Finn Stepputat
Biographic Data
| ID | 77845 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Finn Stepputat |
| GIVEN NAMES | Finn |
| FAMILY NAME | Stepputat |
| SIGNATURE | STEPPUTAT F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Danish Institute for International Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3011-989X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1088 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 6 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Logistics, Politics and Berbera in the Eye of an International Storm
Un accord récemment signé entre l'Éthiopie et le Somaliland afin de développer le port de Berbera au Somaliland et d'y construire une base navale a réveillé d'anciennes tensions et craintes d'un conflit avec la Somalie. Cet article replace l'accord dans un contexte où l'on assiste à un accroissement des investissements dans les infrastructures et au développement conjoint de violences dans la Corne de l'Afrique. En tenant compte du rôle des ident…
The Revival and Re-Embedding of Somali Ports
The chapter argues that port infrastructures have been a key asset in the sometimes violent politics of circulation and state formation after Somali state collapse. The control and development of seaports has had a decisive influence on the making and eroding of Somali state entities. It provides an overview of the conflictive history and recent revival of four major seaports on the Somali coast before zooming in on the changes that DP World’s in…
Trade Makes States: Governing the Greater Somali Economy
Special issue introduction: Burial and the politics of dead bodies in times of Covid-19 (part 2)
When the rst wave of COVID-19 ravaged the world in 2020, we made a call for a special issue of Human Remains and Violence to document early experiences and re ections on the management of those who died from the virus. In hot spots of the pandemic in particular, the sudden surge in numbers of dead bodies overwhelmed o en under-resourced and unprepared institutions of death care; new protocols of management of potentially infected dead bodies chan…
Special issue introduction: Burial and the politics of dead bodies in times of Covid-19
This article considers how the reburial and commemoration of the human remains of the Republican defeated during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) is affected by the social, scientific and political context in which the exhumations occur. Focusing on a particular case in the southwestern region of Extremadura, it considers how civil society groups administer reburial acts when a positive identification through DNA typing cannot be attained. In so d…
Revenues on the hoof: Livestock trade, taxation and state-making in the Somali territories
This article considers the relationship between livestock taxation and local state formation dynamics in the northern Somali territories. While the economic importance of livestock in Somalia is undisputed, its significance as a source of revenue and legitimacy for public administrations and competing state-building projects has been overlooked. Drawing on fieldwork in Somaliland’s main livestock markets and the Berbera corridor, we highlight the…
Governing the dead
He has conducted fi eldwork in
Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies
Governing the dead
This chapter sets out the theoretical terrain that the authors of the volume navigate in their analyses, a terrain where dead bodies and sovereign practice intersect. It looks at four different approaches, including psychoanalysis ('fear of death'), critical theory ('between bio- and necropolitics'), the anthropology of rituals ('sacralisation of authority') and lastly more ideas of materiality and alterity ('dead agency'). Given the theoretical …
States of circulation: Logistics off the beaten path
Politics of circulation: The makings of the Berbera corridor in Somali East Africa
This article explores the co-production of political order and circulation in what today is known as Berbera corridor, a trade and transport corridor that connects landlocked Ethiopia and Berbera Port in the breakaway Republic of Somaliland. We analyse the 'politics of circulation' that are set in motion by the articulation of different projects of making goods circulate and capturing revenue from circulation. Such politics involve a plurality of…
Anthropology and the enigma of the state
This chapter provides an inventory of ‘the anthropology of the state’. It starts from the insight that the anthropology of the state drew considerably more on scholars of political science, political philosophy and sociology than on political anthropology. The ‘theoretical genealogies’ of the field challenged the taken-for-grantedness of the state as a ‘distinct, fixed and unitary entity’ operating outside and above society. The chapter concludes…
Contre-insurrection et urbanisation dans la guerre civile guatémaltèque
Cette étude traite de la façon dont l’armée guatémaltèque a utilisé le déplacement et la concentration des populations rurales dans des camps et des habitats concentrés comme moyen de rétablir le contrôle sur le territoire national dans le contexte de l’insurrection armée du début des années 1980. Les officiers guatémaltèques ont été profondément influencés par les diverses expériences des campagnes de contre-insurrection menées en Algérie et au …
