Thinking beyond the State

Marc Abélès, Phillip Rousseau, Marie-Claude Haince

Description

The French scholar Marc Abeles is one of the leading political and philosophical anthropologists of our time. He is perhaps the leading anthropologist writing on the state and globalization. Thinking beyond the State, a distillation of his work to date, is a superb introduction to his contributions to both anthropology and political philosophy. Abeles observes that while interdependence and interconnection have become characteristic features of our globalized era, there is no indication that a concomitant evolution in thinking about political systems has occurred. The state remains the shield-for both the Right and the Left-against the turbulent effects of globalization. According to Abeles, we live in a geopolitical universe that, in many respects, reproduces alienating logics. His book, therefore, is a primer on how to see beyond the state. It is also a testament to anthropology's centrality and importance in any analysis of the global human predicament. Thinking beyond the State will find wide application in anthropology, political science and philosophy courses dealing with the state and globalization.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501709364
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Thinking beyond the State

Thinking beyond the State

Marc Abélès

Translated by Phillip Rousseau and MarieClaude Haince

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Originally published asPenser audelà de l’État Copyright © Editions Belin, 2014 English translation copyright © 2017 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2017 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Abélès, Marc, author. | Rousseau, Phillip, 1975– translator. |  Haince, MarieClaude, 1978– translator. | Translation of: Abélès, Marc.  Penser audelà de l’État. Title: Thinking beyond the state / Marc Abélès ; translation by Phillip  Rousseau and MarieClaude Haince. Other titles: Penser audelà de l’État. English Description: Ithaca, New York : Cornell University Press, 2017. | Includes  bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version  record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed. Identifiers: LCCN 2017007548 (print) | LCCN 2017021987 (ebook) |  ISBN 9781501712005 (epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501709364 (pdf) |  ISBN 9781501709272 (cloth : alk. paper) |  ISBN 9781501709289 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Nationstate and globalization. | Globalization—Social  aspects. | International economic integration—Political aspects. |  International economic relations—Political aspects. |  Political science—Philosophy. Classification: LCC JZ1316 (ebook) | LCC JZ1316 .A2313 2017 (print) |  DDC 327.101—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007548

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Contents

Foreword by George E. Marcus vii Introduction 1 1 Society against the State: Clastres, Deleuze, Guattari 8 2 The Stalemate of Sovereignty 30 3 Biopolitics and the Great Return ofAnthropos 43 4 Infrapolitics and the Ambivalence of Compassion 51 5 Scenes from Global Politics 65 6 The Anthropology of Globalization 79 Notes 97 References 101 Index 107

Foreword  . 

rom 2008 through 2010, Marc Abélès organized and led a F project conducted by an international group of ethnographic researchers, of which I was privileged to be a member, inside the headquarters of the World Trade Organization in Geneva. This kind of research, in the style of resident participant curiosity, charac teristic of anthropological fieldwork in the world’s “nonmodern” smallscale societies, was undertaken at the invitation of the then director general of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, and was quite unlike previous microsociologies of WTO processes produced by consul tants and organizational experts. Having begun his career when structuralism and Marxism defined the paradigms of anthropo logical scholarship in France, Abélès did his initial research among the traditional cultures of peoples in Ethiopia but soon thereafter followed a rather peculiar, but bold career path for a French an thropologist. He studied, as an ethnographer, the microprocesses of the French State itself (producing renowned ethnographic vol umes on a regional election in Burgundy and on the French Na tional Assembly). Logically, in recent years, he has turned toward studies of the European Union, and his work has gained the admi ration of officials (e.g., Lamy), leading to his entrée and access as an anthropologist at the WTO. Abélès began within the archetype

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Foreword

of the Leviathan—France, the most statist historic European ex pression of it—and followed the track of its efforts to realize its most exalted dreams and ambitions. Throughout his distinguished career, Abélès has consistently applied the anthropologist’s jeweler’s eye to the nature of micro power and politics in the State system, especially as it was shaped in Europe and internationally by Western powers following World War II. His scholarship has tracked, at a molecular level, the vari ous remarkable changes in this behemoth, in particular from the end of the Cold War to the present challenges to the effectiveness of States as the basis of international order. Always thinking be yond the State even while studying within it, or its extensions, as sites of fieldwork research, Abélès has done so in the way that an thropology has constitutionally encouraged its analysts to make its subjects “strange” to encourage unconventional ways of seeing rationalized norms and ambitions. Abélès has always made com parative observations in his writings, drawing from classic anthro pological studies in traditional societies, including in the present essay, from his own initial fieldwork in Ethiopia decades ago. In presenting his cogent critical insights into contemporary in stitutions of the post–World War II State system, Abélès has thus always thought beyond the State. In this essay, however, following extended research at the WTO, at a time in which it was trying to recapture its own relevance in a world that has in many of its pro cesses escaped the regulation or even framework of State author ity (e.g., during the world financial crisis, which coincided with the years of our research at the WTO), he tries to rethink or reset a theory of practice for anthropological research at the present juncture and into the very near future. Before taking up the WTO project, which was itself a bold experiment in sustained collabora tive method and coordination among a large team of independent

Foreword

i

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researchers, ten in number, Abélès had produced an important volume on the phenomenon of globalization (2008). The present short essay is more than an addendum to that substantial work. While it can, and should be, read in one sitting, it really addresses both the theoretical objects and the methods of contemporary anthropological research, and even more importantly, its posture and identity in the scenes of research that are defined formally by the State and it organizations. His key argument is that anthropologists can no longer be mere participant observers in the environments that are still shaped by State systems. Power is not something that can be studied with out anthropologists having very overt methodological strategies for their participation. They need a clearer understanding of their own politics of research, that their presence should be thought of as intervention, and that fieldwork inevitably brings about dis placements in microsettings, which generate the most important sources of insights and arguments that anthropologists can pro duce in their ethnographic writings. Anthropologists are neither journalists nor activists, but pursuers of certain insights about the active play of power that need “proof of life” so to speak—in other words, kinds of data that involve complicit, collaborative relations with those who would classically have been considered only “in formants” or assistants to fieldwork inquiry. “Thinking beyond” the State while working within its processes suggests clues and strategies for making research an intervention or displacement that can be reported on as the data of ethnography. This short essay comes at a point of maturity in Abélès’s career but certainly not at the end—he is currently starting up a fasci nating project on the trade in luxury goods between China and the West, among other personal projects—during the period of the WTO project, for example, he produced an extraordinary