the
in organized politics but in the many practices through most popular media and sports continue to reinforce the
which citizens encounter not only government but also national “containers.”
a myriad of other statelike institutions and processes Beyond this general point, area specialists will surely
that interpellate them as individuals and as members of quibble over detail. As an East Europeanist, I would point
various communities. In short, anthropology may not out that foreign direct investment has made a big dif-
find the state ready-made, waiting for our ethnographic ference in this region in recent years, notably in Hungary.
gaze in the known sites of national government. Gov- Contrary to Trouillot’s claim (n. 20), the “identification
ernment institutions and practices are to be studied, of effects” of some “peripheral states” in this region have
course, and we can deplore that anthropology has not been strong. Putting these two facts together helps ex-
contributed enough to their study. However, we may also plain why increasing numbers in Eastern Europe now
have to look for state processes and effects in sites less oppose entry into the European Union, which they fear
obvious than those of institutionalized politics and es- will lead to still greater economic domination by the
tablished bureaucracies. We may have to insist on en- West and loss of identity.
Trouillot’s call for novel ethnographic approaches is
23. They also suggest that it is not always efficient—or at least that welcome. One might have wished, perhaps in place of
its performance is now marred by increased ambiguity. After all, the neo-Marxist theory, for more substantive discussion
Sen did go to Davos and receive a public apology from the Swiss of the many ways in which political anthropologists have
government. Since 1999 Germany has recognized jus solis (citi- set about this task in the past. For example, there exists
zenship right by birth) as well as jus sanguinis (right by descent).
Other difficulties of ethnic Turks are now being addressed by for many parts of the world a literature on local factions
German courts—one more sign if needed of this global expansion and on patron-client relations which takes as a central
of judicial rhetoric and reach. theme the impact of (central) states on (local) peripheries,
sometimes formulated in dialectical models of interac- time to begin to construct new ethnographies of the
tion. Surely some of this work could prove useful as we state. By giving us an “exploratory exercise,” Trouillot
explore new forms of interaction between the local and wants us to recognize how relevant the state is becoming
the global? for anthropologists. Remarking on Nagengast’s (1994:
I miss, too, any discussion of the different forms and 116) argument, he claims that anthropologists have not
types of state developed by several generations of polit- given enough attention to the state—its formation, struc-
ical anthropologists, for example, in explaining its evo- ture, and institutionalization. In fact, he argues that we
lution (Claessen and Skalnı́k 1981) or in documenting often use “state” where “government” would do. He sug-
the variety of contemporary postcolonial states (Chabal gests that for him an understanding of the state begins
1986). Lumping together all the states of sub-Saharan with the study of Gramsci and his later followers such
Africa seems unhelpful. The recent work of John Gled- as Althusser, Miliband, Thomas, Scott, Poulantzas, and
hill (2000) reviews ways in which anthropologists and Balibar. This list reads like one from the 1960s, as if
political scientists can usefully work together, going be- nothing had happened since. Strangely, Trouillot does
yond mere typologies, to reach better understandings of not include in his theorization any of the results of the
how different kinds of state achieve their effects (and Frankfurt School, a gap that is especially questionable
how they fail to). because many of the questions he asks have also been
It is misleading to characterize Radcliffe-Brown as a addressed by illustrious representatives of that school
methodological individualist. In the more commonly such as Habermas, Horkheimer, Adorno, Münch, and
cited sentence that follows immediately after Trouillot’s Luhmann. At the same time, there are works more
lengthy quotation, Radcliffe-Brown wrote that “the po- within the anthropological tradition that address archaic
litical organization of a society is that aspect of the total state formations (Feinman and Marcus 1998), secular and
organization which is concerned with the control and religious regimes (Moen and Gustafson 1992, Wolf 1991),
regulation of the use of physical force.” Some find this state bureaucracies (Herzfeld 1993, Bailey 1991), and
too narrow, and Radcliffe-Brown himself was also inter- state hierarchy as related to capitalistic labor formation
ested in “moral coercion.” But this is at least a clear as well as nationalism (Hoppe and Langton 1994, Weber
definition of the task. 1977). It is clear from these works that the notion of the
Trouillot’s own prescription of seeking out four types “state” is dynamic and far from uniform, hence its var-
of “statelike effect” lacks this virtue of empirical clarity. ious adjectives such as “inchoate,” “expansionist,” “des-
One wonders why he needs to hold onto the word “state” potic,” “bureaucratic,” “militaristic,” “mature,” “mer-
at all. If “state” has been oversimplified and reified by cantile,” “segmentary,” “city,” “liberal,” “dictatorial,”
other academic disciplines and even by some past an- and so on. Despite the longstanding anthropological in-
thropologists, and if the force of the national state as a terest in these categories, none of these works figure in
“container” is waning even where it was once strong, the “anthropology of the state in the age of globaliza-
then why not just drop it, or at least demote it from the tion.” Of course, one could argue that none of them deal
privileged position it has always held in political an- directly with what Trouillot is addressing here.
