State and Statehood in the Global South: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies 3030939995, 9783030939991

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Miriam Fahimi Elmar Flatschart Wolfram Schaffar   Editors

State and Statehood in the Global South Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies

State and Statehood in the Global South

Miriam Fahimi • Elmar Flatschart • Wolfram Schaffar Editors

State and Statehood in the Global South Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies

Editors Miriam Fahimi Digital Age Research Center University of Klagenfurt Klagenfurt, Austria

Elmar Flatschart Department of International Development University of Vienna Vienna, Austria

Wolfram Schaffar Chair of Development Politics University of Passau Passau, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-93999-1 ISBN 978-3-030-94000-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

It is not easy to find the right words of gratitude and the right group of people to address for this note of acknowledgement. The reason is that this anthology was not connected to a specific (third-party funded) research project of a person, but rather grew out of a network of formal and informal discussion circles at the Department of Development Studies in Vienna. The department itself goes back to a study programme ‘Projekt Internationale Entwicklung’ (Project International Development), where numerous scholars and students developed and pursued what might be called the Vienna approach to Development Studies with its distinct critical and trans-disciplinary perspective. For a long time, the department attracted students, who were interested in critical theory, political science and in the Global South (whatever that means) and who were committed to their studies above average. The ‘Project International Development’ closely cooperated with the Department of African Studies, the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, the Department of History, and the Department of Political Science, profiting from the research activities of the other departments and from their international networks. This was the intellectual environment, in which scholars and students came together for the one or the other occasion and played a role for the project of this anthology, like Alex Demirović, Timo Duile, Judith Ehlert, Albert Krahler, Melanie Pichler, Steffi Richter, Maria Strašaková, Gerry van Klinken. Starting in 2016, a small working group met on a regular basis and worked the publication over a period of two years. Special thanks for their extraordinary commitment go to Hans Pühretmayer, Henrik Feindt, and Rainer Einzenberger. We would also like to express our gratitude to Springer, for the opportunity to publish this volume and for their patience. Miriam Fahimi Elmar Flatschart Wolfram Schaffar

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Contents

Part I

Introduction

Critical State Theory in the Global South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wolfram Schaffar, Elmar Flatschart, and Miriam Fahimi Part II

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Theoretical and Methodological Preliminaries

Materialist Theory and the State in Peripheral/Post-Colonial Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elmar Flatschart

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Stategraphy: A Social Anthropological Approach to the State . . . . . . . . Tatjana Thelen

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Ethics of Doing Critical Research on the State in the Global South . . . . Henrik Feindt and Miriam Fahimi

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Part III

Materialist State Theoretical Analysis

State Theory of the Semi-Periphery as State Theory of Deficit: The Example of Modern Turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Volkan Ağar

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Materialist State Theory: An Example of Analyzing the State at the Periphery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Tobias Boos Part IV

Analyzing the State from Constructivist and Critical Realist Perspectives

Abe Shinzō’s Neoliberal Nationalism: A Discourse of Transcendence . . . 129 Richard Bärnthaler

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Contents

Resource Frontiers and Indigenous Mobilization in Myanmar: A Critical Realist Approach to Empirical Research in the “Global South” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Rainer Einzenberger Part V

Ethnographical and Postcolonial Approaches to State and Statehood

Moral Appreciation: Caring for Post-socialist Cows in Contemporary Serbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 André Thiemann Latin America: The Refounding of the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Mónica Mazariegos Rodas Ethnography of the State in Plurinational Bolivia: Indigenous Knowledge, Clientelism and Decolonizing Bureaucracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Eija Ranta

Contributors

Volkan Ağar studied Development Studies and Political Science at the University of Vienna. He works as an editor at the Department for Society and Media at the German daily newspaper taz. die tageszeitung. He writes about social inequality, pop culture, and political discourse. In his column ‘Postprolet’, he deals with class issues from an autobiographical perspective. He used to work at taz.gazete, a TurkishGerman online magazine, that focused on politics and freedom of media in Turkey. Richard Bärnthaler is a socio-economist and university assistant prae doc at the Institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Department of Socioeconomics). His research interests include socioeconomics, political economy, the foundational economy, and socialecological transformation. In 2019, he received the Kurt Rothschild Award for Economic Journalism for the contribution ‘Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation and Contemporary Capitalism: Putting the Economy in Its Place’. Tobias Boos is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for Political Science, University of Vienna. In his research on International Politics and Development, he is interested in political economy, state theory (of the global south), and the relation between political identities and social structure. He has also published on the question of (left wing) populism and the Latin American middle class. In recent years, he has been a visiting researcher at various institutions in Buenos Aires, Quito, London, and Madrid. Rainer Einzenberger received his Ph.D. in 2020 from the University of Vienna (Department of Development Studies) where he worked from 2015 to 2020 as a university assistant and lecturer. From 2010 to 2015, he was a programme coordinator for an international foundation in Thailand and Myanmar focusing on resource politics and democratization. His research interests include land and resource

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politics, frontiers, critical geography, and indigenous movements. Since 2020, he works as a programme officer for the APPEAR Programme at Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalization. Miriam Fahimi is a Social Scientist and Ph.D. candidate in Science and Technology Studies at the Digital Age Research Center (D!ARC) at the University of Klagenfurt. As a Marie Curie Fellow within the Training Network ‘NoBIAS— Artificial Intelligence without Bias’, Miriam studies the sociomaterial practices of algorithmic bias, discrimination, and power. Her research interests include theory of ethics, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and feminist theory. Henrik Feindt is a Social Scientist. He studied and now teaches Development Studies at the University of Vienna. His research mainly focuses on democracy, statehood, and political economy in India and South Africa. Elmar Flatschart is a lecturer and occasional researcher at and around the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests include a wide area of theoretical debates: Critical Theory (Frankfurt School, critical-dialectical theories of society), philosophy of science (Critical Realism), materialist state theory, critique of political economy, materialist-feminist approaches, political ecology (with a focus on energy as social relation), and social movements (with a focus on direct-democratic participation processes). Eija Ranta is an Academy Research Fellow in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, where she leads Academy of Finland funded research projects ‘Citizenship Utopias in the Global South’ (2019–2023) and ‘Social Justice and Raciality in Latin America’ (2021–2026). She is the author of ‘Vivir Bien as an Alternative to Neoliberal Globalization’ (Routledge, 2018). Her research interests include development, politics, and state formation in Latin America and Africa, with a special focus on indigeneity, decoloniality, and development alternatives. Mónica Mazariegos Rodas is a guest researcher and professor at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. Her research is focused on theory and transformation of the State, indigenous peoples’ rights, transitional justice, and Latin American constitutionalism. The article was written when she was a coordinator of the research programme ‘Normativities, social change and counter hegemonic uses of Law’ at Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala. She is also a guest professor at Externado University and Pedagogical and Technological University in Colombia. Wolfram Schaffar holds the chair of Development Politics at the University of Passau. Prior to this engagement, he taught at the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna, at the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of Bonn, at the Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, He also served as a regular guest lecturer at Yangon University, Myanmar, Jigme Singye Wangchuck

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School of Law, Thimphu, Bhutan. In his research, Schaffar focuses on democratization and de-democratization processes, state theory of the Global South and social movements, with a regional focus on East and Southeast Asia. Tatjana Thelen is a full professor at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Her empirical research has centred around property, care, and the state. Together with colleagues, she headed the interdisciplinary research group ‘Kinship and Politics: rethinking a conceptual split and its epistemic implications in the social sciences’ at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZIF). She co-edited ‘Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State’ (2018, Berghahn) and ‘Reconnecting State and Kinship’ (2018, University of Philadelphia Press). André Thiemann is a Visiting Lead Researcher at Rīga Stradiņš University, Latvia. In 2016, he received his Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. He was subsequently a Fellow at ZIF Bielefeld, a Junior Core Fellow at the IAS CEU in Budapest, and a Visiting Professor of Social Anthropology at the CEU Budapest. His research interests include relational theory, kinship, economic and political anthropology, with a focus on the post-welfare state, global value chains, and infrastructures in the post-Yugoslav semi-periphery.

List of Figures

Chapter 2 Fig. 1

Modes of production and peripheral capitalism (Alavi 1982b, 179) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 6 Fig. 1

Argentinian balance of trade, current account, and changes in foreign exchange reserves in US$ million, 2002–2015; Source: INDEC, author’s figure, * provisional data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Chapter 8 Fig. 1

Levels of realist theorizing as applied in this empirical study (adapted from O’Mahoney and Vincent 2014, 15) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Chapter 9 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5

Auxiliary structure made of oak beam, Jovanovićs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Serbian Simmental cows, dual-purpose bred for milk and beef production . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New milk-cooling technology: a lacto-freeze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The garage of Rajko Janković, where IMLEK placed its lacto-freeze 2005–2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The pump of an integrated milk piping system (upper left) . . . . . . . . . .

176 177 187 187 188

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Part I

Introduction

Critical State Theory in the Global South Wolfram Schaffar, Elmar Flatschart, and Miriam Fahimi

This publication has a long and somewhat discontinuous history. It grew out of the research and teaching practice at the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna. Based on the transdisciplinary orientation of the department and on the critical orientation of the chair of political science and development studies, students frequently took up problems of the environment, health, migration, and other issues in the Global South for their term papers or MA and doctoral theses. Funding schemes by the International Office of Vienna University and the high level of individual mobility in pre-Corona times provided many students with the chance to visit the areas they were interested in with the aim to undertake empirical research. Eventually, this brought them into contact with the administrative, structural, and political conditions, in which the specific issues were embedded in—or in other words—with the state in the Global South. The discussion of the state in the Global South was also encouraged by frequent seminars and courses at the Department of Development Studies such as State and Statehood in the Global South, State Theory in the South, and others, taught by the authors of this introduction. These seminars drew on various sources—on debates of a working group on the state in the Global South in the Association of Critical Social Science (AkG—Assoziation für kritische Gesellschaftsforschung), which are mirrored in publications in the Austrian Journal of Development Studies (Ataç et al. 2008; Wehr et al. 2012), and which owe their basis to the reception of critical state W. Schaffar (*) University of Passau, Passau, Germany e-mail: [email protected] E. Flatschart University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: elmar.fl[email protected] M. Fahimi University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_1

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theory of Nicos Poulantzas (Demirović 2007; Kannankulam 2008; Bretthauer et al. 2006). Equally important as a source was a textbook on Politics and the Periphery (Ataç et al. 2019), and the cooperation of the Chair of Development Studies and Political Science with a research project on citizenship and earlier projects on the state in the Global South at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, Netherlands (Schulte-Nordholt et al. 2016). Often, students profited from the wider institutional cooperation between the Department of Development Studies and other departments at the University of Vienna, where critical research on the state in the Global South was taken up in research and teaching, such as the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Department of Political Science. Transdisciplinary methodological research on the state in the Global South is one research focus of Tatjana Thelen at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Thelen et al. 2017). It featured as the main topic of the Vienna Ethnography Laboratory in 2016—a forum and intensive course for graduate and PhD students, which also inspired this anthology. Concerning state theory, the Department of Political Science is especially noteworthy, as it has a long tradition of critical thought on the state with Eva Kreisky (Kreisky 1995) and Birgit Sauer (Sauer 2003), who both focused on gendered aspects of the state, and Ulrich Brand, who has a background in the German materialist debate on the state (Brand 2005) and expanded his research into the ‘method’ of historical materialist policy analysis (Brand 2013). What the students and teachers were confronted with and what fascinated them was the variety of different critical approaches to the field, the historic body of literature, which already existed and made the field a dynamic field of discussions— albeit sometimes difficult to get an overview. However, theory in itself or a theoretical heritage in the form of institutionalised research is not the only aspect relevant for today’s critical approaches. Another challenge were practical questions, which occurred when students planned empirical research. Once you have decided on the theory you want to pursue, how can an empirical study look like? What is relevant data to look for? And even more practical: How do you get access to such data? To understand social sciences—and research on the state—as reflexive and critical came along with more fundamental considerations. Today’s critical research strives to be transdisciplinary in an empathic sense—it seeks to connect to and integrate everyday life agents with a connection to the research. If it is the gist of critical (development) research to analyse and understand inequality with the aim of changing it, then how can we deal with the fact that knowledge creation—a process, in which the university plays a crucial part—is intertwined with unequal global relations of power? How do we deal with the institutional setting of the University of Vienna as an institution in the Global North, providing funds for students from the North to go to the ‘field’? What are the implications of this constellation—in terms of research ethics? What are theoretical implications? Is knowledge created under such circumstances any useful, or is it compromised? Against the backdrop of these questions, a group of students, lecturers, and professors came together in 2016 and started a colloquium that dealt explicitly with state theory of, in, and about the Global South. In a series of sessions that

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were often at the fringes of institutional academia (as rank and record mattered less than interest) various themes were taken up. Core members of the working group were the original editors, Elmar Flatschart, Hans Pühretmeyer, and Wolfram Schaffar (Hans Pühretmayer left the project during the first months of the pandemic) and graduate and doctoral students like Rainer Einzenberger, Miriam Fahimi (who joined the editorial team at a later point), and Henrik Feindt. This group which in itself was somewhat ‘transdisciplinary’ discussed many issues and eventually came up with the idea to document results of the discussion. In this special format, we invited authors to contribute and intensively discuss the first chapters in regular meetings. We came up with a project to compile the existing knowledge in an anthology—several chapters dealing with the state and giving introductions to theoretical and methodological approaches to different schools of thought relevant for critical research. In the second part, the anthology was planned to provide chapters in which scholars would present their concrete empirical work—as an example for the different strategies of operationalisation of a given theory and as an example of how to confront very practical issues ‘in the field’.

Theoretical Approaches There is quite a broad variety of theoretical approaches to the state in the Global South, which can count as critical. The diversity goes beyond the theoretical plurality we know from the ‘unmarked’ or ‘mainstream’ state theory, which takes the situation in the North for granted and views the South as an appendix. Looking at the state in the Global South not only adds new aspects to the theoretical field, but rather adds dimensions and differentiations, which multiply the existing theoretical variations. The same is true for critical theory: ‘critical state theory of the South’ is more than a (critical) state theory that has the Global South as its research object. It implies—at least to some degree—a genuinely novel perspective. Universalist approaches come with an analysis of the state in the present phase of capitalism. Central topics of analysis and debate have been questions like the nature and the role of the state in capitalism, and the metamorphosis of the state under the changing capitalist conditions (Demirović 2007; Kannankulam 2008). Such analyses are sometimes taken up and applied or transferred to the situation in the South. The central idea is that Capitalism has penetrated all corners of the globe which can thus be analysed in a coherent way. Many sorts of materialist or Marxist critical state theory retained some sort of universalism—be it a critical one, which contextualised idealist notions of universal developmental tendencies in the material conditions of the ‘real universality’ of commodity relation. Other approaches take the inequality between the North and South as a constitutive moment of the world capitalist system and consequently consider the specific conditions in the South as structural conditions, which in a fundamental way distinguish the state in the South from the state in the North. Starting with the Latin American dependency school and inspired crucially by post-structuralist

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thought that pivoted in the post-development school, this strand of critical theory highlights particularities and specific, contextualised knowledge.

Area Studies Particularity is also the point of departure of other approaches, first and foremost in Oriental Studies and Area Studies. Most of these approaches were originally not examples of critical social science—rather the contrary. Oriental institutes were the imperialist or orientalist (in Edward Said’s sense) think tanks of colonial capitals in the North, and the post-war concept of area studies came with cold war logic to prevent countries from drifting towards socialism. Notwithstanding this rationale, the need to genuinely understand the political and social systems—including the states of the non-Western world—gradually became the focus of the emerging departments. An example: the very concept of Southeast Asia was originally created as an area of intervention out of a political and military rationale. In some instances, Oriental Institutes and Area Studies departments were not standing in this colonial or cold war tradition. One example is the Oriental Institute in Prague, which was founded in the times of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia and considered its research as part of emancipatory South–South solidarity. The concept of the Asiatic mode of production and oriental despotism as its corresponding state form shows the multiply intertwined and contested process of theory creation in our field. It goes back to the early and—due to the lack of empirical data—ill-informed concept of Asiatic mode of production of Karl Marx (Wemheuer 2016). The claim that vast areas of the Global South are not participating in the dynamism of world history, but instead remain in a stable form of society and a despotic type of state, was taken up by Karl August Wittfogel, a Sinologist by training (Wittfogel 1938). In the wake of the Cold War, he turned this idea into an anti-communist argument, analysing the Soviet Union and Mainland China as instances of Oriental despotism (Wittfogel 1957). Inside the socialist world, Marx’s concept of an Asiatic mode of production took a different career and became the point of departure for central ideological and strategic debates (McFarlane et al. 2005a, b). One important episode was the Third International, where it led to an ideological struggle about the question whether history would proceed on a single path to socialism, or whether different paths were possible (Kößler 1982). In a recent recast of the idea of Asiatic despotism, James Scott published a seminal work on states and statecraft in Southeast Asia and worldwide (Scott 2009). In his anarchist interpretation of the matter, Scott sees the expansion of states—the Asian states in the irrigated lowlands in particular—on the one hand, and the movement of people away from states, as a fundamental dynamism of world history. His book kicked off a new round of debates on states and statehood in the Global South and proved especially fruitful in anthropology. Examples of this tradition can to some degree be found in the contributions that work with Critical Realism in order to study specific dimensions of the state in a certain geographical region.

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Postcolonial and Decolonial Approaches The line which divides universalist approaches of state theory from post- and decolonial ones is the scope of the notion of critique. Historical-materialist approaches focus in their critique on inequalities and unmask the role of the state in capitalism and the bourgeois society. Part of this endeavour is to look beyond the seemingly neutral descriptions and analytical categories, and carve out power relations, which are the basis of inequality and exploitation. Postcolonial approaches push this line of critique further and depart from the analysis that almost the entire knowledge-producing apparatus—universities, think tanks, publishing houses—is situated in the North, the former centres of global colonialism. According to postcolonial thinking, this determines that the analytical categories of state theory and other social sciences not only exclude voices and experiences from the Global South, but that they are systematically biased and distorted. The postcolonial agenda of critique, thus, entails an epistemological project. The pre-given vocabulary and categories are viewed as complicit in a system that reproduces North–South inequalities. In some cases, this criticism extends to the people doing research as well. Students and professors who were raised in the North and who lack the experience of the social and political situation in the Global South are considered illegitimate agents of emancipation; prominent actors of a project to overcome postcolonial inequalities can thus only come from the Global South. Just as the boundary of research and political practice is transcended, so is the (thin) line between facts and values. It is argued that Northern science is not only biased, but also as such exerting violence. This goes beyond the institution of science; the very mode of thinking in universalist categories is held to be violent. Against the continuous epistemological violence exerted by Northern science, voices from the South should be given the floor.

Operationalisation Before Corona, the University of Vienna was a centre of critical political theory. Students could profit from countless seminars, guest lectures, and formal and informal reading groups. However, concerning methodology and methods, courses were not as abundant. Bridging theoretical debates and empirical research proved to be a challenge, especially for students of development studies, who often had the ambition and were encouraged to ‘go to the field’ for their final theses. Concerning critical research of the state, the decision for one or the other theory to a large extent determines the type of data which needs to be collected in the empirical research. Another factor for methodological decisions are the disciplines in which academics are trained: political science, area studies, development studies, and social and cultural anthropology. Although different theoretical trends can be found across various disciplines, which deal with phenomena related to the state, some disciplines

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stand in the tradition of a long and sophisticated debate on methodology. To help students to navigate through the difficulties of operationalisation of their empirical project and to choose the right methods, which match their theoretical presuppositions, was a major motivation for this anthology.

New Developments with COVID-19 The anthology was planned to be published around 2018. But unexpectedly, the working conditions of all three editors deteriorated. The endowment chair of development studies and political science was discontinued. Contracts of young scholars connected to the chair were not extended. And finally, a new university law soon made it more difficult to continue working at the university, even if a person was willing to accept the precarious conditions as a freelance lecturer. All this put an end to the working group and led to a considerable delay of the publication. In 2020, eventually, the COVID-19 pandemic hit our societies and posed new challenges to the original design of the anthology. The pandemic triggered and accelerated developments that were already on the horizon for a couple of years: the rise of China. This development has shifted our understanding and analysis of the state in the South in a fundamental way. The exact theoretical consequences remain to be seen and can only be hinted at in this introduction. The economic success, by which China managed to become a new economic centre of the world system, was achieved through a state-centred development model. The key for China’s success does not lie in embracing the mantra of (neo)liberal globalisation, i.e. cutting back the state to security and disciplinary functions, but the contrary. The rise of China means that a country from the Global South is taking world leadership through development relying on a strong and active state. Moreover, when COVID-19 spread all over the world, one country after the other implemented far-reaching measures to contain the infections. And in most countries, the state proved to have the capacity to implement such measures. Firstly, this added a final argument to the dismissal of all those theories of the state, which claimed that neoliberal globalisation has led to a weakening of the state in general. Secondly, the fact that a state from the Global South, China, proved to be one of the most effective states worldwide in implementing effective countermeasures shifted the global picture, which used to be underlying most state theories of the universalistmaterialist schools: in such theories, the state in the North normally appears as the fully developed, powerful state, while the state in the South is characterised by deficiencies with regard to the Northern norm. With the example of China, this picture is turned upside down. For postcolonial theories, it means that China now constitutes an example of a state in the Global South, which serves the function of capitalism in such an effective way that it takes centre stage in the capitalist world system. This draws into question the underlying idea that a postcolonial non-Western reconstruction of the global system is an inherently emancipatory agenda.

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The Contents of this Volume: Achievements and Failures The contents of this volume follow a structure that is both related to differing content and level of abstraction, i.e. general aspects of the respective approaches are first presented and then applications. In the beginning, the reader finds a section that seeks to outline the theoretical and methodological/ethical preliminaries of (doing) state theory. Materialist and anthropological approaches are introduced on a general level and the ethical question of how to do (empirical) research on the state is scrutinised. The second part is geared towards materialist state theory and seeks to apply it in concrete analyses. The third part is featuring analyses that build on a Critical Realist meta-theoretical framework in order to arrive at a most succinct analysis of the empirical reality of states in a certain region. The fourth and last part is dedicated to anthropological and postcolonial research on the state. Before we arrive at a more detailed presentation of the contents of this volume, we consider it important to also shed light on some critical aspects or lacunae. This anthology originally sought to combine the broadest possible variety of critical approaches that were within the reach of the working group. The aspiration behind this broad perspective was not only to cover the field as good as possible; the idea was also to produce a book that gives an accessible introduction for students and young scholars. Such a volume could be used as a sort of introduction to the topic and coursebook. Although the result of our endeavours is noteworthy in this respect, we have to acknowledge that there remain major lacunae. Authors from the South are not sufficiently represented and post- or decolonial perspectives could be featured more amply. The gravest shortcoming—one that could seemingly have been averted—is the lack of a genuine feminist perspective on the state. Although Vienna boasts formidable scholars with this expertise and contacts to other relevant scientists in the field were present, notwithstanding the efforts, it was not possible to convince any of them to participate in the project. Many negative replies to our invitations were justified by a lack of time. This is noteworthy, as it is to an increasing degree a general problem in an academia that is concerned with many ‘reproductive activities’ beyond pure research—institutional chores, grant writing, non-paid participation in group activities (like the production of this anthology), dealing with the formal aspects of publishing, and presenting one’s own research record in various ways. It is just an assumption that this whole problem may be particularly grave for critical and even more so critical feminist approaches but maybe one worth considering. A loss that has to be noted in order to give a selfreflected, aware, and critical account of the unfolding of this project is the withdrawal of Hans Pühretmayer who was originally a central part of the working group and editorial team. Due to personal reasons, he quit the project at the height of 2020’s pandemic events, and with him, the designated general introduction into Critical Realism as a meta-theory and research programme was lost. We can, at this point, only refer to notable scholarship on this issue that is accessible elsewhere (see Jessop 2002, 2008 for a state-theoretical perspective and Archer et al. 1998 for a general introduction). Maybe not exactly a failure, yet a certain biased perspective is

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apparent when we look at the composition of the empirical research applications. With Japan, we find a country that is a leading industrial nation and in many ways far away from peripheral statehood as it is often understood. It is, however, a unique example of catch-up development and the forerunner of many states in Southeast Asia and as such notable. Serbia and Turkey are not typical examples of states of the Global South; also they are rather semi-peripheral than peripheral in terms of their spatio-temporal fixes in the world system. It should, however, be acknowledged that both have very distinctive ‘inner peripheries’ and specific dimensions of statehood (the background of the Ottoman empire, the post-socialist dissolution of Yugoslavia) that makes them particularly interesting objects of study. In the following, we will shortly present the chapters and their contents. The chapter by ELMAR FLATSCHART gives an introduction into materialist approaches on the state. The materialist or (originally) Marxist perspective is one of the earliest and most comprehensive traditions of critical thought on the state and has thus been seminal in the field. Elmar Flatschart ontologically distinguishes between interestand form-oriented materialist theories of the state and seeks to explain this difference along important positions of debates that date back to the 1970s and 1980s. Whether one focuses on class struggle or the political and economical forms that relate to the state is of importance as different results for a general theory of the peripheral or post-colonial state are the result. The chapter ends with a presentation of the little recent scholarship on the topic and an outlook with open theoretical questions. TATJANA THELEN presents a specifically social anthropological approach, stategraphy. Ethnographically grounded, it transcends traditional blindness of anthropology and focuses on the boundaries of states in a processual perspective: state is rather conceived as a set of (institutional) practices and relations than a monolithic entity or actor. Michel Foucault and Nicos Poulantzas are notable inspirations for this perspective, but from an anthropological perspective, the cultural and everyday aspects are underdeveloped in these authors. It is necessary to look for relational modalities and thus specifically settle the boundaries of statehood, which also means to give an ample account of the embeddedness of relevant actors. Pursuing empirical research on the state inevitably means getting involved with power relations. Doing fieldwork in the Global South is entrenched with further inequalities, colonial legacies, and—against the backdrop of the global rise of authoritarianism—very tangible dangers for the researchers as well as for the cooperation partners. HENRIK FEINDT and MIRIAM FAHIMI’s chapter gives a general overview over different approaches to research ethics, discussing their respective potentials and shortfalls, while highlighting the varying relevance of different dimensions of research ethics when analysing the state from different perspectives. From the positional reflexivity that is a common demand for such kind of research, the scope of research ethics is broadened to more general theoretical and political considerations, which are entangled not only in activist research, but generally in any research project. Crucially, a dialogue among different dimensions and perspectives must help navigate the sometimes contradicting approaches and realities of concrete research contexts.

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VOLKAN AĞAR is largely building on the form-analytical approach of materialist state theory in his analysis of modern Turkey. His contribution can be understood as an attempt to engage with theory (notably Nicos Poulantzas’ and Tilman Evers’ theories of the state) on the basis of empirical evidence and as an ‘application’ of theory to the real world, viz. the historical legacy and perspective of the Turkish state. Agar seeks to explain Kemalist authoritarianism with its strong leaning on the military as a peculiar version of semi-peripheral statehood that is historically grounded on the aspirations of catch-up development and nationalist defence against foreign influence in the context of the ailing Ottoman Empire. He advances the thesis that this historical context can best be explained with a sui generis theory of semiperipheral statehood that essentially distinguishes itself from peripheral statehood by the lack of an (immediate) colonial experience and a rather negative determination vis-à-vis the developed bourgeois capitalist statehood. TOBIAS BOOS analyses the Argentinian state from a materialist perspective; although Boos is acknowledging the relevance of a general form-analytical theory of the state, he is more interested in a contextualised and agency-focused way of ‘operationalising’ theory in empirical research. His central axis of analysis is hegemony and the way certain hegemonial projects condensate in the state. A chronological analysis of the Kirchnerist hegemony project shows how different class relations come to matter in relation to broader economic trends and how both shape the way hegemony works. RICHARD BÄRNTHALER is introducing the Critical Realist part of empirical research perspectives with his analysis of Abe Shinzo’s neoliberal nationalism as transformation of Japanese statehood. He draws on critical discourse analysis and interprets the discursive strategy of a policy speech by Abe against the background of the work of Karl Polanyi. He argues that the rise of nationalism needs to be understood as a reaction to market liberalisation, but fails to provide social protection. The chapter of RAINER EINZENBERGER provides another example of an empirical research project in the ‘Global South’ informed by Critical Realism. He takes up the case of land and resource conflicts in Myanmar’s periphery against the background of Myanmar’s transition since 2010, with the aim to analyse the underlying generative mechanisms behind the conflicts as well as emerging local responses. The preliminary results show how recent political and economic changes in Myanmar translated into new legal, political, and administrative frameworks (creating a ‘spatial matrix’) in the frontier, increasing privatisation and dispossession of land and resources. The states’ increasing reach into the periphery engendered responses by social actors on different scales, with crucial consequences for their political identities, which can be shown at the recent emergence of indigenous identity constructions. ANDRÉ THIEMANN’s chapter is a third example of empirical research in the frame of critical state theory. Building on long-term participant observation in Serbia, his ethnographic case study tackles the relationship between state and regional economy during the transformations from self-managed socialism to late capitalism. The chapter is based on ethnographic empirical field work, following the paradigm of Thelen and others of stategraphy, and shows how the small-scale dairy farmers

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morally re-appreciated their devalued constant capital and that of their neighbours— machines, stables, tractors, land—and materially repaired, selectively upgraded, and affectively, ethically, and relationally revalued it. MÓNICA MAZARIEGOS RODAS follows a post- or decolonial approach and analyses central debates on the idea of refounding of the state in the twenty-first century in Latin America. The cases of Bolivia and Ecuador are most representative for the region, together with the cases of Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Guatemala. Her text presents a historical and conceptual approach to the relations between ‘state’ and ‘refounding’ from the focus of Latin American constitutionalism and thought, and from the contributions of indigenous, social, and popular movements to new constitutional epistemologies. It finally approaches some hermeneutic and methodological challenges in the scholarly research on these categories and processes. EIJA RANTA also focuses on the rich empirical data from Latin America and introduces an ethnographic approach to studying state formation, policymaking, and bureaucracy in Bolivia during Evo Morales’ first presidency (2006–2009). Her methodological approach to the state does not commit to any specific normative judgement of what the state is or should be; instead, it denaturalises liberal expectations of its form and content by examining its actual operations, representations, and meanings through the lens of people’s experiences and practices. It documents the difficulties in translating Indigenous knowledge into technical expertise, and sheds light on the internal discrepancies and contradictions marking processes of change as they materialise in state ministries and institutions. Making visible how issues such as clientelism operate in the lives of state officials, it helps to make better sense of the institutional fragilities of state formation processes in the Global South.

