State-like and state dislike in the anthropological margins★

Bibliographic Data

ID2253997
AuthorsJ Scheele (0000-0001-7224-7668, EHESS/Centre Norbert Elias, Centre de la Vieille Charité École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales 13002 Marseille France, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume27
Issue4
Pages909-927
Publication date2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-0987 • E-ISSN: 1467-9655
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9655.13610
OpenAlexW3201291700
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited72

This article argues for a return to the study of non-state political institutions, and for the need to free them from their association with locally circumscribed, unmarked, or even 'unthought' practice. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, there is a growing interest beyond anthropology in non-state political arrangements, whether they are described negatively, as the result of 'state failure', or positively. On the other, a focus on the 'non-state', historical and contemporary, opens up crucial perspectives on 'the state', and, through it, on questions of different regimes of historicity and region formation. In other words, it might provide insights into political anthropology as a study of shared thought and imagination, beyond ideal-types of modern bureaucratic governance. This is what this article attempts to do, with special reference to North African and Saharan examples

Bureaucracy · Corporate governance · Epistemology · Focus (optics · Historicity (philosophy · Ideal (ethics · Political anthropology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · State formation · African Studies and Ethnography · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cambodian History and Society · Law · Philosophy