thropology? If the generation of Fortes and Evans-Prit- What I find intriguing in Trouillot’s article is that he
chard failed to avoid ethnocentrism because it upheld an does not remain at the level of classical (Marxist) con-
ideal type of the modern state as it set about analyzing cepts or traditional “state-level” inquiries but proceeds
premodern systems, Trouillot remains vulnerable to several steps further. He argues that there is an inter-
similar criticism in his pursuit of postmodern systems. esting duality emerging: on the one hand, there is a con-
The more radical break would be to develop new tools ceptualization that “globalization renders the state in-
for an anthropology/ethnography of force or power. In- creasingly irrelevant,” and on the other hand the state,
stead of arguing that some NGOs or the World Bank now especially the penal state, has increased its presence in
exercise “statelike power” we would be deprived of that our lives everywhere. “Capitalism” and “globalization”
shortcut and obliged to specify that power more are two terms addressed in his essay, and it is obvious
carefully. from Trouillot’s treatment that he does not share the
If the key question is how to describe and to under- current enthusiasm about either of them. I share his view
stand changing forms of power, then, to adapt the au- that “globalization does not mean that the world econ-
thor’s own comments on Radcliffe-Brown, “a generous omy is now integrated into a single space.” Fine-tuned
reading of Trouillot, which would prune out the added analyses should be able to support or, alternatively, un-
philosophical baggage of his school and times, still leaves dermine Trouillot’s idea about the contradictory devel-
us with a powerful answer.” opment of the economic modes of spatialization across
the globe and its consequent polarization. Indeed, polar-
l á s z l ó k ű r t i ization and hopelessness are the key concepts of his
Department of Political Sciences, University of thesis.
Miskolc, Miskolc, Hungary H-3515 (lkurti@helka. Surely, this is not an idyllic picture: world oligopolies
iif.hu). 11 ix 00 are increasing, with fewer multinational corporations
controlling most major commodities on the world mar-
Trouillot’s thesis is simple and useful for anthropologists ket. Not only are large chunks of regions simply being
working at the dawn of the 3d millennium: it is high left out of current developments but also states are be-
coming increasingly hierarchicized as some become heavily monitored. Similarly, while they celebrate their
poorer and others sell themselves to more prosperous freedom and autonomy, most publishing, art, and theatre
neighbors. Increasingly, as we have seen from recent venues are connected, if not ideologically then econom-
events in the former colonial states and in East Central ically, to state finances and budgetary considerations.
Europe, states are becoming the dumping ground of the Seen this way, the connection between the state and
developed West, causing further division among them. nonstate civil society, at least in Europe, will remain
With the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the cold war, strained and contradictory, a point Trouillot stresses.
even North Atlantic societies, including the U.S.A., are But—and I am not sure Trouillot agrees with me on
losing their grip on their citizens. For Trouillot all this this—the European Union, for him “a truly innovative
leads to a “fragmented globality,” one in which states, and changing formation,” while it certainly parades as a
especially nation-states, are becoming superfluous. In unique transnational political body, is financed by states
their places new social, religious, and political move- and citizens of West European nation-states. Aid distrib-
ments and nongovernmental sites have emerged, pro- uted by the various programs of the EU, the Council of
ducing powerful state effects of their own. Europe, or the European Commission passes through
But is the world so fragmented because of contem- state hands before reaching regional or local organiza-
porary globalization, or are long-term processes also at tions. This is a contradiction that deserves more an-
work here? Have not historical treatises—especially thropological attention.