Introduction: Peacebuilding in an era of pragmatism
The politics of international peacebuilding are undergoing a pragmatic turn. The era of liberal idealism and interventionism is closing, and while the contours of the emerging global order remain uncertain, a more pragmatic approach to the means and ends of peace appears to be on the rise.1 Considerable academic work has gone into analysing the limitations of the ‘old’ liberal peace model, yet so far there has been only limited research on peace …
Pragmatic peace in emerging governscapes
In examining different forms of pragmatic peacebuilding—including the turn to the local, hybrid orders, resilience and non-state actors—this article argues that such approaches bring about analytical and normative challenges that are difficult to deal with within state-centred frameworks. As an alternative, the article develops the notion of ‘governscapes’ as a framing device that can help examine, first, the uneven ways in which the use of force…
Governing the dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies
Formations of Sovereignty at the Frontier of the Modern State
This article discusses the recent revision of the notion of sovereignty that emphasizes de facto rather than de jure sovereignty, understanding sovereignty as an effect of performative claims to sovereignty. As an implication of this approach, we come to see political landscapes as formed by multiple, overlapping, coexisting, and sometimes competing claims to sovereignty operating within and across boundaries. The article suggests using "formatio…
Sociology and Forced Migration
This chapter examines the sociology of forced migration and how forced migration studies have contributed to sociology. It considers how sociological methods, concepts, and theories have advanced our understanding of the causes, experiences, and impacts of forced migration on micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. In particular, it looks at how sociology has tended to be defined by policy labels and categories, such as refugees, internally displaced pe…
Securing the city. Neoliberalism, space, and insecurity in postwar Guatemala edited by O’Neill, Kevin Lewis and Kedron Thomas
Knowledge production in the security-development nexus: An ethnographic reflection
This article contributes to the analysis of transnationalized forms of security governance in the postcolonial world by looking into the production of knowledge aimed at increasing coherence between domains of security and development in Western donor policies. The article takes an ethnographic approach to the analysis of knowledge production, using the author's personal experience of writing a policy analysis for a donor government concerning ho…
Escaping the Fire: How an Ixil Mayan Pastor Led his People out of a Holocaust during the Guatemalan Civil War - by Guzaro, Tomás and Mc Comb, Terri J
At the frontiers of the modern state in post-war Guatemala
Culture in chaos. An anthropology of the social condition in war by Lubkeman, Stephen C: Reviews
Violence, Sovereignty, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Peru
Forced Migration, Land and Sovereignty
Land is a key issue in the aftermath of wars. The return or resettlement of displaced populations accentuates land-related problems, and international support seeks to strengthen the state's administration of land. This article explores ethnographically a land conflict in Guatemala between returning refugees and former members of a civil defence patrol, including the intervention of state and international institutions. In dialogue with Carl Schm…
States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State
Contents: States of imagination Thomas Blom Hansen University of Edinburgh and Finn Stepputat Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen I State as governance Demonic societies: Liberalism, bio-politics and sovereignty Mitchell Dean Macquarie University Governing population: The integrated child development services program in Indian Akhil Gupta Stanford University The battlefield and the prize: ANC's bid to reform the South African state Steffe…
Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World
Preface vii List of Contributors ix Introduction 1 Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat RACE, LAW, AND CITIZENSHIP Territorializing the Nation and Integrating the Indian: Mestizaje in Mexican Official Discourses and Public Culture by Ana Maria Alonso 39 Violence, Sovereignty, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Peru by Finn Stepputat 61 Sovereign Violence and the Domain of the Political by Partha Chatterjee 82 DEATH, ANXIETY, AND RITUALS OF STATE Co…
Sovereignty Revisited
Sovereignty has returned as a central concern in anthropology. This reinvention seeks to explore de facto sovereignty, i.e., the ability to kill, punish, and discipline with impunity. The central proposition is a call to abandon sovereignty as an ontological ground of power and order in favor of a view of sovereignty as a tentative and always emergent form of authority grounded in violence. After a brief account of why the classical work on kings…
States of circulation: Logistics off the beaten path
Politics of circulation: The makings of the Berbera corridor in Somali East Africa
This article explores the co-production of political order and circulation in what today is known as Berbera corridor, a trade and transport corridor that connects landlocked Ethiopia and Berbera Port in the breakaway Republic of Somaliland. We analyse the 'politics of circulation' that are set in motion by the articulation of different projects of making goods circulate and capturing revenue from circulation. Such politics involve a plurality of…
Knowledge production in the security-development nexus: An ethnographic reflection
This article contributes to the analysis of transnationalized forms of security governance in the postcolonial world by looking into the production of knowledge aimed at increasing coherence between domains of security and development in Western donor policies. The article takes an ethnographic approach to the analysis of knowledge production, using the author's personal experience of writing a policy analysis for a donor government concerning ho…
Marching for Progress: Rituals of Citizenship, State and Belonging in a High Andes District
This article explores processes of citizenship and state formation in the Central Peruvian Andes in the wake of the armed conflict through the lens of a public ritual, the celebration of a district anniversary. The celebration is a reservoir of practices from past forms of state formation and may be read as a claim for recognition as full-blown members of the nation-state. While practices of citizenship as rights are emerging, the celebration is …
Repatriation and the Politics of Space: The Case of the Mayan Diaspora and Return Movement
This paper explores the meanings of return and repatriation among Guatemalan refugees who are now returning from a decade of exile in Mexico. The analysis applies a transnational perspective which does not take the attachment of people to certain places and territories as a natural given. Rather, it is argued, the dynamics of flight and return should be explored in terms of the 'politics of space' of the nation state, that is, the development and…
Politics of Displacement in Guatemala
This article examines the processes and effects of displacement during the armed conflict in Guatemala. The analytical approach emphasizes the relations between space, power and culture and draws upon writers like Henry Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, de Certeau and the French army officer, Roger Trinquier. The article argues that the army, through the massive displacement of population and the organization of civil patrols, produced a dichotomous spa…
Formations of Sovereignty at the Frontier of the Modern State
This article discusses the recent revision of the notion of sovereignty that emphasizes de facto rather than de jure sovereignty, understanding sovereignty as an effect of performative claims to sovereignty. As an implication of this approach, we come to see political landscapes as formed by multiple, overlapping, coexisting, and sometimes competing claims to sovereignty operating within and across boundaries. The article suggests using "formatio…
The Rise and Fall of 'Internally Displaced People' in the Central Peruvian Andes
This article analyses the possible effects of the introduction of the category of 'internally displaced people'- IDP - in the context of violent conflict in central Peru. It gives an account of the ways in which the IDP category has been introduced and appropriated by local NGOs, people affected by violent conflict and displacement, and by the governmental organization, PAR, set up to facilitate return and repopulation after the declared end of t…
Pragmatic peace in emerging governscapes
In examining different forms of pragmatic peacebuilding—including the turn to the local, hybrid orders, resilience and non-state actors—this article argues that such approaches bring about analytical and normative challenges that are difficult to deal with within state-centred frameworks. As an alternative, the article develops the notion of ‘governscapes’ as a framing device that can help examine, first, the uneven ways in which the use of force…
Introduction: Peacebuilding in an era of pragmatism
The politics of international peacebuilding are undergoing a pragmatic turn. The era of liberal idealism and interventionism is closing, and while the contours of the emerging global order remain uncertain, a more pragmatic approach to the means and ends of peace appears to be on the rise.1 Considerable academic work has gone into analysing the limitations of the ‘old’ liberal peace model, yet so far there has been only limited research on peace …
Forced Migration, Land and Sovereignty
Land is a key issue in the aftermath of wars. The return or resettlement of displaced populations accentuates land-related problems, and international support seeks to strengthen the state's administration of land. This article explores ethnographically a land conflict in Guatemala between returning refugees and former members of a civil defence patrol, including the intervention of state and international institutions. In dialogue with Carl Schm…
Revenues on the hoof: Livestock trade, taxation and state-making in the Somali territories
