On Mead

This summary is a little difficult to write as I unfortunately do not feel that hyped about Mead. Who is Mead? What are some of his key ideas? What were some of the general movements that he was associated with?

Mead is famous for several concepts that draw on the tradition of social psychology. One of Mead's key idea is the notion of "taking the role of others". Basically, for Mead, thinking is a kind of inner conversation: by importing the attitudes of others into our conduct, we are able to view the world from the perspective of others. This is similar to the notion of the looking-glass self. Our perception of ourselves, thus, is constantly being shaped by society.

You can perhaps see why this is not very exciting: all these are fairly straightforward. What is slightly more exciting is Mead's idea of an I/me distinction. For Mead, there is no such thing as the "self". The highly mysterious, infamous "self" that we are supposed to find and discover from within (perhaps by traveling to India) is argued to be non-existent. In its place are two modes of selves - the 'I' and the 'me'. Mead conceives of the self as a social process whereby the self internalizes social attitudes and a 'me' and responds to it as an 'I'. In other words, the 'I' refers to the spontaneous, impulsive self that acts; the 'me', on the other hand, relates to the self-image when we look at ourselves through the eyes of others. According to Filipe, the "phase of the self that remembers is the 'I', the phase of the self which is remembered is the 'me'. These are not, however, two states of being: they are "processes within the larger process that is the self". The self is thus theorized to be in a perpetual state of flux - of remembering, acting and readjusting.

This duality in the conception of the self is rather radical, considering that it goes against the grain of mainstream discourse that assumes an essential self seated somewhere within our consciousness. For Mead, who and what we are develops not from the inside out, but from the outside in. While this may be true in general, Mead does not address the tricky notion of predispositions. How does Mead take into account certain character traits of children? What about the child predisposed to having an outgoing character? This is where Mead's theories of consciousness comes in. For Mead, consciousness precedes self. We can only have a "self" if we are conscious of ourselves. That is the reason why things without consciousness cannot have "selves", or at least, not the same kind of selves that we have.

In general, Mead's thinking is rather agreeable. It is not immensely fascinating, but it does have some quite interesting implications, one of which, as Filipe argues, has to do with the entire project of modernity. The other one is how it goes against the entire conception of the Cartesian rational self - before Mead, it seemed, reflectivity was not conceptualized as a social affair. That's why everyone talked about the brain in the vet, ghost in the shell, and all those stuff. Mead provides a good counter argument for the solipsism of philosophical skepticism.

The general arguments go like this. Skepticism is not entitled to reach the conclusion of "I think therefore I am" because in order for them to think in the first place, they need language. (Mead would argue that thoughts, or even a consciousness, is impossible without language - which is controversial.) And because of how language only came about due to a social process, thought, or reflectivity itself, can be conceptualized to be a social affair.

A skeptic may say: granted, a child trapped on an island alone from birth might not develop a language system, but surely he could develop a form of spacial awareness? Mead would say that there are two types of consciousness: consciousness as 'awareness', and consciousness as reflective intelligence. Without language, the first could still develop, but the second would have been impossible. An individual would never reach a type of reflective intelligence outside of society. Their "self" is necessarily one-sided.

Overview of 3 ethnographies in States of Imagination by Thomas Blom Hansen

Governing Population - The Integrated Child Development Services Program In India- Akhil Gupta
Facts:	ICDS: response to India’s high infant mortality, morbidity and malnutrition. Goal: nutrition and education for the poor, children under 6; nutrition n health for pregnant women.  Organization: 1 block = 1 project = 100 villages = 86 Angawadi workers+ 86 helpers
Issues	Produces new subjects n new resistance  Governmentality through the ICDS program - Enumeration, surveillance, monitoring
Summary	SHORT summary of Akhil Gupta’s Ethnography on the Integrated Child Development Services Program in India She first gave us an introduction to the ICDS program, the reasons for its creation as well as the structure. One of the main reason is that it is intended to control india’s population growth. A secondary reason is to act as an instrument for collecting data on one of India’s most poorly researched segment: women and children. In doing so, the ICDS creates new subjects and modes of resistance - bureaucrats, anganwadi workers, and the women and children targeted by the program.  Gupta then takes us through the concept of governmentality, claiming that the ICDS is one of the best examples of governmentality, for it is not only about discipline and regulation, but about the ways in which behaviours of social agents are reinforced.  She details how children has been painted as assets, with the synergies the ICDS plays with other developmental projects such as the “Wheat-based” program linked to the Food Corporation of India. The recruitment of Anganwadi from villages themselves.  There is a heavy element of surveillance involved in ICDS, which creates new subjectivities mentioned above. Stories of inspection trips with a CDPO Asha was accounted, detailing her various difficulties in making sure the ICDS are actually staffed, as well as her reluctance/difficulties in firing. This went on for many pages.  In the section called state mechanism, a number game, it was highlighted how record keeping is made, in class Indian bureaucratic manner, as an end in itself. Enumeration as a critical modality of governmentality. It is mentioned that for the first time in history, detailed records on women and children in rural areas has been made; although there are limitations. Some refuse to corporate. Second, it is unsure if the data is processed.  Resistance is partially constructed in terms of anganwadi workers “reimagining” their roles as teachers, or else qualitatively from housework. Semiotic struggle about the meaning of their work. Oka.  Finally, Thomas Blum Hansen summarized Akhil Gupta’s ethnography as showing how “ostensibly technocratic schemes have profoundly political effects. Gupta shows how the program problemtizes gender inequality as a developmental problem, and how the official depiction of increased independence of women as a possible source of development and economic gain slowly encroaches on older discourses on gender”. This summary betrays his lack of knowledge with the ethnography - indeed, has he not read the entire thing? Arguably, Gupta’s main point is on governmentality. She obviously sees the ICDS as a brilliant example of how the conduct of the population is controlled, how it creates new subjectivities, how attempts at surveillance and monitoring infiltrates at different levels of bureaucracies…

ANC’s Bid to Reform the South African State - Steffen Jensen
Facts:	Casts a critical glance at ANC’s attempts at changing post-apartheid South Africa, claiming that not only is it not doing enough, it constantly engages in various strategies to affirm the population that change has occurred - for instance in recycling the the past as metaphors of the struggle and other “state spectacles” which affirms the party’s historic mission Steffen Jensen also criticises how ANC lacks the vocabulary to talk about the truly fragmented nature of South African society.
Issues	States in Transition Changing Ideological State apparatus
:	No

Imagining the State as a space: Territoriality and the Formation of the State in Ecuador - Sarah Radcliffe
Facts:	Sarah Radcliffe takes us through 4 main periods where the “state” has been geographically constructed. The first period spans from 1860-1875. Here, she cites attempts at scientifically mapping the country. Even though there were attempts at consolidating statehood (e.g. In national currencies and anthems), they were “largely meaningless to the population. The second period is the period of modernisation, spanning from 1930s to 1940s. Further state concretisation is firmly rooted in cold-war historical analysis, which I did not read much into, for it presumes some knowledge of the history of Ecuador.
Issues	Spatial formation of state Nation building as profoundly spatial project Cartography, inventory, census data, physical integration via currency, transport, education - as tools of the state to confirm its power over - and knowledge of - its subjects
:
Ratio:
Questions

Summary of Ethnic Boundary Making by Andreas Wimmer

Andreas Miller’s approach to ethnicity is rather interesting and comprehensive. He argues, amongst other things, that current approaches to ethnicity has failed to take into account why its character vary dramatically across cases, displaying different “degrees of social closure, political salience, cultural distinctiveness, and historical stability”. He thus introduces a “multilevel process theory”, which assumes that “ethnic boundaries are the outcome of the classificatory struggles and negotiations between actors situated in a social field”. Arguing that three elements - institutional order, distribution of power, and political networks - determine the people and the strategies of ethnic boundary making, he concludes with a discussion of how these factors lead to “shared understanding”. 