those of Immanuel Wallerstein—taught us that this has Anthropologists need to pay more attention to the in-
been going on since mercantile capitalism arose in the terplay of globalization and states as well as that of states
15th and 16th centuries? Similarly, does this fragmen- and purportedly nonstate spheres. All too often “glob-
tation really entail less power and importance for na- alization” has been used to render worldwide consum-
tional regimes and nation-states as Trouillot wants us erism meaningful in scholarly terms (Jameson and Mi-
to believe? Yes and no. In his rather abstract treatment yoshi 1999). In a similar vein, “multiculturalism,”
Trouillot provides scant evidence for this. Relying on “transnationalism,” and “interculturalism” need to be
Poulantzas, he reinvigorates the argument that there is understood and analyzed in their local settings (Baumann
evidence of a worldwide déplacement of state functions 1999, Greenhouse and Kheshti 1998, Sassen 1999). For
and practices, notably through three kinds of effect: iden- calling attention to these important anthropological ar-
tification, legibility, and spatialization. Yet, regimes and eas, Trouillot deserves applause.
states are also less likely to give up their traditional role
of defining political boundaries. Thus, “national states
produce countries, and countries remain fundamentally
spatial.” But regions, groups, and nationalities can also Reply
create national states. There is a Kurdish nation and
there is a Kurdistan even though at the moment there
is no Kurdish state. I wonder for how long. What about m i c h e l - ro l p h t ro u i l l o t
the Palestinians, Kashmiris, and East Timorese who are Chicago, Ill., U.S.A. 30 ix 00
willing to fight for their states? Will the Corsicans, the
Basques, the Irish in Northern Ireland, and the European I am grateful to Hann and Kűrti for their appreciative
Gypsies follow in their footsteps? comments. I am particularly pleased that this appreci-
Moreover, states–certainly new states and transform- ation comes from specialists in Eastern Europe, an area
ing states such as these of recently liberated Eastern Eu- of the world where some of the contradictions now mar-
rope or postcolonial Africa, Asia, and Latin Amer- ring our understanding of the state are most salient.
ica—will also want to maintain a tight grip elsewhere. Implicit in this article is an epistemological position
Despite global economic forces, national economies lit- that is unabashedly antiempiricist and that should be
erally ground transnational forces. As Saskia Sassen brought forward for the purpose of this exchange. To put
writes, “National and global markets as well as globally it most simply: can the object of study be reduced to the
integrated operations require central places where the object of observation? The extreme empiricist answer to
work of globalization gets done” (1999:179). I should add that question tends to be a naive yes. This answer re-
here, on the basis of the experiences of the past ten years duces most matters of methodology to matters of re-
of freedom, capitalism, and democracy—inarguably all search techniques and mistakenly assumes all empirical
negotiable and contested terms—in the former Eastern studies to be necessarily empiricist in one form or
bloc countries, that these new states also cling desper- another.
ately to their roles of defining citizenship, military ser- Variants of this answer tend to dominate research pro-
vice, national security, and (national) education. Indeed, grams in all the social sciences. Cultural anthropol-
many airlines around the world remain in state owner- ogy—as an empirically based discipline—tended to go
ship; media waves are also owned by states, and conse- with the flow (but vide Lévi-Strauss). Only in recent
quently major radio and television stations will be in years has a growing number of anthropologists refused
state hands for many years to come. Primary, secondary, to avoid the issue of the epistemological status of eth-
and higher education are also state-controlled, and most nography. This is not the place to review that literature,
research and scientific institutions are state-owned or but it is important to note that many critiques of eth-
nography assume the theoretical conflations inherited longer avoid the issue of the relation between the object
from empiricism, thus accepting—or rejecting—en bloc of observation and the object of study.
the value of the empirical as framed by empiricism. Yet my response to this difficulty, new as it may seem,
How does all this relate to the study of the state in is simple and old-fashioned in its antiempiricism: the
the age of globalization? state never was an object of observation. It was always
Since the last quarter of the 20th century, both the a construction—at worst an ideological construction, at
speed and the contradictory directions of global flows best a theoretical construction, that is, an object of study
have contributed to a blurring of the functions and the (Poulantzas 1972). Therefore the theoretical task is to
boundaries of the traditional objects of observation of locate conceptualizations of the state upon which we can
the social sciences. One of the most affected objects is build this object of study in ways that account both for
“the state,” in part because globalization produces spa- recent history and for the ideological role of the state.
tialities—and identities—that cut through national Both Hann and Kűrti acknowledge the necessity of that
boundaries more obviously than before, in part because search. Both also allude to lacunae in my handling of it.
the social sciences have tended to take these very same Let me explain some of the silences.