Perspectives and Outlook on Further Research The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a dramatic change in how we see the state—in the North and in the Global South. The strong capacity of the state to even put entire societies and economies to a halt for the sake of containing the infections, the fact that a strong state in the People’s Republic of China performed quite well compared to the neoliberal truncated states in the North, and the fact that most institutions and networks, which used to be subsumed under Global Governance, played only a small and negligible role in the global political answer to the pandemic shift our perception of the state—and in particular the nation state. The new phenomena, which we are confronted with, and direction for future research, however, are not yet clear. On the contrary—first analyses point into different, contradictory directions. One strand of analyses stresses that the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated existing conflicts and developments. They claim that preexisting inequalities are being augmented and processes of social deterioration are being exacerbated, inside the countries as well as on a global scale. They stress that the same elites and the powers

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that be were able to reproduce themselves and even to increase their wealth and power substantially. Other approaches point in the direction that the crisis is not a mere continuation of preexisting tendencies, but rather a turning point, at which a qualitative change in the role and nature of the state is induced. They see the COVID-19 pandemic on one level with the climate crisis as a new type of upheaval, where tipping points and natural boundaries are transgressed and bring about a new situation with new and non-negotiable limits to political and social development and transformation. These two tendencies and directions of current research are not new and surprising. Rather, they constitute general perspectives of social science, which we can expect to occur. Yet, it remains to be seen, in what direction the global development moves, and how a critical approach to state theory can help understand the role and nature of the state in the new emerging global system of governance.

References Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T., & Norrie, A. (1998). Critical Realism. Essential Readings. London: Routledge. Ataç, I., Kraler, A., Schaffar, W., & Ziai, A. (2019). Politik und Peripherie. Vienna: Mandelbaum Ataç, I., Lenner, K., & Schaffar, W. (2008). Periphere Staatlichkeit. Kritische Staatstheorie des globalen Südens. Austrian Journal of Development Studies (JEP) 24 (2). Brand, U.. (2005). Die Staatstheorie von Nicos Poulantzas. Anregungen für eine kritische Intellektualität zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. In Der Intellektuelle und der Mandarin. Für Hans Manfred Bock, eds. Francois Beilecke, and Katja Marmetschke, 132 143. Kassel: Kassel University Press. Brand, U. (2013). State, context and correspondence. Contours of a historical-materialist policy analysis. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 42 (4):425 442. Bretthauer, L., Gallas, A., Kannankulam, J., & Stützle, I. (Eds.). (2006). Poulantzas lesen. Hamburg: VSA. Demirović, A. (2007). Nicos Poulantzas - Aktualität und Probleme materialistischer Staatstheorie. Münster: Dampfboot. Jessop, B. (2002). Capitalism, the Regulation Approach, and Critical Realism. In Critical Realism and Marxism, ed. Andrew Brown, 88 116. Cambridge: Routledge. Jessop, B. (2008). State Power. A Strategic-Relational Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kannankulam, J. (2008). Autoritärer Etatismus im Neoliberalismus. Zur Staatstheorie von Nicos Poulantzas. Hamburg: VSA Kößler, R. (1982). Dritte Internationale und Bauernrevolution: die Herausbildung des sowjetischen Marxismus in der Debatte um die „asiatische“ Produktionsweise. Frankfurt/Main: Campus. Kreisky, E. (1995). Der Staat ohne Geschlecht? Ansätze feministischer Staatskritik und feministischer Staatserklärung. In Feministische Standpunkte in der Politikwissenschaft, eds. Eva Kreisky, and Birgit Sauer, 203 222. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. McFarlane, B., Cooper, S., & Jaksic, M. (2005a). The Asiatic Mode of Production: A new phoenix? (Part 1). Journal of Contemporary Asia, 35(3), 283 318. McFarlane, B., Cooper, S., & Jaksic, M. (2005b): The Asiatic Mode of Production - a new phoenix (Part 2). Journal of Contemporary Asia, 35(4), 499 536. Sauer, B. (2003). Die Internationalisierung von Staatlichkeit. Geschlechterpolitische Perspektiven. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie.

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Schulte-Nordholt, H, Bakker, L., & Berenschot, W. (Eds.). (2016). Citizenship and Democratization in Southeast Asia. Leiden: Brill Scott, J. (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Thelen, T., Vetters, L., & von Benda-Beckmann, K. (2017). Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State (revised reprint). New York: Berghahn Books. Wehr, I., Leubolt, B., & Schaffar, W. (2012). Welfare Regimes in the Global South. Austrian Journal of Development Studies (JEP) 28 (1). Wemheuer, F. (Ed.). (2016) Marx und der globale Süden. Köln: PapyRossa. Wittfogel, K. A. (1938). Die Theorie der asiatischen Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 1938, 90 122. Wittfogel, K. A. (1957/1977). Die orientalische Despotie: eine vergleichende Untersuchung totaler Macht. Frankfurt/M, Wien: Ullstein.

Part II

Theoretical and Methodological Preliminaries

Materialist Theory and the State in Peripheral/Post-Colonial Societies Elmar Flatschart

Introduction Much of today’s critical discussion of imperialism (post-/neo-) colonialism, unequal development, and peripheral societies has its roots in materialist thought.1 It is, therefore, no surprise that many explicit theoretical considerations of the state in peripheral societies originate in Marxist state theory. This section will attempt to introduce important themes of these debates in order to give an overview of the relevant theoretical desiderata. The idea is not to go into significant depth but to provide an accessible overview. This seems especially important, as we are dealing with arguments that are not new—the respective debates have their origins in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and have been elaborated in an extensive web of interpretations, sub-positions and exegetic efforts. A significant re-formulation took place in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s around the world, with a special academic focus on German and anglophone communities.2 The then vibrant debate led to a reframing and historical actualization of principal paradigms. Since this reappraisal of materialist thought, the theoretical apparatus has remained relatively 1

Materialism, as understood in this chapter, is the meta-theoretical framework that had been originated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels but has since been developed into a broad perspective. This perspective has at its main pillars both the assumption that we can find relative stable features that broadly structure society and that these features are historically derived and thus (relatively) changeable. The term ‘historical materialism’ would be a suitable one to describe this tendency. It is, however, also the name of the dogmatic system conceived by twentieth century ‘Marxism-Leninism’, the official doctrine of the authoritarian ‘socialist’ regimes. An open and critical historical materialism has few commonalities with the dogmas of this kind of Marxism. 2 Good overviews in German language include (Hoff 2009) for the global and (Elbe 2008) for the German debate. E. Flatschart (*) Department of International Development, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: elmar.fl[email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_2

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stable—provided one exempts the various inflictions that ‘post-modernism’ brought about. These inflictions deserve attention as the respective debates have dominated critical research in many fields for the last 30 years. While some post-structuralist interventions3 were relevant as a sort of addition or corrective, they did not significantly alter the positions on key questions of materialist analysis like the state or economic relations. The reason for this is for once the ontological tension between materialist and post-structuralist thought—preliminary motivations and ultimate goals just differ too much.4 On the other side, the actual scope of post-structuralist approaches is (usually) just a very different one. As a result, the subject matters relevant for materialism are often not the same as those puzzling post-structuralist debates in fields like subaltern or post-colonial studies. While it stands to debate to what degree the novel scholarship offers expedient addenda, it is evident that central themes of materialist theory remain relatively untouched by this scholarship. This is definitely the case for ‘large-scale’ issues like the state. It is thus salient to reassess these ‘older’ debates. This explains the fact that much of what will be presented in this section dates back as far as the 1970s. Notwithstanding this fact, the relevance and applicability of these old debates for twenty-first century problems will be assessed. This section will be structured in a fourfold manner. Firstly, it will try to introduce basic lines of argumentation of materialist state theory. Two basic tenets will be isolated, one that builds on an interest-oriented, class-antagonist ontology and one that focuses on social forms and thus the often non-perceived pre-conditions of interest-generation. Secondly, the broader context for the state-theoretical debates will be elaborated, introducing relevant theoretical approaches which are aligned with the original meta-theoretical opposition in materialist thought. Thirdly, it will recapitulate the explicit debates on the state in peripheral or post-colonial societies in two separate chapters. Lastly, it will try to pinpoint central problematics that remain unsolved and bear relevance for twentyfirst century critical theory. With this problem-oriented approach in mind, the chapter will conclude by arguing for a renewal of the older materialist debate on the peripheral/post-colonial state.

3

As most readers will know, much of post-colonial theory has been heavily influenced by poststructuralist thought. While both materialism and post-structuralism mean to produce critical theory of colonial relations, this turns into a matter of dispute inasmuch materialism argues the focus of post-structuralism is overly cultural and particularistic (cf. Chibber 2013). A materialist critique of postcolonialism thus highlights certain universal tendencies that govern the capitalist world system despite of its cultural, regional and temporal varieties. 4 The assessment of the severity of this tension is—as always—a matter of individual judgement. Some Marxists consider it less irreconcilable than others do. The fact that both approaches are still attributable to separate ‘camps’ or epistemic communities is a good indicator for the hiatus that remains for the overwhelming majority of Marxists.

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Materialist State Theory: Interest- and Form-Oriented Approaches The state is without doubt a central factor in the development of capitalist societies. Two pertinent aspects stick out and help us to understand the angles from which materialist state theory approaches the theme. Firstly, it is ostensible that the state helps to develop and sustain the capitalist economy, which is, from a materialist perspective, the driving force of societal integration and regulation. The state has the role of regulating and steering capitalist accumulation. It supplements the inherent growth imperative of the economy. In developed societies,5 the degree of state interference into the economy is typically limited by the relative independence of market mechanisms. This is not necessarily the case in developing societies, in which it may well be that the state is clearly dominating the economy (and every other aspects of society). Secondly and consequently, the quality of the state is to be interrogated. Is the state a (biased) actor or is it a (neutral) entity, is it rather an instrument or an institution? From the beginning, this has been a vexed question in materialist state theory. It cannot be solved without relating to general tendencies in materialist theory that touches upon the very understanding of materiality and materialism. Here, we again find a dual opposition.

The Ontological Question of Materialist State Theory The ontological question that separates two strands of materialist state theory revolves around issues relevant to the normative, critical part of the theory. What administers societal development, what makes it material? One side answers that it is primarily class struggle that propels (capitalist) historical development. This means that the antagonistic result of the ‘separation of intellectual and manual labor’ (Poulantzas 2000, 37) is the motor of history. I call this side interest-oriented materialism, as it assumes that ultimately, capitalist domination is about one side enforcing its interest upon another. These interests are intrinsically political, i.e., relate to the question of power: who determines the course of social development? From this perspective, the separation of economy and the state is a result of the primordial class antagonism between capital and labor that dominates the historical ‘social formation’ (Althusser and Balibar 1979, 42) and hence the mode of production and political and ideological relations. Capitalist domination is domination by capitalists. The state is only relatively separated from 5

A materialist notion of development prima facie does not imply any normative statement. It relates to the historical average of (technical, social and cultural) integration of capitalist relations. Postcolonial critiques of development are certainly right to argue that this technical definition is not so innocent after all, as it harbours ideological implications and vested power interests.

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(other) social relations as it is the political institutionalization of class antagonism and reproduces the domination by capitalists. The second side defines materiality less antagonistically and hence without initial reference to class struggle. It assumes that modern domination is the result of a unique disembedding of such social relations that were hitherto largely determined by more direct forms of (feudal) domination. In the course of the development of capitalist social forms, society was transformed into a relatively rigid (though transforming) set of social relations that follow an abstract historical ‘logic’ of impersonal power (Gerstenberger 2007).6 This impersonal power originates in economic forms that are producing both a social cohesion and a certain form of development. The pertinent state of affairs is thus not antagonism. Frightening stability drives capitalist social relations, not a constant surge of struggles.7 The capitalist state is thus separated from the economy in order to sustain and expand social cohesion. I call this approach form-oriented materialism, as it focuses on the study of the structural boundaries of the abstract social forms that constitute modern impersonal domination. The ontological assumptions behind interest- and form-oriented approaches to the state are disparate and lead to different research questions. Typically, interestoriented approaches are more concerned with relations of power, agents and the instrumental character of ideological systems while form-oriented approaches seek to explain the functional and structural mechanisms of domination and the obfuscating dimension of ideologies. As a result—and not an ab initio intent or declaration—the first side tends to resort to ‘political’ explanations of phenomena, while the second highlights ‘economic’ accounts. In a way, this reproduces the original problem, relocates it to a more general level of philosophy of history: why and how do the political and the economic separate? Ultimately, this conundrum can only be resolved by historization, i.e., the explanation of the origins of capitalist development (Gerstenberger 2011). As such, this problem is significant for the broader theme of peripheral societies as these societies are in one way or the other facing a transition from a condition in which capitalist relations were non-dominant to a status quo in which (intended or not) capitalism and its separation of the political and the economic prevail.

6

This does not mean that direct domination or personalized, interest-oriented forms of violence cease to exist—to the contrary, they reach new, atrocious heights. But it means that there is something behind concrete interests of actors, viz. also class actors. The exact character of the ‘behind’ is complexly debated and usually revolves around themes of alienation, fetishism and ideology, a thread that cannot be followed in this chapter. 7 It should be acknowledged that as a consequence, the understandings of agency are differing. While interest-oriented approaches highlight an ontology of collective (class) agency and tend to see individualization of agency (inter allii) as effect of ideologies, form-analysis takes the individualization and atomization of agents—typically as bourgeois/citoyen—as a real (though historically produced) foundation of social relations. This diverging understanding of primordial real agency— aggregated vs individual—often implies controversial positions on what defines ‘history’.

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Before we see how the duality in materialist state theory expresses itself in views of the state in peripheral societies, a short disclaimer is warranted. In concrete discussions on the state—often performed in contexts of the Marxist political left, frequently with praxeological questions in mind—the ontological opposition is hardly ever present as such. Materialist arguments on the state are often not aware of their ontological ramifications. This is partly so because of the different, more complex nature of concrete problems; but it also has to do with various reductionisms prevalent with praxis-oriented discussions, especially reductionisms that connect to the inability to differentiate between different levels of abstraction. The essential problem typically relates to the question of historical contingency versus determination: what are the opportunities for emancipatory agency and where are they ‘located’? Here, theoretical, historical and praxeological topologies are often illicitly confounded.

Poulantzas and Miliband At the beginning of the twentieth century, the question of revolution was prominent, hence, it was discussed whether the state is rather an instrument of the capitalist class or the direct result of class interests, a ‘committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (Marx and Engels 1976, 486). Siding with one or the other camp meant being rather reformist or revolutionary, as an instrumental perspective paved the way for a gradual (social democratic) transition to socialism, while highlighting the class character of the state tended to indicate the necessity for its (more immediate) abolition. However, Marxist-Leninism, which was to become the dominating political force in the worker’s movement left, stood in between the two chairs, as it sought to destruct the state and at the same time believed it to be a necessary and conducive instrument of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Lenin 1973, 263). A famous debate between Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband (Poulantzas and Miliband 1972) had similar results.8 Miliband was arguing that the state serves capitalist interests because it was ‘manned’ by capitalists and/or determined by their personal influence. Poulantzas argued that the state is structurally a capitalist entity and cannot be anything but an expression of bourgeois power. While the debate was controversial, both authors eventually gave into the other’s position. Especially notably, Poulantzas abandoned his strict structural argumentation in his opus magnum ‘State, Power, Socialism’ in order to give way to an understanding of the state as a ‘specific material condensation of a given relationship, which is itself a class relation’ (Poulantzas 2000, 73). Essentially, the state is hence constituted like an arena for class struggles. The overall antagonism of classes is limited by representative democracy, which has a general pacifying effect but still leaves space for

8

For a critical appraisal (Jessop 2008).

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struggle within the state. Practically, this yields consequences similar to Miliband’s initial argument—the capitalist interests in the state must be uncovered and fought.

The German State Derivation Debate The German state derivation debate9 started from the opposite premise—it sought to understand the functional necessity of a separate political entity and tried to explain how and why the state performs as if were an independent, interventionist agency. The cardinal questions were how the political and the economic forms separated and what governs the logic of their separation. Arguments ranged from juridical explanations over emphasizes on market exchange to reference to sovereignty and the general conditions of production (Altvater and Hoffmann 1990). Typically, forms of the state were derived from economic forms, i.e. the requirements of capitalist production, thus leading to functions necessary for the reproduction of the relations of production. Although the German state derivation debate had a strong leaning towards form-oriented arguments, it was not free of interest-oriented interjections. It was the very practical inquiry into the limitations of the welfare state to ‘domesticate’ capital or even facilitate a smooth transition towards socialism and hence particular reformist social democratic agendas that initiated the debate. And all too functionalist arguments were frequently disputed with reference to the ultimate ‘solution’ of the above-mentioned contradiction of (structural, theoretical) determination and (historical, agential) contingency by class struggle (Braunmühl 1978). Both strands of materialist state theory share a common emphasis on the international domain. Interest-oriented approaches ultimately resort to a transnational notion of class struggle—with the advent of capitalism, the antagonism between workers and capitalists becomes universally relevant. The boundaries of the nationstate are thus transgressed by class struggle, eventually, the possibility of inter- or even transnational class struggle and the question of the state are interwoven. Formoriented approaches have a different problem that relates to the capitalist economy’s tendency to transnationalize: why do we not see a transnational political entity organizing the logic of capital? We must move to the political-economical contexts of the state in order to further understand its development.

9

A prominent English translation of many relevant authors can be found with (Holloway and Picciotto 1978).

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Political-Economical Contexts of the Materialist Debate on the State What does the fact that globalization is not only a recent phenomenon, but a general characteristic of capitalism from its beginning (Wallerstein 2000, 252ff) mean for the relation of political and economic forms? How can the (historical) fact that the state only ever existed as nation state in the plural be reconciled with an abstract (theoretical) analysis of the state form (ten Brink 2014, 81ff)? The questions of the capitalist world-system of imperialism and the resulting unequal development of different world regions are crucial for every explanation of the materiality of the state.

A World-System: Between Abstract Totality and Contingent Concreteness Capitalism has from its beginning had a strong tendency to form a world-system. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, the gradual establishment of the modern worldsystem distinguishes itself from prior forms of imperialist expansion by its formation of a word economy, which started to unfold in the ‘long sixteenth century’, i.e. the period from 1450–1640 (Wallerstein 1974, 66). Concerning economic and political relations, the striking difference was, in the beginning, not the character of economical pursuits but their motivation. This connects to Marx’ notion of early capitalist accumulation: while in prior historical formations, economy was largely embedded in society (Polanyi 2001, xiii), i.e. following concrete needs and interests in a (spatio-temporally) closed circuit, capitalist relations are governed by the imperative of surplus generation. The logic of surplus generation, taking money and making more out of it, is limit- and timeless, it has no concrete determination but reproduces itself quasi-autopoietically through the actions of capitalists. The expansion of value, which is the objective basis or mainspring of the circulation M— C—M, becomes his subjective aim, and it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will. Use values must therefore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims at. (Marx 1996, 163f)

This abstract process-logic is the motor of the world economy and at the same time the central factor of cohesion producing an increasingly integrated worldsystem. Inside the world-system, the trajectory of development is confined by the logic of generation of ‘wealth in the abstract’, it is equally applicable on the lowest

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and the highest level of social aggregation, for the individual and national subject.10 Indeed, the expansive motive produced by capital accumulation is not restricted to the economy in the sense of pure relations of production and circulation of goods. It essentially resembles a developmental logic that is endemic in all sorts of social relations, a fact that turns it into a unique form of ‘society-in-the-abstract’. Social abstraction produces thus a universal disembedding of social relations that ultimately governs all layers of sociality, a state of affairs that is often framed as a totality. While this explains the tendency of global development in the abstract, it does not tell us anything about the concrete historical developments. It leaves out all questions of concrete power, inequality, cultural and historical particularities and contingent events. Following the above-developed insight that the state and the political sphere are relatively separated from the economy (and the rest of society), it is also apparent that the role of the nation state in this world-system remains unexplained. When we look at this concrete side of modern totality, the picture is a slightly different one. The early unfolding of the modern world-system is accompanied by cultural and social ruptures, wars, bloody colonial expansions and a general increase of such events that classical historiography would define as ‘uniquely decisive’. Perhaps the most famous one is the European ‘discovery’ of the Americas by Columbus—and its subsequent conquest and colonization. If we cannot solve the riddle of the contradictory relation between the abstract and concrete sides of modern totality, we may at least acknowledge its effects. While the modern world-system is driven by the engine of an abstract, equalizing logic, the weights of this juggernaut vehicle are unevenly distributed in the concrete. To accentuate this fact conceptually, Wallerstein established the notion of cores and peripheries of modern development. Cores are essentially those regions from which Capitalism originated and those regions derived from it—and very few regions for which this does not apply. They are globally dominating. Peripheries are typically regions that were (formerly) subjugated by Western colonialism or suffered most from capitalist imperialism. These are dominated by the core. To account for the in-between, the category of semi-periphery is introduced. It covers such regions that are on the road towards becoming developed in the modern, capitalist sense, but are still not there.11 They are both dominated and dominating. Wallerstein’s typology is convincing but suffers from its static character. It must still be explained how

10 It must be noted that both categories as ‘extremes’ are genuinely produced by capitalist modernity itself. Before it unfolded—and with it the chief ideologies of humanism and liberalism—society was not thought of as the sum of individuals, as a single wo-/man was never an atomistic unity but always part of a community. Equally, the nation did not exist, which resembles something like the ‘individuality of the sum’. The production of social cohesion and possibility of agency were not necessary on such an aggregate level as no akin social entity (the modern state) existed. 11 This category is perhaps the most controversial of the three, as it is not clearly stated how and why a region (a.) turns from peripheral to semi-peripheral, (b.) may aspire to develop into a core region and (c.) is to be characterized in this juxtaposition, viz. leaning towards either extreme side. This brings up the question of the linearity of capitalist development and its potential scope. We will follow up on this question as the state in peripheral societies is treated in more detail.

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domination works and what prospects for development and hence potential change exist.

Imperialism: A Universal Logic of Development? Classically, materialist theory had built on the concept of imperialism that was originally introduced by Lenin (1968) and significantly expanded by thinkers like Rosa Luxemburg (Luxemburg 1985). Lenin claimed that the monopolization of enterprises and the increasing export of capital led to a predatory expansion of the developed capitalist nations. Luxemburg similarly thought that at a certain stage of capitalist development, only outwards expansion can work for national capitals. The increased competition leads to larger global disparities and uneven developments, a rise of direct domination and violence and hence global struggles. A problem of these approaches is their implicit teleological philosophy of history. According to these authors, who wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, capitalism was already in its end-stage, leading to instability, wars and ultimately the socialist revolution. History proofed these theories wrong—after the first and especially after the Second World War, the next, Fordist (Jessop 1992, 43ff) stage of capitalist development brought about never seen increases in nationalized accumulation and a new boost for the state as an agent of development, interfering in the free-market economy. The global situation in the second half of the twentieth century not only radically changed the role of the state as the eastern bloc established new rules of engagement; it also yielded few, but relevant examples of catch-up development instituted by developmental states. Thus, the need arises for novel explanations of the unevenness of capitalist development and the role of the state therein.

Uneven Capitalist Development: Dependencia and World-Market-Integration Two paradigms conceived after the Second World War are relevant for this question, dependencia and world market integration. At the risk of generalizing, I would propose to interpret both paradigms in the above-developed binary of interest- and form-oriented approaches. Dependencia emphasizes concrete and historical forms of domination and thus has a leaning towards interest-oriented approaches; world market integration is highlighting structural and economic imperatives of development and hence tends to buttress form-oriented analyses. Dependencia originated in post Second World War South America and sought to give meaning to the unequal trade relationships between Europe and South America. Dependencia was developed as an alternative to classical capitalist modernization

26

E. Flatschart

theory. The latter insisted on the beneficial character of free trade and upheld a positive appraisal of national modernization by lesser developed states. Against this idealistic insistence on the unconditional benefits of capitalist economy, dependencia maintained the colonial and imperialist origins of capitalist development and its legacy for the present global dependencies (Cardoso and Faletto 1979, 114). Due to the initial exploitation and domination of large parts of the non-Western world, a pattern of production and exchange unfolded that privileged the core countries: they produced manufactured goods while the peripheries produced only basic commodities or provided natural resources. Thus, not only the colonial surplus gave the core countries a historical advantage, the established pattern of international exchange privileged the core and subsequently enlarged the gap as more and more industrialized accumulation led to increasingly unequal terms of trade between cores and peripheries. One of dependencia’s solutions was a protectionist and state-centred modernization inside the national political confines. This certainly further stressed the relevance of the state and political power relations, as grave changes in the established order were non-beneficial for large parts of the existing local and metropolitan bourgeoisie. The role of the proletariat in a progressive national modernization is highlighted by the left wing of dependencia, as it is more prone to investigate the tempo-spatial specificities of development in one specific state. Although this focus on ‘regional’ political pre-conditions of development and the role of the state therein was not the exact focus of the original dependencia argument (which was more economic by nature), it can be seen as its result. World-market-integration resembles an attempt to grasp the consequences of what Marx defined as the ‘international character of the capitalist regime’ (Marx 1996, 750). The basic assumption behind this regime is capital’s drive towards internationalization which is preordained by the law of value. Capitalist accumulation is about the amassing of surplus value, a development that requires the constant quantitative and qualitative advancement of labour relations. Under the imperatives of universal competition, this leads to evergrowing individual capitals or centralization of production: ‘The cheapness of commodities depends, ceteris paribus, on the productiveness of labour, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore, the larger capitals beat the smaller’ (Marx 1996, 621). This process of centralization of production is complemented by capital’s strive to disrupt all boundaries for the circulation of produced commodities. As commodity production necessarily expresses itself as surplus in money and as money is the ‘universal equivalent’ (Marx 1996, 77), capital is a universalizing entity that tends towards the world market as most universal expression of its original form determination. It is therefore the universal character of the origin of the commodities, the existence of the market as world market, which distinguishes the process of circulation of industrial capital. What is true of the commodities of others is also true of the money of others. Just as commodity capital faces money only as commodities, so this money functions vis-à-vis commodity capital only as money. Money here performs the functions of world money. (Marx 1997, 115)

Money—and capital is, according to Marx, nothing but processing money (Marx 1996, 165)—is thus by its fundamental character ‘anti-national’, as it seeks to

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establish a world-market. This tendency is (ideologically) expressed in the early political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo, who opted for free trade regimes and against the still relevant protectionist mercantilist ideologies. Authors like Christel Neusüß (Neusüß 1972), Klaus Busch (1974) and Claudia von Braunmühl (Braunmühl 1973) developed elaborated accounts of this universalizing tendency of the world-market and its relation to national capitals. To sum up the results: Capitalism harbours a tendency towards a universal world-market, a universal currency and transnational production. But this tendency always has to express itself via the national form of the state, which is the legal and also concrete reproducer of the conditions of capital accumulation. The way the state does this ‘job’ matters significantly for the potential of its economic integration into the world market. Dependencia and world-market-integration thus have opposing understandings of the basic developmental dynamics of the capitalist economy and state. Dependencia is highly doubtful of any developmental role of the world market and consequently opts for a strong and independent state. This makes the internal relations of forces, especially relevant. World-market-integration is maintaining the principal developmental potential of the world-market.12 In this, the state is of importance, but less as a chief actor than as facilitator or midwife. The emphasis is shifted from strictly political antagonisms to the institutional arrangements and the non-existence of constraints to development. It would be reductionist to say that the truth is somewhere in between both positions. For once, this is again a very rough and abstract distinction that—for the sake of simplification—ignores the actual multifariousness of debates subsumed under the respective paradigms. What is more, the concrete historical spatial and temporal arrangements matter for the assessment of each theory’s assumptions.13 Notwithstanding these caveats, these two poles provide a meaningful systematization in terms of existing theoretical problematics on the state in the global south. In the following two chapters, I will discuss the ramifications of the application of this systematic along two streams of discussion, one focusing on the post-colonial state, the other on the state in peripheral societies.

12

It does, however, differentiate and acknowledge that this is development in the capitalist form, i.e. value relations. Other than classical modernization theory, critical theorists in this tradition underline the fact that the establishment of market institutions does not imply the increase of welfare and human flourishing. Often the contrary is the case. Development is thus criticized on a metalevel, viz. the categorical definition of what it implies and less in terms of its actual results inside the categorical defines. 13 This is especially true for world market integration: if the general character of capitalist productive forces and relations changes, so does the meaning of the umbrella term ‘capitalist development’. This holds true even on a very abstract level—the modes of accumulation and regimes of regulation of Fordism differ quite substantially from those prevalent today.

28

E. Flatschart

The Post-Colonial State: Class and State Formation In the wake of the global revolts around 1968 and the ongoing general tendency towards de-colonialization, the topic of post-colonial statehood became of crucial interest for the 1970s critical materialist debate. Highlighting a theoretical ‘antiimperialism’, the potentials for de- or post-colonial state formation were scrutinized. The assessments were of concrete importance—or at least viewed as such, with the hope in mind that alternative, non-capitalist or at least semi-independent development is possible. Evidently, this highlighted the state and the conditions of state development.

Peripheral Capitalism and the Overdeveloped State: Alavi, Saul et al. In the respective debate, the work of Hamza Alavi was seminal. Alavi argued against traditional modernization theories. He espouses the position that ‘modernization’ is about the ‘creation and maintenance of the basic structures and institutions of capitalist society’, viz. the ‘subsumption under peripheral capitalism’ (Alavi 1982a, 289). In order to understand the resulting ramifications for the state, we have to see what Alavi means with peripheral capitalism. Materialist studies of capitalism always depart from the ‘striking difference’ that differentiates it from pre-capitalism, which is usually defined by the category feudalism.14 The argument Alavi and others seek to make is that peripheral capitalism maintains aspect of feudalism not only as a ‘relict’ that is due to be overcome, but as a key feature of a distinct peripheral capitalism. How does Alavi arrive at this ‘third concept’? Following the school of Louis Altusser, he differentiates between the analytical category capitalist mode of production and the historically descriptive category social formation that the former is embedded in Alavi (1982b, 178). This essentially means that the character of a given society is ultimately not definable in terms of its mode of production, as this category is merely analytical and not historical. Peripheral capitalism is then identifiable as a social formation in which some aspects of the capitalist mode of production are present, but others are not (Fig. 1). For Alavi, the specificity of the colonial structure is largely attributable to the last two aspects. Due to the impact of the colonial capital, the localized and selfsufficient (feudal) economy was destroyed and simple reproduction was abolished. Instead of national generalized commodity production with a ‘closed circuit’, a

14

It should be acknowledged that this is premised on a very rough conceptualization of feudal systems. Taking regional disparities seriously would imply the recognition of the fact that actual pre-capitalist systems in various regions of the world differed to such a high degree that a unifying category is hard to maintain. The unification can only hold ex-post, viz. from the perspective of the real universalizing tendency prevalent in the capitalist world system.