This article considers the relationship between livestock taxation and local state formation dynamics in the northern Somali territories. While the economic importance of livestock in Somalia is undisputed, its significance as a source of revenue and legitimacy for public administrations and competing state-building projects has been overlooked. Drawing on fieldwork in Somaliland’s main livestock markets and the Berbera corridor, we highlight the…
Narrations of authority and mobility
Women and men use local experience and experiences gained elsewhere when they embark on migratory projects to reconfigure social space and practices back home. To explore this claim, the authors argue that we must analyze the relationship between mobility and authority, especially how experiences of mobility bestow authority on the moving subjects. This argument is illustrated by an examination of three differently situated narratives from which …
Special issue introduction: Burial and the politics of dead bodies in times of Covid-19
This article considers how the reburial and commemoration of the human remains of the Republican defeated during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) is affected by the social, scientific and political context in which the exhumations occur. Focusing on a particular case in the southwestern region of Extremadura, it considers how civil society groups administer reburial acts when a positive identification through DNA typing cannot be attained. In so d…
Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security
1Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security Mark Duffield London and New York Zed Books 2001 x + 293 Paperback£16.95 1 85649 749 6 Hardback£49.95 1 85649 748 8
The Imagined Return Community of Guatemalan Refugees
Repatriation and the Politics of Space: The Case of the Mayan Diaspora and Return Movement
This paper explores the meanings of return and repatriation among Guatemalan refugees who are now returning from a decade of exile in Mexico. The analysis applies a transnational perspective which does not take the attachment of people to certain places and territories as a natural given. Rather, it is argued, the dynamics of flight and return should be explored in terms of the 'politics of space' of the nation state, that is, the development and…
The Imagined Return Community of Guatemalan Refugees
Politics of Displacement in Guatemala
This article examines the processes and effects of displacement during the armed conflict in Guatemala. The analytical approach emphasizes the relations between space, power and culture and draws upon writers like Henry Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, de Certeau and the French army officer, Roger Trinquier. The article argues that the army, through the massive displacement of population and the organization of civil patrols, produced a dichotomous spa…
Urbanizing the Countryside: Armed Conflict, State Formation, and the Politics of Place in Contemporary Guatemala
Journeys of Fear: Refugee Return and National Transformation in Guatemala
1Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen Journeys of Fear: Refugee Return and National Transformation in Guatemala Liisa L. North Alan B. Simmons Montreal and Kingston McGill‐Queen's University Press 1999 xv + 337 HardbackUS$60 0 7735 1861 4 PaperbackUS$22.95 0 7735 1862 2
Narrations of authority and mobility
Women and men use local experience and experiences gained elsewhere when they embark on migratory projects to reconfigure social space and practices back home. To explore this claim, the authors argue that we must analyze the relationship between mobility and authority, especially how experiences of mobility bestow authority on the moving subjects. This argument is illustrated by an examination of three differently situated narratives from which …
States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State
Contents: States of imagination Thomas Blom Hansen University of Edinburgh and Finn Stepputat Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen I State as governance Demonic societies: Liberalism, bio-politics and sovereignty Mitchell Dean Macquarie University Governing population: The integrated child development services program in Indian Akhil Gupta Stanford University The battlefield and the prize: ANC's bid to reform the South African state Steffe…
The Rise and Fall of 'Internally Displaced People' in the Central Peruvian Andes
This article analyses the possible effects of the introduction of the category of 'internally displaced people'- IDP - in the context of violent conflict in central Peru. It gives an account of the ways in which the IDP category has been introduced and appropriated by local NGOs, people affected by violent conflict and displacement, and by the governmental organization, PAR, set up to facilitate return and repopulation after the declared end of t…
Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security
1Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security Mark Duffield London and New York Zed Books 2001 x + 293 Paperback£16.95 1 85649 749 6 Hardback£49.95 1 85649 748 8
Diane M. Nelson: A Finger in the Wound. Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala
Anmeldes af Finn Stepputat
Lynchning: En Svøbe for Menneskeheden