boundaries and identities for granted. First, this text was meant to be not a review article
My clamoring about these changes may have given but an essay that I still view as quite exploratory. Second,
both Hann and Kűrti the impression that I am too close some of the writings mentioned by Hann and Kűrti as-
to the globalitarists, although both acknowledge that I sume a state functioning, even if poorly, along the lines
specify precisely what I mean by globalization. Thus, I inherited from the 19th century. To take Mexico or Peru
agree with Kűrti’s evaluations of current historical as examples, it seems to me judicious to posit that what
trends. What he perceives as disagreements may be due patron–client ties meant in the 1950s may have radically
to misreadings or subtle shifts in emphasis. I certainly changed and should be open to new investigations. Such
agree with him that long-term processes are at work in investigations require that we problematize anew the
what we now call globalization. I also agree that the relation between object of observation and object of
European Union makes sense only against the back- study.
ground of national states, that Eastern European govern- I am not satisfied with the tradition that would simply
ments cling to their role in defining citizenship. Assess- cast the state as an “ideal type” (Hann) for two reasons.
ing Benedict Anderson’s influential work, I suggested a First, in spite of Max Weber’s careful construction of that
few years ago that the nation is not an imagined political notion, the general tendency is to posit the ideal type as
community but an imagined community projected a construction and then proceed as if that caveat solved
against politics, more specifically against state power the problem of the object of observation once and for all.
(Trouillot 1990:25–26). In short, I do not think that na- Second, even in Weber, ideal types function better when
tional states have become irrelevant as containers for the the relation between the two objects—the historical par-
English or the French or as projects for Palestinians, ticulars “out there” and the object to be theorized—is
Kashmiris, Kurds, Nevisians, Basques, Martinicans, assumed to be known and, therefore, not subject to pro-
Puerto Ricans, Corsicans, or Gypsies, to cite only a very found changes.
few. Rather, my contention is that both the resistance Since I suspect that the nature, the role, and the func-
and the efficiency of these containers and the feasibility tions of national governments are going through pro-
and desirability of these projects now face qualitatively found changes due to globalization, I find a better anchor
new obstacles because of globalization. in what Hann calls “a galaxy of Western Marxists.” Yet
Any of the above examples can illustrate the contra- I have neglected a number of stars, most notably the
dictions and tensions that mark our times. While the Marxist writings that promote an instrumentalist notion
European Union indeed rests upon the power of national of the state. Rather, I emphasize the tradition that ex-
governments, it is also developing new forms of trans- plicitly addressed the illusory character of the state and
national sovereignty and a new legal order (Bermann et yet saw the need to construct it as an object of study
al. 1993). There and elsewhere, while the state continues once removed from “government” and thus twice re-
to be relevant, that relevance is not encapsulated en- moved from an empirical given “out there.” Thus, I am
tirely—if indeed it ever was—by national governments. holding onto not merely a term or a school but a con-
Further, other institutions are now acting in a statelike ceptual lineage and a theoretical apparatus that is
manner and producing statelike effects. We cannot sim- evoked—if not fully deployed—every time that word is
ply say that the state is an ideal type and proceed as if used.
national governments were mere historical manifesta- If that theoretical apparatus is as sound as I think it
tions of that type—not with NGOs fulfilling many func- is, if it is indeed the best able to help us understand new
tions once in the purview of government ministries, not historical forms, then the next issue is methodological.
with drug cartels or private armies harnessing more en- If the state is not a given “out there,” what then is the
forcement power than the national police. The extraor- object of observation? The answer to this question must
dinary power that the IMF has assumed over the lives proceed from the conceptualization. We cannot expect
of millions of human beings in the past 20 years cannot the object of observation to come to the ethnographer
be forced into a residual category such as the “interna- with “empirical clarity,” lest we find in the field exactly
tional.” In short, my starting point is that we can no what we came to find. Nor can we attribute a priori all
deployments of power to the state—a theoretical move Archaic states. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
that would implicitly reject most of the literature on the [lk]
f o r t e s , m . , a n d e . e . e v a n s - p r i t c h a r d . Editors. 1940.
state and most of the literature on power. African political systems. London: Oxford University Press.
My development of the notion of state effects, as [ch]
adapted from Poulantzas, is nothing but a small contri- g l e d h i l l , j . 2000. 2d edition. Power and its disguises: An-
bution to the construction of this object of observation. thropological perspectives on politics. London: Pluto. [ch]
g r e e n h o u s e , c a r o l j . , a n d r o s h a n a k k h e s h t i . Edi-
Since that object cannot be an empirical a priori, we need
tors. 1998. Democracy and ethnography: Constructing identi-
middle-ground notions that can help ethnographers iden- ties in multicultural liberal states. Albany: State University of
tify the actions, ideas, and facts that will constitute it New York Press. [lk]
in each particular case. I see the notion of state effects g u p t a , a k h i l . 1995. Blurred boundaries: The discourse of cor-
as one of many possible methodological tools in that ruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state. Ameri-
can Ethnologist 22:375–402.
search for the relevant empirical material. It makes the h e r z f e l d , m i c h a e l . 1994. The social production of indiffer-
task manageable inasmuch as it calls the ethnographer’s ence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [lk]
attention to particular forms of power deployment. Yet h e y m a n , j o s i a h m c c . 1998. State effects on labor exploita-
it does not preclude novelty inasmuch as it leaves open tion: The INS and undocumented immigrants at the Mexico-
the circumstances under which these effects obtain. United States border. Critique of Anthropology 18:155–79.
———. 1999. United States surveillance over Mexican lives at
Thus, it can be adapted to various situations in and out the border: Snapshots of an emerging regime. Human Organi-
of the North Atlantic. In the end, the ethnocentrism of zation 58:429–37.
individual theorists matters less than anthropology’s h i b o u , b é a t r i c e . Editor. 1999. La privatisation des états.
contribution to disabling the methodological ethnocen- Paris: Karthala.
trism that has characterized the social sciences. h o p p e , g ö r a n , a n d j o h n l a n g t o n . 1994. Peasantry and
capitalism: Western Östergötland in the nineteenth century.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [lk]
j a m e s o n , f r e d e r i c k , a n d m a s a o m i y o s h i . Editors.
1999. The cultures of globalization. Durham: Duke University
Press. [lk]
j e s s o p , b o b . 1985. Nicos Poulantzas: Marxist theory and po-
References Cited litical strategy. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
l a i d i . 1993. L’ordre mondial relaché: Sens et puissance après
la guerre froide. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.
a b r a m s , p h i l i p . 1988. Notes on the difficulty of studying the l u x e m b u r g , r o s a . 1951 (1914). The accumulation of capi-
state. Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1):58–89. tal. New York: Monthly Review Press.
a d d a , j a c q u e s . 1996a. La mondialisation de l’économie. m a c c h i o c c i , m a r i a - a n t o n i e t t a . 1974. Pour Gramsci.
Vol. 1. La genèse. Paris: La Découverte. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
———. 1996b. La mondialisation de l’économie. Vol. 2. Les m a g a z i n e , r o g e r . 1999. Stateless contexts: Street children
problèmes. Paris: La Découverte. and soccer fans in Mexico City. Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins
a l i , k a m r a n a s d a r . 1996. The politics of family planning University, Baltimore, Md.
in Egypt. Anthropology Today 12. m a s a k i , k o t a b e , a n d k r i s t i a a n h e l s e n . 1998. Global
———. 2000. “Making ‘responsible’ men: Planning the family in marketing management. New York: John Wiley.
Egypt,” in Fertility and the male life-cycle in the era of fertil- m a t t e l a r t , a r m a n d . “La nouvelle idéologie globalitaire,”
ity decline. Edited by Caroline Bledsoe, Susana Lerner, and in La mondialisation au-delà des mythes. Edited by S. Cordel-
Jane Guyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. lier, pp. 81–92. Paris: La Découverte.
a l t h u s s e r , l o u i s . 1971(1969). Lenin and philosophy, and
m i l i b a n d , r a l p h . 1969. The state in capitalist society. New
other essays. Translated by Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly
York: Harper Books.
Review Press.
m o e n , m a t t h e w c . , a n d l o w e l l s . g u s t a f s o n . Edi-
b a i l e y, f . g . 1991. The prevalence of deceit. Ithaca: Cornell
tors. 1992. The religious challenge to the state. Philadelphia:
University Press. [lk]
Temple University Press. [lk]
b a l i b a r , e t i e n n e . 1997. La crainte des masses: Politique et
philosophie avant et après Marx. Paris: Galilée. n a g e n g a s t , c a r o l . 1994. Violence, terror, and the crisis of
b a u m a n n , g e r d . 1999. The multicultural riddle: Rethinking the state. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:109–36.
national, ethnic, and religious identities. New York and Lon- n u g e n t , d a v i d . 1994. Building the state, making the nation:
don: Routledge. [lk] The bases and limits of state centralization in “modern” Peru.
b e r m a n n , g e o r g e a . , e t a l . 1993. Cases and materials on American Anthropologist 96:333–69.
