Anthropology 321: Anthropology of the State

What is the state? What’s special about state power and state institutions? How do we understand and experience bureaucracy, state violence, policing, state secrecy, and transparency? How do state structures produce and intersect with constructions of race, gender, class, and other social distinctions? How do we live within and without the state? This course challenges notions of “the state” as a monolithic entity and examines the state as an ensemble of institutions and practices. We will interrogate the foundations of the state and its manifestations in contexts of cultural and social difference. And we will think in novel ways about what it means to approach the state anthropologically — by centering systems of meaning and belief, everyday practices, structures of power, and emergent forms of resistance. Closely engaging with theories of the nation-state, colonialism, hegemony, governmentality, and other concepts, this course will incorporate materials from social theory, ethnography, documentary films, and other genres to examine representations of the state across a variety of socio-historical contexts. Topics may include bureaucratic regimes, policing and incarceration, conditions of “statelessness,” crisis management, conspiracy theories and paranoia, and the national security state.