The article explores the phenomenon of mob violence in predominatly Mayan towns in rural Guatemala. Since 1996, more than 100 people have been killed by crowds in rural towns. The victims have usually been young men accused of often minor criminal acts, or representatives of the state trying to protect the victims. The occurrence of mob violence coincides roughly with the area where the army organized civil self-defence patrols during the civil w…
Marching for Progress: Rituals of Citizenship, State and Belonging in a High Andes District
This article explores processes of citizenship and state formation in the Central Peruvian Andes in the wake of the armed conflict through the lens of a public ritual, the celebration of a district anniversary. The celebration is a reservoir of practices from past forms of state formation and may be read as a claim for recognition as full-blown members of the nation-state. While practices of citizenship as rights are emerging, the celebration is …
Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World
Preface vii List of Contributors ix Introduction 1 Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat RACE, LAW, AND CITIZENSHIP Territorializing the Nation and Integrating the Indian: Mestizaje in Mexican Official Discourses and Public Culture by Ana Maria Alonso 39 Violence, Sovereignty, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Peru by Finn Stepputat 61 Sovereign Violence and the Domain of the Political by Partha Chatterjee 82 DEATH, ANXIETY, AND RITUALS OF STATE Co…
Sovereignty Revisited
Sovereignty has returned as a central concern in anthropology. This reinvention seeks to explore de facto sovereignty, i.e., the ability to kill, punish, and discipline with impunity. The central proposition is a call to abandon sovereignty as an ontological ground of power and order in favor of a view of sovereignty as a tentative and always emergent form of authority grounded in violence. After a brief account of why the classical work on kings…
Forced Migration, Land and Sovereignty
Land is a key issue in the aftermath of wars. The return or resettlement of displaced populations accentuates land-related problems, and international support seeks to strengthen the state's administration of land. This article explores ethnographically a land conflict in Guatemala between returning refugees and former members of a civil defence patrol, including the intervention of state and international institutions. In dialogue with Carl Schm…
Violence, Sovereignty, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Peru
At the frontiers of the modern state in post-war Guatemala
Culture in chaos. An anthropology of the social condition in war by Lubkeman, Stephen C: Reviews
Securing the city. Neoliberalism, space, and insecurity in postwar Guatemala edited by O’Neill, Kevin Lewis and Kedron Thomas
Knowledge production in the security-development nexus: An ethnographic reflection
This article contributes to the analysis of transnationalized forms of security governance in the postcolonial world by looking into the production of knowledge aimed at increasing coherence between domains of security and development in Western donor policies. The article takes an ethnographic approach to the analysis of knowledge production, using the author's personal experience of writing a policy analysis for a donor government concerning ho…
Escaping the Fire: How an Ixil Mayan Pastor Led his People out of a Holocaust during the Guatemalan Civil War - by Guzaro, Tomás and Mc Comb, Terri J
Sociology and Forced Migration
This chapter examines the sociology of forced migration and how forced migration studies have contributed to sociology. It considers how sociological methods, concepts, and theories have advanced our understanding of the causes, experiences, and impacts of forced migration on micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. In particular, it looks at how sociology has tended to be defined by policy labels and categories, such as refugees, internally displaced pe…
Formations of Sovereignty at the Frontier of the Modern State
This article discusses the recent revision of the notion of sovereignty that emphasizes de facto rather than de jure sovereignty, understanding sovereignty as an effect of performative claims to sovereignty. As an implication of this approach, we come to see political landscapes as formed by multiple, overlapping, coexisting, and sometimes competing claims to sovereignty operating within and across boundaries. The article suggests using "formatio…
Governing the dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies
Anthropology and the enigma of the state
This chapter provides an inventory of ‘the anthropology of the state’. It starts from the insight that the anthropology of the state drew considerably more on scholars of political science, political philosophy and sociology than on political anthropology. The ‘theoretical genealogies’ of the field challenged the taken-for-grantedness of the state as a ‘distinct, fixed and unitary entity’ operating outside and above society. The chapter concludes…
Political science (29 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (14 works) · History (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Geography (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Politics and Society in Latin America (7 works)