First taking us through the literature review of the subject, he highlights how Barth broke away from the Herderian canon in anthropology whereby “each ethnic group represented a historically grown, uniquely shaped flower in the garden of human cultures”. He contend that this signifies a turn from “Linnean taxonomy” to “social ecology”, which paved the way for constructivism, the notion that ethnicity is a product of “social process”, rather than a cultural given. It is made and remade, and should not be taken for granted. He takes us through the various battle lines, between primordialism, instrumentalism, essentialism, situationalism, modernsm, perrennialism, before claiming that he would like to “transcend” all these categories. To do so, he starts by rejecting the approach of “definitional ontology”, claiming that definitional debates have “diverted our efforts away from understanding why ethnicity appears in such variable forms”. One can perhaps identify a “Foucauldian” element in his approach. Finally, he outlines his methodology, which involves first of all identifying four “principal dimensions of variation”: different degrees of political salience of ethnic boundaries, of social closure and exclusion along ethnic lines, of cultural differentiation between groups, and of stability over time. After that, he engages with a “more sophisticated and empirically promising theory”, what he termed “social process theory”, that focuses on how social forms are generated and transformed over time. 

That much is the overall outline of the essay. Now, let’s tackle the meat. 

He first starts by defining ethnicity according to the Weberian tradition. To him, ethnicity is “a subjectively felt sense of belonging based on the belief in shared culture and common ancestry”. In this broad definition, race and nationhood are both treated as subtypes of ethnicity. He draws our attention to the possibility of further subtypes, such as “ethnoreligious, ethnoregional, ethnolinguistic” categories and groups. 

He then outlines how his approach of subsuming “race” under “ethnicity” runs against the folk use of the terms in the US, where “race” is associated with African-Americans and “ethnicity” refers to “less consequential distinctions” among dominant “white groups”. Mainstream American sociology, he points out, also treat them separately. Such an approach is problematic. First of all, Miller points how how such a treatment overlooks the fact that the same group of individuals might be treated as a race at one point in history and as an ethnic category in another. He give the example of how the African slaves were primarily defined as pagans and their English masers as Christians in the 17th century, whereby afterwards, the “ethnoreligious distinction was gradually replaced by ethnosomatic differentiation”. Furthermore, Miller argues that phenotypical differences are often evoked as one among other markers of ethnic distinction, which means that race kind of falls within the boundaries of ethnicity. Having a sharp and fast line between race and ethnicity also does not account for the interdependent ways and complexities of racial/ethnic formation, such as Serbs in Kosovo and Albanians in Serbia. He points out that the reason why US is skeptical of a more encompassing definition of ethnicity is because US academics argue that it is a “sinister neoconservative agenda” meant to “negate the role that racist ideologies played in the colonisation of the world” and to “deny that racial exclusion might be relevant in contemporary US society”. Arguing against such a conception, Willer suggests that a more encompassing definition will allow one to “see how *much* it matters” by situating the US case on a comparative horizon. 

Exploring the notion of “boundaries”, Miller points out that boundaries display both a “categorical and a social/behavioral dimension”. The former refers to acts of “social classification and collective representation”, while the latter refers to “everyday networks of relationships”. It is about the dividing of social groups into “us” vs “them”. He maintains that boundaries are not sharply defined most of the time, that they can be fuzzy and soft. 

In an attempt to classify all the available case studies of ethnicity, Willer constructs “four dimensions of variation” along with individual cases can be situated. Variation, here, refers to ethnic forms. According to him, the four are: political salience of boundaries, social closure, cultural differentiation, and stability. 

Some boundaries are “politically salient” while others are not. A Souther Californian may identify as Blue Hmong as opposed to White Hmong, as Hmong in opposition to other persons of Vietnamese origin, as Vietnamese in contrast to other Asian nationalities, as Asian-American in opposition to African-American and Europe American, or as American from a global perspective. The immediate challenge for Miller is identifying which of these lines of cleavages are “politically relevant”. He shows how the “situationists” have claimed that salience depends on the “logic of the situation” and the characteristics of the persons interacting. If a Blue Hmong political activist is struggling with White Hmongs over which group’s cultural heritage will be recognised by the Californian government, it will be the “Blue” aspect of it that is salient. Miller criticises this theory by pointing out that there are certain aspects of one’s identity that is more “political salient” than others in *most* context, for instance the condition of being “Asian” in the case above, because of how college officers decide who to admit to their programs, or when political entrepreneurs design electoral strategies. Miller thinks that the situationists, in privileging *any* identification, is too relativist. We should thus look at how institutions, power and networks, engender a hierarchical salience in their process of structuring political relations in society. 

He also mentions an approach to salience that emphasises economic competition. This theory states that ethnic boundaries that correspond to “groups in competition on the labor market will be politically more relevant than those that cut across lines of economic interest”. This argument is not clearly delineated in Wimmer’s essay, but perhaps what he is trying to articulate is how groups in competition with each other for jobs will tend to develop a corresponding ethnic identity, which is differentiated from other ethnic groups that are competing for jobs as well. Miller attacks quickly on this one, citing evidence high tide of immigration before WWI. In any case, this doesn’t seem to be that important, and it is not well developed anyway, so I’ll skip this part. 

A third, and perhaps the most obvious, question to the problem of salience lies in the more “perrenialist” claim that it is the “visibility of ethnic markers” that determine which cleavages will be most relevant for social interactions and political life. This is at once the “common sense” view, and perhaps most convincing to me. However, Willer claims that such a view cannot be generalised “historically and cross-nationally”. 

For instance, groups such as the Jews, Irish and Italians were once considered to be “phenotypically ambivalent” and now simply classified as “white”. Although there IS a case to be made about the social construction of perception, I think this argument is premised on a weak example. Surely, Black and Asian people have never been classified as of the same “ethnic” origins before. However, Miller also points to how in Puerto Rico, the definition of “white” expanded considerably over time to include individuals of mixed backgrounds previously considered “coloured”. Again, I think this has less to do with the fact that ethnic markers do not matter, but more to do with how the phenotypical traits themselves are ambiguous and rather similar in the first place. Sometimes, I get the sense that Wimmer is trying to hard to be contradictory. 