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Feudal mode of pro- Capitalist mode of production Peripheral duction (FMP)

(CMP)

capitalism

Unfree labor

Free labor

As in CMP

Extraeconomic com- Economic coercion

As in CMP

pulsion Localized power, fu- Separation of economic (class) Colonial sion of political and and political (state) power

structure

economic in production Self-sufficient ized economy

local- Generalized commodity produc- Colonial tion

structure

Simple reproduction, Expanded reproduction, surplus Colonial no surplus

value

structure

Fig. 1 Modes of production and peripheral capitalism (Alavi 1982b, 179)

dependent production for colonial export was implemented (Alavi 1982b, 181). The same is the case for extended reproduction. While expanded reproduction becomes the aim of colonial economies, the surplus is extracted not by a local, but a metropolitan bourgeoisie. If the transition to capitalism as a social formation is not reducible to the implementation of a capitalist mode of production, hence the ‘economic level’ (Alavi 1982b, 182). What is crucial is ‘class struggle’ in which ‘force plays a part’ and here the ‘colonial state’ is of foremost importance (Alavi 1982b, 182). Here, Alavi sees a structural semblance. The newly independent states, under indirect colonial domination, soon began to undertake measures that dissolved precapitalist social relations and established institutional structures necessary for peripheral capitalism. New classes emerged. The pace and the manner of peripheral capitalist transformation has varied in accordance with local specificities and conditions, but the end result, structurally, has been the same. (Alavi 1982b, 186)

Here, we see how the ‘end result’ is in accordance with the premises of depedencia—even if the line of arguments may be a different, more elaborated one. The consequence of this more elaborated understanding is the highlighting of class and state formation.

30

E. Flatschart

Alavi’s approach distinguishes itself from what he calls ‘functionalist theory’— the focus on ‘complementarity and reciprocity of roles in the social division of labor’ (Alavi 1982a, 289). For him, functionalism is a view that highlights the sui-generis efficacy of the capitalist market and as such ‘contrasts with notions of exploitation and oppression, domination and subordination, and antagonism of class interests’ (Alavi 1982a, 290). Alavi also argues against modernization theories that highlight the role of ‘modernizing elites’ (Alavi 1982a, 291) in a voluntarist way, i.e. by giving them directive power without consideration of ‘structural imperatives’ (Alavi 1982a, 291). Alavi seeks to position himself between functionalism and instrumentalism by hinting towards the class nature of the state. While admitting that it ‘is the role of the state [. . .] to maintain the foundations of social order’ (Alavi 1982a, 292), he highlights the relevance of the state bureaucracy as an intermediary between crude (bourgeois) class interests and the view that the state could act autonomously. The state bureaucracy inside the state apparatus thus dovetails the capitalist imperative and class interests. Alavi’s central argument is geared towards the way the state apparatus and the bureaucracy function as an arena for class formation. Where the capitalist mode of production is prevalent, two fundamental classes oppose each other—proletariat and bourgeoisie, the latter being the one usually dominant in the state apparatus. It follows from the above that peripheral capitalism has different class compositions that impede the isolation of one fundamental ruling class. In fact, we find (at least) three ruling classes—the landowning remnants of the former (feudal) ruling class, the striving indigenous bourgeoisie and the present (metropolitan) foreign capital. These classes often have opposing interests they seek to represent in the state apparatus. This has three consequences: 1. The political role of the educated and salaried middle class is considerable—not only were they often the ones that kept up the colonial state, but they also represent Western ideology and modernist conceptions of statecraft, giving them considerable leverage in the state apparatus (Alavi 1982a, 299f). 2. Due to the existence of juxtaposed ruling classes, the relative separation of the state from these classes becomes more important, leading to a powerful and centralized state that is overdeveloped ‘in the sense that the excessive enlargement of powers of control and regulation that the state has accumulated and elaborated extend far beyond the logic of what may be necessary for the orderly functioning of the social institutions of the society over which the state presides’ (Alavi 1982a, 302). 3. Due to its overdeveloped nature, that state develops a life of its own. The comparatively large state expenditure has to economically sustain itself, which means that state expenditure tends to benefit primarily the state structure and those inside it. This leads inter alia to the perpetuation of peripheral capitalism itself—‘otherwise those in command of the state would find themselves in the grip of crises that they cannot resolve’ (Alavi 1982a, 303). The context of the overdeveloped states is a social formation that operates within its own logic, steered by a bureaucracy representing an amalgam of Western colonial

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and local ideologies. It is perpetuating peripheral capitalist economies that lead to centralist, often authoritarian, policies. This in turn stabilizes the prevailing postcolonial order and makes any sort of ‘development’ difficult. Peripheral capitalism remains peripheral not only because of its (post-)colonial dependency from the metropolis; it also does so due to the political results of colonialism, expressed in the peripheral state. The separation of the political and the economic, which is the distinctive character of capitalist states, thus takes place, but this separation is by tendency consumed by the overarching power of the post-colonial state. The actual political model of the overdeveloped post-colonial state has obvious explanatory power when it comes to describe certain important cases of peripheral developments. Alavi himself builds his theory around South-Asian cases (Pakistan and India), but arguments concerning both state and peripheral capitalism are also compelling for many Latin American applications.15 They are less convincing for most African cases, as scholars like John Saul (Saul 1974) maintained. Saul argues that Alavi’s concept of the post-colonial state is too readily assuming that the state it is mainly an arena for various fractions of the ruling class. But the state’s function of providing an ideological cement for the capitalist system is one which has evolved slowly and surely in the imperial centres, in step with the latter’s economic transformation. In post-colonial societies, on the other hand, and particularly in Africa, this hegemonic position must be created, and created within territorial boundaries which often appear as quite artificial entities once the powerful force of direct colonial fiat has been removed. Peripheral capitalism, like advanced capitalism, requires territorial unity and legitimacy and the postcolonial state’s centrality to the process of creating these conditions (like its centrality in ‘promoting economic development’) further reinforces Alavi’s point about that state's importance. Indeed, when viewed from a Marxist perspective, this is what all the fashionable discussion of ‘nation-building’ in development literature is all about! (Saul 1974, 351)

Pointing towards the then socialist government of Tanzania, he sees larger potential for progressive transformations of nation-building, i.e. a socialist hegemony in the political power centres. Surprisingly, this potential is not tied to (proletarian) class rule in a strict sense. Saul argues that the specific class composition of the cases Alavi studies result in a dominance of the three ruling classes and their focal role in the emanation of an overdeveloped state. The existence of a pre-capitalist (feudal) ruling class cannot be taken for granted in most African cases (Saul 1974, 353). If there are no primordial ruling class interests that condensate in the state, the role of the ‘petty-bourgeoisie’ is a different and more important

15

René Zavelta Mercado (1986) developed a similar account of the developmental state in Latin America. He referred to the concept of a ‘motley society’ (formación social abigarrado), in which the state embeds. Similar to Alavi, Zavaleta highlights the non-linearity of state and society formation, which is a result of world-system dependency and the heterogeneity of a mixed economy, in which capitalist relations lived side by side with patrimonial regimes. The heterogeneous and dependent character of post-colonial Latin American societies consequently nurtures tendencies towards authoritarian state forms. Recent authors like García Linera take a similar stance, but try to interpret the ‘motley society’ positively in terms of ethnical identity politics (Williams 2015).

32

E. Flatschart

one. It is created in the process of (post-)colonial developments and seeking not only ‘political domination’ for its own sake like Alavi’s middle-class bureaucracy,16 but uses the state to a far greater extent as a ‘source of economic power’ (Saul 1974, 354). Authors like Murray (Murray 1967) highlight the fact that these bureaucratic elites lack features crucial for the definition of traditional classes, as they are not rooted in economic interests derived from an actual mode of production but rather formed in the political process of the constitution of the post-colonial state. Saul notices that any attempt to define these ruling elites as class or ‘class-in-formation’ is ‘essentially teleological’ (Saul 1974, 357), as it presupposes the future development of historical agency on the basis of a schematic and essentialist (class) ontology. Indeed, Saul’s et al. in-depth studies of African cases unveil the theoretical limitations of interest-oriented approaches—their essentialization of class struggle prioritizes a condition that may as well be a product of state formation, not its causal origin. State structures and certain functional imperatives are present prior to any antagonistic agential constellation, aspects like ‘territorial unity and legitimacy’ are linked to the ‘conditions of economic development’ in a way that is not necessarily connected to the class constellations present in a specific post-colonial context. In the case of Tanzania, Saul draws on Michaela von Freyhold’s term ‘Nizers’ (from ‘Africanizers’) to describe the progressive local elite that does not have a clear class background is mainly motivated by—contradictory—ideological rationales with contingent social foundations. A strong focus on ideological considerations without any necessary connection to apparent class dimensions does, however, not foster the original interested-oriented ontological position and thus leads away from a concise formulation of materialist state theory. From these important replies to Alavi’s seminal thesis, we can learn that the agential dimension of post-colonial state formation is contingent upon the specific historical and material relations that vary from one regional context to the other. Although the dominance and transformation of (pre-capitalist) ruling classes is a widespread phenomenon, it is not necessarily the case that this can be covered even by a very vague understanding of feudalism. Notwithstanding the lack of such a class basis, peripheral state structures can be in place and yield certain structural imperatives. How then can state formation be explained? One way is to question Alavi’s original linkage of peripheral capitalism and the post-colonial state.

16

This does not mean that the middle class in cases like, e.g. Pakistan is only acting altruistically or based on culturally conceived motives, but the existence of other articulated ruling class interests limits the role of the state bureaucracy. It is thus rather the vacuum of economic class interests compatible with the capitalist mode of production that harbours the historical potential for the rise of an—often exploitative or ‘rent-seeking’—economic rule of the bureaucracy.

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Neo-imperialism Versus the Separation of the Political and Economic? Amin-Khan Tariq Amin-Khan recently argued that Alavi’s thesis of separation of the economic and the political does not actually take place in many post-colonial settings (AminKhan 2012, 103). He thus distinguishes between a proto-capitalist post-colonial state and a capitalist post-colonial state (Amin-Khan 2012, 121ff) and only the latter features the characteristics Alavi describes. Indeed, Alavi claims that ‘[a]lmost no post-colonial states were capitalist at the time of decolonization’ (Amin-Khan 2012, 122). This permits the integration of cases in which there is no obvious feudal heritage, hence no antagonism between feudal and bourgeois classes and no mixed peripheral capitalist economy with a drive towards world-system integration. However, Amin-Khan’s approach puts even more stress on the bureaucracy–state nexus than Saul’s. The apparent lacunae with respect to the connection of economic and political problematics are filled with reference to an overarching theory of an imperialist state that essentially upholds the continuity between colonial and postcolonial relations. The state is thus post-colonial vis-à-vis its role in global imperialism and the bureaucracy is mainly determined by its ties to imperialist forces. The enormous political power that was contained in the unitary, centralized structures of the colonial state gave it a monopoly on coercive control of the colonized, principally to stop revolts, have the power to extract tribute and appropriate surplus in the colony, and to drain the wealth of the colonized peoples. This debilitated the colony and left it very resourcepoor. The colony was drained not because the metropolitan elite had economic power; rather, the realization of economic power rested on the political control of the colonial state through extra-economic means to extract economic benefit (tribute extraction) and fuel metropolitan capitalist development (Amin-Khan 2012, 121)

Amin-Khan’s strong insistence on imperialism understood as primarily political domination is only superficially solving the problem of the relation of economic and political determinations of state formation. When reading his renewal and alteration of Alavi’s theorem, one is left with the impression that the capitalist economy is actually only constituted of political determinations, various ‘class interests’ he refers to, but cannot sufficiently ingrain in material relations. This is at odds with (original) materialist theories of imperialism that were firmly rooted in assumptions on economic development. This is unrealistic and simplifying—the complex dynamics of twenty-first century’s world-system can hardly be explained by a simple scheme of domination-subordination like the imperialist one proposed by AminKhan. A materialist theory of the post-colonial state thus cannot be founded solely on agential dimensions or the social/political composition of the respective spatiotemporal context, however, large the autonomy of the post-colonial state may be—it is still a relative autonomy and only explainable in the wider picture of world-system integration. In order to understand the economic character of the post-colonial state and hence its developmental directionality, we must go beyond interest-oriented approaches to the post-colonial state.

34

E. Flatschart

The State in Peripheral Societies: Prerequisites of World-Market-Integration An understanding of the state in peripheral societies that follows up on the lacunae of interest-oriented approaches and takes into account the premises of world market integration stresses the sui-generis economic imperatives behind state formation. A contribution by W. Ziemann and M. Lanzendorfer (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977) critically engages with central themes of the interest-oriented tradition and presents an alternative approach on the state in peripheral societies.

A Critique of the Overdeveloped State Their first critique targets the concept of the overdeveloped state. Alavi’s argument depends on the continuity between pro-colonial, colonial and post-colonial state formations that he roots in his class theoretical approach. The idea that the overdeveloped state is a distinctive feature of peripheral societal relations and necessarily a heritage of colonialism is scrutinized both empirically and theoretically. There are too many examples in which this cannot be maintained, e.g. non-colonized states or those (Latin American ones) which gained their independence in the nineteenth century, often before the rise of modern imperialist colonialism. The theoretical question is maybe, even more, striking—relative to what is the state ‘overdeveloped’? Here, we can resort to extrinsic and intrinsic qualifications—both are not compelling.17 The establishment of a relation to the metropolitan state would imply the introduction of a schematic developmental ideal. Intrinsically, it is even harder to find a meaningful delimitation, as it can be argued that ‘so long as a state is fitted for its main function, to secure the societal reproduction, the extent of its influence on society is neither too great or too small, but adequate’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 145). The thesis of the overdeveloped state also hints towards the important economic role of the post-colonial state for peripheral capitalism. Ziemann/Lanzendorfer criticizes the argument that the state (or the state bureaucracy) ‘directly appropriates a very large part of the economic surplus’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 146) for being vague and not explaining why and how it is doing so. It matters significantly whether an expanded economic state apparatus is dirigiste, focused onstate-enterprise or merely rent-seeking/ exploitative. What is at stake here is the expanded reproduction of the (peripheral) economy, not primarily agential questions around class dimensions. Saul’s

17

There is maybe a third, ideology-critical way of explaining the prominence of this theorem. It could be argued that the thesis of an overdeveloped state was a normative bias of the authors themselves that led to the generalization of this thesis, as the state was often conceived as the main agency of (socialist/communist) emancipatory development. At least concerning Saul, this seems to be a legitimate interpretation.

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intervention concerning the ideological dimensions is recognized, but it is questioned whether the ideological function of producing legitimacy can only be explained with respect to the political level (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 148). Instead, the authors maintain that [t]his ideological function derives far more from the fact that capitalist commodity relations have not been generalized -on the one hand there is the semblance of formal freedom and equality for all commodity owners which derives from the mystification inherent in capitalist production, on the other, the social integration by means of commodity and financial ramifications is incomplete. (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 148)

The second critique problematizes the way in which Alavi and Saul approach the relative autonomy of the peripheral state. For them, the relative autonomy of the post-colonial state is different from the one the metropolitan state features because the class nature and economic role are dissimilar—the post-colonial state is not clearly the state of the bourgeoisie and its autonomy is more important for economic development. Against this, Ziemann/Lanzendorfer uphold the relative class neutrality that defines important state functions in both the peripheral and the metropolitan state. The degree of relatively independent reproduction of capital defines the relevance of state intervention, not any primarily political dimension—'only by examining the relationships of state and society can the significance and the relative autonomy of the state be perceived’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 149). Ultimately, Ziemann’s/Lanzendorfer’s critique aims at the class ontology that was criticized above—a perspective that grounds its understanding of capitalist development first and foremost on an agential dimension, viz. a theory of history based on (political/interest-oriented) antagonisms misunderstands the character of structural powers and liabilities that distinguish the capitalist world-system from prior modes of domination. The elimination of class reductionisms is thus crucial for materialist state theory: A purely political analysis on the level of class relationships—as we have from Alavi and Saul—without clear definition of the place and function of the capitalist state, of the statesociety relationship, i.e. without an overall theory of the state in the economically-given capitalist social formation, is bound to lead to faulty interpretations in the concrete analysis of a state. (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 150)

Towards a General Theory of the Capitalist State The alternative to a perspective that starts from the historically concrete level of social antagonisms is a ‘general theory of the state’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 150) as a prerequisite of capitalist development and its necessary separation of political and economic domains. Interest-oriented approaches highlight historical contingency in order to foster their class ontology and therefore usually scorn attempts to establish any kind of universal theory of the state. Form-oriented approaches consider exactly this universality to be the logical outcome of their definition of the capitalist system, viz. it being the (historically unique) product of

36

E. Flatschart

reified social forms that mediate the relation of agency and structures.18 A general theory of the state thus assumes that there is something like an abstract blueprint for state constitution. Other than normal blueprints that are the product of ideas, a general theory of the state derives from material social relations, to be precise, such relations are predetermined by the specific form-determinations that govern capitalism.

The Separation of the Political and Economic Revisited Such a general theory starts from the way the separation of the political and economic expresses itself with respect to overall societal reproduction, viz., how this separation is always also a relation to the economic. What we define as (modern/ capitalist) state depends on the formation of an entity that appears autonomous19 from all other aspects of society. This is the first pillar of a general theory of the capitalist state. The state is (a) autonomous vis-à-vis ‘material production and reproduction’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 151)—from this autonomy, the relation to the economy in terms of the economic functions of the state are derived. Economic policies can have various shapes and goals, but at the minimum, the separation of the material production from in terms of a separate sphere of economy has to be safeguarded.20 The state is (b) autonomous vis-à-vis social classes (and other forms of political agency)—from this autonomy, ideological relations, i.e. bourgeois hegemony and the state’s function as ‘political organizer and unifier’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 151) stem. Although the state is the arena for the condensation (class) interests and in its concrete shape defined by policies implemented via these interests, the very existence of this arena and certain mechanisms that enable it to function as such is pre-existing and result of its autonomy. The state is (c) autonomous in the exercise of (state) power, i.e. in the ‘institutional expression of the social power set-up’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 152)

18 This distinguishes form-oriented materialism from Luhmann’s system theory: while the latter constructs universal systematicity and functionality in terms of a general ontology, the former historicizes it vis-à-vis the social forms that are relevant only for a specific context. Dealing with the ‘real-abstract’ character of this universality becomes especially problematic when it is confronted with aspects that are apparently outside of it, like pre- or anti-capitalist, particularist interjections. 19 This appearance is partly a false one, as the state depends on the economy. However, on the level of structures and structural selectivities, it must really appear as such in order to function according to its formal delimitation. 20 The concrete nature of economic enterprises—‘public’ or ‘private’—does not matter for this definition. This is even true for the extreme case that the state itself runs large parts of the economy (like, e.g. in socialist countries). What matters is the way it reproduces the economic forms that define capitalism—labor, value, money and capital.

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found, e.g. in the state bureaucracy. This autonomy is ultimately related to the functions of reproducing the political form itself, which—in the last instance— depends on the ‘dynamic and laws of material production’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 152). The institutional arrangement of the state can vary from nation to nation, but a sort of hierarchical and functional institutionalization with its adjacent bureaucracy necessarily results from the state defined as an autonomous entity. It is evident that all three dimensions of separation are often insufficiently developed in peripheral societies—usually in relation to the developmental status of the respective capitalist economies. The problem of the separation between the economic and political or the lack thereof is therefore—pace Saul—relevant for the delimitation of the state in peripheral societies.

The State’s Role in Reproducing Society The second pillar of a general theory is the state’s role in reproducing society. The state’s reproductive role is a direct result of the way the political separates from the economic. In this separation, the state assumes a ‘role’ that is mainly geared to the economy. As such, it has two reproductive dimensions, (a) the reproduction of the capitalist economy and its separate social forms and (b) the political reproduction, i.e. the ‘contradictory representation of social unit’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 151). Both depend on the primordial separation of the political from the economic, but only the latter is evident in customary definitions of the state as a political agent. Consequently, interest-oriented approaches21 cover only (b); (a) remains insufficiently explained on basis of a perspective that is ab initio political. It thus is important to highlight the economic reproduction forms and their functional delimitation. In the German State Derivation debate, various functions derive from the reproductive state form determination (Altvater 1978, 42; Läpple 1975, 95ff): 1. Constitution and safeguarding of a generalized rule of law (and subjectivization as legal subject). 2. Establishment of (non-commodified) prerequisites of material production (e.g. infrastructures). 3. Reproduction of the commodity ‘labour-power’ (repression and promotion of the workforce).

21

Form-oriented approaches resort to differing causal explanations. The political dimension of the state is not itself constituted in the process of the condensation of struggles. The other way round— it is the basis for such condensations and thus already pre-given because of the primordial separation of social forms in economic and political dimensions, which in turn is the consequence of the formal subsumption of social relations under the ‘abstract domination’ derived from the imperatives of value-production.

38

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4. Maintenance of the existence and expansion of the national economy inside the world-system. Every capitalist state does in one way or the other establish institutions that represent these functions following from the reproductive form determination. It is certainly the case that these state functions are different or not at all present in states in peripheral societies.

The State Form and Sovereignty The third pillar relates to the way the relative autonomy expresses itself in terms of sovereignty, i.e. the monopoly of extra-economic power (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 151). This dimension is important as it connects to the nation form, which is, after all, the real articulation of the relatively autonomous political form. While the construction of metropolitan nation-forms differs in shape and outreach, they all relate to a societal process of integration that can establish at least the image of a historical tradition with which ideological ramifications interlink. This is not the case in post-colonial societies like, e.g. those of Africa, in which this foundational form of social cohesion is, therefore, harder to achieve and maintain (Evers 1977, 80f). What is maybe even more important is the heritage of colonialism present in the nation form itself—it was from the onset constituted as a closed community, a body in which sovereignty is grounded in a legitimation induced from a qualified populace. The production of this ‘inside’ was intrinsically welded to the construction of an outside, which was from the onset a colonial one. The core capitalist nation thrived in a nascent world-system that is impossible to think without the forced, colonial Columbian exchange. The ‘civilizing’ effects of the monopoly of power inside the borders contrast with the outside unrestricted use of power against those that are apparently ‘uncivilized’ or ‘less developed’ (Evers 1977, 106).22 Sovereignty as a product of the nation form is thus not only the monopoly of power ‘within’ but also towards the outside. This does not mean that every nation state must act as an active colonial power in order to attain sovereignty; but it does mean that sovereignty is to a significant degree determined internationally, viz. via a sort of competition on the level of power politics that typically govern international politics.

22

It is important to notice that this is not only a normative or ideological construction, but also materially real in terms of levels of development inside the confines of the capitalist forms and vis-à-vis the forces of competition in the world system. Those nations that are more developed usually have a larger technical and organizational power potential and can force their will upon others.

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The State’s and the World-Market In order to grasp how these three pillars of a general theory of the capitalist state relate to the conditions of peripheral societies, it is necessary to address a few formoriented assumptions on the economic structure of peripheral societies. This is similar to Alavi’s methodical proceeding, who departed from the capitalist mode of production. Alavi, however, did not sufficiently cover its peculiarities and moved too quickly to the (political) specificities of post-colonial societies. In order to amend this problem, it is necessary to explain the relation of metropolitan and peripheral modes of production on an abstract level. Ziemann/Lanzendorfer come up with six theses that deserve consideration. 1. The world market is an international production relation ‘derived’ from the reproduction of the metropolis (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 155). Integration into the world market is a historically unequal process, which leads to moments of dependence. The dominance of capital around the world, however, also implies a ‘structural interlocking’ (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 155) of periphery and metropolis. 2. The world market is a production relation on a higher level (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 156). The world market is not only an arena representing the various national economies, but also (and increasingly) a sui-generis system of division of labour, exchange and distribution—especially between periphery and metropolis. 3. The derived, international production relation is an augmented force of production, for the extended reproduction of the metropolis (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 156). International production relations are structurally shaped in a way that not only keeps the periphery dependent but also sustains the metropolis at its high level of capitalist integration. The metropolis thus also ‘depends’ on the periphery. 4. The economic structure of the periphera1 social formations is characterized by derivative, not original relations of production overlaid by the derived international relation of production (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 156). The colonial intervention produced a distortion of (prior) economic development, which leads to the mentioned dependent reproduction and produces a sort of (often dysfunctional) structural heterogeneity that far exceeds the varieties of capitalism existing in the metropolis. 5. The extent and form of the peripheral dependent reproduction depend on the internal structural elements (Ziemann and Lanzendorfer 1977, 158). Although the general tendency induced by world-market dependence privileges specific (e.g. resource extractive) forms of extroversive modes of production, it cannot be said—pace dependencia theories—that imperialism or post-colonial influence dominates throughout—the peculiarities of regional social and economic patterns shape the developmental avenues. 6. The peripheral societies are the social formations of’ the relatively stagnating transition from pre-capitalist social formations to capitalism (Ziemann and

40

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Lanzendorfer 1977, 159). There is no essential ‘outside’ of the global worldsystem. Its general dynamic, chiefly evident in world market integration, permeates even those societies that are apparently ‘economically backwards’, ‘undeveloped’ or ‘pre-modern’. The strong impetus towards world-system integration is ubiquitously present and yields a real and normative telos of development. Peripheral societies are subject to this telos, but due to internal and external reasons also restraint from fully going its way. Based on the six theses, we can determine two central societal and economic features relevant for the analysis of the state in peripheral societies. There is a strong homogenizing drive towards world-market and world-system integration that is only partly covered by the ideological concept of development. Peripheries are also distinctively featuring structural heterogeneity, which is on the one hand obstructing the homogenizing tendency of integration, on the other side—as prevailing status quo—the only relevant basis for modes of integration. This contradictory relation has grave consequences for the analysis of the state in peripheral societies. It is reasonable to assume that the economic features of world-system integration are relatively universal. We can comprehend the abstract mechanisms that are relevant for capital accumulation around the world and the resulting consequences for world-market integration, i.e. a general theory of capitalist economic development. This does not hold for a general theory of the state, because its premises are the existence of a developed capitalist economy, i.e. the (relatively) prevalent separation of the political and the economic. As we have learned from Alavai et al., peripheral societies distinctively feature a (relative) lack of a separation between the political and economic. As an effect, a general theory of the peripheral state does not exist as such. It cannot be derived from the heritage of colonialism, prevalent class relations or concrete features of economy. The only common feature of the peripheral state form is the lack, i.e. a negative determination vis-à-vis the general theory of the developed capitalist state, viz. the above-developed three pillars and four functions.23 This negative determination is not merely theoretical in an abstract sense. It is a constant driver of politics. In its ideological guise—the (uncritical and underdefined) ideal concept of development—it is the goal of activity in virtually all state apparatuses that can be found in peripheral states. Catching up not only means economic development, hence world-market integration. It also implies the establishment of a functioning state that is in a well-established regulating position.

23

A scrutiny of the forms and functions of the capitalist state would lead to a more refined and likely extended list. The one presented here focuses on the foundational aspects that stem from the politics-economy nexus.

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World-System Integration and Development As compared to ideological, Eurocentric and non-materialist ‘traditional’ theories of development, the world-system and world-market integration perspective are critical of the conditions of ‘catching-up’. The existing structure of the world-system depends on the existence of peripheries, so does the economic development. This means that understanding development as open one-way road that simply needs to copy the western highways to success is false. Similarly, institutionalist ideas of the establishment of state structures that resemble Western structures are reductionist. If the perceived lack (of development) is the result of the world-system as such and hence a key feature of the world market into which a region seeks to integrate, it is not the result of a ‘concrete lack’ but of the structural determination of the peripheral economy. The peripheral economy is dependent not (merely) because it is politically controlled by imperialist powers, it is so by structural composition. This composition is difficult to alter because it stems from a strong integration into the world market. In this sense, the metaphor of a lack is misleading. Analytically, there is no lack but a specific form of integration. The metaphor of a deficiency is morally or ideologically determined, but does not resemble productive relations. Viewing peripheries in terms of developed nation states and relatively homogenous national economies is as such ideological, a product of a Eurocentric perspective. Capitalist economy is not structured around a Eurocentric model; it is, however—as a product of historical developments—effectively Eurocentric inasmuch the Western world constitutes most of the metropolitan regions. If we approach the problem of development from the perspective of the state or politics, a contradiction of state development appears. Something non-extant—a national economy—must be created (and hence safeguarded from external interventions) and at the same time, that, which is not yet developed must integrate into the world market in a non-dependent way (i.e. different to the current mode of integration). In terms of economic policies, it must be at the same time open to the world market and protectionist. As there is no ‘natural’ road out of a dependent world market integration, a change of such a position can only be the result of political intervention.24 Metropolitan modes of regulation are naturally inadequate for this task, as they assume the existence of a (neither ‘under-’ nor ‘over-developed’) state form that relates to a given national economy. As the spatio-temporal limitations of a coherent social formation are non-existent, we can only operate with its negative determination, i.e. ask the (somewhat idealist) question ‘what would have to be the case if an integral state were to develop’. In reality, this question contrasts with the

24

It is no wonder that nascent peripheral states struggle with this task. It is also no surprise that allegedly ‘successful’ catch-up developments—i.e. the establishment of horizontal world-market integration and a capitalist state and hence the incorporation as part of the metropolis—have usually been the result of extensive support by the metropolis.

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structural heterogeneity of the social relations in given regions.25 We can sum up the condition as follows: The peripheral state’s form determination (or lack thereof) is negative (as related to its insufficient character), it is unclear if and in what way political relations constitute a capitalist state. Imperatives of political selfreproduction of the state/agents involved in state structures and the reproduction/ constitution of a national economy inaugurate a strong tendency towards the establishment of a coherent, capitalist social formation. This form determination is, however, at odds with one of its central functions, i.e. the reproduction via (existing) capitalist economic relations in terms of the prevalent regime of world market integration (Evers 1977, 113). The contradiction of state development is the central condition of a theory of the peripheral state and economy—there is no blueprint solution to it. Ultimately, the form-analytical approach shares some conclusions with the interest-oriented one. A relatively big state apparatus is a typical feature of peripheral states. Size does not equal output—the structural heterogeneity and the consequent contradictions of form and function are prevalent settings of state development. The complexity of class articulations in these states is a logical consequence and relevant for concrete historical itineraries. It is, however—pace interest-oriented approaches—not the sole or single most relevant engine of history. The contradictory nature of the general condition that peripheries face results in a high likelihood of crisis-prone developments. While (economic and political) crises are a common feature of capitalist development as such, it can be argued that peripheral development is always critical, a muddling through a permanent crisis (Evers 1977, 130). The pervasiveness of authoritarian ‘solutions’ to this permanent crisis is thus a common feature of peripheral states. Due to the contradiction of state development and the structural heterogeneity of the societies, peripheral state politics are prone to be less balanced and more changeable than those in the metropolis are. Sudden switches between progressive and reactionary programmes are the result.

