Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Anthropological approaches to the state have undergone a veritable revolution since the 1970s. Max Weber's once normative model of the state as a centralized entity that taxes, conscripts, and monopolizes legitimate violence within a given territory - and further, his conception of rational bureaucratic states as “cages of reason” that stand above society, employing a vast bureaucracy to implement decisions in a neutral, disinterested manner - has been called into question from multiple quarters. Even as some scholars find that modern states impose a structure of hyper-rationality and order on the societies they administer (Scott 1998) - at times with disastrous consequences - other scholars cast a critical eye on virtually every aspect of the Weberian model. Some question the rational, disinterested nature of states, finding instead either dark, irrational, even libidinal passions at work in the very entrails of state processes (Aretxaga 2000), symbolic structures embedded deeply within the workings of seemingly neutral state bureaucracies (Herzfeld 1992), or a near obsession on the part of states with appropriate forms of affect rather than reason (Stoler 1995).Other scholars question the unity of the state. In place of coherence and consistency of purpose, they find state activities to be chaotic and incoherent assemblages of sites, processes, and institutions that lack any underlying, ... log in or subscribe to read full text