So to summarise a little before we move on. In attempting to take into account variations in ethnic forms, Wimmer drew our attention to political salience. He points out to 3  ways political salience is constructed, via a “situational” approach, via “economic competition”, and via visible ethnic markers. Up till this far, I don’t think Wimmer has been very thorough. For one, I can think of many other ways ethnic forms can be made politically salient, for instance through differing ways self-understanding is affected - via media, institutions, etc…

So far, then, quite disappointing. The second thing that accounts for variation in ethnic forms (again, i don’t think he defines what this means enough - I shall take it to mean different types of ethnic categories) is social closure, or “groupness”. This brings in the notion of “self-identification” and a shared sense of belonging. Ah, perhaps this is why Wimmer left it out of his first factor - the first factor is purely political/economic in nature, while the second factor looks inwards. Indeed, he raises the example of how immigrants from Haiti and West Indian came to identify with the “imposed category of ‘black’” while their parents vehemently emphasise their national identity. Exploring the concept of closure, Wimmer mentions how degrees of closure affects the easy in which boundaries can be crossed. This begs the question: what does it mean by crossing the boundary? I think Wimmer answers this in his next section. Under “repositioning”, it perhaps refer to a subjective attempt for a social actor to “pass off” as another ethnicity. So high degrees of social closure means it is harder for other people to lay claim to *their* ethnic identity…? I think that is the case. For instance, when ethnicities such as “Singaporeanness” is defined as having lived and behaving like a Singaporean, then there isn’t much of a social closure. If social closure is defined by “bloodlines”, such as Kurds, or Jews, then they tend to be more closed off, and the boundaries more distinct. 

There are also examples of ethnic boundaries that are drawn unambiguously, for instance the Mongolians, where a “Mongol is a Mongol even if born from a Kazah mother and brought up among Kazahs”. Some studies show that a Mongol is a mongol even if born from two Kazahs and brought up in America. Lol jk. 

Apart from social closure, there is another factor in accounting for variation in ethnic forms: cultural differentiation. Wimmer is quick to point out that many do contend that the “culture stuff within” matters. Cultural differentiation therefore may “make a boundary appear quasi natural and self-evident”. On the other hand, we have countries where “ethnic boundaries do not divide a population along obvious cultural lines but unite individuals who follow quite heterogeneous cultural practices”. Singapore is, again, a great example, and multilingual, multi religious national communities such as the Swiss. Also, when ethnic boundaries *do* coincide with cultural differences, the boundary might be “blurred subsequently and eventually break down completely, such as among the Chinese in Guyana or Cuba, and countless other cases of assimilation”. 

Stability also poses a problem in our consideration of ethnic forms. While some groups and boundaries change slowly, other change rapidly. The most stable boundaries are those that identify through “multigenerational, unilineal descent lines, such as MOngols, Pathans, Jews”. More unstable boundaries are those defined by behaviour, such as Vezo of Madagascar, or Singaporeans…

Moving on to the theoretical foundations of his own work (it never seems to end! - Wimmer builds foundations upon foundations), Wimmer says that his model draws inspiration from three research traditions. First is Weber’s notion of “group relations”. Second is the study of ethnicity as “the outcome of a political and symbolic struggle over the categorical divisions of society”, in the tradition of one like Bourdieu, and perhaps also drawing upon the Gramscian notion of hegemony. Thirdly, the institutional tradition - the spread of nation-state form - is engaged as well.

There are five “strategies” of ethnic boundary making that “may be pursued by different actors in different social context”. There might be shifting boundaries through expansion, for instance when modernising empires incorporate smaller ethnic groups, or when newly nationalising states create ethnoregional blocks in an attempt to establish a larger political base, or perhaps simply in “nation building”, in “making French” of peasants, Brazilians out of whites, blacks, browns, Singaporeans out of Indians, Chinese, Malay, etc. 

Boundaries can also contract. This occurs when second-generation chinese and Koreans in Los Angeles would prefer to be referred to and treated as Chinese-Americans and Korean Americans rather than lumped together under the term “Asian”, in the same way as how immigrants from the West Indies fought to be recognised as “Jamaicans” and “Trinidadians” in order to avoid being categorised as “black”. 

Inversion can also apply to a boundary, where, according to Wimmer, the culturally, economically inferior group empowers itself. Examples given were cultural nationalism among African Americans in the States. As a process, however, this one seems much more shaky than the rest. It is premised on a very specific form of inversion, that of power. 

Boundaries can furthermore be repositioned. This was mentioned earlier in the essay, where assimilation or passing off are the main strategies where individuals “shift sides”. A good example of “collective repositioning” is what anthropologists have called “caste climbing”, where lower caste members of India adopts the lifestyle of the upper castes. 

Finally, boundaries can be blurred. For instance in explicitly anti-nationalist organisations such as the Communist International, the radical Islamic movements that dream of the restoration of a supranational caliphate, Sophiatown in the 1950s where Africans, Jews and immigrants had formed what they perceived as a cosmopolitan culture inspired by American Jazz, British fashion and continental literary styles. The emphasis of civil commonalities in arguments where universal moral qualities and membership in the “human family” is evoked, etc. 

In what seems like the final part of Wimmer’s essay, he explores how institutions, powers and network that constraints actions upon the boundaries. 

Institutional frameworks affect the dynamics of ethnic boundary making. For instance, the colonisation of the non-Western world, the racialization of population, the spread of the nation-state in the postcolonial era, are all example of “boundary creation”. This is really just governmentality (Foucault), how ethnicity is created by institutions through violent localised struggles. Wimmer himself doesn’t really quote Foucault. He mentions how the nation state creates incentives for state elites to pursue strategies of ethnic boundary making. The “principle of ethnonational representativity of government”, for one, became the norm for any legitimate state. This provides the main institutions incentive for state elites to systematically homogenise their subjects in cultural and ethnic terms, usually by expanding the boundaries of their own group and declaring their own ethnic background, culture, and language as forming the national pot into which everyone else should aspire to melt. 

In addition, political entrepreneurs among “ethnic minorities” emphasise ethnic rather than other social divisions, in their bid to expand nationalist power. Wimmer mentions a sad point of how majority members may discriminate against minorities in everyday circumstances for the reinforcement of their own national identities. 

Wimmer then qualifies that boundaries are not drawn along ethnic or national lines for all institutions, citing the example of emergency room hospitals in US as how it transcends boundaries. Second, he claims that other institutions also influence the dynamics of ethnic boundary making, such as democratisation politics. This is an interesting point of how the very nature of democracy promotes ethnic divisions as politicians appeal to and manipulate the sense of shared groupness. 

Next, Wimmer looks at how power acts on the boundaries. He claims that the level of ethnic differentiation an individual will emphasise “depends on her position in the hierarchies of power that the institutional order establishes”. The effect of this power are twofold. 

First, the actor will prefer the level of ethnic differentiation that is perceived to further her interests. This is a variant of the situationist argument in disguise, actually, with a slight focus on the “reflexive mode of reasoning” that it takes to decide one’s interest. Wimmer claims that even when boundaries are already established and routinised, individuals have a “choice between different interpretations and instantiations of the ethnic scheme”. This gives more power to the individuals to act on their idea of ethnicity. 

Second, “endowment with power not only determines which strategy of ethnic boundary making an individual will pursue but also how consequential this will be for others”. Wimmer gives the example of how only those in control of the state apparatus can use the census and law to enforce certain boundary. He cautions against “overstating the hegemonic power” because “subordinates may develop counter discourses”, for instance in the case of West Indians insisting on being Jamaican rather than being black. 

