Free-Standing State / Local to Global / Everyday Practices Flashcards
(16 cards)
Free-Standing State / Everyday Practices
SB BC NG
Capitalism
Structural/ State
Bureaucracy
Blurred Boundary
Capitalism
Neoliberalism
Global Organisations
Structural => State Effect
Abrams => Mitchell
Abrams ‘Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State’ (1977) : Structural = Practices INTERACT to shape a specific form of power - exists through complex network => larger system of interconnected practices, institutions, and networks
‘The Limits of the State’ (1991)State = ILLUSION of the state as a constructed boundary=> Foucauldian power not simply as something that represses from above, but as something that produces realities ; knowledge, norms, and self-regulation rather than force
Bureaucracy Points
PIT NL,NM
Bureaucratic practices:
- POPULATION registration,
- IDENTITY documents,
- TAXES
help construct the state’s authority by embedding its power in everyday life.
=> seems NORMAL and LEGITIMATE, even when the state itself is not visibly intervening.
People’s day-to-day interactions reinforces state’s power, making it part of the NATURAL order, even if pervasive or unequal.
Seems MUNDANE or insignificant => must be necessary
Bureaucracy Case Studies - Make-Believe Papers = UDIAS
Navaro-Yashin (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus): explores ‘make-believe’ documents (e.g., passports, ID cards) in an UNRECOGNISED state.
These documents have no international legal status, but are crucial for DAILY life: accessing services, crossing checkpoints.
State authority is enacted through INTERNAL bureaucratic practice, not just formal recognition.
AFFECTIVE engagement with paperwork creates a sense of belonging and statehood.
Documents are SYMBOLS of sovereignty- performing the state even when it lacks global legitimacy.
Bureaucracy Case Studies - Spatialising States - PSSFEII
Ferguson and Gupta : Local clinics, health camps, and hospitals act as PHYSICAL nodes of the state, where women interact with bureaucracies during pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal care.
SERVICES include antenatal check-ups, iron supplements, ultrasound scans, institutional deliveries, immunisations, and birth registration - each requiring paperwork, identity documents, and formal records.
These encounters tie women’s bodies to state SURVEILLENCE: weight, nutrition, blood pressure, and birth plans are recorded in state-issued health cards or registers.
FRONTLINE workers (e.g., ASHAs in India, midwives, nurses) serve as EXTENSIONS of state authority, educating, recording, and reporting on women’s compliance with health protocols.
INCENTIVES and conditional cash transfers (e.g., for hospital births or vaccinations) encourage engagement with state systems, effectively drawing women into bureaucratic loops.
The state becomes INTIMATE — involved in reproductive timelines, child-rearing, and bodily care — producing a paternalistic or even maternalistic image of governance.
Blurred Boundary Points - Althusser - II DI CF
INTERPELLATION as a Model of Ideological Power: Althusser’s example - the policeman shouting “Hey, you!” - illustrates how individuals are hailed into subject positions, recognising themselves as the one being addressed, and thereby INTERNALISING the state’s ideological structure.
This interpellation isn’t a one-time event; it’s ongoing. Through DAILY rituals (schooling, work discipline, law, media), individuals are continuously reproduced as subjects who willingly conform to their roles in the system.
Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs): INSTITUTIONS like schools, churches, families, and workplaces perform the function of interpellation. They appear ‘private’ but serve the state by embedding its ideology in everyday life, creating subjects who act freely in ways that support the system, giving ideological CONSENT. The subject’s recognition of themselves as subject is what gives the state its stability - what feels like FREE will is often the internalised expectations of the state, making freedom the most effective mask of power.
Blurred Boundary Case Studies - Navaro-Yashin - SSC
Navaro-Yashin interviews TRNC civil servants who describe feeling “more real” when STAMPING papers or issuing IDs. One clerk says, “The state is me. If I stop doing this, it disappears.” Another notes the emotional satisfaction of using official stamps and SEALS—despite knowing they are internationally invalid.
The civil servant is not just enacting a job; they are inhabiting the state. There is no CLEAN break between “worker” and “citizen”—they experience themselves as extensions of statehood, both physically (through the document) and emotionally. Interpellation here isn’t abstract—it is felt viscerally through daily tasks.
Blurred Boundary Case Studies - Akshay Khanna - AMSE
In Akshay Khanna’s work on India’s ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activists): ASHAs are paid per task—e.g., getting a woman to a hospital birth—yet the community sees them as MORAL guides, not paid functionaries. They are STOPPED in markets, asked for health advice at weddings, even scolded if someone falls ill. One ASHA says, “I am always ASHA didi, never just me.” She cannot EXIT her bureaucratic role. The state extends into her social identity, even in intimate community spaces. She is never not being the state. Interpellation here operates via both state incentives and social expectation, fusing her personal and professional selves.