European Community law. St. Paul: West. o h m a e , k e n ’ i c h i . 1985. Triad power: The coming shape of
b u c c i - g l u c k s m a n , c h r i s t i n e . 1975. Gramsci et l’état: competition. New York: Free Press.
Pour une théorie matérialiste de la philosophie. Paris: Fayard. p a r s o n s , t a l c o t t . 1951. The social system. New York:
c h a b a l , p . Editor. 1986. Political domination in Africa: Re- Free Press.
flections on the limits of power. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- p o u l a n t z a s , n i c o s . 1972. Pouvoir politique et classes so-
versity Press. [ch] ciales. Paris: Maspero.
c h e s n a i s , f r a n ç o i s . 1994. La mondialisation du capital. r a d c l i f f e - b r o w n , a . r . 1955[1940]. “Preface,” in African
Paris: Syros–Alternatives Economiques. political systems. Edited by M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Prit-
c l a e s s e n , h . j . m . , a n d p . s k a l n ı́ k . Editors. 1981. The chard. London: Oxford University Press.
study of the state. The Hague: Mouton. [ch] r e i c h , r o b e r t . 1992. The work of nations: Preparing our-
c o m a r o f f , j e a n , a n d j o h n l . c o m a r o f f . 2000. Millen- selves for 21st-century capitalism. New York: Knopf.
nial capitalism: First thoughts on the second coming. Public r e s c h , r o b e r t p a u l . 1992. Althusser and the renewal of
Culture 12:291–343. Marxist social theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
c o r d e l i e r , s e r g e . Editor. 2000. La mondialisation au-delà s a s s e n , s a s k i a . 1998. Globalization and its discontents.
des mythes. Paris: La Découverte. New York: New Press.
f e i n m a n , g a r y m . , a n d j o y c e m a r c u s . Editors. 1998. ———. 1999. “Whose city is it? Globalization and the formation
of new claims,” in Cities and citizenship. Edited by J. Holston, t u r n e r , t e r r e n c e . n.d. Globalization, the state, and social
pp. 177–94. Durham: Duke University Press. [lk] consciousness in the late twentieth century. MS.
s c o t t , j a m e s c . 1998. Seeing like a state: How certain w a d e , r . 1996. Japan, the World Bank, and the art of paradigm
schemes to improve human condition have failed. New Ha- maintenance: The East Asian miracle in political perspective.
ven: Yale University Press. New Left Review 217:3–36.
t h o m a s , p a u l . 1994. Alien politics: Marxist state theory re- w e b e r , e u g e n . 1977. Peasants into Frenchman: The moderni-
trieved. New York: Routledge. zation of rural France 1870–1914. London: Chatto and Windus.
t r o u i l l o t , m i c h e l - r o l p h . 1990. Haiti, state against na-
[lk]
tion: The origins and legacy of Duvalierism. New York:
w e i s s , l i n d a . 1997. The myth of the powerless state. New
Monthly Review Press.
———. 1996. “Démocratie et société civile,” in Les transitions Left Review 38.
démocratiques. Edited by L. Hurbon, pp. 225–31. Paris: Edi- ———. 1998. The myth of the powerless state. Ithaca: Cornell
tions Syros. University Press.
———. 1997. “A social contract for whom? Haitian history and w o l f , e r i c . Editor. 1991. Religious regimes and state-forma-
Haiti’s future,” in Haiti renewed. Edited by R. Rotberg, pp. tion: Perspectives from European ethnology. Albany: State Uni-
47–59. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. versity of New York Press. [lk]

Michel-Rolph Trouillot - The Anthropology of The State in The Age of Globalization

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Michel-Rolph Trouillot - The Anthropology of The State in The Age of Globalization

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Michel-Rolph Trouillot - The Anthropology of The State in The Age of Globalization

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the main topic of the article?

What examples are provided to illustrate the author's points?

The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization Close Encounters of the

The University of Chicago Press, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological

German government when in fact he had never set foot

Changing Containers onomic or in other walks of life. Indeed, the number of

You might also like