Moving on, Wimmer also studies how networks determine how the boundaries are drawn. By network, he means “networks of political alliances”. In particular, he seems to suggest the networks that politicians belong to in the decisive, early periods of nation-state formation in deciding the boundary between nation and minority. For instance, different types of political alliance networks was present in Brazil’s nation-building project, which included population of African descent, as opposed to that of the US, which resulted in more inclusive policies. 

It follows that there is one last thing to be explored, according to Wimmer, and that is the notion of consensus. Who gets to decide why certain boundaries are drawn? What if some actors (minorities) disagree? Wimmer says that those in power typically has to “convince others of their view of society”. They thus have to enter a “negotiation process”. One theory (neo-Gramscian) states that the elites achieve hegemony through consent. There is, of course, the presence of counter hegemonic struggles, which does not mean that consent does not exist for large parts of the population. Consent may also arise from the “exchange” of different economic, political and symbolic resources between individuals occupying different social positions. 

Finally, Wimmer moves on to the features of the boundaries. In trying to construct how different degrees of inequality affect the nature of ethnic boundaries, he argues that where there is high “power differentials” between individuals, degrees of social closure are also high. According to Wimmer, those who have “successfully set themselves apart form the rest as “ethnic others” and managed to monopolise economic, political or symbolic resources will try to police the ethnic boundary and make assimilation difficult”. Conversely, Wimmer notes the potential for “market forces” - ‘meritocratic recruitment through elite universities- ensure status reproduction and tendencies of closure may weaken. ??? what does this mean? So when class divisions are perpetuated, ethnic boundaries are weakened? How does this make sense?

He then talks about things like Stability and path dependency, which I feel are clustered and unilluminating terms in general, and hence I’ll end this summary here. 

He mentions how certain boundaries are more resistant to strategic reinterpretation or blurring than others. He mentions three main mechanisms of change. The first is an exogenous shift. Major political events such as imperial conquest or nation-state formation will transform the institutional structure, hence blurring or changing the boundaries. Things like the EU, and the UN are examples of such forces. International migration can also change this. Secondly, endogenous shifts occur due to “cumulative consequences of strategies pursued by actors”. Strategies of boundary expansion and assimilation, for instance, will lead to shift in boundaries. Third, when actors adopt new strategies that are not within the current repertoire, boundaries may change. For instance, the US civil rights movement’s influence on the global LGBT community world wide, the political mobilisation of Quebecois in Canada, postcolonial immigrants in the UK, “blacks” in Brazil, and so forth. They are hence inspired. 

Okay this shit is way too long, I am going to stop here. 

Summary of Beyond Identity - Brubaker and Cooper

Identity is a very complicated subject. Part of the reason why it is so complicated is because it can mean so many things. It can be understood both in its strong sense - as something fixed, crystallised, hardened, congealed, or in its weak sense, as something malleable, in flux, unstable, contradictory. In Beyond Identity, Brubaker and Cooper problematises the discursive treatment of identity, arguing, amongst other things, that the prevailing constructivist stance on identity - “the attempt to soften the term, to acquit it of the charge of essentialism” is ill suited for socio-analytic purposes. In addition, they argue that conceptualising “all affinities, affiliations, all forms of belonging, all experiences of commonality, connectedness, and cohesion, all self-understanding and self-identification in the idiom of ‘identity’ saddles us with a blunt, flat, undifferentiated vocabulary”. For this very reason, B&C proposes to break “identity” apart, for both practical and epistemic reasons. 

They first take us through a literature review of the rise of discourse on “identity” in academia. Charting its historical roots, BnC points to the 1960s as the point at which academics (mainly in the US) started paying attention to ‘identity’ for social analysis. Erik Erikson, for instance,started the ball rolling by coining the term “identity crisis”. Slowly it diffused from the realms of psychoanalysis to ethnicity, sociological role theory and reference group theory. It is in America that the “prevalent individualist ethos and idiom” gave a particular salience and resonance to “identity” concerns. The “mass society problem” of the 60s, the generational rebellion, the Black Power movement and other ethnic movements all contributed to the focus on identity. BnC also claims that the “institutional weakness of leftist politics” and the “concomitant weakness of class based idioms of social and political analysis” further facilitated the turn, although it is unclear what he means by former. How is leftist politics - presumably variants of social democracy - weak institutionally? Moving on, with the rise of “race, class and gender” (the “holy trinity” of literary criticism and cultural studies, according to BnC), identity talk blossomed. 

Perhaps the most useful and insightful part of BnC’s writing is this portion as follows. Many key terms in the social sciences - race, nation, ethnicity - are at once “categories of practice” as well as “categories of analysis”. Categories of practice refers to “native”, “lay” or “folk” categories. It is the categories used in everyday speech, by the laymen. Categories of analysis refers to specialised usage by sociologists. BnC claims that they “prefer” the former to the latter, for the latter relies a sharp distinction between “lay” and “scientific” understanding while the former reflects the “close reciprocal connection between practical and analytic use. 

Identity too relies on both categories. There is “everyday identity talk” and “identity politics”, which is argued by BnC to be real and important phenomena. They further argue that despite its importance as categories of practice, it does not necessarily follow that it needs to be used as categories of sociological analysis. Providing the example of nations and nationalism, they argue that one “does not have to take a category inherent in the *practice* of nationalism and make this category central to the *theory* of nationalism. Just like how one can engage in “nation-talk” without positing the existence of “nations” (theoretically) and like how one can talk about “race” without positing the existence of “race”, so too can we talk about “identity” without arguing that it exists conceptually, or theoretically. This is a brilliant point - but it raises certain paradoxes. If speech and communication is a series of word games, how can we talk about something and expect other people to know that in fact theoretically, we contend that this thing does not actually exist? How do other parties then differentiate between the things we actually mean to exist and those that we don’t? So in principle we can separate identity talk from hard notions of identity but in practice this seems impossible. 

As if foreseeing the difficulties, BnC then talks about reification. Reification occurs at moments where the “political fiction” of categories like nation, race, gender, “crystallise as a powerful, compelling reality”. By “uncritically adopting” categories of practice as categories of analysis, we are in fact reinforcing such reifications. He argues that analysts of these categories should try to *account* for the process of reification. However, the question remains: how does one get around the process of reification every single time a category is mentioned? Isn’t naming something, in this case, the ultimate reification process? This is when symbols become real. 

Moving on, BnC dissects the different uses of identity. 

The first way identity is used emphasises its distinction from “interest”. By doing so it highlights the “non-instrumental” modes of social and political action. In simpler terms, interests are instrumental: it is a way to achieve a certain end. Social actions explained by identity is posited to be the end in itself. I do this because it is part of who I am. Actions under identity are governed by “particularistic self-understanding” instead of “putatively universal self-interest”. 

Second, identity connotes a “collective” phenomenon, a “fundamental and consequential sameness” between members of a group. 

Third, identity can be understood as a “core aspect of selfhood”, either on an individual level on in a group level. This selfhood is deep, basic, abiding and foundational. 

Fourth, identity can be understood as a *processual, interactive* development of a kind of self-understanding or “groups”. It is typically found in “new social movement” literature where identity is understood as a *contingent* product of social action. 

Lastly, the post-modern take on identity finds it “unstable, multiple, fluctuating and fragmented”. It is a product of multiple and competing discourses. 

To make things clearer, BnC highlights the affinities between the second and third, and between the fourth and fifth. He also mentions that the first usage is compatible with all the others. While number 2 and 3 highlights fundamental sameness, 4 and 5 rejects this notion. 

To BnC, identity is simply too semantically rich to be analytically useful. He proposes that we split it up into the following categories: identification and categorisation; self-understanding and social location; commonality, connectedness and groupness. Before that, he has to justify what we gain by splitting identity up into these categories and what we lose. To do so, we return to current notions of identity. 

BnC distinguishes between strong and weak notions of identity. While the former generally refers to everyday usage of identity with an emphasis on sameness, the latter focuses on the instability and flux, or what BnC calls “cliched constructivism”, where identity is “routinely packaged with standard qualifiers” such as “unstable, in flux, contingent, fragmented, etc”. He then pushes the argument that weak conceptions of identity ought not be conceptions of *identity*, and that they are too weak to do theoretical work. He cites several theorists who engage with weak notions of identity for theoretical work and contends that “identity” is not the best concept for their theories. 

Moving back to BnC’s divided categories; let’s focus on the first element, identification and categorisation. The primary reason provided by BnC for the adoption of this category is that identification lacks the reifying connotations of identity. This seems to be a very functional category. BnC also draws our attention to relational and categorical modes of identification. One can, for instance, identify oneself “by position in a relational web (kinship, friendship, teacher-student relations) or one may identify oneself by membership in a class of persons sharing some categorical attributes (race, ethnicity, etc). He mentions how the modern state is one of the most important agents of identification and classification. This is linked to Foucault’s notion of governmentality. 

Of course, simply accounting for categorisation of social agents is not enough: BnC also needs to account for the internal dimension of identity. Thus, the second category - self-understanding and social location. Self-understanding refers to one’s sense of who one is, one’s social location. Like identification, self-understanding lacks the reifying connotations of identity; in other words, it is less “essentialist”; it is much more susceptible to change. However, self-understanding is only one tiny part of “identity”, and BnC takes pains to let us know what it cannot do. First, since it’s a self-referential term, it cannot capture other people’s understanding. For instance, identity can sometimes said to be imposed from outside, where self-understanding can at most be influenced by the outside, but will always stem from within. 

Second, self-understanding’s privileging of cognitive awareness does not capture the affective or cathectic processes of identity. However, BnC insists that self-understanding is not always *truly* cognitive; it is affected in large part by feelings as well. Finally, self-understanding does not claim to objectivity. Strong notions of identity allows one to distinguish “true” identity from “mere” self-understanding. Identity is assumed to be something deep and discovered, whereas self-understanding is just momentary and might not correspond with one’s abiding, underlying identity. BnC claims, quite naturally, that such an understanding of identity is problematic. 

The third and final category BnC claims is “commonality, connectedness and groupness”. This category deals with the notion of “collective identities”, a sense of belonging to a distinctive, bounded group. Commonality denotes the sharing of some common attributes. Connectedness the relational ties that link people. BnC claims that neither of these two engender groupness - the sense of belonging to a distinct, bounded, solidary group. The benefits of thinking of connectedness in this manner is to develop an “analytical idiom sensitive to the multiple forms and degrees of commonality and connectness, and to the widely varying ways in which actors attribute meaning and significance to them.” Thus commonality is seen as the weakest bonds, groupness the strongest. 

In the final part, BnC takes us through three case studies where his new conception of identity is applied. The first is Nuer; I will be skipping this. The second case study deals with East European nationalism. In this, BnC attempts to argue that “identity” is neither necessary nor helpful as a category of analysis even though, in this case, it *is* widely used as a category of practice. He begins by highlighting how literature on nationalism in Eastern europe is premised on notions of group identity. Many attribute the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in the region as springing from robust and deeply rooted national identity, something that has survived decades of repression by communist regimes. BnC argues against this view, contending that many of these countries was not “anti-nationalist” per se, but rather take great pains to institutionalise and codify nationhood. The Soviet Union, for instance, carved up Soviet territory into more than 50 putatively autonomous national “homelands” each belonging to a particular ethnonational group. In this way, nationalities are constantly ratified and reinforced. BnC implies that we cannot assume the presence of strong, buried, repressed identities since these “identities” are constantly being ascribed.

To illustrate this BnC brings up the case of “Russians” in Ukraine. He says that while 11.4m of the residents in Ukraine identify themselves as Russians, the categories of “Russians” and “Ukrainian” as “putatively distinct ethnocultural nationalities” or distinct “identities” is deeply problematic as rates of intermarriage have been high. The problem with “identity” here is that it creates the “illusion” of bounded groupness. That official categorisations will shape self-understanding is a fact - but using “identity” to figure out this question will only lead us to confusion. 

Using a very similar example of Hungarians and Romanians in Transylvania, BnC argues further that even “constructivist” notions of identity disposes us to think in terms of bounded groupness, for it connotes that identity is always “there” (even though it’s weak, fragmented, in flux) as something individuals and groups “have”. He emphasises how the tendency to objectify “identity” deprives us of analytical leverage, making it more difficult to treat “groupness” and “boundedness” as “emergent properties of particular structural or conjunctural settings”. 

The final example BnC gives is that of race in the US, where the pathos and resonance of identity claims is particularly strong. He notes how constructivist arguments have particular influence in the US, where the self and other-identitied groups are not primordial but historically produced. BnC astutely points certain contradictions in this approach. Directing our attention to African americans, he contends that “asserting oneself as a diasporic people did not necessarily imply claiming cultural commonality”. He laments that it is “whiteness” or “race” that is taken as the object of construction, not looser forms of “affinity and commonality”. He argues that to write about “identifications” might be more fruitful. He raises the same problem early on that many are caught between a “hard identity that does not fit into a soft rhetoric of hybridity and fluidity”. If “real contributions of constructivist social analysis” is to be taken seriously, it should not, argues BnC, take “bounded groupess” as an axiomatic given. 

Summary of Anthropology of the State Introduction Aradhana Sharma

Summary of the Introduction:

Aradhana begins by painting us a picture of the call centres of Gurgaon. These call centres situated in business hubs forms a “new form of indenture in the global division of labour” where the North outsources to the South. She gives a brief overview of the value ladder. Addressing the central issue at question, she asks: what are the effects of outsourcing on the Indian state? Is the relationship between the state and these business friendly “zones” antithetical or compatible? While some academics like Thomas Friedman pushes for the narrative of “progressive global capitalism” surviving in spite of poor local infrastructure, others, like Aradhana herself, attributes the success of these economic zones to the policies of the Indian state. Examples include tax friendly policies as well as an educated local workforce. 