Towards a Renewal of the Debate on the Developmental State In the cold war era, the socialist model of development offered a fruitful agenda for the belabouring of the contradictions of state development in the periphery. Since the political fall of the soviet empire and the change of economic relations on a world scale—the so-called ‘globalization’—this option is no longer available. The real necessity and theoretical problematic of world market integration is more than ever relevant as global capitalism has indeed changed as the technical and social complexity of its relations enhanced exponentially. Today’s world-system is all

25

In many African cases, the assumption that a nation state can possibly be constructed in the confines of the derived national spatio-temporal fix is dubious, as the borders were often drawn arbitrarily or even with the interest to obstruct national endeavours in mind.

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encompassing as communication, infrastructure and the nature of economic activity have produced a degree of integration that was not conceivable for most people just 40 years ago. From a materialist perspective, the developmental trajectory is no surprise. Capital accumulation was always global by tendency and in the abstract, the transnationalization of the economy is probably one of the only features of the modern world-system that has a quasi-teleological character. Yet, sources of agential interests and their political articulation have greatly changed. Up until the 1980s, progressive and reactionary peripheral agents were relatively easy to distinguish. Also, their interests were not only juxtaposed, but they could also be summarized into a more or less stable programmatic. In the twenty-first century’s global capitalism, the picture is a different one. Even if we concede that the basic contradiction of the developmental state remains untouched, the articulation in clearly progressive and non-progressive interest groups becomes increasingly difficult. Structural heterogeneity was always the basis of peripheral societies, but given current tendencies, they almost inevitably result in agential heterogeneity. This has to do with the growing importance of cultural and identity-centred questions26 often loosely labelled post-modernism (Jameson 1991) and the consequent condition of postdemocracy (Crouch 2005). Lastly, it is also a result of shifting economic trends that influence the world-system as such. Against the backdrop of this meta-analysis, it must be asked what role materialist state theory in general and thoughts about the peripheral state can play—if any. This ultimately relates to the role that the developmental state can play for progressive agency. Can the state still ‘develop’ anything and if so, what development is within its scope? This question has to do with the way world-market integration works in today’s global economy. Bob Jessop (2016) convincingly summarized relevant tendencies in an attempt to explain why the ‘traditional’ developmental state model27 is increasingly hard to sustain. This has to do with three major trends affecting all peripheral states (Jessop 2016, 41): (1) the ‘neo-liberal promotion of global flows of disembedded capital and domestic de-regulation’ that hinders national development strategies, the (2) ‘growing interest in promoting inward and outward direct investment as well as a regional division of labour that stretches production networks across national border’ and (3) ‘growing external pressures’ threatening the developmental state ‘through such measures as privatization, liberalization, de-regulation, market proxies, reduced taxes and an opening to foreign direct investment’. It is evident that these problems relate to what is often called neoliberalism and from a materialist perspective better framed as post-fordist crisis regime. The crisis of the fordist mode of accumulation in the metropolis significantly 26

The rise of religious fundamentalism as a global political power is perhaps the most striking evidence of this tendency. 27 His analysis is more concrete-complex than the one offered here, as it includes institutional ensembles and concrete regimes of regulation. What he calls the Listian Workfare National State (Jessop 2016, 35) is, however, in many ways very close to the prototypical model of the developmental state, relevant aspects including, e.g. the focus on nationalism and export-led industrialization.

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alters the potentials of catch-up strategies, as export-oriented growth is complicated by the new forms of production and competition that govern the informational and financialized production relations of today’s world-system (Jessop 2016, 43). This crisis tendency of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century capitalism is pointing towards limits in the developmental confines of the capitalist economic and political forms and thus questions their further (functioning) reproduction as such (Flatschart 2014, 2016). In this constellation, some scholars speak of the post-developmental state (Wong 2005; Beeson 2004)—especially in the Asian case. The complete rebuttal of the developmental state in the wake of ‘neoliberalism’ rests on an ideological understanding on the role of the developmental state. Post-development theory (Escobar 1995) equally falls into a reductionist trap as it does not investigate the materiality of the developmental state but rather relies on a critique of the prevalent ideologies of development. In its deconstructive critique of the developmental state as a Western, colonial concept, it obliviates the historicity behind the concept. Development is necessarily capitalist development, hence buttressing the capitalist developmental state, because we are engulfed in a capitalist world-system. Questioning development for this necessary connection is viable, but it does not satisfy the need for change, for alternative concepts. In the current condition, it is hard to imagine how this can be envisioned without taking the (developmental) state into account—even both ‘development’ and ‘state’ in their capitalist guise are ultimately meant to be overcome. One has to deal with the reality of the developmental state. As a consequence, we can agree with Jessop who seeks a ‘rapprochement between those who claims that neoliberalism has superseded the developmental state and those who argue that the latter remains essentially unaltered’ (Jessop 2016, 51). However, this statement is vague, as it does not clearly distinguish between ideological and critical concepts.28 A more precise formulation—one that Jessop also seeks, as his conclusion shows—is critical of the ideological discourse about both the developmental state and the post-developmental state. Such a position contextualizes both discourses in a fordist or traditional modernist and post-fordist or postmodernist historical framework. From this vantage point, materialist theory can analyze how the formal and functional necessity of states in peripheries relates to those historical tendencies that structurally impede the developmental role of the state. How can materialist state theory help in this scientific endeavour and what aspects of the ‘old’ debates are still useful today? The largest parts of both interest- and formoriented materialist state theory still matter for the analysis of the world-system we are living in the 2020s. The theory of capitalist forms, the general theory of the state and the relating necessity of certain state functions hold true in our world. The nation 28

Neoliberalism is amongst the most ill- and undefined concept (that are still used freely), as it is ‘being used to refer to almost any political, economic, social or cultural process associated with contemporary capitalism’” (Nonini 2008). The developmental state in turn derives its ideological function vis a vis its role in the general ahistorical paradigm of development that is rightly scorned for its uncritical character by post-development thinkers.

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form remains the prevalent spatio-temporal ‘container’ for development and the latter is ultimately still about world-market integration. In this, the separation of the political and the economic still matters. The world-system is still the universal reference frame of development and it remains divided into metropolitan, semiperipheral and peripheral regions. Social antagonisms that transform economic into political power are still crucial for the constitution of state politics and the basic dynamics of interest articulation remain intact. Significant changes are the product of the crisis-prone and uncertain social relations of post-fordism. This matters for form-oriented approaches. While the nation state remains the only form, in which politics can stably and universally manifest, its power is significantly reduced by transnational agencies like multinational corporations or religiously motivated terrorism. Borders are defended viciously, yet they are constantly destabilized by transnational flows of goods, information and ultimately people—most notably those who flock from the periphery into the metropolis. The spatio-temporal framework for development is further obfuscated by displacement of scales. Metropolitan regions are increasingly perforated by ‘internal peripheries’—just as peripheral regions boast small pockets of developed, quasimetropolitan urban regions. Even in the metropolis, this leads to tendencies of partial dissolution of the separation of the political and the economic, viz. forms of governance that transgress the separation in various ways. The consequence is not only a constant state of precariousness of state politics (evident, e.g. in the ubiquitous strive for austerity and the real surge of state debt), the state is often hardly able to sustain its role in reproducing the society. This may result in further economization, or, as often, in dysfunctional or non-regulated terrains. As already mentioned, the current trajectory of the world-system is one that partly questions the further developmental potential inside the confines of the fetishized capitalist economic, political and cultural forms. As we are facing a fundamental or ‘structural crisis’ (Wallerstein 2010), an end to the current internal decay of the prevalent social forms cannot be taken for granted. In terms of the real-abstract contention of our critical categories, this means that difficult to decipher general theoretical characteristics that we were facing when we scrutinized peripheral societies and the peripheral state, in particular, may increasingly expand towards the totality of the modern worldsystem. Nevertheless, there is no apparent alternative in sight, which means that the incrementally dysfunctional forms continue to constitute ‘our’ social reality. These circumstances of global turmoil and uncertainty that parallel an unprecedented technical-economic integration, financialized information capitalism, certainly alter the starting point for interest-oriented approaches. The general increase of (global) inequality between rich and poor individuals adds to a condition that tears apart social cohesion, manifest in the condensation of forces in the state. Not only is it harder to distinguish between reactionary and progressive forces, more and new players are involved. Globalization produces (transnational) elites that establish modes of living and exercises of power that are reminiscent of (neo-) feudal relations (Neckel 2016). This intersects with the old problems of the hiatus between pre-capitalist and capitalist class relations. In general, the question of class affiliation is more difficult to answer, bringing about a more complex agential realm,

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featuring sophisticated power politics in the struggle for hegemony in the peripheries. While structural heterogeneity always was a central feature of peripheral societies, it is perhaps the increasingly uncertain developmental trajectory ‘away’ from this heterogeneity that most strikingly defines the realm of interest articulation in the current world-system: the universality of the goal of development has been seriously disrupted and with it the clear interest positions of actors. This is especially the case with the subordinate classes, as the bourgeois classes, however, dispersed they might be, still share the common interest to remain in power. The critique that Saul et al. advanced against the seminal work of Alavi has thus become even more relevant during the course of the events since the original debate—conditions and contexts, the spatio-temporal specificities matter for interest-oriented analyses. General assumptions on the (political) power relations in the post-colonial world as such are hard to maintain. In order to assess the future of the developmental state in twenty-first century crisis capitalism, we still require refined theoretical instruments. Materialist state theory provides superior categories to understand both the formal boundaries of what we call the state and the processes within these confines. These categories need to be adapted to the historical relations we are facing today. Such a renewal can be the result of the analytical use of these categories in more concrete (empirical) scientific endeavours. However, we also need a reopening of the theoretical debate on the materiality of the state in the peripheries. I hope that my contribution and the volume it is part of will help to instigate this debate.

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Neckel, Sighard. (2016). Die Refeudalisierung des modernen Kapitalismus. In Kapitalismus und Ungleichheit. Die neuen Verwerfungen, eds. Heinz Bude, and Philipp Staab, 157 174. Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Neusüß, Christel. (1972). Imperialismus und Weltmarktbewegung des Kapitals Erlangen: Politladen Druck. Nonini, Donald M. (2008). Is China becoming neoliberal?. Critique of Anthropology 28 (2): 145 176. Polanyi, Karl. (2001). The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Poulantzas, Nicos. (2000). State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso. Poulantzas, Nicos, and Ralph Miliband. (1972). The Problem of the Capitalist State. In Ideology in Social Science: Readings in Critical Social Theory, ed. Robin Blackburn, 238 262. New York: Pantheon Books. Saul, John. (1974). The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Tanzania. Socialist Register 11:349 372. ten Brink, Tobias. (2014). Global Political Economy and the Modern State System. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1974). The Modern World-System I. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. (2000). Gobalization or the Age of Transition? A Long-Term View of the Trajectory of the World System. International Sociology 15 (2):251 267. Wallerstein, Immanuel. (2010). Structural Crises. New Left Review 62:133 142. Williams, Gareth. (2015). Social Disjointedness and State-Form in Álvaro García Linera. Culture, Theory and Critique 56 (3):297 312. Wong, Joseph. (2005). Re-Making the Developmental State in Taiwan: The Challenges of Biotechnology International Political Science Review 26 (2):169 191. Zavaleta Mercado, René. (1986). Lo Nacional-Popular En Bolivia. México D.F.: Siglo XXI. Ziemann, W, and M Lanzendorfer. (1977). The State in Peripheral Societies. Socialist Register (14): 143 177.

Stategraphy: A Social Anthropological Approach to the State Tatjana Thelen

Introduction WESTERN political theory has developed certain assumptions about the ‘modern’ state. Among these, those of a monopoly on (the legitimate use of) physical force and a disinterested rational bureaucracy have taken centre stage. These elements of the Weberian ideal type have gained global currency (Hansen and Stepputat 2001, 6; Migdal and Schlichte 2005, 12) alongside the almost opposite—more Durkheimian—concept of the state as the defender of the public good and provider of welfare (Baer and Mathur 2015; Bourdieu 1994; Fassin 2015). Linked to adjacent normative classifications, these elements have also been inscribed into the analysis of (post)colonial states, which are accordingly often described as deviations. In contrast, discrepancies between state ideal and practice are evaluated as exceptional in what have come to be seen as modern states.1 Underlying such assumptions and evaluations are temporal and spatial ideas that also influence the disciplinary division of labour and hence have epistemological consequences. According to a temporal imaginary, such ‘other’ (that is, non-Western) political orders would eventually evolve into ‘modern’ states. In spatial imaginaries, the state stands ‘above’ or ‘encompasses’ other social units

1

Despite Weber’s own interpretative approach (1978 [1920/21], his ideal type of the modern bureaucratic state took on a life of its own, which led to an understanding of the Weberian state as an actually existing entity which could be used as a yardstick for measuring the deviations of actual states (Migdal 2001, 15).

T. Thelen (*) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_3

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such as family or society (Ferguson and Gupta 2002; see also Abrams 1988),2 and such state-based societies are thought to comprise ‘the West’; correspondingly, stateless societies represent ‘the Rest’. These spatial and temporal dichotomies become inscribed into the disciplinary division of labour, in which political science is conceptualised as the academic discipline invested in the study of the ‘modern’ state and anthropology left with the task of studying ‘traditional’ societies (Thelen and Alber 2017). The latter are conceptualised as being predominantly characterised by political rule without a (modern) state. Although contemporary anthropological studies treat core state activities in Europe and political scientists have extended their interests to apparently marginal areas of the globe, the division still manifests when ‘modern’ (that is, Western) states are analysed using different tools and concepts from those applied to ‘other’ states in the rest of the world. Thus, this chapter makes a strong call for applying the same conceptual framework when studying states everywhere in order to overcome binary visions based on normative assumptions. In the following, I first delineate the development of anthropological thinking about the state with its embedding in interdisciplinary debates. Specifically, I describe the emergence of an analytical gap between state images and practices. Based on this analysis, I then outline a relational approach called stategraphy (Thelen et al. 2018b). This approach proposes three avenues of analysis: relational modalities, boundary work, and embeddedness of actors. Together, they lay the foundation for comprehensive ethnographic research on the actual workings and (re)production of states. In the second part of this essay, I demonstrate the productivity of this analytical framework with some examples. The conclusion highlights how such stategraphies can contribute to an understanding of the actual variety of states.

The State in Social Anthropology The state has long been a topic of anthropological interest. Early debates, in keeping with nineteenth-century thinking, centred on the evolution of the ‘modern’ state from preceding, seemingly less complex, forms of political organisation (Bouchard 2011; Lewellen 1983, 43–63). They often presupposed a (positively connoted) teleological process in which ‘premodern’ societies almost naturally aspire to become—and eventually evolve into—modern state-based societies. After the Second World War, anthropology largely withdrew from studying the state; curiously enough, this took place at a time when almost all the societal formations under scrutiny had been or were being integrated into (colonial or postcolonial) states. This unfortunate move was encouraged by, and further reproduced, the binary between

2

This view relies on the mirror image of kinship/family as a minor counterpart, an idea that becomes hegemonic after the seventeenth century in which the concept of kinship was increasingly thinned out and relegated to the private as counterpart of the ‘bigger’ public, e.g. the state (Strathern 2020).

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modern and pre-modern societies as well as anthropology’s division of labour with political science (Thelen and Alber 2017). The apparent contrast between state-based and stateless societies was strengthened with the publication of African Political Systems edited by Fortes and EvansPritchard in 1940. The volume did not just reinvigorate the dichotomy: after its publication, the state largely vanished from anthropological inquiry. This development is commonly attributed to Radcliffe-Brown’s statement in the foreword to the volume: ‘The State, in this sense, does not exist in the phenomenal world; it is a fiction of the philosophers. What does exist is an organization, i.e. a collection of individual human beings connected by a complex system of relations’ (1940: xxiii). Although this formulation comes very close to contemporary understandings of the state (see below) and could be taken as a plea for an empirically grounded inquiry of political organisation, many took it to mean that the (modern) state did not represent an appropriate object of anthropological inquiry. In the following decades, the central focus would be on ‘traditional’ forms of authority—lineages and clans as distinct types of political organisation—and preferably those not influenced, or ‘polluted’, by Western influences (Vincent 2002). The notion of a traditional politics seemed to have acquired eternal qualities, while its (re)production as part of modern states, including Western states themselves, largely remained non-issues. There are always exceptions to the rule. Some anthropologists sought to track historical changes brought about by the colonial state. For example, Max Gluckman (1963) depicted precolonial conflicts as more predictable than colonial conflicts. He attributed the development of increasingly unpredictable and violent conflicts to the loss of mechanisms of de-escalation based on cross-cutting ties. Despite his general acceptance of the traditional–modern divide, Gluckman’s work recognises the (colonial and post-colonial) state as an important site of inquiry in anthropology and foreshadows a relational analysis. Furthermore, other members of the so-called Manchester school of social anthropology pioneered ethnographic studies on politics in Western states and on ‘modern’ bureaucracies (Frankenberg 1990 [1957]; Handelman 2004 [1976]). In the more processual approach they developed, the state was integral to societal change and no longer ignored as a ‘polluting’ influence.3 This processual perspective is also central to the more recent anthropological interest in the state. Since the 1990s, a new wave of studies no longer conceptualises the state on a temporal axis or as an idealised stable formation of Weberian imagination. Instead, the state is conceived of as a fragmented form of political organisation that is always in the making and contingent upon cultural imaginaries. This renewed interest in the nature of the state was triggered at least partly by neighbouring disciplines. After earlier heated debates about the role of the state as either the coercive servant of the interests of capital or as an impartial defender of the public good, political scientists, and political sociologists had turned to anthropology. With this theoretical deadlock, scholars called for conceptual alternatives

3

On the Manchester school, see also Thomassen (2008).

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(Abrams 1988; Bourdieu 1994) and for greater awareness of cultural factors (Mitchell 1991, 1999; Steinmetz 1999).4 Consequently, this emerging ‘new’ ethnography of the state has spotlighted certain issues, while others have received less attention. Significantly, there has been a marked shift towards cultural representations. Sharma and Gupta (2006), for example stressed studying such state images as the genuine anthropological contribution to the study of the state. In addition, the state was also being increasingly researched at its ‘margins’ (which often meant marginal settings) and in unexpected sites (Das and Poole 2004). Many studies now moved also beyond the conventional scope of the nation state to ‘state effects’ outside or below its confines at infra-, supra-, or transnational levels (Ong 2000; Trouillot 2001). Much of the— often Foucault inspired—literature put stress on state fragmentation and its pluralist nature. In their critiques, Kapferer (2005) and Marcus (2008) contend that this approach takes the pluralist nature of the state for granted—in and of itself an ideology that must be questioned. Non-state actors have undeniably taken over former state responsibilities in many places around the globe. However, this understanding might underestimate the degree to which these processes not only weaken the state but also contribute to its continuity and strength as representation and political formation (Kapferer 2005, 286–287). Furthermore, talking about fragmented state effects runs the danger of juxtaposing globalisation with an ideal of the sovereign nation state in much the same way in which non-European states were measured against the template of the Weberian ideal type of the modern state (Migdal and Schlichte 2005, 3; Steinmetz 1999, 22). In addition, trying to comprehend the state by studying marginalised populations and territories seems to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is certainly true that some state activities (e.g. police and justice) are focused on them, but it takes marginalisation as a given instead of investigating how these very state actions produce it in the first place. This approach might risk overlooking how much the lives of ‘normal’ (that is not marginalised) citizens are also shaped by state power even if they experience less cruelty. On the other hand, the dual emphasis on representation and marginal sites indicates that some authors have in part unwittingly subscribed to the disciplinary division of labour that ascribes the responsibility for culture and specifically exploring ‘exotic’ cultures to anthropology. Finally, despite the stress on the diversity of cultural representations, the state images described often appear to be rather monolithic, coherent, and unified across the

4

In the 1960s and 1970s Marxist-oriented circles, especially those engaged in the so-called Poulantzas-Miliband debate, discussed to what extent the state was exclusively an instrument of the capitalist class interest (Miliband 1983; Poulantzas 1969, 1976). In contrast, the largely American pluralist school of community studies at the time viewed the state as an extension of the power of either elitist or pluralist societal interest groups (Dahl 1961; Domhoff 1990). Finally, in the 1980s, neo-Weberian theorists sought to ‘bring the state back in’ by treating it as an autonomous entity, analytically separable from intra-societal power struggles (Evans et al. 1985). By the late 1980s, these approaches to the state had lost much of their appeal.

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respective societies being studied, which easily brushes over their actual differentiation (Thelen et al. 2018b). A smaller strand of literature has focused explicitly on state practices. James Scott (1998), for example explores state practices of making populations and territory legible.5 Norman Long’s concept of an ‘interface’ between the lifeworlds of peasants, bureaucrats, and experts also contributed to the study of state practices and their effects (Long 1989). More recently, several authors have started to study specific bureaucratic institutions, sets of bureaucratic actors or the materiality of bureaucratic practices (Baer and Mathur 2015; Dubois 2010; Bierschenk and de Sardan 2014; Heyman 1995; Hull 2012; Fassin et al. 2015). Alongside the capacity of bureaucracies for producing knowledge and control, these studies emphasise how they produce differentiated new subjectivities, and effects. Importantly they also point (in contrast to the overdeterminacy and strictness of Weberian images) to the actual indeterminacy of bureaucracies in which the state emerges. Often, this kind of research has been inspired by the work of the political scientist Michael Lipsky (1980). He emphasised the ambiguity of central policies and the role of ‘street-level bureaucrats’, who give concrete shape to them in their encounters with clients. In that vein, for example Thelen, Sikor and Cartwright (2008) have called for research on the ‘local state’ and Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan (2014) have coined the term ‘states at work’. The latter, by exploring the practices of judges and teachers in West Africa, explicitly aim to go beyond studying the state in Africa through a focus on violence or cultural difference. For example, Carola Lentz’s chapter (2014) in that volume stresses the professional Weberian ethos of public servants in Ghana. Like Dubois (2018), she pays special attention to the structural embedding of state actors that shapes their ideas and practices. These authors have renewed the emphasis on the actual state practices and on gaining an empirically grounded understanding of the state, as well as the historical development of specific institutions. Furthermore, in all these studies local state actors play a pivotal role in shaping state practices, which contributes significantly to our understanding of the working of the state. What is nevertheless missing here is an explicit link to how state actors’ practices are formed by state images and vice versa. The emphasis on images—first attributed to anthropology by other disciplines in their attempt to overcome the theoretical stalemate in the discussions in the late 1980s and then actively appropriated in the new ethnographic studies of the state of the 1990s—not only relegated state practices to second place but left the void between them and state images unexplored (Thelen et al. 2018b).6 Already in 2005, the political scientists Migdal and Schlichte advocated investigating the dynamics between state image and practices, but they did not propose a 5

His approach has the disadvantage of reifying the state by largely casting it as a stable political unit together with a state-society/citizen dichotomy. 6 The collection of ethnographies of French state institutions by Fassin et al. (2015) is an exception insofar as it attempts to grasp moral economies and moral subjectivities ‘at the heart of the state’ by studying interactions between state actors and marginalized populations (Fassin 2015, 3). As such, it comes much closer to the relational approach I advocate below.

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concrete way of how to proceed. In his own ‘state-in-society approach’ Migdal also uses the singular ‘image’ in contrast with the plural ‘practices’: ‘states are shaped by two elements, image and practices’ (2001, 16, emphasis in original). He goes on to explain that the Weberian ideal of a coherent entity with a set territory is shared more or less globally and what sets states apart are the infinite practices that either reinforce that image or weaken it. In line with Foucault inspired studies on governmentality, Migdal tends to interpret leaders’ enforcement of that unified image as employed strategically to convince their citizenry of the omnipotence of the state, but he opens up the perspective to look at how they might also fail (2001, 19). While the Weberian ideal of coherent state power has surely travelled across time and space and influenced ideas nearly worldwide, there nevertheless exist variations regarding what ideally that power should contain. Even more important for us than the lost multiplicity of state images is that in the end it was the dichotomy between images and practices that became part and parcel of the interdisciplinary discussions. This missing link makes it difficult to understand how specific state constellations and boundaries emerge, are reproduced, or dissolved. To bridge this gap between images and practices, we developed a relational anthropology of the state that we call stategraphy (Thelen et al. 2018b). This call for an empirical investigation that takes relations as the starting point of analysis has the potential to offer fresh insights into the workings of the state and what accounts for its remarkable stability as a political idea and formation. Aiming at a more comprehensive framework, we combine the emphasis of the practice-oriented studies of bureaucracies as emergent organisational forms with scholarly insights into state images and suggest a relational analysis to bridge the gap. Methodologically, this approach is based on ethnography that requires participant observation and informal talks in order to elicit both these images and the everyday practices that co-produce the state.7 To be sure, actual state practices usually do not conform to images, hopes, or desires for a coherent and benevolent state. Relations mediate the apparent mismatch of practices and images and as such constitute the interceding link. Stategraphy can be fruitfully applied in historical situations in which the presence of the state is more or less taken as self-evident, as is the case in many contemporary European countries, and likewise in areas where it makes an only rare appearance. In the following section, I outline the contours of this approach.

7

Ethnography refers to a cluster of methodological approaches used for data collection, analysis, and processing. Usually, participant observation is deployed during one or several longer phases of field research and is combined with different types of interviews as well as collecting other resources such as archival sources, artefacts, and visual materials. This inherently reflexive approach already implies ethnography’s potential for making significant contributions to the study of social transformation because it demands a critical interrogation of the prevailing theoretical assumptions.

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Stategraphy: A Relational Approach to the State Relational thinking in the social sciences is by no means new—Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and Norbert Elias are often cited as prominent forefathers—but is still a promising approach, specifically for research on the state. In anthropology, the earliest relational approaches were introduced by the above-mentioned Manchester school. Most notably in the African Copperbelt, apparently fixed categories of religious, ethnic, or clan membership did no longer provide a satisfactory explanation for political structures and conflicts. Researchers turned to actors’ personal embeddedness as the focal point of analysis (e.g. Epstein 1969; Kapferer 1972). However, social network analysis soon turned to quantification and ventured into structural determinism and explicit relational analysis remained marginal within political anthropology.8 Stategraphy aims to retain earlier insights into the importance of actors’ embeddedness and the focus on relations as decisive for understanding state formations. With his explicit articulation of the state as social relation, Poulantzas (1969) spearheaded a relational approach to the state in political sciences, a view that Bop Jessop (2008) developed into his ‘strategic-relational approach’. This and similar perspectives in sociology and political sciences usually look at nation states and international relations. In contrast, Froedin understands the state as ‘patterns of interaction among individuals with different rights and obligations’ that are characterised by a plethora of constitutive and regulatory rules (2012, 271). This view on the state comes much closer to the structures described by early network theorists. In our Stategraphy, we complement the structural perspective of embeddedness through a processual approach in which concrete relations and their negotiation become palpable in the multitude of recurrent face-to-face encounters. Accordingly, we describe the state as a relational setting that cannot be categorised according to simple hierarchies or a governing centre (Thelen et al. 2018b, 7). In contrast, it exists within the relations between actors who have unequal access to (material, social, regulatory, and symbolic) resources. These actors negotiate ideas of legitimate power by drawing on existing state images—at once reaffirming and transforming these representations within concrete relations. This conceptualisation neither presupposes any regulatory functions or source of authority in itself to the state nor views states as characterised by static ties. Instead, being processual, states can be understood as ever-changing political formations emerging within institutional settings structured through interactions characterised by the ideological work of different state images. As such, stategraphy calls for researching how the state is understood, experienced, and reproduced in everyday encounters around three interrelated avenues of analysis: relational modalities, boundary work, and embeddedness.

8

On the development of network analysis in anthropology, see Schweizer 1996.

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Relational Modalities The first avenue of analysis focuses on how different images of what a state should be and how it should act become translated in relational modalities. These modalities embody past experiences in relational environments that translate into contingent expectations for the future. As Fassin (2015, 5) argues—echoing Lipsky—it is not just through exercising discretion but also by defining the modalities of their implementation that state agents actually ‘make’ the state. Relational modalities speak to the affective sides of states contributing to the way they are constituted and sustained through the claims, avoidances, and appeals made in these interactions (Laszczkoswski and Reeves 2015; Baer and Mathur 2015). Consequently, the attribute ‘relational’ does not designate a specific monomorphic concept of the state, as Levi-Faur (2013) critically remarks on the concept of a regulatory state. Instead, polymorphic state formations can be seen as emerging—and also experienced—through different relational modalities. Historical trajectories shape specific state images that are important in how citizens and state actors deploy particular relational modalities. For example, Larissa Vetters (2018) documents two ends of a relational continuum in the provision of housing assistance in post-war Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina). On one end is the image of the state as a paternalistic figure that cares for deserving citizens through personal relationships between state officials and citizens. Public and academic discourses often refer to this modality as ‘clientelism’. At the other end of the continuum stands a set of practices and images that are commonly associated with civil society. This modality is represented as relying on the opposite logic, namely on a clear separation of government and citizens. Despite their apparent opposition, Vetters shows how both modalities facilitate communication and interaction between state authorities and citizens lending a fragile stability to a state formation often doomed as failed.9 In contrast, Javier Auyero (2012) describes waiting as a specific and consistent modality of domination in Argentina. He starts from the ethnographic observation that poor people are often kept waiting by state actors. As victims of brutal state actions such as evictions, they are transformed into welfare clients and wait for the benevolent side of an arbitrary state bureaucracy. Although at first glance nothing seems to happen while they are waiting, this modality in fact evolves with complex interactions among the clients and the state actors involved. These interactions shape and are shaped by the understanding of how state agencies work. Although, as Auyero stresses, this politics of making poor urbanites wait does not result from a deliberate strategy of some kind of central agent or master plan, it contributes to a specific mode of domination.

