The territorially sovereign nation-state – the globally dominant political formation of Western modernity – is in crisis. Though it is a highly heterogeneous assemblage, moulded by different histories involving myriad socio-cultural processes, its territorial integrity and sovereignty are always contingent and related to the distribution and organization of authority and power, and the state’s position within encompassing global dynamics. This volume attends to these contingencies as they are refracted by the communities and populations that are variously incorporated (in conformity or resistance) within their ordering processes. With ethnographically grounded analyses and thick description of locales as various as Russia, Lebanon and Indonesia, a vital conversation emerges about forms of state control under challenge or in transition. It is clear that the politico-social configurations of the state are still taking new directions, such as extremist populism and a general dissatisfaction with the corporatism of digital and technological revolutions. These are symptoms of the dilemmas at the peripheries STATE, RESISTANCE, of capital growth coming home to roost at their centres. Such transformations demand the new forms of conceptualization that the TRANSFORMATION anthropological approaches of the essays in this volume present. A fascinating and timely collection that dwells on the unsettled nature anthropological perspectives of contemporary relationships between ‘state’ and ‘society’. Drawing on case studies from beyond the heartland of political theory, contributors on the dynamics of power in refuse to treat global phenomena as generic and focus instead on the contemporary global realities specific social relations that constitute the varied possibilities and limits of contemporary state power. edited by Penny Harvey, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester BRUCE KAPFERER This is political anthropology on a truly large canvas. The standing question about how ‘state’ and ‘society’ relate, and whether the distinction between them makes sense in the first place, is tackled deftly through the lenses of varying conceptions and practices of power and resistance. Martin Holbraad, Professor of Social Anthropology, University College London Bruce Kapferer is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway. Cover image: ice cliffs at the end of the Barne Glacier (H.G. Ponting, Captain Scott’s Antarctic Expedition, 2 December 1911). STATE, RESISTANCE, TRANSFORMATION We gratefully acknowledge the funding of the following bodies, and thank them for making this publication possible. First published in 2018 Sean Kingston Publishing www.seankingston.co.uk Canon Pyon Text © Eldar Bråten, Jonathan Friedman, Ørnulf Gulbrandsen, Don Kalb, Bruce Kapferer, Judith Kapferer, Anh Nga Longva, Leif Manger, Donald M. Nonini, Eria Olowo Onyango, Roshan de Silva-Wijeyeratne, Olaf H. Smedal, Hege Toje. Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in the captions. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Non-derivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Further details about CC BY licenses are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Version 1.1 Ebook ISBN 978-1-907774-50-8 DOI 10.26581/B.KAPF01 State, Resistance, Transformation Anthropological Perspectives on the Dynamics of Power in Contemporary Global Realities Edited by Bruce Kapferer Sean Kingston Publishing www.seankingston.co.uk Canon Pyon In Memoriam Georg Henriksen Colleague, Participant and Friend in the Research Programme of which this volume is a result. Acknowledgements This volume grew out of debates among social anthropologists in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, whose collective comparative historical and especially ethnographic understandings, in a diversity of different regional contexts, addressed a variety of key issues concerning the relation of local populations to state processes under the conditions of contemporary globalization. Contributors to this volume took part in regular seminars and the occasional workshop on the matter of the state, and this book is in numerous ways the result of their collective effort. Other members of the department also often participated, notably Reidar Grunhaug, Edvard Hviding, Hanna Skartveit and Tone Sissener. Georg Henriksen, to whom this volume is dedicated, was a particularly active and enthusiastic participant in discussion, and was a key researcher among us. His life was tragically cut short part way through the project – a loss to all of us, though his spirit remained an inspiration. Georg was a founding organizer of IGWIA (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs), which is directly engaged with the plight of indigenous communities that are frequently in a marginal relation to state practice and the forces of globalization. Georg’s work in Africa (among the Turkana) and North American Indian communities (especially the Naskapi) is well known, particularly his classic monograph, Hunters in the Barrens. He was a major activist in the defense of the interests of indigenous peoples and his insights gained from intensive ethnographic experience remain in the forefront of contemporary anthropological understanding. The idea for the book achieved substance and support (for fieldwork and for workshops which enabled the participation of scholars from outside the department) from the Norwegian Research Council award to Bruce Kapferer for the project which he organized under the title Challenging the State. This was later supplemented by the EU Advanced Grant Egalitarianism project directed by Bruce Kapferer, which in key aspects extended ideas developed in the Challenging the State project. Funding for the Open Access publication of this volume was provided by University of Bergen Open Access Publication Fund. The contributors wish to thank the Department of Social Anthropology and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Bergen for the use of facilities in the course of discussion and research for this volume. Particular expressions of thanks are given to Sean Kingston by all the contributors to the book. Sean is not only the publisher but gave his extensive expertise in copy-editing. One of his many abilities is that of being an outstanding anthropologist in his own right. He engaged this knowledge to our collective benefit and we are all in his debt. Contents Introduction Crises of power and the state in global realities 1 Bruce Kapferer Chapter 1 Challenges to the European state 23 The deep play of finance, demos and ethnos in the new old Europe Don Kalb Chapter 2 State formation, territorialization and the challenge 67 of movement Hege Toje Chapter 3 The state? What state? 97 State, confessionalism and civil society in Lebanon Anh Nga Longva Chapter 4 ‘Yogya Inc.’ 119 Transformed kingship in decentralizing Indonesia Eldar Bråten Chapter 5 Resistance as a problem 153 An ethnic minority and the state in twenty-first century Indonesia Olaf H. Smedal Chapter 6 Sovereignties in the making 185 Reflections on state and society in the Sudan Leif Manger Chapter 7 Pastoralists at war with the state 207 Historical armed violence in the shadow state of north-eastern Uganda Eria Olowo Onyango Chapter 8 Buddhist cosmological forms and the situation 231 of total terror in Sri Lanka’s ethnic civil war Bruce Kapferer and Roshan de Silva-Wijeyeratne viii Chapter 9 Inside and outside the state in Italy and Botswana 265 Historical and comparative reflections on state apparatuses of capture and rhizomic forces Ørnulf Gulbrandsen Chapter 10 Arts for the people 295 Public support and private patronage Judith Kapferer Chapter 11 Repressive ententes, organized crime and 317 the corporate state Donald M. Nonini Afterword Notes on crisis and transformation of 349 political orders in the global arena Jonathan Friedman Notes on the contributors 359 Introduction Crises of power and the state in global realities Bruce Kapferer This volume concentrates on the crises of communities and populations as these are mediated through the nation-state. This, of course, is a highly heterogeneous assemblage or formation moulded in different, if often intersecting, histories involving myriad socio-cultural processes. The territorial integrity and sovereignty of nation-states is highly contingent. These are dependent on an array of considerations relating to the internal distribution and organization of authority and power (including the way these are ideologically articulated and legitimated) and the way states are positioned within encompassing global dynamics. In a broad sense, nation-states – from the strongest to the weakest – are in a continual crisis of formation. That of specific nation-states is refracted by the communities and populations that are variously incorporated or related (in conformity or resistance) within their ordering processes, including those of the global forces impinging on them. Overall, the essays in this book explore, ethnographically, dimensions of a perennial anthropological issue, the relation between the state (power) and society. Anthropology