Aradhana then explores the concept of “outsourcing”. She highlights how as an idea, outsourcing has been under scrutiny from actors and workers in the North because of it’s detrimental effects on structural unemployment. She also points out the irony in the United State’s open trade policies and it’s simultaneous hesitance towards labour migration. She concludes that the “rhetoric of legislation against the flight of jobs weave together national belonging, citizenship, culture, race, state work, and state control”. Turning to the meat of the essay, she claims that it is important to establish an anthropological understanding of the state in order to understand the nature of rule in a (neo)liberalizing, transnational world. She suggests that we do this by studying everyday practices and representations of the state. 

Before moving on to those two areas, Aradhana introduces her methodology. She argues that new insights of the state can be gleamed by treating them as “cultural artefacts” while “simultaneously framing them within transnational dynamics”. She suggests that we can do so by examining “how cultural and representational frames articulate with structural and functional approaches to studying states, and what they reveal about the deeply cultural nature of states”, along with “shifting the focus from a national to a transnational frame, thus highlighting the translocality of the state”. Doing so will enable us to imagine the state as a “multilayered, contradictory, translocal ensemble of institutions, practices and people”. It would also enable us to reach beyond the reductionism inherent in the “more globalisation = less nation-state sovereignty = weaker states” line of argument. 

To Aradhana, outsourcing represents an “reorganisation of the forces of global capitalism” that affects nation states in new ways. She brings out how, in popular discourse, globalisation is taken to be a threaten to the concept of nation state on two fronts, sovereignty and territoriality. Specifically, the territorial inviolability of nation states is challenged by “border-transgressing circulations of people, images, money and goods, and the demands of separatist ethnic movements”. State sovereignty is threatened by quasi-state-like institutions like WTO and regional institutions like the EU. Interestingly, she highlights how resistance to different aspects of globalisation is itself in ways that challenge and go beyond nation states. She brings in Keck and Sikkink’s term, “transnational network” (loose transborder affiliation of activist groups organised around specific “local” issues like environment and violence against women) to illustrate her point. 

There are a few dominant strands of contemporary discourse when studying the state and the role of sovereignty in the globalised world. Some argue for the retreat of the state, others for the altered role of the state - but all of them, maintains Aradhana, assumes a relatively cohesive “national” state, and an inevitable link between state and nation. Challenging these assumptions, Aradhana shows how critics of globalisation has a habit of privileging “nation” or “nationhood” in arguing for less outsourcing. Here, Aradhana argues, the state is inevitably conceived as a nation state. The presumed association between “nation-states, sovereignty and territoriality” has been reshaped by transnational processes; and in this vein, Aradhana brings up Saskia Sassen’s concept of “unbundling of sovereignty” to indicate the altered relationship between territoriality and sovereignty where “political power and regulatory mechanisms are being reorganised at a national level”. Her choice of words here is interesting: sovereignty is argued to be “partially disentangled” from nation states and “mapped” onto supranational and nongovernmental organisations. The use of partially disentangling and mapping in this case is avoids the usual vocabulary of “shifting from” or “partially moving away from” while retaining similar substantive meanings, at least when direction of the movement of sovereignty is concerned. Anyway, after making this measured claim about sovereignty, as if anticipating a deluge of criticisms, Aradhana quickly asserts that it doesn’t mean that the nation state, “as a conceptual framework or material reality”, is useless or passé. Then she finally returns to her initial, and as of yet unproven, thesis on the assumption of “inevitable link” between state and nation. She argues that “the state, the nation and the nation-state” have been used interchangeably in scholarly discourse. Theories of state often have implicit theories of nationalism, and vice versa. However, to her, there are important distinctions. Theories of state are “largely silent” on issues of culture, while theories of nations engage in them. Questioning why this is the case, Aradhana suggests that perhaps it’s because nationalism is both an affect, and affective, which makes it easier to think of its cultural moorings, unlike the state, which is primarily conceptualised in institutional terms. This is interesting. But not as interesting as her final point, which is a meta-point about nation statism itself. Claiming that theories of nation states “assume the frame of the nation-state and a world of nation-states”, she seems to be suggesting that simply by evoking the concept of nation states, one is at once normalising nation states and delegitimising other forms of social actors, for instance NGOs, or perhaps tribal communities. 

Moving on, she gives us a survey of how anthropology can contribute to the study of the state. She first lays the groundwork by pointing us to the two main ways the state has been studied in political science, via the systems approach, and the statist approach. The systems approach “highlights the difficulties in delineating clear boundaries of “the state” and argued for abandoning the study of the states in favour of the broader idea of a ‘political system”. Perhaps a bit of interpretation of this line is needed. The difficulties in delineating clear boundaries of the state might arise when we ask the question, what actions are specifically acted upon by the state, and what actions are considered societal actions? For instance, in the modern context, to what extent are state policies given in isolation, and not as a reaction, from the empirical realities of the ground? (Ok this might be a bad example, but I am just speculating as to how difficulties in delineating boundaries of the state might arise - maybe I’ll return to this later). Then, discourse changed in the 1960s to bring the state back into scholarly focus. As a reaction to Marxist functionalist notions of the state (state as instrument of capitalist class interest), scholars began attempting to establish the state as a “discrete social fact” - very Weberian, if I may - which brings us to the Statist approach to states. This approach conceptualises the state as a “clearly bounded institution that is distinct from society”, and is “often portrayed as a unitary and autonomous actor that possesses the supreme authority to regulate populations within its territories”. It also assumes the notion of the state as an a priori conceptual or empirical object, which many scholars have criticised. Most modern scholars do not take the state as a given - rather, they tend to focus on the “ideological and material aspects of state construction”. One of the most popular arguments from the anthropological perspective is that the “appearance of the state as a discrete and relatively autonomous social institution is itself a reification that is constituted through everyday social practices”. How the line separating the state from civil society comes to be drawn becomes an exercise in power and control. 

Aradhana argues that “once we see the boundaries between the state and civil society is itself an effect of power”, we can “begin conceptualising the state within, and not automatically distinct from, other institutional forms through which social relations are lived, such as the family, civil society and the economy.” The problem becomes one of “figuring out how the state comes to assume its vertical position as the supreme authority that manages all other institutional forms that social relations take, and functions as super-coordinator”. Apparently mundane state activities such as the collection of taxes, the distribution of subsidised food to the poor or the issuance of passports can then be conceptualised as meaningful examples of the mechanisms of rule and workings of power. All these, of course, falls under the Foucauldian tradition of state-power analysis. 

Turning to the benefits of approaching the state with an anthropological lens, Aradhana argues that by focusing on particular branches and levels of state institution, we get a “disaggregated” view of the state that shows the “multilayered, pluri-centered, and fluid nature of this ensemble that conceals different contradictions”. In addition, anthropology brings up the cultural differences in the formation of states, which is differentiated from neo-Marxist or neo-Weberian accounts of the state which sees culture as lying firmly on the “society” side of the state-society divide. She then outlines and criticises the structural and functional conceptions of the state by questioning the essential similarity in the “units” used for comparison, i.e.democratic, or authoritarian regimes. Cultural differences might in fact reflect a core difference. Because of this, we ought not, argues Aradhana, treat culture as epiphenomenal to the state. 

Aradhana points out as well the problematic way states are measured as “strong” or “weak”. Doing so assumes a very specific Western conception of the state as the ideal type. 

Moving further, Aradhana turns her attention to how everyday practices informs on our conception of the state. She maintains that “states that are structurally similar may nonetheless be profoundly different in terms of the meanings they have for the people”. The difference is substantiated by different ways states appear in people’s daily lives. Primarily, Aradhana argues that the state manifests itself through “banal practices of bureaucracy”. While acceding that some might interpret bureaucratic proceduralism as “apolitical”, she challenges this view by considering the example of maps: mapping and surveying are important part of the apparatus of control and legitimacy as they directly mould what states see, how they govern, and how the population perceives them. It is through proceduralism that the state comes to be “imagined, encountered, and reimagined by the population”. She brings up examples like the “rule-following behaviour” in Indian society, as well as Gupta’s ICDS to show how practices of bureaucracy is “intimately linked to cultural contestation and construction”. 

One interesting way we can look at official procedures is to see them as “authorless strategies through which power is exercised and inequalities instituted”. Doing so would allow us to “disentangle intentionality from the operation of power”. The state’s iterative actions, thus, should be viewed as “performative” (Butler), where rather than being an outward reflection of a coherent and bounded state core, they actually constitute the very core. One might recall the similarities this has with the Aristotlian idea that “we are what we do repeatedly”. States are ontologically present in the bureaucratic procedures. To illustrate this point, Aradhana brings up the example of India’s Mahila Samakhya program, which is a grassroots program that “empowers” women by teaching them how to construct proper paper trials. Doing so would enable the uneducated, poor and non-literate to be in a position of lesser disadvantage when dealing with the state. Aradhana also admits that the relationship between bureaucracy and its reproduction is not as straightforward as it seems, given that there is a possibility of subversion from both the civilians as well as within the bureaucracy. Jeeps with official license plates, development workers with census forms, all these show how “representations, symbols, practices, and materiality are linked”. Interbureaucratic conflicts occur when the intentions and goals of high ranking officials are never realised during implementation when bureaucrats adhere to the letter but not the spirit of the policy. Programs may thus work out in unintended ways or suffer unlikely consequences. 

Representations, according to Gupta, comprise another “key modality” through which states are culturally constituted. It refers to ways in which states are represented, through newspapers, the media, etc. Public representation and “performance of statehood” is crucial in shaping people’s perceptions about the nature of the state. Through localised images and experiences, the state is discursively imagined as “something greater than simply its local manifestations”. The dialectic between practices and representations, however, opens up the possibility of dissonance between ideas of the state gleaned from representation and personal encounters with official entities. This might lead to a “rupture of the hegemony and singularity” of the state. Finally, the focus on representation allows us to examine the mechanisms by which the extraction and redistribution of surplus, as well as the production of relations of production are accomplished and legitimated. 

In the final section - this summary is getting too long - Aradhana explores how states are now constructed by transnational discourses. Citing the act of representing Third World states by decreasing order of development (present in the UN), a certain set of “needs, characteristics and interventions” are produced. This has the effect of positioning states as primary agents for national development, which might be an obvious, but important point, for it affects the how governments understand the mandate for national development. The “scramble” for governments to appear neat, lean and efficient is reflective of a broader neoliberal discourse which emphasises civil society, privatisation and the rollback of welfare programs. This highlights how transnational pressures can lead to a broader neoliberalization across the world, especially towards less developed countries. In pursuing this line of thought, Aradhana tries to establish exactly how neoliberalism has transformed the way the nature, boundary and role of the state are represented. She observes a “shrinking” boundaries of the state in two sense. First, the “transnational organisation of global capitalism is forcing a different regime of regulation of national economies by their respective states.” This is essentially saying that the organisation of national economies are severely influenced by the global dance of capital. The corollary of this - which is the second point - is that the redistributive role of states is highly curtailed, as liberalisation programs like SAPs, austerity measures and privatisation programs have led to a shrinking of tax base. An interesting point Aradhana makes here is that while this represents a “degovernmentalization of the state”, it also signals an increased “governmentalization of society”. 

In highlighting what transnationalism brings to the study of states, Aradhana maintains how it challenges the Weberian notion of states as holding “monopoly over violence” of a territory. The US occupation of Iraq, UN peacekeeping missions, all point to how the role of the state in maintaining security is weakened. The emergence of global human rights organisations is another key factor that challenge state monopoly of violence. To a degree, these issues have been repeated invoked in China-US foreign relations meetings. The effects, however, are uncertain. As rather characteristic of Aradhana, she warns against the celebration of the “current incarnation of the human rights regime as the solution to global inequalities”, for it might be dangerous in its dependence on US hegemony. Urging us to rethink the “state” in a context where the national space is transnationally defined, Arad brings up the issue of migration. Diasporic movements point to how the “space of the “nation” and the affective ties that bind this imagined community are expanding across the boundaries of the nation-state”. Citizenship too is being imagined, practiced and regulated transnationally and flexibly; on top of being unevenly experienced and spatialized, both transnationally and nationally. A very interesting example brought up by Aradhana evokes the Indian state’s category of “Non-Resident Indians” and the “People of Indian Origin” to enable them to have easy access to investment opportunities in India. This creates the new subjectivity of diasporic subjects as India’s economic saviours. I would also like to add that the e-citizenship program of Estonia also provides a fascinating case study. The birth of sovereignty, for instance in the case of contemporary Kurdistan or during the breakup of Yugoslavia, would inevitably be presided over by transnational entities like the UN. 

Thus, we conclude this summary. 

International System+ Society

How significant are the differences between an “international system” and an “international society”?

For students of international studies, the term “international system” and “international society” often gets bandied around. But what exactly are they? Is there really an international system to talk about, in the sense that there are fixed procedures and systematic relations between nations? Is there a difference between international system and international society? Is the difference merely technical, or is it substantial? 

Let’s start first of all with the notion of international system. International system, according to Hedley Bull, quite a heavy weight academic in the International Relations circles, is defined as a political system “when two or more states have sufficient contact between them, and have sufficient impact on one another's decisions, to cause them to behave - at least in some measure - as parts of a whole”. In other words, international systems exist when states take into account the existence of other states. If State A acknowledges the presence its neighbouring state, State B, and engages in activities such as trade with it, then there can be said to be an international system. As long as the behaviour of one state is affected in some way by the awareness and acknowledgement of other states, an international system is said to exist. Perfect. Now, international society, on the other hand, exists when a group of states, “conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.” As per this definition, an international society exists only when there is shared understanding between states. This means there has to be, first of all, successful attempts at communication. Rules, established common interests in the form of norms and conventions, common institutions - all these are the manifestations of shared understanding. International society can thus be seen as one step more “advanced” in inter-societal development, both empirically and substantially; empirically because shared understanding can only come after states become aware of each other, and substantially because the contents themselves - rules, laws, conventions - exist in international societies as opposed to there being none in international systems. There can be international systems without international societies, but there cannot be international systems without international societies. 

Curiously, the usage of the terms “international system” and “international society” has seldom been questioned in international relations. This strikes me as fairly odd because the connotations of the word “system” really does not match up to its weaker definition. In fact, it is the lack of system (in the  that defines the “international system”, and the presence of a “system” that defines an “international society”. If I could rewrite the discipline, I would have flipped the definitions of the terms around to save much confusion from students. 