9

Sedleniks (2020) describes the use of similar relational modalities by individuals and civil society actors in their negotiations with state actors around repairing a road in a Montenegrin village, showing that they are also embedded in different temporalities which make that geographically remote rural place a central state symbol.

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Complementing the emphasis on discrete relational modalities employed by specific actors in these accounts, other studies stress how a variety of modalities are employed by the same person and in the same setting. For example, Rebecca Kay (2018) concentrates on relational modalities between local state actors and other citizens, as well as between local state actors and higher-level authorities, in rural Western Siberia. The modalities she describes are based on different—and at times contradictory—state images but are not separate and discrete. Instead, they are combined into hybrid modalities, or used consecutively, thereby reinforcing one another. In the end, it is exactly that flexibility that makes the state ‘work’. Like Vetters and Auyero, Kay argues that such combined relational modalities, rather than being an imperfection or an anomaly, bridge the gap between images and practices of the state. Despite all the contradictions and conflicts, they contribute to (fragile) stability and continuity of the state as image and formation even in situations of a highly fragmented institutional setup. These case studies already hint at the question of how the boundaries of the state are (re)created in specific interactions, which leads me to the second avenue of analysis.

Boundary Work Given that the state can no longer be seen as a stable unit, boundary work is central to any state theory (Mitchell 1991). Gupta (1995) recounted the practices of a state official in India, who used his home as his office and made a colleague work in his household. While this shows a deviation from the Weberian ideal separation of public and private, a relational analysis seeks to detect how, despite blurred boundaries and their constant negotiation, states come into being as separate entities. Two fields of boundary work stand out: the boundary between family/kinship and the state and the boundary between (civil) society and the state. Both are predicated on the dominant Western image of states as distinct entities separated from other societal forms. Although more recent studies have heavily criticised this demarcation—along with the ethnocentric conceptualisations of kinship (Thelen and Alber 2017) and of civil society (Hann 1996)—both dichotomies have continued to influence self-understandings of Western societies. Such conceptualisations not only obscure particular social relations as constitutive of the workings of the state but also that its boundaries are themselves a part of the negotiations and struggles over the power to define how the (legitimate) state should be seen and work. In his research on emerging food networks in China’s Sichuan Province, for instance, Christof Lammer (2017) focuses on state practices as routinised performances of the boundary between state and civil society. On the one hand, urban middle-class consumers suspect that personal relations between officials and producers would impede the proper functioning of the Chinese state’s food safety regulations and organic certification schemes. On the other, personal relations played a central role in their image of a civil alternative for sourcing healthy and sustainable food. Lammer argues that similar dichotomous evaluations of personal

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relations as producing either ‘corruption’ or ‘transparency’ can also be found in the social science literature on regulation and food safety, and that performed state boundaries are key to understanding them. In that vein, he describes how a township agronomist’s performative distancing of the state in front of an urban middle-class audience that is critical of the state is a crucial aspect in his regulatory practices (Lammer 2018). Similar boundary work is also the central topic of Read’s (2018) relational analysis of volunteering in three Czech hospitals. She demonstrates how volunteering, as an instantiation of civil society, is distinguished from the state. The volunteer coordinators forge relationships with a variety of state actors like hospital managers and officials in local and central governments. Even though their success depends heavily on material resources and moral backing from the state, the actors reproduce the ideological boundary between state and civil society. Read shows how this apparent contradiction is mediated and resolved within the relationships between volunteer coordinators and state actors. With Thiemann and Roth (Thelen et al. 2018a, b), I have explored yet another prominent example of boundary work, that between state and kinship in two eldercare projects in Serbia.10 In one project, state-paid carers perform household tasks (shopping, cleaning, cutting firewood) for their elderly clients and in the other, foster families for the elderly were organised and funded through a state programme. In both cases, positively experienced relations are denoted by kin terms, accompanied by practices of exchange, and participation in life circle rituals. Thereby, they showed a surprising level of intimacy between state-paid caregivers and their clients. These practices of ‘kinning the state’ stood in stark contrast with the widespread image of an absent or uncaring Serbian state that was held by local inhabitants and social scientists alike. By crossing the ideological boundary through kinning, the contrasting images of ‘caring family’ and ‘uncaring state’ could be reproduced, despite state actors actually surpassing the expectations of the citizens. If, in contrast, the practices resulted in negative experiences, this was attributed to a failure of the state to care for deserving citizens. We see these processes as points of intersection between kinship and the state that show how their representations function as mirror images of one another. Both variants of boundary work reproduce the ideological separation of the realms of state and kinship and make visible how both realms are entangled and, indeed, co-emerging. Relational analyses of boundary work leading to manifestations of the state permeate not just interactions between state agents and citizens. Whereas in these situations it seems clear who represents the state, Lammer (2017, 2018), Thelen et al. (2018a), and Read (2018) demonstrate how boundary work also pervades interactions involving a broad array of intermediaries receiving varying degrees of state funding. Often, they do not identify themselves with the state but still, facilitate connections between citizens and various state agencies. Sometimes, such

10 Thiemann’s dissertation (2016) enlarges our framework of stategraphy by drawing on Jessop (2008) and adding strategic selectivity as a fourth avenue of analysis.

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intermediaries allow for personalised relationships that would be impossible in direct interactions between bureaucrats and citizens.11 The resulting complex relational webs have a counterintuitive implication. As it is often difficult to determine unambiguously whether or not an actor is part of the state, they show the blurred nature of the state’s boundaries. But as these studies also demonstrate, the discursive distancing from the state allows state (aligned) actors to fulfil the task more effectively and simultaneously recreate the image of a coherent state entity. Besides the importance of boundary work, these stategraphies also point to the crucial importance of actors’ embedding in a wide range of relations, which determines not only the implementation and outcome of central state policy but also how state images and practices are either reconciled or challenged in concrete social relations.

Embedding of Actors As indicated above by the basic insights of the Manchester school, an analysis of the social embedding of actors at various levels promises to connect the study of state images and practices through a focus on concrete persons. Or, as Fassin argues, the state is embodied in physical persons, who ‘constitute the state’ (2015, 4). However, I contend it is not the individuals alone but their relational embedding that creates that effect. In a now classic article, Gluckman et al. (1949, 93) described the irreconcilable demands arising from the double embeddedness in different relational logics as the ‘dilemma of the village headman’. This dilemma resulted from his intermediary position between government and village structures in a colonial state. Even if Gluckman saw both positions as fundamentally different, his analysis of their convergence in the role of the village headman opened up the question of their intersections. This theme has lost none of its urgency. Differently embedded state actors have different ideal images of the state that they negotiate in encounters with other state actors (Mathur 2015) other powerful actors (Mugler 2018), and also implement in interactions with state clients (Dubois 2010; Schwarcz and Szőke 2018). Thus, as well as relational modalities and boundary work, it is necessary to observe different sets of actors in their personal embedding within institutional hierarchies and also in other networks. Here, embeddedness means not only describing the norms and interests of different actors, but also taking relational embeddedness as decisive for practices and decisions (Granovetter 1985). In the case study of Mostar mentioned above, Vetters describes how citizens’ employment of different relational modalities depends on which social relations they could mobilise according to their embeddedness in particular socially and politically structured webs of relations. Read (2018) reveals how the differentiated embedding

11

For an example of the work of intermediaries that facilitate the state works in Great Britain, see Forbess and James 2018.

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of volunteer coordinators leads to more or less successful programmes. Local state actors are always embedded in multiple other relations that demand adherence to different sets of norms and relations. With respect to rural Indonesia, Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (1998) speak of ‘off-state’ and ‘on-state’ activities of state actors embedded in both local communities and state structures. But being entangled in diverse local communities with different sets of norms means not only struggling with structural constraints but also opening up room for manoeuvre, as Kuper (1970) has previously argued in relation to Gluckmans’ dilemma of the headman. Dorondel and Popa’s (2018) show this at the example of discretionary practices of bureaucrats, who implement an EU food aid programme in two different sites in Romania. The double embeddedness of local state actors, as described by Gluckman et al., enhances their power, which they use for different political goals through symbolic gifting to specific individuals and groups. These practices not only enhance their personal standing in the respective communities but also serve to garner political support for national parties in the upcoming presidential elections. Thus, these acts simultaneously strengthen their position within the local and supralocal networks of power, and contribute to the consolidation of central state authority. Thereby, the authors show (again) that individual discretion in combination with a transnational policy does not necessarily undermine state power.12 In a similar vein, Schwarcz and Szőke (2018) compare the reproduction of local hierarchies through the embeddedness of two village mayors in Hungary. The devolution of central regulatory power to municipalities allows them to create their own welfare regimes that may well deviate from nationally dominant policy discourses. One mayor, in line with neoliberal discourse, favours lower-middle-class individuals, whom he considers as eager to self-improve (as opposed to poor citizens). He thereby largely excludes the Roma minority from access to state welfare resources. In contrast, the mayor of another village has established a paternalistic modality that ensures that villagers identified as Roma also have access, a more inclusive practice that contradicts the national government’s rhetoric. Each mayor employs different relational modalities based on different images of the state and its responsibilities, but also based on their different structural embedding. As in the studies by Dubois, Vetters, and Kay, such flexibility and variance also absolves the central government from the responsibility of preventing widespread poverty and thus contributes to state stability.

12 Similarly, McKay (2018) traces how the overlapping of multiple relations between unequal public and non-governmental, market, and private actors shape inequalities in Mozambique.

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Conclusion and Comparative Outlook I have argued that the anthropological theorising of the state within the wider social sciences has produced a one-sided emphasis on the state as a cultural representation. This has contributed to the emergence of an analytical gap between state images and state practices. Furthermore, I proposed a relational approach called stategraphy that can tie these strands together and offers a more comprehensive framework for grasping the state. Bridging the established divide between state images and practices, this perspective aims at showing how both are negotiated, approved, and transformed within everyday interactions. As a grounded analysis of relational settings, stategraphy approaches particular localities or institutions as important sites for the manifestation of states. They derive their significance less from a supposedly bounded nature, or their legally defined degrees of autonomy, but rather through the convergence of (ever-changing) regulatory frameworks, actors, resources, and interpretations, all actualised in relations at particular conjunctions of time and space. Rather than coherence, it is their fragmentation and blurriness that lends the state its stability (Auyero 2012; Dubois 2010; Thelen et al. 2018a). The outlined studies also point to the dissimilarity of state images within a supposedly unified national setting, which are translated into different relational modalities. Thus, they find plural manifestations of the state in one locality (Vetters 2018) and within one state territory (Schwarcz and Szőke 2018). Likewise, actors switch between and combine different images of the state (Kay 2018) and exploit supranational programmes to enhance their role as state actors in the local context (Dorondel and Popa 2018). Transnational welfare provision and decentralisation also can be used by state actors to reproduce local communities and their hierarchies, which are tied in complex ways into the reproduction of power relations at the national and international levels. Applied in a variety of settings, this relational perspective provides an avenue for studying the state as a process subject to deep historical transformations and negotiation. Who is perceived as a representative of state power can vary contingent on particular configurations of state functions, institutional arrangements, and the social relations within which these are embedded. Ethnographic research that investigates different relational modalities and the (re)production of state boundaries, as well as forms of embeddedness can enrich current debates about the nature of the state. Stategraphy accentuates how the variety between legislative, executive, and judicial power, between central and local authorities, and between service provision and coercive intervention feeds into the empirically traceable notions of statehood that emerges in interactions. The relations between differentially embedded actors link individuals as well as groups of actors with differences in power and access to diverse resources. State actors who attempt to shape the behaviours of citizens with respect to the moral notions implied by state programmes sometimes assume a coercive function, patrolling the borders of belonging by granting or withholding state resources. By foregrounding concrete social relations and how they adhere in recurring interactions, we can begin to understand how such situational power

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differentials might settle into political formations, thereby lending an appearance of coherence and stability to the state through time. This relational focus makes it possible to see how both the processual nature of state formation and specific images may become generalised and concretised, thereby complementing the emphasis on state images and representations by turning the gaze towards the question of how the images themselves are shaped in concrete relational settings. Moreover, stategraphy encourages inquiry into the negotiations of the tensions between what actors see state agents do and what they think they should ideally be doing. By focusing on contradictory moments and conflicting images as they become apparent in interaction, we can move away from seemingly straightforward, unified cultural representations in order to fully appreciate the diversity and contradictory nature of existing state images, as well as the role of long-term historical and global processes in bringing about such images. In the concentration on potentially conflictive modalities and embeddings, deviations of the rule and last but not least the final indeterminacy of institutional setups, we can find the epistemic chance of new insights as well as the hope for change.

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Ethics of Doing Critical Research on the State in the Global South Henrik Feindt and Miriam Fahimi

Introduction DISCUSSIONS1 of research ethics mostly prescribe codes and point to dilemmas arising from the resultant conflicting requirements. Resolving these dilemmas is often a question of discretion on the part of researcher and participants, concrete circumstance and political consideration. There are no blueprints, and no account can provide comprehensive, or even adequate, coverage of all of its issues. With these disclaimers in place, we2 do not want to suggest that research ethics is ultimately arbitrary, and in fact would like to point to the pertinence of various issues across disciplines, positionings, perspectives and spaces. For the matters at hand, it seems there is little beyond the scope of ethics. There is (often formalised) an ethics of how to do research, of how to share it and of how to use it. Then there is an ethics prior to research: why to do research in the first place and what research to pursue. Implicated in the latter, there are ethical questions involved in choosing a theoretical paradigm and in applying or criticising it. Sometimes, there are also questions of who should do research on whom, or at least of the implications of who does research. Thus, when discussing the ethics of doing critical research on the state in the Global South, our previous qualifications 1

We would like to express our deep gratitude to Wolfram Schaffar, Hans Pühretmayer, Elmar Flatschart, Richard Bärnthaler, Rainer Einzenberger as well as the anonymous reviewer for very helpful critique and fruitful discussions, from which this text (and its authors) benefited greatly. 2 In this text, the term ‘we’ always refers to both of the authors (Henrik Feindt and Miriam Fahimi). H. Feindt (*) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] M. Fahimi University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_4

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of ‘research ethics’ challenge standard accounts. We call for a view of research ethics that is more profound (complicating e.g. informed consent, transparency etc.) and holistic (an integrative perspective on ethics, politics, theory and methodology) than standard accounts of research ethics. Hence, in what follows, we seek to provide an overview of selected aspects on research ethics which we deem particularly important.3 First, we introduce our general perspective on research ethics and second, its relevance when doing research on the state, since different approaches to the state also imply a different relevance of ethics to research. In a third step, we proceed to a basic discussion of the three major approaches to thinking about (research) ethics and how to construct ethical arguments, before fourth discussing some more practical issues of conducting actual research in the Global South. Here, we highlight the ‘complex mess’ that researchers need to navigate and how even seemingly very technical questions have significant political and ethical dimensions. Fifth, we turn to some possible implications for questions of community engagement and activism, highlighting the limits but also opportunities of an inevitably political knowledge production from the perspective of research ethics. In conclusion, we bring together the various discussions, arguing for an understanding of research ethics as a continuous process involving engagement, solidarity and power, in which a holistic and comprehensive agenda is to be pursued despite and because of the many contradictions likely to be encountered in any research project.

Research Ethics . . . Ethics is ‘practical theory’, especially in its applied form of ‘research ethics’: It must be able to inform concrete action, and in this, it is expected to necessarily deal with contradicting claims. Discussing claims is thus not meant to problematise research as such, much less to deter from doing research, but simply the only way to properly reflect upon doing research ethically in the first place (Lutz-Bachmann 2013, 16–18, 203). ‘Just do it by all means, but think a bit first’ (Punch 1994, 95). But think about what exactly? It is not helpful to contend that everything is relevant for research ethics—a lot is, the question is what, when and how? For instance, Price discusses ‘mixing academic pleasures with the business of empire’ (2016, 359; similarly, Exo 2009), that is, how the CIA (mis-)used and systematically funded anthropological research. In doing so,

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More comprehensive discussions can be found in Israel and Hay (2006), Scheyvens et al. (2003), Glasius et al. (2018), Unger et al. (2014), Dannecker and Englert (2014) and Smith (1999). We will cite many different aspects, looked at from various perspectives, and will not claim that these are always already compatible with each other in all their premises and arguments. However, they also do not necessarily absolutely preclude each other. Such plurality introduces issues often ignored by singular perspectives and it might in select cases call for adaptation or even synthesis of different accounts. Some of this will be taken up in the conclusion, while most of it must remain open.

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Price highlights how ethics is situated politically and economically. We might interject that research on the state should be particularly sensitive to such statal interference. Pierce then concludes that anthropologists are ethically obliged, as their research thus affects the persons they research via informing imperialism, to consciously act politically when doing research. E.g. they may consider withholding information that could harm the studied population. Here, ethics demand politics of research—but ethics might also foster certain politics in a given situation. For instance, prescribing political neutrality can have the effect of prohibiting research critical of (geo-)politics or even warfare (2016, 356–365). So, (research) ethics and politics are inseparable but distinct. In this chapter, we understand research ethics as the ethics of designing, conducting, drafting, sharing and (mis)using academic inquiries. Thus, we deal with the effects of politics on research ethics or vice versa and do not discuss politics, questions of global justice, feminism etc. as such (for that, see references we give throughout the chapter).

. . . and the State Different perspectives on and interests in the state have particular implications for the way research is done, as this book testifies. Similarly, they implicate different aspects of research ethics as well. If, for example the state (or a more complex concept of it) is conceived of as being concerned with forming the categories and apparatuses with which it is itself understood, then critical state theory could inter alia be conceived as an ‘anti-positivist project’ (Demirović 2017, 68; own translation). That is, to first question the theoretical concepts themselves instead of taking them as given (see Demirović 2017, 67–70). When mainly concerned with criticising the conceptualisation of state and politics, one might not necessarily be primarily led to employ empirical methods and hence might not face some of the more applied ethical issues discussed later in this chapter. However, one might take yet another step back and ask: why and how to think about, e.g. transitions to or away from democracy in the first place? ‘Democracy’, ‘Authoritarianism’ and ‘exploitation’ etc. are terms only meaningful with connected ethical arguments— and these are far from arbitrary, as we indicate below. Thus, when inquiring upon the underlying ethical assumptions4 from which the critique itself is formulated, it becomes clear that no critique can be free of ethical judgement (Lindner 2011, 106, 110; Sayer 2000, 160–163, 172, 187). From this perspective, one must include ethics in any account of (critical) research. Furthermore, the state (or other parts of society) might not only co-form theoretical concepts but also ethics themselves. That is to say that ethics are, to an extent, specific to historical conjunctures and entangled in the prevailing relations of power.

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This is not to say that the state, research etc., are to be deduced from or ultimately reducible (only) to ethics.

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In such cases, one needs to reflect upon the conditions under which such ethics was itself produced and how an adequate one might be produced in relevant praxis (Haug 2010, 10, 22, 29). To give a state-related example: Inspired by Holloway’s (2005, 17) dismissal of state power as a liberatory instrument, the Colectivo Situaciones (2006) maintains that researchers must establish working conditions that are not permeated by state power (which could include ethics as part of ‘state ideology’). Instead, they should understand themselves as ‘researcher-militants’ working outside of state-permeated institutional contexts, since only this can, in their view, allow knowledge production for what they call counter power. With their concept of Stategraphy, Thelen, Vetters and Benda-Beckman (2014, see also Thelen 2022) introduce an ethnographically grounded, relational approach to theorize the state. Their focus on the negotiation, adoption and transformation of state images and state practices allows for (critical) research on local state manifestations. Research following this approach analyses, e.g. everyday practices of state institutions and their relation to state images or state actors seen as subjects with unequal access to material, social, regulatory and symbolic resources, negotiating power by re-/producing certain state images, transforming the latter at the same time (Thelen et al. 2014, 7). When drawing on concepts like Stategraphy, research ethics thus constitute an indispensable element of how to interact with these local bureaucracies and state actors. Thus far, we have shown how political and statal situations, as well as theoretical implications, shape the relevance and scope of research ethics and vice versa. The next section introduces different ways of thinking about research ethics and how they can be related to such situations.

. . . and How It Evolved Research ethics is often traced to European Enlightenment, which induced fundamental dichotomies between subject/object and fact/value (Christians 2005, 139). Following that dualism, John Stuart Mill e.g. developed the idea that to ensure individual autonomy, science requires neutrality, for only thus one can prevent top-down impositions of what is right (Christians 2005, 141–142). The greatest outcome of ‘what is right’ would be achieved through weighing benefits resulting from a certain decision or action against certain risks (Israel and Hay 2006, 13). For the separation of ‘facts from values and means from ends’ (Christians 2005, 143), Max Weber (1949 [1917]) is often cited. For him, values must play a role in choosing a topic and in applying the results, but do not necessarily play one in between, during the actual research process. Both approaches hint at the underlying belief that scientific knowledge and its production can exist as morally neutral. The desired neutrality would not only contribute to individual but also to political autonomy (Christians 2005, 143). These approaches are consequentialist (Israel, Hay 2006, 13) as they suggest first the possibility to balance ‘good over evil’ (Israel, Hay 2006, 13) and second posit

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solely the consequences of a certain action as the merit. Third, they adapt natural science to their considerations insofar as they equate moral reasoning with calculation, namely maximizing the positive consequences as if they were empirical quantities, to reach general happiness (Christians 2005, 144). Of course, critique is not far off. Consequentialist approaches assume to know how to divide certain outcomes into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and how these outcomes would affect every person—for all time (Israel and Hay 2006, 14). This reduction and homogenisation of moral reasoning ‘portrays all moral issues as discrete problems amenable to largely technical solutions’ (Euben cited in Christians 2005, 144) and leaves out factors which cannot be calculated. Hence, the ‘unidimensional model of rational validation’ (Christians 2005, 148) always supports a majority and thus re-/produces power relations: How to counter exploitation, if—following a consequentialist logic—the ‘benefits’ resulting from that exploitation will ‘outweigh’ the loss of the exploited? Consequentialist approaches are the basis of a liberal tradition, which is part of the foundation of modern research ethics. Other parts are non-consequentialist or deontological approaches to ethics. They argue against the consequentialist exteriority of ethics, in which one’s motivation or reason for certain action does not count. On the account of non-consequentialist ethics, acts are ‘good in themselves. They are morally right or obligatory because, for example, they keep a promise, show gratitude or demonstrate loyalty to an unconditional command’ (Israel and Hay 2006, 15). Therefore, moral reasoning requires consideration of the researcher’s actions and behaviour and not their—speculative—ends. For instance, non-consequentialist approaches would argue to keep a promise of maintaining certain indigenous secret knowledge (and not e.g. publish it academically) even if that knowledge would support the fight for indigenous rights. Although non-consequentialist approaches do not follow the same rationalist arguments as their consequentialist counterparts do, they still divide between certain universalistic ‘goods’ and ‘bads’, without considering research ethics in the context of historical and social processes.

Codes of Ethics Consequentialist and non-consequentialist approaches allow to formulate standardized codes of ethics. Following Christians (2005, 144–145) differently adapted codes of ethics are based on four main guidelines: 1. The principle of informed consent formulates the right of the researched to be informed about the content, aims and consequences of scientific research. The research participant(s) must voluntarily agree to participate. Most Institutional

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Review Boards (IRBs)5 demand researchers to obtain informed consent in the form of signed consent forms. 2. At the same time, deception is the opposite of informed consent. Generally, scientific research must be free from active deception, but as some situations require at least deception by omission, a graduated amount of deception may be permitted under specific circumstances.6 3. Privacy and confidentiality aim to guarantee research participants’ anonymity and protection through using pseudonyms for participants and researched localities. 4. Through the notion of accuracy the researcher must ensure, the gathered data reflect the social world as precisely as possible. Thus, fabrications, omissions, contrivances or false data are neither seen as scientific nor ethical.

. . . and How It Is Challenged In particular, feminist and decolonial approaches challenge the previous notions of research ethics by pointing to the imperialistic character of some forms of science as regimes of power, which perpetuate and reproduce power relations of class, sex, ‘race’ and nationality. Their common starting point is the rejection of the myth of a researcher who can abstract moral reasoning from the situatedness in these power relations.

Feminist Research Ethics Feminist approaches, as ethics of care or feminist communitarianism, stress the patriarchal dimension of research (ethics). Gilligan (2003 [1993]) divides between masculine ethics of justice and rights and female ethic of care. While the former represents rights, autonomy and abstract reasoning by mainly male researchers, the latter emphasizes the role of compassion, nurturance and empathy as they are said to be the main drivers to resolve conflicting

5

Institutional Review Boards are bodies (usually of a university) tasked with advising on ethical matters of a research project and approving or prohibiting it on ethical grounds. Their concrete functioning and positioning in a wider inter-/national regulatory regime differs by country and sometimes between natural and social sciences (see Israel and Hay 2006, 40–59; though on tendencies of ‘convergence’ or ‘imperialism’: Israel 2018). 6 This is a contentious question with no clear answer. Several ethical frameworks offer exceptions to a general rule prohibiting covert research (Israel and Hay 2006, 73–75; see also Punch 1994, 90–92, but Glasius et al. 2018, 38, 49). Exceptions may inter alia depend on the risks involved for participants or on the research subject (e.g. it may be justified for illegal or ‘extremist’ organisations; see also below on researching elites). In Science, in particular for some clinical experiments, research is based on deception by omission (e.g. placebo studies).

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responsibilities. By analogy, moral reasoning should thus be based on human care (Noddings 1984) and affection, intimacy, nurturing, egality and collaboration (Steiner 1989). Seigfried (1996), however, challenges Gilligan’s concept of ethics of care, criticizing the re-/production of a constructed simplistic biologism, which equates men* with autonomy and rationality and women* with care and nurturance. Instead, she puts ‘sympathetic caring’ (Seigfried 1996, 222) at the centre of moral reasoning without directly relating it to a certain (binary) gender, but still claiming ‘more autonomy for women and more connectedness for men’ (Seigfried 1996, 219). The so-called ( feminist) communitarian approach highlights the importance and effects of community structures constructing and influencing individual behaviour and decision making: ‘It presumes that the community is ontologically and axiologically prior to persons. Human identity is constituted through the social realm’ (Christians 2005, 150–151). Criticizing the consequentialist equation of the common good with aggregated individual aspirations, the feminist communitarian approach argues against a separation between individual aspirations and their specific social context where individual aspirations, e.g. needs, beliefs, values, and morals, are nurtured. Instead, individual satisfaction and fulfilment are always embedded into communal well-being.

Decolonial Research Ethics Some indigenous peoples criticized the approaches above for their essentialism (Denzin and Lincoln 2008, 4), use in favour of a colonizing power (Battiste 2000) and allowing academic researchers to become the authority over others (Decoloniality Europe 2013). Tuhiwai Smith states that [t]he word itself, ‘research’, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary. [. . .] It appals us that the West can desire, extract and claim ownership of our ways of knowing, our imagery, the things we create and produce, and then simultaneously reject the people who created and developed those ideas' (Smith 1999: 1)

Even qualitative research serves ’in many, if not all, of its forms (observation, participation, interviewing, ethnography) [. . .] as a metaphor for colonial knowledge, for power, and for truth.’ (Denzin, Lincoln 2011, 1). The network Decoloniality Europe (2013) defines three main privileges of research, which protect the ‘white political field’7 (Decoloniality Europe 2013): Firstly, the teleological privilege refers to the manners in which academic knowledge ‘—expertise—

‘White’ here is a ‘[c]ategory that refers to the established group that benefits from the racialising social hierarchy produced by the ongoing coloniality of the power relationships in their political, economic, cultural and symbolic dimensions. The established frontiers of this dominant group transgress class and gender boundaries, and they have been constituted through a historical process

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monopolises the political’ (Decoloniality Europe 2013) in defining future projects, e.g. which projects are realizable. Secondly, the privilege of epistemic perspective refers to epistemic racism, which e.g. takes effect when perspectives or voices from the Global South are included in the research process solely as empirical material. Third, the privilege of ontology defines what (does not) exist based on ‘Western, Eurocentric ideas of validity, scientificity and method’ (Decoloniality Europe 2013).

Codes of Feminist or Decolonial Ethics Conducting research relying on such (not all) feminist or decolonial approaches does not require standardized codes of ethics. Actually, an almost universal code of ethics would contradict its participatory and collaborative aspirations. However, these approaches provide certain helpful questions and tools for researchers and for ‘the researched’. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) and Russell Bishop (1998) introduce the decolonial approach of Kaupapa Māori originating from Māori concepts, values and perspectives. Following that approach, researchers should ask themselves the following questions: ‘(1) What research do we want to carry out? (2) Whom is that research for? (3) What difference will it make? (4) Who will carry out this research? (5) How do we want the research to be done? (6) How will we know it is a worthwhile piece of research? (7) Who will own the research? (8) Who will benefit’? (Smith 2000, 239). The researcher should aim at repositioning themself ‘in such a way as to no longer need to seek to give voice to others, to empower others, to emancipate others, to refer to others as subjugated voices, but rather to listen to and to participate with those ‘othered’ as constructors of meanings of their own experiences and agents of knowledge [emphasis RB]’ (Bishop 1998, 207). Decoloniality Europe (2013) has elaborated a Charter of Decolonial Research Ethics primarily as a ‘tool for decolonial social movements’ which are confronted with academics interested in researching with (not about) them. At the same time, the Charter can be a useful tool for decolonial researchers. In these terms, research is not about the social movement as such, but about and in favour of their struggles. Decolonial social movements here have the right to define these struggles, the theoretical framework and the relevant social context. In addition, social movements are involved in the peer review and publication process and have, above all, the right to stop their involvement with the researcher at any time. Now, having reviewed the main strands of approaching research ethics, the reader may have already sensed that there is no ‘magic bullet’—no single text to quote and be done with research ethics. The approaches were presented in a simplified and sometimes ‘extreme’ form, and thus their basic criticisms only partly apply to more of racialisation, associating the phenotypical characteristics (White epiderme) with a European and Christian origin’ (Decoloniality Europe 2012).

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nuanced instances (the problematization of decolonial approaches will be taken up below, i.e. when discussing questions of solidarity). Nevertheless, making ethical choices is hard and highly consequential. So how to negotiate this practically?

. . . and the Global South Writing from a perspective from ‘the’ Global North (as the authors of this chapter do), one might start this section by pointing to the specificity of doing research in contexts of ‘the’ Global South (Lunn 2014, 3). Yet, such ‘northern’ perspectives are just as relevant starting points in the Global South as well, not least, because academic institutions globally are often oriented towards northern/‘western’ theories (Natukunda et al. 2016), methodologies (Smith 1999) and ethics (Israel 2018). Israel refers to the latter as ethical imperialism, but there are of course various other forms of domination, such as colonial ‘legacies’ (Sikes 2013) and (other) geopolitics (Price 2016). This section mainly deals with different examples from the Global South, variously applicable to both southern and northern researchers. Of course, the issues raised are relevant in the Global North as well, with, as always, appropriate contextadaptation. And this is not to say that all ‘northern’ theories and ethics are necessarily merely imperial impositions, but it does require a great deal of reflexivity on anyone’s part and highlights the politically and culturally mediated relationships any researcher is in, enters into and establishes, which are key points of reference for approaching research ethics (Israel and Hay 2006, 112).

Relational Positioning Now, such reflection can happen in different ways. Bourdieu refers to ‘participant objectivation’, i.e. objectivation-reflection of the researcher’s lived experience from ‘the social conditions of possibility—and therefore the effects and limits—of that experience’ (2003, 282). Thus, the focus is not primarily on the researchers, but on the world in which they are positioned and specifically on the position as such. Here, Weber is challenged since it is now science looking at its own possibility and by extension also at its ethical foundation. This then obliges researchers to continually reflect upon their own positioning and through such understanding upon that of others—to understand the world (i.e. also others) by understanding oneself in it ‘understanding’ it (Bourdieu 2003, 288–292). A popular starting point for further reflection is the effect of knowledge (re-) production. Spivak (1993, 76–77, 86) points to the ubiquity of colonialism: if one assumes knowledge is powerful and if one further assumes that due to the institutional positioning of dominant knowledge production, colonial conceptions such as ‘western’ superiority are still inscribed in it, it appears that innocent positions are illusive. Ignorance of this is merely a privileged position. Thus, one must recognize

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difference and power in it in order to transcend it. Even Chambers’ Participatory Rural Appraisal approach (Chambers 1994, see below) appears problematic. Per the criticism from Spivak’s perspective, Chambers believes to do away with power imbalances only by ignoring larger power structures as well as more subtle microdynamics which cannot as easily be captured by due process of participation in research or development projects. And similarly to Bourdieu (2003, 288), the above perspective is also critical of ascribing to the essentialised subaltern pure knowledge and intention. The subaltern too are positioned and thus fallible (Kapoor 2004, 636–638). If one cannot escape one’s positioning, Kapoor says one should be ‘hyper-selfreflexive’ (2004, 641) about it and from there learn to unlearn, e.g. preconceptions, as Spivak would put it. Since this is inevitable, it cannot imply inaction and by extension means that all (even ‘hyper-self-reflexive’) action will still be flawed.8 Kapoor points to the similarity such an undertaking has with ‘‘decolonisation’ (Fanon), ‘conscientisation’ (Freire) and ‘accountable positioning’ (Haraway)’ (2004, 641), and one could add Bourdieu’s ‘conversion of the whole person’ (Bourdieu 2003, 292, emphasis PB) or Chamber’s more specific ‘new professionalism’ (1995, 198). They all aim, in their own way, at ‘establishing an ethical relationship with [research participants]’ (Kapoor 2004, 642, own emphasis). That is one where one’s mutual positioning is recognized before domination in it can be jointly addressed. But Kapoor warns that for Spivak at least, this happens at an individual level, what the implications for interaction with (or between) institutions, organisations and groups are, is much less clear (Kapoor 2004, 642–643). We shall return to this in the next section.

Adapting Guidelines? Positions, though, are far from clear-cut. Sultana (2007, 377, 382) relates her experience of doing research in rural Bangladesh, where although she shared positions of, e.g. ethnicity and nationality with participants (as far as one can claim to share such fuzzy concepts), there were differences in education and class. She describes that since she was often in-between positions, she continuously had to re-negotiate relations and thus it became impossible to rely directly on general ethical provisions—in fact, only when recognizing this dynamic can ethical relationships to research participants be established in the first place, she contends. Reality is neither as clear as ethical guidelines seem to suggest, nor are guidelines necessarily (fully) applicable to a given context in the first place (Lunn 2014, 2–6; Sultana 2007, 383; Gillan, Pickerill 2012, 134).

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This not only calls for open examination of inevitable failure in doing ethical research (Punch 1994, 85), but then fundamentally for ‘rational’ discussion of (as opposed to skeptical retreat from) norms and values (Sayer 2009, 768).

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The most discussed issue in empirical research is informed consent forms, which are variously criticised to be inapplicable in certain contexts, where participants might be unable to understand them, be intimidated by them, where it would prevent trust and empathy to be established in the first place etc. (Israel and Hay 2006, 60–76; Matelski 2014, 74; Maxey 1999, 204; Scheyvens et al. 2003, 142–146; Sikes 2013, 528–529; Skinner 2014, 185–186; Zhang 2017, 150). Such difficulties might be mitigated by tape-recording verbal consent (Scheyvens et al. 2003, 144) or might be substituted by ‘only’ informing participants of one’s role and the research context, use etc. (Matelski 2014, 74). Decolonial approaches even dismiss the necessity of formalised consent [see also Codes of Feminist or Decolonial Ethics above], since they design their research in and with the community, they work in from the beginning (Sikes 2013, 528–529, 232; Christians 2005, 157). One should keep in mind though, that the latter might be considered only from a ‘privileged’ position in so far as one needs appropriate access to a community, which especially from a decolonial perspective, is not simply to be claimed by the researcher alone. Further, it might even be questioned whether individuals have the right to give informed consent (and share knowledge etc.), since such rights may reside in the community. This posits collective versus individual (often read as ‘western’) rights (Smith 1999, 10, 118–120; Battiste 2008; 500–504).

Power Thus, mitigating exploitation in ‘powerful’ relations, methods and the researcher’s conduct need to be appropriately adapted. One approach to this, Chambers famously depicts as ‘handing over the stick’, i.e. ‘abdication of power and passing much of the initiative and [methodical] control to local people’ (Chambers 1994, 1265). As one of the sources of this participatory approach, Chambers quotes Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the oppressed’ (2005), with which he shares the ambition to empower the subaltern (‘poor’ for Chambers, ‘oppressed’ for Freire) through such methodology (Chambers 1994, 1253, 1265–1266).9 We return to such aspirations in the next section. Research participants, however, are not necessarily subaltern. The power relation can be significantly levelled or even reversed, e.g. when dealing with educated, urban middle classes (Smeltzer 2012, 257). Taking this further and dealing with ‘elites’ is a contentious and interesting field, since from an ‘academic’ perspective they are to be granted the same ethical standing as the subaltern, whom they potentially oppress. Yet from a political perspective, that might be outweighed by ethical responsibilities to the ‘struggle for liberation’ (Freire 2005, 60). Is it ethical to ‘give back’ to exploitative elites? Is one required to be truthful about one’s

Though one should not forget that for Freire, this is because his ‘pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection’ (2005, 48), something not as prominent in Chambers, making his approach both wider in scope but also open to criticisms such as Spivak’s mentioned above.

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intentions? Is anonymity to be accorded? May hidden observation be justified? Access to such circles is unlikely to be granted to the (outspoken) ‘scholar-activist’ (Dawson and Sinwell, 178, emphasis removed) and thus some form of compromise is very likely necessary (Perera-Mubarak 2014, 211–213; Punch 1994, 90–92; Glasius et al. 2018, 49). If investigation, e.g. of the elite’s ‘illegal’ activity already is difficult, publishing on that of the subaltern can be even more so, since this might threaten precarious livelihoods (Brooks 2014, 37–38).

Responsibility and Association It is often asserted that the first responsibility is to those studied, only then come the researcher’s own ambitions or prescriptions of IRBs (Denzin and Lincoln 2008, 2; Lewis 2012, 233; Glasius et al. 2018, 58). But responsibilities might not always be as clear. For instance, the Developing Areas Research Group (DARG) code demands one ‘should follow the formal procedures and requirements of host governments concerning research permission and access’ (DARG 2003). Reflecting on her privileged position of being able to ‘do fieldwork wherever you pleased in a globalized, borderless and accessible world’, Kuyakanon Knapp (2014, 17–18) decided to go to a country where a permit would be necessary (Bhutan), in order to be granted such privilege, not have it almost by default (of studying at a northern institution). She immediately highlights the close connection she thus established between her academic work and government politics. Such relations can have significant (gatekeeping) implications, e.g. out of fear of being expelled from the country (or not being granted a permit), or due to the ramifications for local contacts. (Scheyvens et al. 2003, 153–155). On the other hand, doing research critical of or involving those working against a government faces similar issues (Glasius et al. 2018), though the general risk level of course depends on one’s research topic, contacts/research participants and quality of repression by the government. Here, again, the risk faced by research participants should be the primary consideration. Yet, risk assessments made by oneself, ethics boards and participants (and among them) may differ widely. Something unlikely to be fully determinable prior to being ‘in the field’. Governments likely judge how much of a threat one is to them by association. Thus, researchers need to be careful in how to approach even those participants less risk-averse, since they might pose an indirect threat to others via association with the researcher. The same goes for anonymity, even if participants wish to be mentioned by name. Questions of operational security are highly relevant here.10 Though research ethics often require

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Though it should be stressed that it is not in the power of the researcher alone to control security (nor the research relationships in general, of course), this is a joint effort and should be approached as such (Israel and Hay 2006, 99), which does not release the researcher from taking responsibility (Matelski 2014, 61).

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ad hoc decisions, not preparing for them can pose security threats in situations of confusing (though maybe justified) paranoia (Matelski 2014, 63–73; Smeltzer 2012, 260). ‘Losing’ a memory stick with sensitive data (in her case likely to Israeli secret services) is a real threat, as Skinner discovered (2014, 188–189). On the operational security side to this, e.g. the Electronic Frontier Foundation provides a guide on how to ‘digitally’ cross one particularly nasty border (Cope et al. 2017), more generally Glasius et al. (2018, 32–34). And such risks are not only relevant to research participants, but to researchers as well—and here researchers from the Global North should not think that their passports are an absolute guarantee for safety (Kirchgaessner 2016; for a nuanced discussion Glasius et al. 2018, 23–26). This section demonstrated the necessity and possibility of weighing competing claims in concrete research settings. The next section will take a more general perspective on the approach of a given research project. By doing so, we concretise some of the implications of ‘responsible positioning’ called for above.

. . . as Ethics of Theory and Politics of Research Theory and ethics co-determine each other. Corbridge (1993, 463, 469; Sayer 2000, 169) notes how theories that posit exploitation in global interconnectedness demand ethical arguments (see above on the ethics of critique) as pertaining to global justice. In the global justice literature in turn, key points of discussion are based on theoretical arguments and empirical evidence of the quality of global structures and dynamics (e.g. Pogge 2002, 13–15; Miller 2007, 232–233). De Jong (2012, 198–200) more concretely shows how analysing Palestine-Israel from a binary conflict paradigm forced her to take sides or remain, ostensibly, neutral (which theoretically leads to normalising power relations). Gradually rejecting her neutral position in favour of one of a human rights struggle, deemed more fitting to the findings of her research, allowed her more complex positioning and power analysis. This also led her to join her activist and academic pursuits more closely, since grievances were now more immediate to her and neutrality no longer prescribed.

Activism There are (at least) two approaches to the ethics of activism and academia. Maxey (1999, 201) de facto adapts Spivak’s argument introduced above: If we, to some extent, produce the social world around us through practice, then we are all already and always ‘activists’ and as such ethically obliged to reflect upon the impacts we do

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or should make.11 The same applies to consciously performed activism. The second is the ethical obligation of reciprocity, i.e. to not only extract knowledge, but to provide benefits in return (Israel and Hay 2006, 99–104). Now, neither one should be exaggerated: Routledge (1996, 401) warns that we are not ‘at the center of an heroic and romanticized narrative’ (ad construction) and Gillan and Pickerill (2012, 136) point out that the actual contribution academics can make might very often be rather modest (ad beneficence). That means it might still be the academic who profits most even from reciprocity (Maxey 1999, 204). Both approaches come together in Routledge’s ‘Third Space’ (i.e., one that emerges out of a combination of both academia and activism). He calls for ‘living theory’, similarly to de Jong. In doing so, and this concretises above discussions of positional reflection, one should, argues Routledge (1996, 40–406), make productive use of the differences of (privileged) positionings, perspectives, ambitions etc., that come together in this space. He and Derickson (2015, 393) explicitly put this in contrast to views that see researchers only as disturbance of an otherwise pure field in which they should thus completely immerse. Rather, academics can contribute in positionally reflexive ways. By this, they mean to channel the resources and privileges afforded to academics for advancing the work of nonacademic collaborators; designing research explicitly to ask and answer questions that nonacademic collaborators want to know; and engaging in research that explores barriers to sustained and active participation and activism. (Routledge and Derickson 2015, 391)

As discussed for elites, it is not ethical to ‘give back’ to just anybody. So it might also not be possible and thus not be necessary to always be an activist researcher in the sense of being politically involved in the social movements of one’s choosing and to derive research topics from their immediate needs (Gillan and Pickerill 2012, 136). Thus, for the research community it is not ethical to only do activist research. Though highly laudable and without doubt one of the most important developments in research methodology and ethics in the last decades, there might be an ethical imperative to also do research that cannot be participative, inclusive, reciprocative, (immediately) empowering etc. Not that such an approach then is exempt from ethical scrutiny, far from it, just that here specific ethical trade-offs are willingly accepted from the beginning (Israel and Hay 2006, 102–103, 109).

Engagement And this not only holds for dealing with e.g. Neo-Nazis. It might indeed be a good idea, argue Gillan and Pickerill (2012, 138; also Dawson and Sinwell, 2012, 187–188), to get some distance from any movement and from there be able to

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A more pragmatic version of this is that if you are interested in e.g. opposition groups in Myanmar, you are a political (and potentially ‘dangerous’) activist as far as the government is concerned (Matelski 2014, 65).

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‘criticise’, so as to avoid becoming ‘social movement parrots’ as they vividly put it (or what Routledge (1996, 413) similarly calls ‘romantic ventriloquism’). They explicitly mean the production of academic knowledge, that is ‘knowledge in general’ as opposed to exclusively ‘situated knowledge’. The former refers to knowledge that does not serve a direct purpose for concrete agents, something not necessarily (only) concerned with debates over universalism or indeed objectivity; while here ‘situated knowledge’ is thought to be produced with or through a community directly involved in the research process. Since both are necessarily restrained in scope, one needs, as so often, their combination.12 That such criticism of one’s favoured movements (one could add political parties and governments as well as communities) always does disservice to them is rejected by, e.g. Nilsen (2016, 282). For him, it is precisely such deliberation, already existing within them, that needs recognition and engagement. That is unless one deems one’s movement to be beyond (external) criticism.13 While it may be emancipatory or empowering to explicitly let grander ethical or political ambitions enter into considerations of how to shape one’s research, e.g. the likes of Spivak would warn us of the looming paternalism in this (i.e. we may not know ‘what is to be done’). This leads to discussions that cannot be covered here. We would like to stress, however, that if we were to follow, e.g. Miller (Miller 2007, 28; similarly Israel and Hay 2006, 102–104) and contend that it is generally accepted by now that we are all moral equals (i.e. that differences in ethical treatment need careful justification), how to negotiate our path in-between the various pitfalls becomes an ethical imperative for researchers. This calls for a more holistic and more profound way of conceptualising ethics. In the language of research ethics, it is not enough to live in this world and just (ostensibly) ‘do no harm’ to it. With all this, one can begin to appreciate the, intended or not, breadth of the call (Gillan and Pickerill 2012, 140–141) for a more ‘collective’ approach to research ethics, in addition to all the very relevant individual(-istic) reflections that usually dominate its treatment. For instance, Kapoor pointed out that Spivak draws rather individualistic conclusions of forming ethical relationships (like learning languages to relate to interview partners better). Communitarian ethics such as those advanced by decolonial or (some) feminist approaches, just as deontic theories of global justice (and there are utilitarian ones as well), were quoted as examples of ways to transcend this focus on the individual. And so were discussions of political ‘interferences’: there is no neutral definition of the collective good, but there are various attempts to

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Precisely such a combination is sometimes discussed as transdisciplinarity (e.g. Novy and Beinstein 2009). 13 This is not to say that mere criticism always has primacy. Becker (2013, 44–45, 59) points out the dilemma that emerges if one does not flat-out reject engagement with the state (as does Holloway, see above) and if one then is confronted with e.g. the Ecuadorian realpolitik of a both politically repressive, but e.g. in terms of social policy rather progressive government: ‘critical civil society’ both made the Alianza PAIS government possible but now might also discursively strengthen its opposition (on this, see also Routledge and Derickson 2015, 402).

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(ethically) justify one, of course. These attempts need (collective) engagement and individual positioning to allow for solidary research.

Negotiating Responsibilities As much of the literature quoted testifies, and as we would agree, indulgence in criticism of unethical behaviour or mere (re-)statement of what is ethical does not suffice. That the outcomes of institutional review procedures are not to be confused with ultimate judgements of ethical conduct is widely accepted14 also.15 Crucially, accounts of negotiating ethics in concrete research situations are sometimes coupled with generalisations on how to approach thinking about dealing with such dilemmas.16 It is to be hoped that both lines are continued and it was our humble attempt to discuss some of both and show, as many others have, how moving between them can be fruitful for discussions of these matters. For, rejecting any limitation of ethics to formalised checklists necessitates, theoretically ‘and’ practically, approaches of how to deal with complexity-induced and politically laden uncertainty. What remains yet to some extent under-explored is the question of what and how ‘knowledge in general’ could and should contribute. Though knowledge in general is rarely explicitly denied merit, it has not yet received the same level of scrutiny as more ‘immediate’ forms of activism have and surely for good reasons, since they often are much marginalised themselves, often by a dogmatically merited ‘general knowledge’. Related but not reducible to this, is the question of the positioning of each researcher in a ‘world system of research’ and the varying possibilities, roles and indeed responsibilities that come with it. This is only answerable with specific premises as to how this world is constituted (theory) and what responsibilities in it are (ethics) and thus how to shape a common conduct (politics, if you allow this crude distinction from ethics itself). What this intends to amount to is the inextricable interconnection of the three. For instance, by example of studying elites, it was shown that even the seemingly most technical topics of research ethics (e.g. anonymisation and transparency) are already political in the sense that a decision has to be made on which ethics to compromise, those of

14 For instance: de Gruchy and Lewin (2001), Denzin and Lincoln (2008, 15), Gillan and Pickerill (2012, 134–135), Hopf (2016, 203), Israel (2018), Israel and Hay (2006, 139–140), Lunn (2014, 4–5), Scheyvens et al. (2003, 142–149), Sikes (2013, 525–528), Sultana (2007, 383), Unger (2014, 31–33), and Zhang (2017, 150). 15 Which is not to suggest that IRBs are always counterproductive. The question is how they are involved and who is involved in them: Constructive exchanges on navigating ethical questions by persons familiar with the concrete research setting can be helpful (Glasius et al. 2018, 18–20). 16 Recently e.g. Glasius et al. (2018) and articles from Lunn’s (2014) edited volume as well as issue 11/2 of the Social Movement Studies journal—and various other individual contributions have been cited.

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‘the struggle for liberation’, to use Freire’s words, or those of academia. Now, who elites are, whether their conduct is problematic, whether it is such conduct or some other that is primarily problematic for transcending exploitation (if that is to be the ethical imperative), are theoretical questions. In fact, if and how the state is relevant in this, itself is one. How one ‘chooses’ to understand the state thus has ethical implications, and be it only by denying some while affirming other political and, mind you, research strategies that may or may not turn out to be the right ones.

. . . for Critical State Theory of the Global South: An Outlook After initially reminding us that any research project is situated in a political context, we moved to discussing possible strategies of constructing ethical arguments: via principles, outcomes or communities. These argumentative strategies are historically connected (not identical) to different political strategies, especially of situating scientific work in wider society: one aims to autonomize science mainly from the state, the other from more specific forces in society such as patriarchal or colonial power relations. The former, at the same time, made universalising claims, e.g. for ethical codes, while the latter is more particularistic, or at least more sensitive to the specific positioning of groups in their (powerful) interrelations. Accordingly, we continued with examining research situations more concretely to point to the necessity of reflecting upon the positioning of researchers in local as well as global relations of power and institutions. This provided a different kind of challenge to universal codes of ethics: not one based on philosophical possibility but on practicality. The ‘complex mess’ confronting researchers ethically obliges them to, in some situations, rely on justifiable judgement calls rather than static regulation. Here, we also highlighted the competing claims of different ‘spheres’— the academy becomes political. Both ‘positioning by default’ (i.e. any context is political, gendered etc.) and conscious political positioning demand a comprehensive ethical agenda, able to negotiate who one is responsible to, and how. In this sense, we argue for a broadening of discussions around ‘research ethics’. Although we did not aim at offering a definite ethical framework (which would, in fact, run counter to many claims in this chapter), we offer an overview of crucial considerations that need to be made. We deem this of particular importance since thinking of such ‘comprehensive’ ethical decisions is rarely made explicit even though they are ad hoc and de facto taken all the time. Firstly, we do not want to discourage doing research. We want to discourage from the ignorance of ethics and blindly following some code. Rather, we suggest that thinking about how to do it ethically must expect (some) competing claims and dilemmas (it is an applied ethics after all). Secondly, the sometimes contradictory approaches we presented were meant to show both different ways of addressing problems and to introduce some problems in the first place: Integrating a feminist approach to ethics first of all means to recognise the significance of gender relations. Whether or not one then constructs a

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communitarian argument or some other is a different matter. Decolonial approaches are probably the most fundamental challenge to classical accounts of ethics discussed in this text. Rejecting universal codes of ethics, they rely on community structures able to solve ethical issues autonomously. This thus offers much more than ‘empowerment’. But what about those groups which are not (democratic) communities? Or how to think about inter-community research, maybe even one that utilises resources from outside of ‘protected’ community structures such as Routledge’s and Derickson’s Third-Space approach? The latters’ approach in turn was shown to be inapplicable e.g. for generating external perspectives or ‘knowledge in general’. The circle closes when then inquiring upon the possible neglect by such external perspectives of the merit of the community as such versus outside ascriptions. Acknowledging the former circle, we do not want to imply that each approach is right in its own terms, so pick any, but to stress to the impossibility of making a judgment completely internal to research ethics as commonly defined. In the end, making a judgment means being able to justify the shortcomings of one’s choice—a choice thus, that is constantly being subverted. This subversion prohibits any definite solution, but nevertheless demands engagement. To expect definite answers from ethics would be naive. To not seek them can be of serious consequence. After all, only such a contradictory search for contradictory answers will allow questioning contradictory power relations.

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Pogge, T. (2002). World poverty and human rights: cosmopolitan responsibilities and reforms. Cambridge; Malden: Polity. Price, D. H. (2016). Cold War anthropology: the CIA, the Pentagon, and the growth of dual use anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press. Punch, M. (1994). Politics and Ethics in Qualitative Research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 83–97). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Routledge, P. (1996). The Third Space as Critical Engagement. Antipode, 28(4), 399–419. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1996.tb00533.x Routledge, P., & Derickson, K. D. (2015). Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(3), 391–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0263775815594308 Sayer, A. (2000). Realism and social science. London; Thousand Oaks: Sage. Sayer, A. (2009). Who’s Afraid of Critical Social Science? Current Sociology, 57(6), 767–786. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392109342205 Scheyvens, R., Nowak, B., & Scheyvens, H. (2003). Ethical Issues. In R. Scheyvens & D. Storey (Eds.), Development fieldwork: a practical guide (pp. 139–166). London; Thousand Oaks: Sage. Seigfried, C. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Skinner, C. (2014). ‘You can be jailed here by even me talking to you’: dilemmas and difficulties relating to informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity. In J. Lunn (Ed.), Fieldwork in the Global South: ethical challenges and dilemmas (pp. 183–191). London, New York: Routledge. Sikes, P. (2013). Working together for critical research ethics. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 43(4), 516–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2013.797765 Smeltzer, S. (2012). Asking Tough Questions: The Ethics of Studying Activism in Democratically Restricted Environments. Social Movement Studies, 11(2), 255–271. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14742837.2012.664905 Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. London; New York; Dunedin: Zed Books; University of Otago Press. Smith, L. T. (2000). Kaupapa Māori Research. In M. Battiste (Ed.), Reclaiming indigenous voice and vision (pp. 225-247). Vancouver: UBC Press. Spivak, G. C. (1993). Can the Subaltern Speak? In L. Chrisman & P. Williams (Eds.), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (pp. 66–111). Abingdon, New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315656496 Steiner, L. (1989). Feminist theorizing and communication ethics. Communication, 12(3), 157–174. Sultana, F. (2007). Reflexivity, Positionality and Participatory Ethics: Negotiating Fieldwork Dilemmas in International Research. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 374–385. Thelen, T. (2022). Stategraphy. A social anthropological approach to the state. In M. Fahimi, E. Flatschart, & W. Schaffar (Ed.), State and statehood in the global south. Cham: Springer. Thelen, T., Vetters, L., Benda-Beckmann, K. (2014): Introduction to Stategraphy. Toward a relational Anthropology of the State. Social Analysis, 38(3), 1-19. Unger, H. von (2014). Forschungsethik in der qualitativen Forschung: Grundsätze, Debatten und offene Fragen. In H. von Unger, P. Narimani, & R. M’Bayo (Eds.), Forschungsethik in der qualitativen Forschung (pp. 15–39). Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-3-658-04289-9_2 Unger, H. von, Narimani, P., & M’Bayo, R. (Eds.). (2014). Forschungsethik in der qualitativen Forschung: Reflexivität, Perspektiven, Positionen. Wiesbaden: Springer. Weber, Max (1949, [1917]): The Meaning of “Ethical Neutrality” in Sociology and Economics. In E. A. Shills; H. A. Finch (Eds.), Max Weber on the Methodology of Social Sciences (pp. 1-47). New York: Free Press. Zhang, J. J. (2017). Research ethics and ethical research: some observations from the Global South. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 41(1), 147–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265. 2016.1241985

Part III

Materialist State Theoretical Analysis

State Theory of the Semi-Periphery as State Theory of Deficit: The Example of Modern Turkey Volkan Ağar

Turkey: Authoritarian Statehood in the Semi-Periphery On the evening of 15th July 2016, Turkish soldiers blocked Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge that connects the European and Asiatic part of the metropolis. What follows is a night full of fights between coup plotters and security forces loyal to the government. This night is succeeded by a morning declaration in which Recep Tayyip Erdoğan triumphantly proclaims his victory and calls the coup d’état a “gift of god”. During the following weeks and months, it becomes clear why he finds such a label for an event that cost over 250 lives1: the Turkish state dismisses 150,000 state employees, among them professors, teachers, and administrative personal but also judges, state attorneys, and security forces. Many of them are arrested and prosecuted under the charge of being members or supporters of a terrorist organisation. Publishing houses, TV channels, newspaper, NGOs, and private associations are dismantled. Erdoğan’s government claims that these measures are necessary to combat the sectarian organisation of the Islamist preacher Fetullah Gülen (now called FETÖ, Fetullahist Terrorist Organization) which is held responsible for the coup attempt. Two years later, on 24th June 2018, the authoritarian conversion of the Turkish state and society, amply accelerated by the coup, reaches its peak. With the electoral victory of Erdoğan, the new political system installed in April 2017 via a referendum (then only with a small majority) was vindicated. The new presidential system concentrates far more power in the hands of the president than democratic presidential systems such as those of France or the USA. The president has far-reaching

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http://in.reuters.com/article/turkey-security-casualties/death-toll-in-failed-turkey-coup-rises-tomore-than-290-foreign-ministry-idINKCN0ZX0NW Accessed 21 Sep 2017.

V. Ağar (*) Berlin, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_5

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authority over the executive, legislative, and judicative branches, the office of the prime minister is abolished, and the parliament is degraded to a passive institution. Two years after the coup, the authoritarian reconstruction of Turkey is no more restricted to “cleansing” of the apparatus, as the government called it. The regime used the coup as an opportunity to reconstruct the Turkish state in a profound and permanent way. This development runs counter to the prior trend attributed to the AKP’s rule—an exceptional synthesis of Liberalism and Islam praised by quite a few foreign observers (Tugal 2016). The abandonment of democracy, however, already started with the crushing of the Gezi protests in the summer of 2013. Since then, the international isolation of Turkey is aggravating as diplomatic crises with historic allies like Germany and the USA indicate. Even though the political project of the AKP is stagnating since 2020 as the economy is in turmoil, the democratic civil society in and outside of Turkey has little hope to effect change via democratic elections. The political institutions are deeply entrenched with AKP loyalists—and they still profit from the system. These political developments of the recent years bring up many questions. How could a formally democratic state with a strong secular foundation be reconstructed in an authoritarian way in such a short time? Which historically derived structures and ideologies of the given statehood have facilitated this transformation? Can we thus find a connection between the relatively swift and smooth deconstruction of liberal-democratic standards and the fact that Turkey is not a state of the global core2? I want to answer these questions from the perspective of materialist state theory, thereby employing an approach that analyses the concrete-historical state formation of modern Turkey with a materialist approach inspired by form-analytical state theory. This focuses on structural conditions necessary for the existence of modern statehood: the rule of law and the division of powers and the separation of the economic and political spheres and powers. These are prerequisites of the modern state form as analysed by form-analytical approaches, and it is thus my thesis that approaches solely focusing on actual (class) antagonisms are insufficient to grasp authoritarianism in peripheral and semi-peripheral states like Turkey. I will discuss Nicos Poulantzas’ state theory in order to pinpoint certain reductionisms of accounts focusing on social antagonisms. It is my central thesis that the validity of these accounts is limited to the implicit ideal form of bourgeois-capitalist statehood as found in the cores, yet this form of state is not to be found in peripheries and semiperipheries. Therefore, the properties of peripheral and semi-peripheral statehood are to be determined negatively, by comparing this ideal to the concrete examples of such (semi-)peripheral statehoods and their deficiencies. Such a (non-normative) 2 I here refer to the concept of metropolitan countries as elaborated by Immanuel Wallerstein (2004). Capitalist metropolis are those regions of the world, in which Capitalism had first developed (due to contingent historical factors) and established itself by expansion, trade, and colonialism. Originally, the western European and consequently North-American core dominated other world regions, degrading them to their peripheries or semi-peripheries. The categories of core, periphery, and semi-periphery are thus to be understood relationally, not normatively.

