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FACULTY OF HUMANITIES SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES COURSE UNIT OUTLINE 2012-2013 SOAN 30352/60352: ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MODERN STATE Semester: TWO Lecturer(s): Dr Madeleine Reeves Room: 2.054 Arthur Lewis Building Telephone: 0161 275 3488 Email: [email protected] Office Hours: Monday and Thursday, 2-3pm, teaching weeks only Administrator: [email protected] undergraduate [email protected] postgraduate Lectures: Thurs day 09.00 -12.00 Roscoe 3.4 PG seminar Thursday 13.00-14.00, 2.066, beginning February 5 th . UNDERGRADUATE POSTGRADUATE COURSE CODE SOAN30352 SOAN60352 20 15 NUMBER OF CREDITS 10% - 4 seminar reports 20% - Book Review (12 th MODE OF ASSESSMENT 20% - Book Review (12 th March) All deadlines are 2.00 pm March) 80% - Final Essay (7 th May) (UK time) 70% - Final Essay (14 th May) Word Limits for Assessed Work: Students exceeding the maximum word limits on assessed work will be penalised. There is no formal minimum word limit, but students should consider whether essays that fall substantially below the maximum have adequately covered the topic. An automated word-count must be printed on each piece of work – failure to do so will result in an automatic deduction of 2%. PENALTIES FOR LATE SUBMISSION OF ASSESSED WORK There is an absolute deadline of 2.00 pm on all hand-ins. Late submission of essays and other coursework will be penalised. The penalty is 10 points per day for up to 10 days (including weekends) for any assessed work submitted after the specified submission deadline. Social Sciences students should contact the Social Sciences Undergraduate Office (G.001 Arthur Lewis Building) or the Social Sciences Postgraduate Office (2 nd floor landing) if they feel they have mitigating circumstances. All other students should follow the procedures of their Home Schools. A "day" is 24 hours, i.e. the clock starts ticking as soon as the submission deadline (2.00 pm ) has passed. Unless a student has an authorised extension, any assessed work that is submitted late will be penalised. There are no pre -requisites for this course. However, students should consider whether it is advisable to take an advanced level course, without any prior knowledge of the subject, at this crucial stage in their academic career. Reeves, Anthropology of the State 2014-2015/1 SOAN 30352/ 60352 The Anthropology of the Modern State Dr. Madeleine Reeves Course overview What is the state, and how might we try to understand it ethnographically? These two big questions have been some of the most generative in recent political anthropology; and are also urgent questions of our time. What, if anything, constitutes state sovereignty today? Should we make a categorical difference between (legitimate) state and (illegitimate) non- state violence? Is state power being eroded as a result of globalization? Or is it being re-constituted in new ways? Can we even generalize in any meaningful sense about “the” state, or does that term conceal the empirical variety of political formations that exist in the world today? This course explores some of the answers that have been developed in anthropology and kindred fields to these questions. We will situate these questions and answers historically, looking at the way in which anthropologists have come to ask certain kinds of questions about the state at certain historical moments and political junctures. We will explore them comparatively, drawing on a range of empirical examples from North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, East, South, and Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. During the course we will consider debates around the “capillary” workings of governmental power influenced by Michel Foucault; at the politicization of life and death often glossed as “biopolitics”; at the technologies and infrastructures through which the state comes to take on material form in daily life; and at recent concerns to explore how, in contexts of formal state weakness, localized zones of sovereignty are sustained. Following this we will consider the complex relationship between states, illegality and violence, exploring what happens when informal sources of protection are experienced as more secure against arbitrary violence than those notionally authorized by the state. In the later part of the course we turn to debates about democracy, participation and popular statism. We look at recent concern to attend to the affective and emotive dimensions of statehood, attending to what Jonathan Spencer has identified as the “moral investment that many people make in the idea of being owners, or at least members, of a state of their own”. We consider this alongside recent ethnographic explorations (and scholarly defences of) anarchism, ending to come full circle to questions of the complex intersections between anthropology, the state, and political critique. Reeves, Anthropology of the State 2014-2015/2 Organisation of the course The course is organized around a core 3-hour session on Thursday each week. This will consist of a lecture of approximately 70 minutes, followed by a break, after which the UG students will be split into two 40 minute (+/-) seminars, one following immediately after the other (a separate tutorial will be held for MA students at 1pm on Thursdays, beginning February 5th). UG students will be randomly allocated to one or other seminar during the first class. For any given seminar there will be 2 or more presenters who are responsible for giving a 5-7-minute presentation on the basis of their seminar report to the rest of the group that week. This is a reading-based course and you will be asked to leave the seminar if you have not done the key readings, or brought along a copy of the readings (in hard copy or electronically) and your own notes. Seminar preparation You should come to the class having read the key readings designated for each week, and having formulated three questions that you would like to pose to the class for the group to discuss in relation to the readings. These can be questions of comprehension or meaning (e.g. “what does Trouillot mean by describing the state as a ‘lived fiction of late modernity’ on p. 130”?), but at least one should be a substantive question relating to (what you understand to be) the theoretical stakes of the argument in question (“Abrams seems to suggest that the purpose of a political sociology of the state is ‘demystification’. But how can such an approach help us better to make sense of, or put stops upon, state-sponsored violence?”) There are no “right” and “wrong” questions to ask of the texts—there are only more or less penetrating or interesting ones. We will write an assortment of the questions that are asked on the board each week, so you should come to the seminar prepared to use your questions to open up discussion. This is also a course in which you are actively invited to hone your ethnographic sensibilities in daily life, and to think theoretically with what you observe. The “state” and its traces, its modes of governance, its gaps, as well as the hopes and desires it elicits are all around us, symbolically, materially, discursively. You are actively encouraged to document your own ‘state encounters’ ethnographically and visually in this course and to use the theoretical tools you will be honing to reflect upon them. Thus, you are invited and encouraged to bring these instances that can document this (notes, photographs, leaflets you have picked up, comments overheard, signs or summons you have observed ….) to the seminar and to discuss them with your peers in the light of our theoretical discussion. Reeves, Anthropology of the State 2014-2015/3 Assessment For Undergraduates assessment will consist of the following: 1. 4 X 400 word seminar reports (10%) 2. 1 X 1000 word book review (20%) 3. 1 X 3000 word final essay (70%) For Postgraduates assessment will consist of the following: 1. 1 X 1000 word book review (20%) 2. 1 X 3000 word final essay (80%) Seminar presentation One of the key goals of the course is for students to gain experience of presenting their ideas and responses to text in a variety of formats: in the form of questions relating to the key reading; in the form of a book review of the kind that might be found in an academic journal; in the form of an extended final essay; and, for BA students, in the form of a non-assessed seminar presentation. It may be helpful to think of the latter as a mini-lecture (7 mins) which YOU give to your peers, introducing them to a text that most of your fellow students will not already be familiar. You should prepare power-point slides or a hand-out, and you should think about how you introduce the text, present the key arguments, and its links to the key readings in such a way that it is accessible and comprehensible to your fellow students. You are encouraged to audio-record or film your presentation and listen to it/ watch it afterwards, as there will be dedicated office-hour feedback sessions for each of the presenters to reflect on and improve their presentation skills. The week in which a given student is to given their seminar presentation will be allocated during the first class. Book review A 1000 word book review is required of both BA and MA students, and should discuss one of the ethnographic monographs listed at the end of the course outline, or another relevant monograph by prior agreement. Detailed guidance on how to write a balanced, engaging book review will be given during class. This is due for submission on Blackboard by 12th March .