Scope: Focus on Power, forms of governance, politics and the nature of the state.

PA as unique as it draws on power and culture in equal measure. Cf. Weber 'Politics as a Vocation'. The 'variety and complexity of the human political condition' (Donald Kurtz 2001, Political Anthropology; paradigms and power). Kurtz's five principal paradigms of political anthropology : structural-functionalism, processualism, political economy, evolutionism, and what he calls the 'postmodern paradigm'. Contrast to Political Science : Political scientists have generally given priority to the study of modern political institutions such as the state and political parties. The theories and concepts of political anthropology have been constructed on the basis of ethnographic material, with studies ranging from the analysis of stateless societies (where political institutions such as kinship, witchcraft, or magic play crucial roles in the reproduction of a social order) to societies in which political institutionalisation has led to diverse configurations of state organisation. Themes: Leadership - Big man, Headman, Political succession, Clientelism and patronage Strategies & choice, individual, small-scale politics - Transactions, goal-oriented approaches of individuals. Patron-client relations. Approach guilty of methodological individualism? The State - Surveillance and bureaucratic machineries - Weber. In what ways do state structures immerse themselves, shape, and are shaped by ordinary life? - Nationalism Human rights and the state. From Structure to process, supra-local interaction - Acephalous societies, big men societies, and chiefdoms in relation to supra-local processes (colonisers, post-colonial states, globalisation). Conceptualise the impact? Politics of Identity - Representations of the other, Inter-sectarian or inter-ethnic politics, How identity changes?, Symbolic aspects of identity.Nationalism and other powerful imageries - Imagined communities? Relationship colonialism - nationalism? Role of religion in nation-building? What is 'everyday nationalism'? Nationalism relevant in a transnational age? Citizenship - politics of belonging. Anthropology of colonialism - Experiencing colonialism, political economies, resistance, decolonisation, gender, sexuality, bodies, the colonial legacy. Anthropology of ideology and Hegemony. Biopolitics and governmentality - Michel Foucault Themes on disorder: Biology Aggression, Fear and violence Explaining ethnic cleansing. Ethnicity. State collapse, disruption and disorder In Africa , blurring between state and society (Nugent). Rhizome state where power is deeply rooted in society (Bayart). Ordinary people reproduce structures of tyranny when they attend state functions (Mbembe)- if tyranny deeply rooted in society and not result of domination, what impact for discourse of domination (and donor attempts at reform). Power Politics of resistance and revolution, Relationship between power evident in everyday life and broader structures of state power? Foucault and disguised power, knowledge. Relevance for non-western societies? Domination vs. resistance?

Conflict Studies and Conflict Resolution Specific Anthropological perspectives concern Mediation and mediators, Feud, Rituals of conflict resolution, Warfare, How the poor or the disempowered resist, social movements, activism, Resistance Studies. Global crises from an anthropological perspective : AIDS, refugees, displaced persons, the disappeared, trafficking, spread of corporate capitalism, lack of access to neoliberal free trade, environmental disasters. Related themes: Anthropology of Religion (and ritual) - Sociology, Religious Studies. PA additions : Political legitimation, Social stratification and political specialization, Succession among shamans, Totemism and social hierarchy, Revivalist movements, Symbolism and ritual. Gender Studies, Identity. Gender specialisation, Patriarchy and matriarchy. Patrimonialism. Legal Anthropology - Taboos and the realm of the profane, Customary (unwritten) law, Social stratification and political specialization, Interaction of traditional and modern legal systems. Economic Anthropology - Economic exchange systems Redistribution systems, Taxation and tributary systems, Property and ownership. General Introduction: A. More attention to articulations between local and global Gledhill: Political anthropology must seek to relate the local to the global .. in a more radical way than has been attempted in the past. But if we were to concentrate too much on the global, it would invalidate the lessons of the founding fathers. Our aim is to understand how local level politics and global politics interrelate, not just in how global politics determines everything at the local level. B. More attention to the politics of everyday life C. The Power explosion in anthropology Political refers to all power relationships, whether inside or outside the everyday conception of politics. Consider the following titles: The Politics of the Belly (Bayart 1993) The Culture of Politics & the Imagined State (Gupta 1995) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (Verdery 1999) The Poetics and Politics of (ethnography ...) But if everything is political, what word can we use to mark out that special area of life which people themselves refer to as politics? (Spencer 1997: 13). Political scientists may criticize anthropologists for viewing politics simply as a matter of power and inequality (Vincent 2002: 1) History of Political Anthropology: Pre-1940s: Anthropologists studied the political almost incidentally to other interests (Vincent 2002) Political organization is an exceptional thing, characteristic only of certain groups (Teggart quoted in Balandier 1970:4)

Political Philosophy has chiefly concerned itself with how men ought to live and what form of government they ought to have, rather than with what are their political habits and institutions 1940-1970: Political anthropology: To answer the riddle of political organization in acephelous (government-less) societies. Concerned with the description and analysis of the political systems ... proper to societies regarded as primitive or archaic (Balandier 1972) Focus on internal workings of bounded systems. Strict distinction between political and other spheres of life. Practitioners aimed at formalizing the sub-discipline. political anthropology became determinedly unexotic, anti-cultural and dull (Spencer 1997:5) heuristic based on the individual pursuit of power was the basis for analysis and understanding. The cultural was "ornaments, different hat styles, things like that" (schneider). Stress on observation not interpretation (positivistic). E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Acephalous political systems and Segmentary Lineage Systems as part of structural-functionalism. EE-P, The Nuer 1940. EE-P & MF, African Political Systems. Each society studies as an isolated whole, where equilibrium and social order was sought in overlapping social, political, economic systems. Max Gluckmann, Analysis of a Social Situation in Zululand. The Bridge. Focus on political activity at a moment in time (not timeless structures as in structuralfunctionalism). (later used further as event analysis, situational analysis.) Edmund Leach, Pul Eliya: A village in Ceylon. Focus on material context of social and political behaviour, and on economic self-interest. F.G.Bailey (On India). Delineates a model of pragmatic human behaviour in political context, based on game theory and "actor-driven politics." Turner. Political Processual analysis. Focus on poverty and passage from one political status to another, and on marginalisation which elaborates the concept of social fields or 'fields of force." An attempt at overcoming structural-functional approaches, and actororiented perspectives. Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas. & 'Nuer Ethnicity Militarised. The Nuer politicised, conscious of oil wealth. Shows how global-historical factors of increasing scale impacts on regional specific social and cultural fields. Cf. Talal Asad, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault. Post-1968: Discrediting of structural-functional theories, and new focus on analysis of impact of western imperialism. *Anthropology of Colonialism *Resistance Studies *James Scott *Homi Bhabha