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deficit-oriented approach can fruitfully connect to the work of Tilman Evers, which in the late 1970s developed theoretical criteria for statehood beyond the historical capitalist core. I will apply the form-analytical approach to Turkey which I consider to be an example of bourgeois statehood in the semi-periphery. In this, I want to both further the analysis of the Turkish state and expand the scope of materialist state theory by attending to the yet open question: Can we elaborate a particular materialist state theory of the (semi-)peripheral state? I propound the thesis that a materialist state theory of the (semi-)periphery can be defined as a negative theory. This means that such a theory is not positively determined, but in terms of its deficit, viz. its delimitation vis-à-vis the core state. It is my central argument that in contemporary Turkey, the state does neither have a “relative autonomy” (Poulantzas 2002), nor is it chiefly a “material condensation of forces” (Poulantzas 2002), as processes of condensation are themselves precarious. Due to the different speed and competition of catch-up development in the semiperiphery, authoritarian measures were far more common in semi-peripheral states like Turkey. The constitution of state institutions was a top-down process pushed by political and military cadres and not a development borne by an emancipating bourgeoisie and its fight against the ancient regimes. This had profound effects inscribed into the character of the political institutions. The state is thus less open as an arena for different antagonist power groups; it is far better describable in terms of Lenin’s state theory (1972): Interest groups and elites can directly access the state and use it as a means of domination. Compromise and its contradictory effects in terms of a time delay and a different form of sedimentation of political agency are less present. I will further elaborate on this account of the state that I derive from a critique of Poulantzas’ state theory with reference to Tilman Evers’ criteria of peripheral statehood. He developed the notions of structural heterogeneity and world marketdependent reproduction. The former implies a non-ubiquitous generalisation of capitalist forms—grave regional-ethnic socio-economic differentiations and insurmountable political-cultural discords remain within the realm of the sovereignty of the state. The latter implies that the foundations for the development of specific statehood are primordially exogenously defined, chiefly a result of the embedding of the state into the capitalist world market. In my concrete analysis, I will support this thesis by referring to the historical genesis of the modern Turkish republic. Central demarcation points in this genesis are the foundation of the republic by Western-oriented military cadres in 1923; the third military coup d’état in 1980; the neoliberal economic opening of Turkey (which thus abandoned its original accumulation strategy of import substitution); and finally, the rise of the AKP since 2002 and the development towards authoritarianism since 2013 (and more vigorously since 2016).

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Poulantzas and the State Theory of the Semi-Periphery In his opus magnum on state theory (Poulantzas 2002), Nicos Poulantzas introduced an understanding of the capitalist state as “material condensation of a power relation between classes and class fraction” (Poulantzas 2002). This can be understood as a subsequent advancement of Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the integral state (BuciGlucksmann 1981). Poulantzas acknowledges the “relative autonomy” of state structures vis-à-vis power relations—they do not necessarily manifest in the state apparatuses. They latter have a proper dynamic and structural solidity that is relatively distinct from immediate social conflicts that exist outside but also inside the state. The state apparatuses boast a “strategic selectivity” (Poulantzas 2002) that privileges certain particular interests and interest groups. As such, the state is also present in the economy. It plays a crucial role in the reproduction of capitalist relations and is not a secondary political “superstructure” that can be deduced from the economic structure. This also means that the state is relatively autonomous in relation to everyday political events and antagonisms. For Poulantzas, the political domain is independent from economic determination and channels political agency. This agency is embedded in the general primacy of class struggle inasmuch as “political struggle and domination [. . .] are inscribed in the institutional structure of the State” and thus “explain the differential forms and precise historical transformations of the State” (Poulantzas 2002, 157). His state theory focuses on antagonisms between political groups as the state is itself moulded by various (prior) struggles. They constitute the structural condensation that produces the “arena” for ongoing struggles. Although he acknowledges the persistence of state structures, the ongoing (class) conflicts also play a constitutive role in the constant reproduction of state-institutional mechanisms and structures. Social interests are thus not only constitutive of political agency but relevant for the reproduction of state structure. Therefore, Poulantzas’ analysis highlights historical changes of (class) forces and political antagonisms. In its focus on historical processes as condensations, it is ultimately agency-focused—with certain limitations that the theorem of the relative autonomy of the state implies. It is, however, important to acknowledge that the foundation for the theorem of the relative autonomy of state apparatuses is directly related to capitalist economic and bourgeois-constitutional legal relations that facilitate the autonomy and permanence of state structures (Poulantzas 2002, 154ff). If these relations are not established, it is precisely the historical perspective that destabilises the core of Poulantzas’ theory of the relative autonomy.

Precarious Relative Autonomy of State Apparatuses A historical perspective on the modern Turkish republic shows that Poulantzas’ “relative autonomy” cannot be fully applied to its state apparatuses. On the one hand, the development of the Turkish state is demarcated by a series of coup d’états led by

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the military. State institutions could therefore never really develop a “relative autonomy” towards the military which remained a constant influencing force. This is evidenced by the existence of the “national security council” (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu) that was first created in 1933 and became a dominant force after the coup on 12th September 1980. In its monthly sessions, this council brought together the president, the minister president, the minister of defence, the foreign minister, and high-ranking military officials, led by the chief of general staff. It was effectively determining the foreign and security policy and also mandated the authoritarian economic liberalisation after the coup. State institutions had to abide by directives ordained by the council. The legitimation for this interference had always been the safeguarding of Kemalist foundations of state doctrines. A change in the constitution instituted by the AKP in 2003 limited the influence of the military in the council as further civil officials were appointed. Yet, the conflict between the religious leader Fetullah Gülen and the AKP, the infiltration of the state apparatuses by Gülen sympathisers (Şık 2014), and the coup of 2016 showcase that the relative loss of power by the military after 2003 did not imply institutional stability. I argue that the coup of 2016 is in fact to be understood as a manifestation of the specific character of the Turkish state apparatuses in which the continuous influence of the military and its instrumental use of state power is sedimented. Turkish state apparatuses are thus not so much to be understood as an arena for the condensation of forces; they have always been strategically open for direct and instrumental usurpation of state power by military cadres. Conflicts in the state apparatuses (or power of them) are regularly openly violent. The last coup and the open repression against all kinds of members of the opposition drastically exemplified this. The questionability of the assumption that we find a relative autonomy in the Poulantzian sense in Turkey is also evidenced by the reform of the constitution in April 2017 with which the AKP took power from the legislative and judicative branches and centralised it in the executive. State interventionism and the concentration of power in the hands of the executive are no new dynamics in the history of modern Turkey, but with the presidential and parliamentary elections on 24th June 2018 and the consequent implementation of the new presidential system of power, both dynamics reach a new level. Poulantzas devised the concept of an “authoritarian etatism” (Kannankulam 2008) in order to analyse the connection of economic and political crises: Thus, the relative distinction between legislative and executive power is becoming less sharp: [. . .] the power to fix norms and enact rules is shifting towards the Executive and the state administration. That legitimacy embodied by parliament which had as its frame of reference a universal rationality is gradually passing over into a legitimacy characterized by the instrumental rationality of efficiency and embodied by the Executive-administration. (Poulantzas 2002, 247)

Further investigations into the specific relation between authoritarian tendencies and economic crisis are necessary to corroborate the thesis that the Poulantzian concept of “authoritarian etatism” is suitable to describe the Turkish situation. Yet there is no doubt that the authoritarian shift after the 1980 coup was connected to the abandonment of a crisis-prone accumulation regime, and the rise to power of the

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AKP is equally linked to prior economic crisis of the year 2001. Poulantzas’ concept thus produces suitable material for closer scrutiny of the structural characteristics and historical genesis of authoritarian statehood (in Turkey). The instrumental character of the modern Turkish state renders it incapable of fulfilling those integrative functions that are necessary for the maintenance of capitalist relations of production. The state is only to a certain degree acting as an “ideal capitalist”.3 A dynamic equalisation of contradictions arising from different leading societal interest groups and capital fractions is hampered by the instrumental use of state apparatuses by one fraction. There is no “material condensation of relations of force” which is the necessary precondition for democratic functions and the reproduction of the capitalist state. That, however, does not imply that there are no condensations, but they are more fragile than in the capitalist core and much more influenced by the specific historical materiality of state institutions which relates to the dominance of the military after the founding of the state in 1923. The competition of antagonist ideologies or capital fractions like the cosmopolitanWestern entrepreneurial organisation TÜSIAD and the Islamic-Anatolian MÜSIAD do influence politics, but they are on a different level of political efficacy than the open struggles around the coup of 2016 or the direct influence that the president wields on the Turkish central bank, resulting in an erratic monetary policy. I want to argue that Poulantzas’ theorem has to be revised partially and adapted to the specific relations of the semi-periphery. I will now present a theoretical framework that advances such a partial revision.

Tilman Evers’ Concept of the Peripheral State Tilman Evers’s form-analytical4 concept of “bourgeois dominance in the third world” (Evers 1977) was inspired by the West German state derivation debate5 of the 1970s (Evers 1977, 53). It can be read as an attempt to derive criteria for the

Engels uses this concept to describe the modern state: “And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine—the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital.” (Engels, Collected Works, 1973, 319) 4 See Flatschart (2021). 5 According to Ingo Elbe, the state derivation debate started with the article “The ‘Welfare-State Illusion’ and the Contradiction between Wage Labour and Capital” by Christel Neusüß and Wolfgang Müller published in 1970. It was the “second influential strand of a new Marx reading in Western Germany (Elbe 2010, 319), which focused on “fundamental structures of modern statehood” (Elbe 2010, 319). It focused on the foundational questions as to why modern statehood exists besides the economy and “which systematic connection exists between capital, class-relations and political democracy and what are the limits of state intervention in the relations of production” (Elbe 2010, 319). 3

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delimitation of peripheral statehood by negatively defining it vis-à-vis the metropolitan state. On the one hand, Evers defines the peripheral state as an entity that is heavily engulfed in “world market-dependent reproduction”. Global-capitalist relations and the concrete place the peripheral state has in them are thus constitutive for dependent statehood: “Capitalist periphery encompasses capitalist societal formations in which Capitalism hasn’t developed originally, but in relation to the predominance of the existing capitalist relations of production in the global metropolis. The laws of Capitalism are the same everywhere; but the historical conditions and manifestations that govern its implementation are different in the core and the periphery” (Evers 1977, 14). Evers emphasises that the constitution of statehood and the conditions of the state’s reproduction under the regime of world market integration is no linear process. The political ruptures of the peripheral nation state result in conflicts and frictions that produce only limited feedback in the global market and on the level of economic totality (Evers 1977, 87). On the other hand, national class struggles are relevant beyond the national political-economic scope; they internationalise just as the production and circulation is increasingly dominated by internationalisation (Evers 1977, 92). Structural heterogeneity is the second feature of peripheral statehood and described by Evers as an “inner form of the state in which its form-principle and historical reality are diverging” (Evers 1977, 96). “The form of universal abstraction is incompatible with the structural heterogeneity of its societal foundations” (Evers 1977, 96), a fact that somewhat paradoxically results in a protrusion of the political form that is at odds with the societal basis: “Just as the form-principle of the sovereign nation state is historically ‘rushing ahead’ of the inner-societal integration of reproductive relations, the edifice of statehood as separate political sphere is disjunct from the degree of universalization of capitalist commodity relation” (Evers 1977, 99). Structural heterogeneity thus implies a dissonance of developed statehood and the underdeveloped6 economy. Such dissonance by tendency privileges strong or authoritarian statehood, because the precarity of the capitalist reproduction circle and its necessary real abstractions (the “universal abstraction” Evers mentions) is compensated by forceful state agency. Structural heterogeneity also implies an economic structure in which national productivity standards are regionally disparate to a degree that significantly impedes economic development. According to Evers, economic crises that lead to forceful and authoritarian answers by state often relate to structural heterogeneity7: “The ideal subsumption of societal relations and the socio-economic [relation] and, concerning bourgeois statehood, of

I do not use the words “developed” and “underdeveloped” the way they have been employed by modernisation theories, which has been rightly criticised by postcolonial perspectives. With reference to materialist state theory, I use it descriptively in order to differentiate between differing manifestations of statehood and productive relations. This is necessary to derive theoretical delimitations relevant for the analysis of global inequalities. 7 This tendency does, however, not imply any automatism or determinism. The connection of crisis governance and authoritarian political systems is not a necessary one with both Evers and the position maintained in this article. 6

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political forms under the form of equivalent exchange hasn’t developed sufficiently” (Evers 1977, 94). This can be applied to the Turkish case. World market-dependent reproduction of the Turkish state had begun before the foundation of modern Turkey, and structural heterogeneity manifests in the structural historical asynchronicity of national development and the associated cultural-religious turmoil.

Application to the Turkish Case The classical critical literature on peripheral statehood addresses states of the Global South and the so-called BRICS states (Gomes et al. 2006). With a few exceptions (Ataç 2012), Turkey usually does not play any role in these discussions. This fact may have to do with the regional focus of critical development studies on such regions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that can be classified as postcolonial (Frank 1975). On the other hand, it must be taken into account that a classification of modern Turkey is difficult, as its history is quite unique—it was never occupied by any Western colonial power; to the contrary, it is based on the Osman empire which boasted a complex concoction of centralised and decentralised power structures. In the eighteenth century and especially after the peace treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774, the downfall of the empire began8 and was connected to a series of military defeats due to technological backwardness (Günay 2012, 61ff). This militarytechnological backwardness was subsequently accompanied by economic dependency (Günay 2012, 43ff), for which the 1838 free trade agreement with Great Britain stands prototypically. European investments, especially in the field of infrastructure, fostered the structural economic dependency of the Osman empire. An example for this is the Baghdad railway that was built with German capital and know-how. This dependent economic development had grave impacts on the modern Turkish state, viz. the specific conditions of transformation of the outdated Osman political formation into a modern political state form. The economic modernisation pressure influenced the institutional architecture and state ideology in a specific way, as it led to the so-called Tanzimat reforms of the military-political edifice (Günay 2012, 61). A central aspect of this reform was the establishment of military and bureaucratic academies for the state elite which were meant to yield the personnel for the aspired modernisation of the Osman empire. The founders of the modern Turkish state were graduates of these academies that sought to restore the empire’s power. The young military elite was, however, not only adhering to “technical” modernisation, but it was also throughout admiring positivism and ideas of the European enlightenment, thus maintaining political and cultural aspects of Westernisation. Originally oriented

8

According to Cengiz Günay, this treaty after the defeat of Osman army against Russia demarcated a new epoch for the empire by ending the Osman dominance of the Black Sea Region and the concurrent cession of the Crimean Peninsula (Günay 2012, 43).

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towards the goal of inhibiting the advancement of (political) dependency, they soon organised to implement radical reforms. The establishment of the influential “committee for unity and progress”9 and the so-called “Young Turks” stood for this development. The state founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was also a member of this group which, however, came to power before the downfall of the empire, when they enforced the reinstatement of the constitution of 1876 against the authoritarian Sultan Abdulhamid in a military coup in 1908. This revolt was pathbreaking for later coups d’état as it was not backed by significant popular support but planned and executed by a small military elite (Günay 2012, 89ff). Contrary to European revolutions, the bourgeoisie did not play any role in the operation. After the First World War and the internal turmoil it brought about (most significantly the Armenian genocide), Atatürk led significant parts of the population in a “liberation war” against the occupying powers. The consequent victory was of chief importance for the national ideology; it led to a mystification of foundation of the republic in 1923 and rigidified the core of the centralist constitution of the Turkish state. I suggest analysing the authoritarian state tradition and the violent nationalism— constitutive moments of Kemalist state ideology—as largely related to exogenous, not endogenous causes. The world market dependency led to the rise of the Young Turks which in turn was foundational for the establishment of the modern republic. The members of the elite for which Atatürk stands saw no other way to prevent dependency than the establishment of a strong state that dogmatically adhered to the elemental concepts of nation, identity, and secularism. Indeed, a looming comprehensive global dependency was prevented by this intervention. On the downside, the republic had ab initio inscribed an authoritarian moment into its state tradition. We thus need to historicise even the twenty-first century authoritarianism in order to understand it. Drawing on Evers’ concept of peripheral statehood, we can see that this authoritarianism is intrinsically connected to a world market-dependent reproduction. As such, the modern Turkish state transformed dependent development into new forms, but it never managed to completely abandon it. An example is the military coup of 1980. Becker comments: “The form of Turkey’s economic dependence has changed, but dependence itself has not been diminished” (Becker 2016, 108).10

While “unity” stood for the union of the various ethnic elements in the empire and was thus related to the old Osman patriotism, “progress” was indicating the positivist, modern orientation of the group (Günay 2012, 91). 10 Becker’s classification of phases of dependency is instructive: “Although Turkey’s economy has grown since the beginning of the neoliberal era, basic features of dependency have persisted or have even been aggravated during these three and a half decades. The 1980s were primarily characterised by a deepening subordinate integration into the international economy through exports. With the renewal of international capital flows into the periphery, Turkey’s model of accumulation turned towards financialisation in the late 1980s. In the first, particularly crisis-ridden phase up to the financial crisis of 2001, financialisation was based particularly on high interest payments of the state to the banking sector. In the second phase, since 2001, rapidly increasing private household indebtedness has been a key feature of financialisation” (Becker 2016, 107). 9

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Structural heterogeneity is the second pillar of peripheral statehood according to Evers, and it is also identifiable in semi-peripheral Turkey. The discrepancy between the real societal and geographical heterogeneity and the homogeneity and abstraction required for a seamless reproduction of capitalist relations is the result of pre-capitalist relicts and a sort of hybridisation they imply: “The form of universal abstraction is non-identical with the structural heterogeneity of its societal basis” (Evers 1977, 96). No necessary tendency towards a dissolution of such heterogeneity exists; in fact the heterogeneity of the economic structure was significantly exacerbated in the times of financialisation and liberalisation after the coup of 1980. The structure of manufacturing has been gradually transformed since the 1980s. While industrial production had been dominated by resource-intensive sectors like agricultural products and food in the 1980s, there has been a change towards ‘low technology industries’ (textile and clothing being the leading example) in the 1980s, and towards medium technology sectors (machinery and automotive) since the mid-1990s. (Becker 2016, 101)

The defining feature of this increase in heterogeneity was the drifting apart of the cosmopolitan western Turkey and the rural Anatolian parts. This development had a historical background. Turkish economy had been based on agriculture for a very long time when after the Second World War, the young republic opened its market in order to industrialise. This led to a modernisation of agricultural production and hence an internal migration into urban agglomerations (Toksöz 2016, 67). In all these efforts, the state played a crucial role in the economy; import substitution industrialisation was the prevailing paradigm. It can thus be argued that structural heterogeneity is directly linked to the state and its economic policy: politics were leading the way; the peripheral state is overdeveloped vis-à-vis the economy and the “generalisation of capitalist commodity relations” as Evers (1977, 99) argued. I would suggest a modification of Evers’ conception of structural heterogeneity in the Turkish case as it is no peripheral but a semi-peripheral state with its unique hybrid position between the global North and South. There is no complete regional absence of commodity relations, but rather a stark developmental discrepancy between the internal metropolitan areas and the internal peripheries. The overdeveloped statehood is directly related to the specific power structure and the interventionist authoritarianism of the state. This specific structural heterogeneity is causally connected with political and cultural aspects that have already been explained as related to the history of coups, insecure governmental regimes, political disparities, and other forms of markedly austere ruptures and crises. This could be framed as a structural heterogeneity of not only the economic but also the political sphere which in turn is directly connected to the hiatus between the cultural hegemony of the homogenising Kemalist nationalist ideology on the one hand and the cultural-ethnic-religious heterogeneity prevalent across Turkey on the other hand. This unique political structural heterogeneity is producing political instability and the frequent ruptures in Turkish politics. An example for this is the case of the political crises of the 1970s with its militant riots, political radicalisation, and economic instability, which led to the military coup of 1980 (Günay 2012, 238ff)

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and the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish society according to IMF directives. It could, however, be argued that the Armenian genocide of 1915 was also linked to this political structural heterogeneity just as the continuing repression of (parts of) the Kurdish population is an outcome of it. The political and economic structural heterogeneities are interlinked, as the example of citizenship demonstrates. The generalisation of capitalist commodity production and exchange requires the institution of abstract citizenship with its formal equality and certain inalienable rights. Only juridically free citizen can be equal trading partners and thus qualify as bourgeois subjects (Paschukanis 1970). The post-Osman political elite installed a vigorous version of citizenship connected to Turkish nationalism that built on a “ius sanguinis”, the idea that ethnic descent alone, and not the place of birth or certain religious beliefs, constitutes the basis for being a Turkish citizen. One central reason for this constitutive role of nationalism in the Turkish state doctrine is the fear of the elites that the heterogenous character of the population (that in itself is principally the product of the different degrees of modernisation) might lead to instabilities and centrifugal power relations. This constitutive form of nationalism that is specifically linked to the state ideology and the strong, “overdeveloped” state remains omnipresent through all political changes. Whether it is secular Kemalists or Islamic fundamentalists, whether the doctrine of world market integration or a sort of (regressive) anti-imperialist narrative is prevalent, and whence there is war and repression or a path of integration of the minorities is chosen—the Turkish state ideology cannot be abandoned as it is a feature of the political structural heterogeneity that defines Turkish society. This is true even for the most recent “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” (Günay 2012, 257) that is the central ideological pillar of the currently dominant AKP and its ultranationalist coalition partners in the MHP.

Conclusion The history of the Turkish state is a history of violence. The state was both an agent of violence and arena for violent struggles. The modern Turkish republic has an extraordinary record of military coup d’états. The centralisation of power, the social importance of the traditionally strong army, and the violence exerted by government, military, and paramilitary against the population—especially the Kurdish and Alevite minorities—have always been features of the Turkish state. These structural features explain the surge of the conservative-Islamist AKP, but also the intense opposition against this opposition—1980 after the coup and 2013 during the Gezi protests. As I have shown, this political turmoil and the brutal state intervention can only be understood when their intimate linkage to the economic crises is unravelled. When we look at the recent developments with the 2017 constitutional reform and the parliamentary and presidential elections of 2018 that further fostered the installation of the new presidential system, we have to acknowledge that the democratic rule of law is significantly weakened as the separation of juridical, legislative, and

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executive branches has been largely demolished in order to concentrate all power in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. What can be done when antagonist social groups cannot condensate their interest in the state, because its apparatuses have been altered to a degree that largely obliterates their role as arenas for such condensations? This question has to be asked with particular consideration of the Turkish case. The Poulantzian (general) model of condensation of forces is insufficient to explain the dynamic of the Turkish state. What is needed is both a form-analytical viewpoint and one that acknowledges the historical specificity of the semi-peripheral statehood in Turkey. This implies analysis of both internal and external dynamics. Social agents and the conjunctures of antagonisms and struggles are crucial for understanding the development of the Turkish state, but it is of vital importance to take the different structural conditions into account. Capitalist metropolises are largely governed by the rule of law and separation of powers and thus establish arenas for social antagonisms that, according to Poulantzas, also institutionally manifest in certain condensations of power. These condensations with all their political implications cannot be taken for granted in peripheral states; in fact they are scarcely found. In semi-peripheral states, it is, as I have tried to show, important to distinguish between characteristics that make possible such condensations and aspects that impede them more or less. Historisation is thus of key importance; the development of specific structural conditions is necessary in order to grasp the political dimension of semi-peripheral statehood. Pace Poulantzas and other interest-oriented materialist approaches, historisation does, however, not imply that we automatically focus on the contingent dimension of political struggles and antagonist groups. These struggles are often taken for granted or even fetishised when in fact the structural conditions for them are not present. In order to grasp these conditions, the relation to the economy and the specific political and cultural conjunctures need to be taken into account, as form analysis does. Such a historisation of the state form could fruitfully relate to aspects of Poulantzas’ theory, as it also acknowledges the relative autonomy and durability of state apparatuses that in fact implies the possibility of only a relative condensation of powers in institutions. We see how this relative autonomy is only relatively existing in the Turkish case; yet we—somewhat paradoxically—still find a “strong state” with an authoritarian tendency that in its core is very stable and enduring (something we usually do not find in peripheral states). A form-analytical approach like that of Tilman Evers thus starts its inquiry with the analysis of the concrete-historical conditions for semi-peripheral and peripheral statehood. This does not imply an abandonment of social antagonisms, but it implies that we need to theoretically focus on the question of the historical constitution of the concrete state and its development of bourgeois-capitalist statehood.11 Poulantzas’ state theory can thus be altered so as to explain the state of the periphery or semiperiphery. With the Turkish case in mind, we arrive at a more general state theory of

11

See Flatschart (2021).

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semi-periphery that I frame as state theory of the deficit. As I have argued, we are not talking about any normative deficiency but should descriptively acknowledge the difference between specific semi-peripheral cases and a structural norm that is preconditioned by capitalist statehood as it historically developed and functionally unfolded in the capitalist metropolis. The modern Turkish republic is specific as it is the result of specific political constellations, namely the disintegration of the Osman empire after a century of military, political, and economic decay that increasingly led to a form of dependency that is structurally rather to be found in colonial relations than in those of a major empire relating to equal global players. In order to stop this development, modern elites installed an authoritarian republican state that was extremely homogenising and dogmatic in its ideological doctrine. Vehement interventions were necessary due to the structural heterogeneity of Turkey that relates to societal, political, economic, and cultural aspects that was at odds with the requirements of the capitalist economic abstraction, which, in turn, had to be represented politically. If we only looked at current social antagonisms, e.g. the one between the Kemalist-Laicism and Islamic conservatism in order to understand the “new Turkey” under Erdoğan, we would be able to uncover certain short-term strategies and conjunctures, but deep contradictions, the agents’ apparent irrationalities, and structural recurrences could not be understood. I want to exemplify this argument with one last example: The radical authoritarian transformation of Turkey under AKP rule, the pivot of which was the constitutional reform, came as a surprise for many foreign analysts as they saw struggles for cultural rights of minorities and the disempowerment of the military unfolding in the early years of AKP rule. It was only the violent repression of the Gezi protests that changed their point of view, demarcating an authoritarian volte-face and disenchantment of hopes. But was this volte-face really a contingent or unexpectable historical development as interestoriented approaches might suggest? I argue that with the specificities of Turkish statehood and form-analytical state theory in mind, we cannot retain such a hopeful and historically contingent picture of the early AKP rule. It was in fact quite expectable that authoritarian crisis regulation would prevail. This specific example helps us to arrive at a more general state theory of the semiperiphery. I have argued that due to global power structures and world market relations, the semi-peripheral state exhibits historical constitutional features that differ significantly from those of the metropolis. Structural heterogeneity and world market-dependent reproduction are key features that demarcate both endogenous and exogenous causal factors. Exogenous factors, however, dominate, as they represent the already globalised and generalised capitalist relations of production and their political form, leading to forms that manifest as structural norms. A state theory of the deficit or a negative delimitation of features of semi-peripheral statehood vis-à-vis the “ideal” modern state of the capitalist metropolis does not imply eurocentrism or reductionist modernist developmental discourses. Notwithstanding, it acknowledges that specific features and problems of semi-peripheral statehood in relation to global hierarchies are neither contingent nor discursively produced but rather grounded in material phenomena. The economic, political, and military

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dominance of the Capitalist metropolis that produces the “structural norm” represents a material objectivity that is the direct result of their political and economic resourcefulness and historically derived global-capitalist dominance. Interest-oriented perspectives overemphasise ruptures and historical contingency. The historical form-analytical approach represents the enduring features of political materiality and the state. This does not imply a strong historical determinism—in the Turkish case, authoritarianism is a structural potential of statehood, but not a necessity. Concrete state-theoretical analysis has to identify the concrete determining factors and their historicity in order to analyse current phenomena; although it is drawing from the abstract conditions, it is not deriving abstract analysis. My contribution in this chapter sought to offer a theoretical perspective for a more detailed form-analytical scrutiny of Turkish statehood and the state of the semiperiphery.

References Ataç, I. (2012). Ökonomische und politische Krisen in der Türkei. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Becker, J. (2016). Financialisation, Industry and Dependency in Turkey. Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, 32(1), The Politics of National Conservatism: 84–113. Vienna: Mandelbaum. Buci-Glucksmann, C. (1981). Gramsci und der Staat. Für eine materialistische Theorie der Philosophie. Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein. Elbe, I. (2010). Marx im Westen. Die neue Marx-Lektüre in der Bundesrepublik seit 1965. Berlin: Akademie. Engels, F. (1973). Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft. Karl Marx/ Friedrich Engels - Werke. 19. Berlin: Dietz. Evers, T. (1977). Bürgerliche Herrschaft in der Dritten Welt. Zur Theorie des Staates in ökonomisch unterentwickelten Gesellschaftsformationen. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Flatschart, E. (2021). Materialist Theory and the State in Peripheral/Post-Colonial Societies. Berlin: Springer Frank, A.G. (1975). Kapitalismus und Unterentwicklung in Lateinamerika. Frankfurt: Argument. Gomes, B.; Maral-Hanak, I., & Schicho, W. (2006). Entwicklungszusammenarbeit. Akteure, Handlungsmuster und Interessen. Vienna: Mandelbaum. Günay, C. (2012). Geschichte der Türkei. Von den Anfängen der Moderne bis heute. Vienna: Böhlau UTB. Kannankulam, J. (2008). Autoritärer Etatismus im Neoliberalismus. Zur Staatstheorie von Nicos Poulantzas. Hamburg: VSA. Lenin, W.I. (1972). Staat und Revolution. Werke, 25. Berlin: Dietz. Paschukanis, E. (1970). Allgemeine Rechtslehre und Marxismus. Versuch einer Kritik der juristischen Grundbegriffe. Frankfurt: Neue Kritik. Poulantzas, N. (2002). Staatstheorie. Hamburg: VSA. Şık, A. (2014). Paralel Yürüdük Biz Bu Yollarda. AKP-Cemaat Ittifaki Nasil Dagildi? Istanbul: Postaci Yayinevi. Toksöz, T. (2016). Transition from ‘Woman’ to ‘Family’. An Analysis of AKP Era Employement Policies from a Gender Perspective. Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, 32(1), 64–83. Tugal, C. (2016). The Fall of The Turkish Model. New York: Verso Book. Wallerstein, I. (2004). World-Systems Analysis: An Introduciton. Durham: Duke University Press.

