Sovereignty as Care
Acquaintances, Mutuality, and Scale in the Wa State of Myanmar
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2109297 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hans Steinmüller (0000-0002-5921-421X, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 64 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 910-933 |
| Publication date | 2022-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0010417522000299 |
| OpenAlex | W4294219726 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 30 |
Sovereignty always relies on a double movement of violence and care. It requires the power to exercise violence as well as the capacity to care, to protect, and to nourish. In the footsteps of Foucault and Agamben, numerous scholars have rediscovered the same paradox in philosophical and legal texts. Anthropologists writing about informal and practical sovereignty pay attention to violence, but sometimes ignore the importance of care for the exercise of sovereignty. Against such tendencies to focus on texts and on violence, this article deals with sovereignty as care. The concrete examples are the relationships of care between commanders, soldiers, and villagers in the Wa State of Myanmar, a de-facto state governed by an insurgent army. In the absence of an effective government bureaucracy, popular sovereignty in this military state relies on a particular logic of personal relations, in which care is central. Subordinates have to careaboutleaders, whereas leaders are supposed to careforsubordinates. Care provides the balance and foil for the exercise of violence, and both are necessary for the exercise of sovereignty. The combination of violence and care in personal relations is scaled up to create 'the people' as the subject and object of sovereignty. The article describes the logic of personal relations that allows for the exercise of popular sovereignty in the Wa State and elsewhere
Bureaucracy · Political science · Politics · Popular sovereignty · Power (physics · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cambodian History and Society · Turkey's Politics and Society · Law
Scale and social organization
Political Authority in Burma's Ethnic Minority States
Cultures of Relatedness
The Ethics of Care
Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge
Kinship, Contract, Community, and State
Pioneers of the plantation economy
Kings of Disaster
In a different voice
Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance
Social security and care after socialism
Slavery as the commodification of people
Gestures of Care and Recognition
Dead zones of the imagination
Care as social organization
Sovereignty and political modernity
Communities of care
Sovereignty Revisited
The Ethics and Aesthetics of Care
What kinship is (part one)
Before Nation
People First
State, Mind, and Legibility Without Writing in the Wa State of Myanmar
Conscription by Capture in the Wa State of Myanmar
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |