While the people of pre-colonial and colonial societies in Africa often lived in scattered, sparse settlements, the people of the Northern Tswana kingdoms (present-day Botswana) were found in large towns with thousands of residents. This is puzzling in view of their location on the edge of the Kalahari, where such concentrations would normally be least expected. Moreover, while pastoralism is generally considered antithetical to the formation of densely settled populations, cattle have featured centrally in these kingdoms' political economy. Breaking away from ecological determinism, the author argues that the role played by cattle in these societies was mediated through social and political processes that favor both state formation and large, compact settlements. The article is particularly concerned with the centripetal forces vested in the cultural and symbolic wealth of Tswana royal towns.
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Town-State Formations on the Edge of the Kalahari
Social-Cultura Dynamics of Centralization in Northern Tswana Kingdoms
Ørnulf Gulbrandsen
Contested boundaries
Border disputes, administrative disorder, and state representational practices in Nicaragua (1936–1956)
Jennifer Alvey
This article examines a 20-year border dispute between two adjacent southern interior municipalities in Nicaragua. The dispute acts as window into the politics of state formation and the consolidation of the dictatorship of Anastacio Somoza García (1936–1956). This conflict was waged by locally based “state actors” who contested each other's attempts to stake and extend spatially based claims to authority. Contending parties developed a shared language of contention that I call “administrative disorder”, which tracked closely with accusations of invasion and abuse of authority. Administrative disorder discourses were representational practices that contributed to the discursive construction of the state. They were also the means by which representatives of the state sought to justify or normalize their own activities. As such, these discourses concealed political tensions rooted in patronage networks, municipal formation, land privatization, and ethnic assimilation, which shaped the contours and longevity of the dispute, but remained lurking silences in administrative disorder discourses.
Border tricksters and the predatory state
Contraband at the Romania-Serbia border during the Yugoslavian embargoes
Cosmin Radu
This article analyzes actions of the Romanian state officials and the Romania-Serbia border region people during the embargoes imposed on Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It shows that the embargo-related contraband trade with its diverse layers and actors is an excellent window for studying state formations. Getting involved in both big contraband and the criminalization of smugglers, different state factions developed specific logics of privatization, transnationalization, and interstitial relations. These developments were connected to both the fantasies of accumulation in the context of embargo and Romanian European Union accession. The article also suggests how to understand continuities between the embargorelated and present state formations. Looking at the interplays among border posts, state officials, and the EU, it shows that the border posts are increasingly dislocated from the state and that they seem to become interstitial parts of a post-state field of power.
Pyropolitics and the Production of Territory
Michael M. Cary
concerned with the links between environmental governance, spatialized political economic interventions, and state formation. Reading this scholarship through the lens of territory highlights the relationships between state-backed policies to control fire
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2023
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 104–121 (18 total)
A cosmopolitan Europe?
On "unity in diversity" and the politics of Turkey's EU accession
Katharina Bodirsky
Cosmopolitan visions hold EU-Europe capable of recognizing diversity within limits set by universal principles. This view has gained currency in EU self-representations and among the liberal left as a counter to founding EU-Europe on civilizational unity. Proponents of a cosmopolitan Europe nevertheless partake in a culturalization of politics that enables and obscures processes of state transformation visible in Turkey's EU accession process. Debates on Turkey's EU membership construct a normative representation of EU-Europe that justifies EU accession measures as "normalization." Supporters of a cosmopolitan EU contribute to this political effect by adhering to a liberal distinction between "mere difference" to be tolerated and "disruptive difference" to be contained, which legitimizes an interventionist stance vis-à-vis Turkey. However, changes in state interventions and institutions supported by this normalizing project go beyond installing "unity in diversity" in cultural-political terms. They involve economic de- and reregulation that might entrench social and territorial inequalities.
Mineral springs, primitive accumulation, and the “new water” in Mexico
Casey Walsh
English abstract: This article explores the process of centralization of water resources by the Mexican nation-state between 1880 and 1940, and, in particular, how the postrevolutionary state facilitated, after 1920, the transference of control over the Topo Chico mineral springs from the local agrarian community to industrial bottling companies. Using archival evidence, it highlights the importance of science and law in this process and argues that centralization must be understood in terms of “primitive accumulation.” The article focuses on hot mineral springs, which provide a privileged window on centralization and primitive accumulation but are largely ignored in the historiography of water.
Spanish abstract: El artículo explora el proceso de centralización de los recursos hídricos por parte del Estado Mexicano entre 1880–1940, y particularmente analiza la manera en que después de 1920 el estado posrevolucionario facilitó la transferencia del control de las comunidades agrarias locales de los manantiales de Topo Chico, a las empresas embotelladoras industriales. Utilizando fuentes de archivo, el autor evidencia la importancia de la ciencia y el derecho en este proceso, y muestra que la centralización debe entenderse con base en la “acumulación primitiva”. Este artículo se centra en el estudio de las fuentes minerales termales, las cuales a pesar de ser una ventana privilegiada para la centralización y la acumulación primitiva, han sido ampliamente ignoradas por la historiografía hídrica.
French abstract: Cet article explore le processus de centralisation des ressources hydriques par l'Etat-nation mexicain entre 1880 et 1940, et en particulier la façon dont l'Etat postrévolutionnaire a facilité, à partir de 1920, le transfert du contrôle des sources hydriques de Topo Chico des communautés agraires locales aux entreprises d'embouteillage industriels. Fondé sur les sources documentaires archivistiques, il souligne l'importance de la science et du droit dans ce processus, et fait valoir que la centralisation doit être comprise en termes «d'accumulation primitive». L'article se concentre sur les sources d'eaux minérales chaudes, qui fournissent une fenêtre privilégiée sur la centralisation et l'accumulation primitive, mais sont largement ignorées dans l'historiographie de l'eau.
In Regions and Cohesion
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–25 (25 total)
Looking at Zionism from New and Challenging Perspectives
Avi Shilon
, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021), 296 pp. Hardback, $35.00. Johannes Becke, The Land beyond the Border: State Formation and Territorial Expansion in Syria, Morocco, and Israel (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021), 286 pp. Paperback, $31
In Israel Studies Review
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2022
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 159–166 (8 total)
Formations of Sovereignty at the Frontier of the Modern State
Finn Stepputat
This article discusses the recent revision of the notion of sovereignty that emphasizes de facto rather than de jure sovereignty, understanding sovereignty as an effect of performative claims to sovereignty. As an implication of this approach, we come to see political landscapes as formed by multiple, overlapping, coexisting, and sometimes competing claims to sovereignty operating within and across boundaries. The article suggests using “formations of sovereignty” as a way of understanding these political landscapes and the way they change over time in specific areas. Empirically, the article analyzes different formations of sovereignty in a Guatemalan municipality at the border with Mexico, from before the civil war of the early 1980s to the present.
In Conflict and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 129–143 (15 total)
Bertelsen, Bjørn Enge. 2016. Violent becomings: state formation, sociality, and power in Mozambique (Ethnography, theory, experiment, volume 4). Oxford: Berghahn Books. xxviii + 332 pp. Pb.: £21.00. ISBN: 978‐1‐78533‐293‐7; open access ebook ISBN: 978‐1‐78533‐429‐0.
Jan De Wolf
In Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
- Published (Print):
- 01 Nov 2017
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 551–552 (1 total)
Introduction
The Presence of the Past in the Era of the Nation-State
Nicolas Argenti
, anthropology has nonetheless inherited from Enlightenment thinking a teleological model of political formation in which the nation-state is the natural endpoint of a universal process of state formation. Hobbes’s state of nature—in which ‘man is a wolf to man