Capitalism Points - MR GRL
MITCHELL = economics : RECIPROCAL = state needs society to legitimise authority, society looks to state for regulation, protection, and services
Capitalism supports state: generating WEALTH, providing JOBS => economic GROWTH critical to state’s legitimacy, as creating jobs and wealth for its citizens, maintaining political stability.
State supports capitalism: establishing property RIGHTS, labour LAWS, corporate laws, ensuring that economic inequality does not lead to large-scale unrest = Policing and Surveillance
Capitalism Case Studies - M-DMI RS
The U.S. supported ARAMCO through a MIX of corporate investment and state intervention, with oil companies like Standard Oil of California operating under the protection and strategic interest of the American government.
The U.S. provided DIPLOMATIC support, MILITARY protection, and INFRASTRUCTURE investment, especially during the mid-20th century, to secure oil access.
The U.S. government allowed ARAMCO (a consortium of American oil companies operating in Saudi Arabia) to deduct from its U.S. tax obligations the ‘ROYALTY’ payments it made to the Saudi government as a foreign tax payment rather than as a business expense.
This meant ARAMCO could SUBTRACT the full amount of these payments from its U.S. tax bill, not just deduct them from profits and, as a result, ARAMCO paid far less in U.S. taxes, meaning the shortfall was effectively picked up by American taxpayers.
Neoliberal Points - TDW
TAX Cuts and DEREGULATION: favour large corporations and the wealthy
Cutting down WELFARE policies (unemployment benefits, food assistance, healthcare subsidies)
Neoliberal Case Studies - NRER
Mark Fisher’s concept of ‘capitalist realism’ captures how neoliberal ideology NATURALISES market logic, making it seem like the only viable way to organise society - even when it undermines public goods. Neoliberalism promotes the image of a RETREATING state, emphasising privatisation and individual responsibility, yet this image is deceptive.
In reality, the state remains deeply EMBEDDED in economic life, actively shaping markets, enforcing austerity, and governing through policy, data, and regulation.
Rather than disappearing, the state is RECONFIGURED to serve capital more efficiently, producing the illusion of minimalism while intensifying its control over populations and infrastructures.
The distinction between state and market is strategically constructed to legitimise capitalist governance.
Global Organisations - MACAL
MULTINATIONAL corporations wield immense power in shaping the global economy, often acting with greater influence than individual nation-states
Can provide loans and financial ASSISTANCE to countries in need, especially in times of economic crisis, come with specific CONDITIONS:
AUSTERITY measures, (cutting public spending, reducing welfare programs, or privatising state-owned enterprises.)
Market LIBERALISATION, reducing tariffs, removing regulations on industries, opening up the country to foreign investment.
Global Organisation Case Studies - GA-TWPL FR
The case of GREECE during its financial crisis exposes the limits of national sovereignty and challenges the idea of the state as a self-governing, free-standing entity. Under pressure from the IMF and World Bank, Greece was required to implement harsh AUSTERITY measures - raising TAXES, cutting public sector WAGES, and PRIVATISING key industries like energy and transport - in exchange for LOANS.
These externally imposed conditions undermined the state’s autonomy, revealing how state policy was coordinated through transnational financial institutions.
The Greek state remained the FACE of implementation, but REAL decision-making power was distributed across a global network of financial governance.
=> Power DECENTRALISED through international organisations
Greece Ethnography - BHNJT
Daniel M. Knight shows how people in rural and urban Greece interpreted austerity as a BETRAYAL by the state, feeling caught between supranational dictates and a vanishing welfare system. People used HISTORICAL analogies (e.g. Nazi Germany’s occupation - Germany’s role in EU-imposed austerity a ‘bloodless invasion’ ) to understand what was happening - NARRATIVISING how neoliberalism felt like foreign control via local institutions. He tracks how neoliberal governance naturalised crisis - people began seeing it as a permanent state of being, not a deviation. People would say things like “crisis is now just life,” and even JOKE about waiting for the next bailout as a predictable seasonal event - like Easter or the olive harvest. This reflects what Knight calls the TEMPORAL sedimentation of crisis: crisis becomes the framework through which all time is lived—past, present, and future. “The state is not absent, it is present in our lives in the most violent ways”
Node
This supports the idea of the state as one node within a wider neoliberal apparatus, rather than central or dominant force.
Flows through multiple actors: corporations, civil society organisations, and global institutions. Decentralised view of power allows for a more nuanced understanding of governance taking into account the multiplicity of influences.
Challenges traditional hierarchical model of governance, where the state is seen as the primary decision-maker
