Margins versus centres in modern states

Résumé du document

This essay is based on an article by Veena Das and Deborah Poole (2004): Anthropology in the Margins of the State. This article gives us a good way to focus on the State. It helps us to think of the State differently: as an object of ethnographic inquiry. The main point is the asertion that another perspective is to be used when it comes to the study of the State. States are not simply rational organizations and bureaucratic entities. This is why, the study from the margins of the State is necessary. It is a difficult statement because the state is not a classical object of anthropological studies (except the great works of Pierre Clastres) and it one must forget the theoretical debates in order to focus on the results of practical ethnographical investigations.

Extraits

[...] Margins are a necessary element of every State. Margins are even a basic sight of the exercise of power as presented in the Weberian theory. Max Weber give this definition of the political organisation and of the State : compulsory political association with continuous organisation (politischer Anstaltsbetrieb) will be called a `state' if and in so far as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.'' What is interesting is that, the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order'', is precisely focusing on the margins. [...]

[...] Margins versus centres in modern states This essay is based on the article by Veena Das and Deborah Poole (2004): Anthropology in the Margins of the State. This article gives us a good way to focus on the State. It helps us to thinks the State differently: as an object of ethnographic inquiry. The main point is to say that another perspective is to be used when it comes to the study of the State. States are not only rational organizations and bureaucratic entities, that's why the study from the margins of the State is necessary. [...]

[...] Thousands of would-be asylum seekers went there in order to use the close Eurotunnel in order to go to Britain. They lived in really poor conditions and the French State argued that it was unable to cope with the vast numbers of refugees. This example of margin respects the first category of margin because it is a concrete and closed place in the French territory. Then it fits with the second category because most of the people living there have no passports and are classified as illegal immigrants by the State. [...]

[...] Those people can be indigenous subjects or people that have been displaced because of wars: they pose the problem of the integration to the community. How can the state transform those unruly subjects into faithful ones? The second category is linked with the issued of legibility and illegibility. It underlines that margins are not only territorial concepts. They are also based on the documents and on every kind of written elements that the State uses to classify its population. This category underlines that the sovereignty of modern States has been constructed thanks to writing practices. [...]

[...] This area is partially self-governed and there are 850 residents living in those 34 hectares. It was created in 1971 when some people decided to use this abandoned area in order to solve the big issue of the lack of affordable housing in Copenhagen. Then Jacob Ludvigsen, a well-known journalist published an article which became the proclamation of the birth if the free- town. This community is a margin in itself and it welcomes every people that are at the margin of the society for example drug-addicts who could no longer cope with regular society. [...]