So how significant are the differences between the two terms? On one hand, they are rather significant. While international systems are, in a sense, more “primitive” (in the less developed sense of the word), international societies are more advanced, mainly in the domain of inter-nation communication. The former seems to exist in a state of limbo, where one state is merely aware of the presence of another state, but cannot effectively predict the actions of the other. They will perpetually be second-guessing what the other state/states will do, given the lack of communication between them. 

Granted, perhaps an absolute lack of communication will be a bit of a stretch. It might even be a wrong understanding of what constitutes “international systems”, since according to Hedley Bull’s definition, states under the international “system” must have “sufficient contact”. Something is thus wrong with our previous understanding of difference based on levels of communication. The idea of communication is already crucially present in an “international system”. The central difference between the system and the society, thus, seems to lie in the nature of the contact. If the contact comes in a mutually beneficial form, in the establishment of “common interests and values”, “common set of rules”, etcetc, then we might legitimately call it “international society”. There seems to be connotations of civility involved. On the contrary, if the contact is hostile, or non-coorperative, then these states might only belong to the international “system”. 

Thus while it is not apparent from the definitions themselves, the distinction between international system and society is deeply normative. Underlying the idea of “society” is the concept of order, as well as value that order brings. International systems can only remain as systems because value has not been created in their interactions, be it in the form of efficiency, order, peace, justice, and so on. This is the most crucial difference between an international system and society. 

How significant, then, is the difference between the two concepts? Taken in the general sense, the question seems to allude the idea that perhaps in certain instances, the difference between an international system and society is not great. Indeed, the distinction has been questioned by various academics. 

Sometimes, the boundaries might be blurred, for instance when multiple states have significant interactions but do not have formalised rules. It is mentioned in Barry Buzan  that the boundary between a system without and one with international society cannot be defined by the mere presence or absence of rules and institutions among states. Bull's definition is not precise enough to avoid creating a large gray zone in which some norms, rules, and institutions exist, but not enough to justify calling it an international society.

Literature Review discourse on International System vs International Society

Hedley Bull:

Didn’t really tackle the issue adequately. He made rather logical postulations on why the international system transformed into a society. First, as the “regularity and intensity” of their interactions increased, the states are “virtually forced” into a degree of “recognition and accommodation”. Ok. Pretty good guess bro. My sister could have done that. 

What seems like the second premise is simply a variant of the first. The desire for common order arose out of “disadvantages of permanent chaos”. Thus, this led to agreements on “some limits of force”, some “provision of sanctity of contracts” and “some arrangement for the assignment of property rights”. 

Moving on later into the argument, another variant of the first and second argument occurred. Because of the increase in probability of conflict that comes with increasing contact, there is “pressure of security dilemma”. The pressure of life in the anarchy is alluded to. These are all essentially the same argument. 

Finally, Bull points out an interesting phenomenon. The level of integration between states will depend on the “communicative capacities” between. Some states will have a higher communicative capacity than others. This is especially true for regional states. Thus, international societies will emerge firstly from regional “subsystems” and then expand outwards. This, however, does not address our question. Instead, it clarifies the differing rates as well as illustrates the mechanisms that lead to the change from an international system to a society, but does not tell us how or why international systems or societies are different. 

Sources: Hedley Bull The Anarchical Society Chapter 1+2, Barry Buzan From International System to Society

Some thoughts on class

After reading quite a few different takes on what class is for my sociology revisions, I am met with a fundamental question: so which point of view on class do you subscribe to? I think it's important to first get a little bit philosophical with this idea of class, so that we do not get too caught up with some of the artificially constructed battle lines.

At it's core, class is a way to group people. It is a social construct, created by sociologists to better understand society, and to give them a vocabulary to talk about certain groups of people within society. In a sense, class has always been a category that has "stuck around". In Victorian Britain, social stratification is very much divided along the lower, middle and upper class lines. Class theory is further refined by Marx's dialectical understanding of society as consisting of the working class, and the bourgouisie. Class identification used to be very strong across European societies in the nineteenth century, but has seen sharp decreases until after WWII. Nowadays, hardly anyone identifies themselves by reference to class. It is still used, however, in the media and popular discourse to differentiate people according to income - upper-middle class, middle class, lower class, underclass - but such usage hardly at all refer to Marxist or Victorian conceptions of class. This has led theorists such as Pakulski and Waters to sound the death knell for class, claiming that as a concept, it has exhausted its usefulness. Is class still useful in understanding society?

Neo-Marxists such as Erik Olin Wright places class in the broader tradition of Marxist thought, proposing that essentially, capitalistic society will always have two strict divisions: the working class, and the property owning class. Wright proposes that we should not understand society as comprising of two classes as such, but that these two classes lie at the extreme of a relational field within capitalist structures. The zone in the middle consists of a field where differing subclasses are relationally defined according to the "contradictions" they exhibit. For instance, one kind of middle class, defined by their increased managerial role, are essentially holding delegated capitalist powers. They inhabit a "contradictory class position" within capitalist class locations.

The urgent question seems to be: must we understand class in a neo-marxist way? Wright certainly makes a convincing case for it, giving us numerous reasons to subscribe to this his conception of class. For instance, one benefit of understanding class from the neo-marxist lens is that it aids our understanding of class conflicts. Central to Wright's theory of class is the concept of exploitation. It is the familiar Marxian notion that capitalism survives because property owners exploit and expropriate the surplus labour of the working class. In his model of class, society is inherently unstable and antagonistic.

Of course, we do see instances of this in our daily lives. We hear protests against big banks "stealing" our money, against financiers and against big corporations all the time; and every time that happens, Wright's theory is useful in illuminating the nature of the protests. It seems that as long as we're still living in a capitalist society, there is value to understanding class in the neo-marxist lens.

Pakulski's claim that class is dead seems a little premature, given that many of the revolts we have today can essentially be read as class conflicts. For instance, the occupy movement in the united states, with signs that read "we are the 99%", seem to be organized around the notion of income inequality and general hardships of the "working class". The Arab spring had a strong class dimension as well. The 2016 general elections in the US is punctuated by Bernie Sanders' persistent rallying cries to "break the banks", which, given that the banks are the chief financiers, capitalists and exploiters in the current state of affairs, makes sense in the neo-Marxist conceptions of class.

Class, however, can no longer be used as how it was once used, in the strictly structural, essentialist sense. How then, must we use it? To push a theory to its logical limits, let us imagine a world where the term "class" is not used. How then, might thinkers and sociologists refer to people of varying income? Would the term "income-group" suffice? Perhaps; but an immediate limitation to this approach is that we lose all sense of coherence in group identity. We lose the relational similarities that exists between people of the same income group.

When people use the phrase "it's a class problem" in daily speech, they often use it as a shorthand to connote three related concepts: income inequality, structural differences in endowments, and perhaps Marxist antagonism.

At the end of the day, class does not "exist" in the strict sense of the word - it doesn't exist in the way an apple exists - but understanding things from the perspective of class, whether from the Marxian perspective or from a Weberian perspective or a gradational perspective, gives us more solid grounds to understanding the complexities of the interaction within and between groups in society.