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State Formation DAVID NUGENT AND ADEEM SUHAIL Emory University, United States Anthropology has a deep history of engagement with state formation. Ever since the field t ook s hape a s a n a cademic d iscipline i n t he l ate n ineteenth c entury, scholars have struggled to understand the conditions that variously enable or disable organized political subjection. For most of the twentieth century, academic writing about state formation was structured by the shifting dynamics of nation and empire. The dominant national/imperial projects in which anthropology was embedded—the English, the French, and the United States—were confronted with distinctive challenges to the reproduction of rule and produced conceptualizations of state formation that reflected the dilemmas peculiar to each. As the twentieth century wore on, however, the conditions in which political subjec- tion unfolded changed profoundly, and in ways that made earlier, national/imperial for- mulations seem increasingly parochial. Confronted with the disintegration of the Euro- pean colonialempires, thecollapseoftheSoviet Union, theend oftheColdWar,and the broad range of globalizing material and cultural forces referenced by the term “ne- oliberalism,” scholarswereledtoreflectinnewwaysabout thebasesofstateformation. What had been a series of different conversations rooted in distinct national/imperial traditions merged to form something of a shared, transnational field of discussion. It was in this context that the questions that dominate contemporary debate were framed. Most of the scholars who joined in this emergent, transnational conversation acknowledgedthattheprocessesthat enable thereproductionofrulehaveboth meaningful and material dimensions. That is, implicit in their writings is the notion that state formation is a cultural process, rooted in violence, which seeks to normalize and legitimize political subjection in large-scale, stratified s ocial o rders. E ven so, during the 1980s two distinct traditions of investigation emerged that were to define the parameters of scholarship in the decades that followed. One group of scholars focuses on the organizational challenges involved in efforts to normalize political subjection. Implicit in their approach is the assumption that pro- cesses of state formation culminate in an institution. This institution, they argue, has unique coercive capabilities, which allow those who direct it to oversee the reproduc- tion of rule. The institution in question is the state. The key task these scholars set for themselves has been to identify the distinctive trajectories of state formation that have produced different forms of state in the various regions of the world. A second group of anthropologists takes a very different approach. These scholars approach state formation as a cultural process—a process by which the intolerable (i.e., politicalsubjection) is made to appear,ifnot tolerable, then certainlyinevitable. Implicit in this view is that processes of state formation do not produce a coercive institution The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology.EditedbyHilaryCallan. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1809 2 STAT E FORMAT ION but the illusion that such an institution exists. Coercion, these scholars argue, is built into the very fabric of contemporary social orders. It is a mistake, therefore, to attribute this violence to a broad, overarching institution that imposes its will on recalcitrant populations. Doing so masks the very process of normalization that scholars of state formation need to understand. State formation as organizational process The normative trajectory of state formation: Western Europe and its others The 1980s is commonly regarded as a historical watershed, when processes of political subjectionthathadbeeninplacefordecadesbegantounravel.Ontheonehand,the formsofruleassociatedwiththeera’ssocialistregimesshowedclearsignsofweaken- ing, as reflected in China’s extensive restructuring, the efforts of the Soviet republics to become independent polities, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union itself. On the other hand, the “capitalist democracies” were involved in a restructuring of their own, systematically dismantling the post-World War II welfare regimes and devising new institutions of global governance. In other words, all around the world efforts were underway to challenge, scale back, or dismantle existing state structures. In the context of this broad retreat of the state, and the extensive disorder and distress that accompanied it, scholars were led to think carefully about the basis of the state sys- temthatseemedtobecomingdownaroundthem.Manyweredrawntoa(normative) conceptualizationofthestatethattheyattributedtoMaxWeber.Weberhadargued that “a state is a human community that … successfully … claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (Weber 1946, 78). Scholars interpreted Weber’s “human community” as “institution” and the “successful claim to the monopoly on the legitimate use of force” as “a monopoly on violence.” On this basis, they concluded that the state is an institution with a monopoly on coercive power, one that stood at the intersection of a territorially bounded national arena and a globalized “international” arena. Having identified the form of state that had gone missing, as it were, scholars set for themselves two primary tasks. The first was to understand why this particular state form had emerged in the select countries of the North Atlantic where it was (said to have)formed.Thesecondtaskwastoidentifytheprocessesthathadinterferedwith the formation of this (normative) state form elsewhere. A work that proved especially influentialinmakingsenseofbothofthesequestionsaboutstateformationisCharles Tilly’s seminal 1985 essay, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.” Tilly argues that state formation in Western Europe had followed a unique path. Processes of extraction, accumulation, and war making, he asserts, came together in historically contingent ways to generate a highly distinctive form of state. This was the territorially delimited, coercive institution whose core features had been identified by Weber and that was clearly expressed in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648)—regarded by many as the origin of the modern state system. STAT E FORMAT ION 3 Tilly’s interpretation of Western Europe’s unique path of state formation influenced a wide range of scholarship. This scholarship explored the alternative ways that pro- cesses of extraction, accumulation, and coercion had come together in national polities outsideoftheWesttoproducedeviationsfromtheNorthAtlanticnorm.Eachdistinct path of (non-Western) state formation had produced an equally distinct type of state. These included sultanistic, absolutist, authoritarian, monarchical, dictatorial, patrimo- nial, security, and prebendal, to name but a few. Tilly’sworkonstateformationalsohelpedinspireanotheravenueofresearch.This scholarshipexplorestheformationofstatelikestructuresofanonnationalnature,which are based on the management of illicit processes of extraction, accumulation, and coer- cion.Thesemakeupwhatscholarsrefertoasthe“parapolitical,”adomainofcovert relations that operate at once within and between polities and remain largely hidden from public view. The parapolitical involves quasi-legal and illegal relations formed between state security apparatuses, “terrorist” organizations, and transnational crim- inal syndicates. These relations are characterized as intrinsically sinister, as a threat to the monopoly on legitimate force to which states are said to aspire. State formation despite the state While many scholars responded to the disorder of the 1980s by identifying norma- tive and nonnormative forms of state formation, others derived a very different set of lessons from the instability of the era. Despite the fact that state structures were in clear retreat all around the globe, organized political subjection appeared to be as strong as ever. In other words, the processes that were responsible for the reproduc- tion of rule appeared to be independent of state structures. Confronted with this fact, scholars began to look in new directions to understand the bases of organized political subjection. ItwasinthiscontextthattheideasofMichelFoucaultbecameinfluential.Fou- cauldians initiated an important discussion about the dynamics of political subjection beyond the state by distinguishing different forms of power. They proposed that power in its “sovereign” and “disciplinary” guises had been replaced by governmentality, a “biopolitical” form that seeks to manage population. Population was regarded both as thesubjectandobjectofgovernment.Itwasanaggregatecategorymanagedthrough a confluence of multiple instruments and modalities rather than by a unitary political formation (the state). Governmentality was thus an ensemble of institutions, instruments, and procedures that allowed for the management of population. This ensemble implied a new form of capitalist political economy, with an added emphasis on economic and other forms of “security.” Second, governmentality invoked the emergence of the knowledge systems, sciences, and academics necessary to effectively “govern” as well as produce legitimacy. Finally,ittracedthedispersalofthepracticeofpowertodisparatesocialsitesthatare not explicitly identifiable as “the state.” Instead of asking who possesses power in the state, the social sciences drew on Fou- cauldian