Materialist State Theory: An Example of Analyzing the State at the Periphery Tobias Boos

Introduction But the most important observation to be made about any concrete analysis of the relations of force is the following: that such analyses cannot and must not be ends in themselves (unless the intention is merely to write a chapter of past history) but acquire significance only if they serve to justify a particular practical activity, or initiative of will. (Gramsci SPN 1971, 185)

Much ink has been spilled in the Marxist tradition to determine the abstract and universal features of the capitalist state. The most emblematic example to this day is the state-derivation debate during the 1970s (for key texts in English, see Holloway and Picciotto 1978). This endeavor still remains a salient example of scientific rigor and precision. But although the debate started as discussion about the political conjuncture in Germany in the late 1960s (Hirsch 2017), as the debate progressed, it increasingly shifted to a level of abstraction that seemed inaccessible to empirical arguments. Defining the structural dimensions of the capitalist state and its material foundation is still an important task for the materialist tradition. This is all the more relevant in an academic context in which theories and concepts that go beyond the empirical surface are largely dismissed. However, we are faced with the challenge of to develop a state theory that not only provides an analysis of universal features of the capitalist state, but also takes into account the historical and geographical specificities of different contexts (see Gerstenberger 1978 for a similar position in the debate). This chapter seeks to address this dilemma that many researchers in the materialist tradition have experienced. Applying materialist state theory in a sense of straightforward operationalization would counter epistemological and ontological premises of its tradition. Therefore, working with materialist state theory remains a

T. Boos (*) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_6

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challenging endeavor. Especially in the classroom, these challenges become apparent. Not only accessibility of the theories but also their use for concrete analysis can be troublesome for students. However, to put it in a positive light, these difficulties remind us of the necessity to translate theories into useful tools for the concrete analysis of social relations. In the following, I will give an example of an empirical study from a materialist perspective. The case studied here is the period of Kirchnerism in Argentina between 2003 and 2015. The chapter does not seek to be a “user manual” to materialist state theory. Instead, I depart from the assumption that the way in which structures, agency, and contingencies come into play depends strongly on context and history. To be clear: Theory and abstraction do not become obsolete, rather are seen as a kind of ‘vanishing points’ that orient the researcher’s perspective within the complexity of society. In part one, I discuss the core elements of the tradition of materialist state that I use in my analysis. Here, I also sketch out particularities of the peripheral state, and how the position within the global system shape what is called the hegemonic capacities of the state. Part two analyzes the hegemony project of Kirchnerism in Argentina for the period 2003–2015. In my analysis, I propose a periodization of the Kirchnerist hegemony project in four subperiods. This periodization is developed by analyzing the social base of the Kirchnerist hegemony project, and how hegemonic capacities were shaped by structural constraints and context. Part three summarizes the findings.

Materialist State Theory It is well known that Karl Marx himself never developed a theory of the state. However, in an unsystematic manner he noted in his critique of The German Ideology: It follows from this that all struggles within the State, the struggle between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the struggle for the franchise, etc., etc., are merely the illusory forms in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought out among one another. (Marx et al. 1998, 52)

The quote already contains the most innovative insights provided by materialist state theory. In contrast to other traditions, historical materialism does not conceive the state as a neutral institutional apparatus, such as the Weberian tradition, but as an expression of the social forces that extend far beyond the state. However, approaches within Marxism differ significantly. Some strands promote a more instrumentalist reading of the capitalist state, stressing the overlapping interests between state and ruling class (Miliband 1969). Others, as Nicos Poulantzas and scholars influenced by his work (see most prominently Jessop 1985, 1990), propose to understand the capitalist state as social relation.

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In his late work State, Power, Socialism, Poulantzas (2000) examines the structural foundations of the capitalist state. In his book, he defines the state with the wellknown formula as “a relationship of forces, or more precisely the material condensation of such a relationship among classes and class fractions, such as this is expressed within the State in a necessarily specific form” (Poulantzas 2000, 128–129). His short definition contains the most salient aspects of a notion of the state as a social relation. First, the state is seen as an expression and important battleground of class struggle. However, that does not mean that the capitalist state represents a neutral terrain. On the contrary, strategic selectivities are inscribed in the structure of the state (Jessop 1990). These selectivities favor some interests over others. In other words, the structure of the capitalist state always remains more accessible for the ruling classes and is more responsive to their interests than to the interests of the subaltern classes. Secondly, due to contradicting interests among different class fractions within the power bloc, the state retains a relative autonomy. This relative autonomy guarantees the organization of the general interest of the ruling classes in the long run, i.e., it assures the continuity the accumulation process and the appropriation of surplus value (Poulantzas 2000, 128–139). Thirdly, while it protects the interest of the ruling classes, the capitalist state simultaneously disorganizes the dominated classes (Poulantzas 2000, 140–145). However, at this point it seems important to delve deeper into the Gramscian notion of domination. Following the line of thinking opened up by Antonio Gramsci, the exertion of power is not conceived as a mere coercion but always includes elements of consent. The state plays a key role in granting concessions to the subordinated classes. The most emblematically example of this is the welfare state during Fordism. However, concessions are not reducible to material concessions but include cultural and ideological forms of integration as well. Gramsci’s notion of commonsense captures this dimension on the most granular level of everyday life (Gramsci 1971, 323–343). To gain hegemony, a group has to universalize its own worldview. This process of universalization and the struggle for hegemony is analyzed by Gramsci (1971, 177–185) in his notes on the Analysis of situation. Relations of forces. Here Gramsci underlines the necessity of analyzing structure and agency together. Gramsci does not understand the relationship between (economic) structure and action in a deterministic manner but explores “[t]he dialectical nexus between the two categories of movement” (Gramsci 1971, 178). Within this dialectic, it is on the level of the relation of political forces where the struggle for hegemony takes place. For Gramsci (1971, 181–182), the moment of hegemony is the moment in which a social group is able to incorporate other groups, to establish cohesion on an intellectual and moral level, and to universalize its own interests. This effort of a social group to generalize its interest is what Bob Jessop (1990, 196–219) calls a “hegemonic project.” Jessop is one of the most prominent Marxist researchers who proposed some intermediate concepts for materialist state analysis. He distinguishes three levels of analysis: (1) accumulation strategy, (2) state forms, and (3) hegemonic projects. The

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first points to the growth model which guarantees the accumulation process. The second focuses on the cohesion and power distribution between different state apparatuses. For this purpose, the third level of hegemonic projects is crucial since it is there where support and the “social basis of the state” is provided (Jessop 1990, 207). Jessop’s distinction proves very helpful as a starting point for concrete analysis. However, as Buckel et al. (2012) argue, Jessop’s term of “hegemonic project” obscures the contested nature of hegemony as it suggests that the analyzed project has already succeeded, e.g., “became state.” They propose the term “hegemony projects” to define a set of tactics and strategies of different political projects around a social problem or in a political field (Buckel et al. 2012, 20–22). In the following, I use “hegemony project” to describe the Kirchnerist governments between 2003 and 2015. The term is better suited to highlight the notion of hegemony as a permanent process rather than a fixed state or condition. Yet, before I analyze Kirchnerism as a hegemony project, it is necessary to outline some important characteristics of the capitalist state in the periphery.

Hegemony and the Peripheral State Capacities Gramsci argues that hegemony implies material concessions to the subalterns. Yet, economies and capitalist states in the periphery have a lot of particularities (Petras 1982; Thwaites Rey 2012). For example, the concept of relative autonomy as structural feature of the capitalist state has been questioned for the Latin American case (Pimmer 2017). Furthermore, the underlying conditions to construct hegemony differ significantly in general (Acanda 2007; Beasley-Murray 2011). The so-called pink tide in Latin America gave rise to new attempts of theorizing the state (overview Boos and Brand 2020). When progressive governments in some Latin American countries came to power and took over the state apparatuses, the Left was again confronted with the question of the state. As a result, the last two decades have witnessed vibrant debates, the rediscovery of previous discussions, and also further developments of materialist state theory (see, e.g., García Linera et al. 2010; Thwaites Rey 2012). These debates owe many of their insights to the fact that they were born out of the necessity to address pressing political issues. This can be seen, for example, in the revival of a Latin American structuralism (Leiva 2008) or dependency theory (Katz 2018). The dependency theory and (neo-)structuralist thinkers (see Kay 1989; Saad Filho 2005) were quick to point out the need for a global perspective. One of the most important representatives of this tradition, Celso Furtado, emphasizes the world system as an important reference point of analysis: [T]here is a gain in the theoretical capacity if the concept of ‘underdeveloped economy’ is replaced by an approach that shows that the so-called underdeveloped economies constitute subsystems, whose behavior is not completely intelligible if we do not use hypotheses that

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relate to the structure and functioning of the global, superordinate system. (Furtado 1973, 317, own translation)

Obviously, cases differ. It is also noteworthy that subordination is not understood in a deterministic manner but, according to Cardoso and Faletto (1979), as a mechanism that introduces external contradictions into the national context which exacerbate already existing class contradictions within the capitalist mode of production. Yet, the subordinated integration into the world economy is a common feature of the peripheral state. This subordination has consequences for the construction of hegemony. As Gramsci argues, material concessions to the subalterns are key to establish hegemony. However, possibilities to grant material concessions heavily depend on the availability of resources to be distributed. As Grigera (2017) has recently shown for the cases of Argentina and Brazil, the state’s capacity to capture and redistribute resources cannot be presumed, but depends to a large extend on the current economic conjuncture. Therefore, if and which rooms of maneuver exist for the ruling classes depends on the context. This is especially true in the periphery, because, in addition, structural constraints play a more important role here. Hence, I would like to go into a little more detail about the latter, i.e., the question of structural constraints and how they relate to the construction of hegemony. From a neo-institutionalist perspective, Oszlak (2014) addresses the question of structural conditions and context. He speaks of “state capacities” to satisfy demands and resolve problems that arise in society. The term “state capacities” is helpful to bring in structural conditions and context. From a Marxist viewpoint, however, there is a rationalist notion of the state which runs through Oszlak’s perspective, since the state is conceptualized as a problem-solving instance. As discussed above, from a Marxist perspective, the state presents itself as condensation of power relations with strategic selectivity. For hegemony theory, the question is not so much how the state solves problems, but how different classes and class factions are able to organize hegemony through the state. Therefore, I tentatively propose the term hegemonic capacities for the following analysis. The term aims to shed light on how structural constraints/potentials and the conjunctural context shape possibilities to construct hegemony through (material) concession. In the Argentinian case, I am especially concerned with three structural constraints of the Argentinian economy: (1) Argentina’s dependence on the exports of primary goods and resources, (2) the dependence on imported consumer goods, (3) the resulting pressure on the current account which leads in difficulties in stabilizing a stock of foreign exchange reserves. The first issue is addressed in current debates on (neo-)extractivism (Gudynas 2009; Svampa 2012; Veltmeyer 2013; Burchardt and Dietz 2014). In these debates, the resource boom during the pink tide governments is interpreted as the material condition of the hegemonic capacities of the respective governments. Soaring world market prices granted the material foundation for their redistribution policies. The second issue, imported consumer goods, receives less attention in the literature about the pink tide governments. Yet already Celso Furtado pointed out

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the implications of consumption patterns for dependent economies. He argued that dependent integration into the world market also leads to the enforcement of consumption patterns from the centers into the periphery (Furtado 1973). One effect is the historical dependence on imported foreign consumption goods (Felix 2015). Nowadays, and as a result of the internationalization of certain forms of consumption and products, this issue becomes even more relevant. There is also a non-negligible symbolic dimension of this form of consumption for important parts of the upper and middle classes. In order to integrate these groups into a hegemony project, governments are forced to guarantee this form of consumption. This in turn leads to the third structural limitation. The import of foreign consumer goods exerts strong pressure on the trade balance and saving capacity in foreign exchange reserves. Furthermore, it limits the government’s economic policy instruments: The devaluation of the national currency makes these imports more expensive and import restrictions are perceived as illegitimate political interference in personal decisions of consumption (Adrian Piva 2016). To bring the different theoretical “vanishing points” together, I analize in the following Kirchnerist hegemony project. As a starting point, I discuss the question of how the relations of force (re-)configure in different periods and analyze how they are condensed in the Kirchnerist project. In this analysis, I pay particular attention to the interaction between context, structural conditions, and the possibilities of creating hegemony, i.e., what I proposed to call hegemonic capacities.

The Kirchnerist Hegemony Project in Argentina1 On 25 May 2003, Néstor Kirchner delineated his vision for the Kirchnerist project in his inaugural speech: “Central to our project is the idea of rebuilding a national capitalism that generates the alternatives to reinstall upward social mobility.” Then, he went on to explain: The internal consumption will be at the center of our strategy of expansion. Precisely to comply with this idea of the permanent expansion of consumption, the purchasing power of our population should grow progressively as a result of wages, the number of working people, and amount of worked hours. (2003, own translation)

Although being a political speech, Néstor Kirchner’s announcement describes the Kirchnerist strategy of the coming year in quite a precise way. The overriding aim of Kirchnerism was to restart capitalist accumulation, while the state assumes a mediating role through active interventions. In the following, I analyze this strategy in detail.

1

Important parts of the empirical analysis are based on Boos 2021.

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2003–2008 Accumulation, Capital, and the Power Bloc During the following years, Kirchnerism took a mediating stance with respect to the different fractions of capital. After turbulent years, capital was in search for stability and projection. Kirchnerism successfully granted these possibilities by opting for a state-driven neo-developmental strategy. On the one hand, the internal market was strengthened through the elevation of consumption capacities. On the other hand, agrarian capital benefited from thriving international commodity prices during these years, while at the same time, Kirchnerism found a favorable context in which the hegemonic capacities of the state expanded. Therefore, Kirchnerism pursued the deepening of this neo-extractivist pillar of its development strategy by further fostering the primary sector. Especially the areas of genetically modified soybeans and large-scale mining projects expanded (Svampa 2012; Brand and Dietz 2014). Not surprisingly, the agrarian sector later became the scene of a decisive confrontation between certain fractions of capital and the government that led to the reshaping of the Kirchnerist hegemony project. While existing production capacities were successfully revitalized, the attempt to establish more (regionally) integrated clusters of small and medium-sized enterprises in order to escape dependent integration into the world market remained rather primordial (Sztulwark 2010). Beyond speculations about the intentions of the Kirchnerist governments, the balance sheet seems rather disillusioning here: Concentration and foreignization of capital grew heavily between 2003 and 2015, and Argentinian capital mostly invested in sectors which are protected naturally because of their geographic location, i.e., natural resources, the construction sector, and certain services (Gaggero et al. 2014). Because of the crisis of 2001 and monetary and financial policies of previous governments, the Kirchnerist government faced several challenges regarding the financial sector. From 1991 onward, the government of Carlos Menem had been using the so-called plan of convertibility to counter hyperinflation. This 1:1-dollar exchange rate with its overvalued peso contributed to the cheapening of imports. The model was financed through foreign capital, which was attracted by high interest rates and the privatization of state companies (Becker 2002). By the end of the 1990s, the international scenario changed and foreign capital refrained from flowing into Argentina. Being extremely dependent on the permanent flow of foreign capital, the established model collapsed and led to state bankruptcy in 2001. The 1:1 convertibility ended. As a consequence, the foreign debt of the state and private debt incremented drastically, as both had been quoted in US dollar during the 1990s. In 2004, the government renegotiated the foreign debt with international creditors and financial institutions by offering a restructuration. Despite the complexity of the negotiations, the government reached an agreement with a majority of the creditors

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(76%) (Musacchio and Becker 2007), which increased to 93% in the following years (2010). Another part of the government’s strategy was to guarantee a competitive and stable exchange rate and low inflation rates to strengthen domestic production. Through sterilization operations in the currency market, the government managed to keep inflation low. At the same time, the peso remained slightly undervalued. This exchange rate had positive effects on import substitution and encouraged domestic consumption. Because of the low peso, exports were relatively cheap and internationally competitive, while domestic production was protected from more expensive imports. In addition, the government pursued an expansive monetary policy through low interest rates. The government’s strategy was successful during the first few years. Until the end of 2006, the government was able to keep inflation low (10.3%). However, from then on, inflation rates began to rise and undermined the exchange rate strategy (2007: 18.3%).2 As Damill and Frenkel (2015) analyze, the government failed to adjust its economic policies, so they increasingly ran counter to each another. From 2005 on, the government decided to continue maintaining a competitive exchange rate instead of prioritizing low inflation rates (Frenkel and Rapetti 2007). The government introduced minor capital flow controls such as a minimum duration for investments (Piva 2015, 55). The latter were in line with the government’s primary objective of stimulating employment and growth through incentives in the domestic market. These priorities must also be interpreted in the light of the upcoming 2007 presidential elections.

Working Class, Labor Movement, and Popular Classes At first glance, the government’s economic strategy was successful with regard to the labor market. Between 2003 and 2008, except the last year, the Argentinean economy grew between 8% and 9% every year. The economic boom allowed Kirchnerism to make numerous concessions to different classes and class fractions. Between 2002 and 2008, unemployment fell from 17.8% to 8% and the wage share rose from 31.3% in 2003 to 40.4% in 2009 (CIFRA/CTA 2015, 21). Informal work decreased, while wages in this informal sector increased at the same time. However, wages in the informal and also in the public sector did not increase to the same extent as wages in the formal and private sector did (Basualdo 2006, 170). The successful reactivation of the labor market enabled the government to forge alliances with the unions. Argentinian trade unions regained importance during these years (for an overview of developments, see Delfini and Ventrici 2016). The government 2

In 2007, the Kirchnerist replaced officials and changed methodologies of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC). Especially inflation rates were affected by these statistical distortions. Several non-governmental organizations started to develop their own estimations, and, from 2015 on, the new government reviewed existing figures. Therefore, macroeconomic data in Argentina for the period 2007–2015 has to be dealt with caution.

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re-institutionalized collective bargaining in important sectors of the economy. However, the (organized) labor movements remained highly fragmented. Against this back drop, Etchemendy and Collier (2007) coined the term “segmented neo-corporatism” to describe the resurgence of the formal labor market with improved conditions, while a high proportion of informal labor relations persisted. While the organized labor movement regained importance, parts of the unemployed movement (piqueteros), which had played a central role during the 1990s and in the crisis years around 2001 (Svampa and Pereyra 2003), were integrated into the Kirchnerist hegemony project. Yet more radical groups, which pushed for more profound social changes, were marginalized by the government (Svampa and Pandolfi 2004). Although parts of the movements and popular classes were marginalized, they also benefited from the economic recovery. In addition to the abovementioned wage increases in the informal sector (although these were lower than those in formal employment), poverty and absolute poverty also declined. This was due to social policies, which had been designed by the previous government. Kirchnerism continued, deepened, or expanded these social programs. However, in contrast to the 1990s, when the programs were administered primarily at the provincial level, the Kirchnerist government centralized the administration of these conditioned cash transfers at the national level. For this reason, and following on from Etchemendy and Collier’s characterization introduced above, Piva (2015, 234 own translation) speaks of a “segmented neo-corporatism plus centralized public welfare (asistencia social).” These aspects are often named as characteristics of the Kirchnerist hegemony project. Less attention has been paid to the prospering Argentinian middle class during those years. By the end of the 1990s, an important part of Argentina's lower middle class had experienced a steep decline and suffered greatly from the 2001 collapse. The debate about the so-called “new poor” showed how these fractions of the Argentinian middle class descended into poverty during the 1990s (Kessler and Virgilio 2010), while other parts of the middle class emerged as winners from the neoliberalization of Argentinian society (Svampa 2001). During the first few years of Kirchnerism, these “losers” of the heyday of neoliberalism in Argentina encountered a real “boom of consumption,” which allowed them not only to recover their former consumption capacities but even to expand them (Wortman 2010). Also, the upper and upper middle classes profited from the economic upswing. For example, the increased sales figures for the shopping malls (INDEC)—primarily frequented by the upper and upper middle classes—are astonishing and testify to the rapid recovery of this sector. In addition to economic recovery, Néstor Kirchner granted the Argentinian middle class an atypical appreciation on the discursive level. Historically, in the Peronist tradition the urban middle class has been represented as a kind of antagonistic counterpart of the popular classes (Adamovsky 2012). This relation under Kirchnerism proved to become more ambiguous, especially at the beginning as Néstor Kirchner tried to incorporate these identities into the Kirchnerist hegemony project. This is one reason that the president gained broad support among

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Argentinian society (Ozarow 2019, 151). However, parts of the middle-class electorate remained reluctant from supporting the Kirchnerist project fullheartedly. Apart from the president, trust in other political institutions was only partially restored (Ozarow 2019, 151–153). To sum up: the period between 2003 and 2008 is often referred to as the phase of transversalidad (transversalism) because of the cross-sectorial alliances on the economic as well as the political level. While the export-oriented agrarian oligarchs profited from the global boom of the commodities, the government used the additional state revenues for concessions to the popular classes and the organized labor movement. This also led to arousing expectations within the trade unions regarding a possible recovery of their political role, which later led to the rupture between the government and parts of the unions (Natalucci 2016). The (urban) middle class profited from the reactivated private sector and was able to recover from the dramatic decline it had experienced in the previous years. This first period of with its “pact of consumption” (Boos 2017) between the Kirchnerist government and the subaltern classes permitted to crank up accumulation dynamics. Furthermore, it seems appropriate to state that the relation of forces within the power bloc was altered. “Productive” capital in the form of the industrial capital as well as export-oriented agrarian capital supplanted financial capital as the dominant fraction (Piva 2011; Lucita 2012). However, important features persisted and especially the underlying macroeconomic structures largely remained the same. On the level of political representation, Néstor Kirchner tried building alliances beyond the Peronist apparatuses. Most emblematic are the so-called Radicales K, (former) party members of the second historical party in Argentina, the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), which supported the government and even brought the former governor Julio Cobos into office as vice-president of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2007. However, this alliance was not meant to remain intact for a long time as we will see in the next section.

2008–2009 The years of the second period are often referred to as years of crisis for Kirchnerism. The government was forced to change its hegemonic strategy. In 2007, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had been elected president. In 2008, the Argentinian economy still grew 4.1%, but contracted in 2009 by 5.9%. The global economic crisis made itself felt in Argentina to the extent that private capital started to flow out of the country. At that time Argentina still did comparatively well, as it had been relatively detached from the international financial markets in the years before. In 2009, expectations of devaluation led to capital flight which grew even stronger in 2010 and 2011. However, more decisive for the starting downturn were internal factors such as the rising inflation and the usage of reserves of the central bank to service public debt (Damill and Frenkel 2015, 15–18). Moreover, in the months between

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March and July 2008, the Kirchnerist hegemony project faced one of its key confrontations, the so-called conflicto con el campo (Countryside Conflict). The conflicto con el campo originated in the government’s attempt to implement flexible export taxes (determined by current world market prices) on agricultural products (Resolución 125/8) (Arceo et al. 2009; Giarracca and Palmisano 2012). The agrarian capital ferociously resisted this attempt to enlarge the state’s share of profits out of the global thirst for natural resources. This class fraction denounced the class compromise for stability forged after 2003 and openly questioned the role of the state as mediator. While they had given up political power in exchange for massive profits, they were unwilling to cease economic power. Both sides mobilized ancient imaginations and narratives about the rural origin of the Argentinian nation: The agrarian oligarchs appealed to slogans as “el campo somos todo” (we are all the countryside) and the image of small-scale farmers working their land. In turn, the government depicted the big landowners as historic oligarchs who regard themselves as masters of the country. Finally, the agrarian capital emerged victorious when the vice-president (the abovementioned Julio Cobos) voted against the Resolution 125/8. This decisive vote also marked the end of transversalism as hegemony project. It is safe to say, that, because of the structural dependency on state revenues from agricultural exports, Argentinian agrarian capital has an economic veto power, which it made use of now (CIFRA/CTA 2015). The government failed in its attempts to divide the agrarian block through material concessions to the small producers. Instead, the fraction of large capital within the agrarian bloc emerged as a winner of this conflict. On the one hand, large agrarian capital hegemonized other fractions within the agrarian bloc such as small and middle entrepreneurs by universalizing its interests. Its interests were represented as the universal interests of the entire sector. On the other hand, this class fraction capitalized the growing discontent of the urban middle class. Although the middle class had profited from the economic upturn during previous years, demands about insecurity or the increasing inflation rates had been ignored by the government during the years before. The conflict granted the opportunity for the urban middle class to punish the government. The conflict also resonated in other sectors of the Argentinian society. Within the Confederación General del Trabajo de la República Argentina (CGT), the national trade union federation, there were internal debates about its own position in relation to the government. Yet, the leading faction remained an important alliance partner of Kirchnerism during this period (Delfini and Ventrici 2016). But within the second trade union federation, the Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina (CTA), the Countryside Conflict led to a deeper divide, which finally expressed itself in the fracture of the CTA in 2010 (Retamozo and Morris 2015). In sum, the second period of the Kirchnerist hegemony project is marked by the Countryside Conflict. The conflict represents a decisive event in the analysis of the political conjuncture of the years 2003–2015. The clash between the government and agrarian capital reconfigured the alliances between the government and various social actors and ended the transversal hegemony project on the economic and political level. In this sense, Kirchnerism’s attempt to expand the state’s hegemonic

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capacities through higher tax revenues failed. The government’s defeat in this conflict was reflected in the results of the 2009 congressional elections, in which Kirchnerism suffered severe losses. However, Kirchnerism was able to go back on the political offensive and (re)founded the hegemony project of Kirchnerism, as the next period will show.

2009–2011 The third period of the Kirchnerist hegemony project dates from 2009 to 2011. Elsewhere I have characterized this period as the foundational moment of Kirchnerism as it exists today (Boos 2021). As we will see, many of the policies, which are emblematic for the Kirchnerist hegemony project, were implemented around this period. These policies laid the foundation for today’s prevailing Kirchnerist narratives and mythologies. The arrival of the global crisis was delayed in Latin America, and the Argentinian economy saw a considerable recovery after 2009. In both 2010 (10.1%) and 2011 (6%) growth rates rose again, as did private consumption. Real wages also grew again. Yet, wage increases continued to follow the pattern of previous years, as the segmentation between private sector and the public and informal deepened (Piva 2018). Nevertheless, relations with the trade unions increasingly deteriorated. Regarding the CGT, the government’s unwillingness to grant same space for the CGT’s political aspirations led to a rupture with the part of the organized labor movement led by Hugo Moyano, which had been a strong ally of the Kirchnerist project up to that point. The strategy envisaged by the government—as Natalucci (2015) argues— had been to concede unions an important role within the distributional conflict between capital and labor but not within the Peronist party itself. Within the CTA, conflicts deepened and led to a split of the organization in 2010. Although the split was not offically institutionalized untiel the separate internal elections in 2014 (Retamozo and Morris 2015), the two organizations emerging from the dispute (CTA de los trabajadores and CTA autónoma) were already operating as two distinct entities during this period. These developments cut down an important ally of Kirchnerism to only one part of the CTA (CTA de los trabajadores), which primarily organizes parts of the lower middle class, such as teachers and state employees (Svampa 2016, 468). These changes were part of a broader reconfiguration of the Kirchnerist hegemony project. It may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but Kirchnerism revived a national-popular imaginary on a discursive level (Svampa 2014) while at the same time relying increasingly on figures from Kirchnerist (youth) organizations that came from the Argentinian middle class. Kirchnerism had learned its lesson from the Countryside Conflict, when the urban middle class had tipped the balance against the government. As a strategic consequence, the government “unleashed the (middle) class struggle” (Rodríguez 2013,

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own translation): On the one hand, it pushed forward policies which were welcomed by the parts of the middle class which considered themselves as “progressives.” Kirchnerism passed the Asignación universal por hijo para protección social (AUH), a universal child benefit; same sex marriage was made possible by law and sexual minority rights were recognized; a new media law was passed; and Aerolineas Argentinas and the national pension funds (AAFJP) were re-nationalized. Furthermore, some symbolic events took place during this period, as for instance, the celebration of the national bicentenary in 2010. The death of Néstor Kirchner in the same year also contributed to the myths surrounding the historical mission of Kirchnerism. All this led to the revival of a historic narrative of radical Peronist youth organizations and their resistance against dictatorship in the 1970s that reverberated especially with students and (leftist) intellectuals (Altamirano 2013). These policies and rhetoric were accompanied by a growing importance of middle-class cadres within the state and the hegemony project of Kirchnerism, which supported the government through a kind of “state militancy” (Rocca Rivarola 2017). Most emblematic is the case of La Cámpora, whose members also increasingly occupied political positions in the state apparatus (Vázquez and Vommaro 2012). For that reason, Svampa (2016) coined Kirchnerism as “middleclass populism.” On the other hand, by pursuing this strategy, Kirchnerism further antagonized other parts of the middle class. An emblematic example is the conflict with the Clarín media group. The Clarín newspaper is one of the three major daily newspapers in the country. The newspaper is an outlet of the Clarín media group. Clarín is the largest media group in the country owning numerous television channels; the group is also active in other sectors of the economy such as the telecommunication sector. Clarín had begun to polemicize against the Kirchner government during the Countryside Conflict. Now both sides started to “arm up” discursively. One reason among others was a dispute over the granting of broadcasting licenses (Kitzberger 2016). Now the media group felt directly attacked by the new media law. Clarín lodged a legal appeal against the law adopted in October 2009. The lawsuit dragged on for 4 years until the Supreme Court rejected the complaint in October 2013. To sum up, in the period 2009–2011 the Kirchnerist government successfully regained the political initiative and reconfigured its hegemony project. The Argentinian economy slightly recovered, and the government delayed the impact of the global economic crisis. However, the government’s success relied heavily on a reconfiguration of the political level. The government not only implemented policies but also linked them to a particular set of narratives that founded the imaginary of the Kirchnerist hegemony project as it exists today. In this sense, it can be argued that after being blocked in its attempt to expand the hegemonic capacities on the economic level, Kirchnerism successfully integrated certain sectors on a cultural and ideologic level through a progressive agenda. The period ended with the landslide victory of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the 2011 elections, when she was reelected with 54.11% of the vote in the first round.

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2012–2015 The last period of Kirchnerism (2012–2015) was marked by signs of disintegration of the political and economic model. Within the Kirchnerist discourse, this period was often labeled as stage of “deepening the model.” From 2013 onward, however, the government fought the symptoms rather than addressing the underlying limitations of the model. During this period, the economy stagnated and even shrunk.3 Private consumption declined, real wages went down, and soaring inflation rates caused severe economic problems. Real wages in the private sector had been increasing since 2003 but started to decline from then on. The minimum wage had reached its climax in 2011 and started to deteriorate shortly afterward in 2012. During these years, large parts of the Argentina population gradually lost some of the economic gains they had experienced in the periods before (for more details, see Boos 2017). After her reelection, Fernández de Kirchner begun to address some issues caused by high inflation rates and the deterioration of exchange rates. The government tried to counter these tendencies by stimulating private consumption through credit programs which incentivized private debt. On a discursive level, there is at the same time a strong presence of the theme of consumption in the speeches of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. From 2013 onward, the president begins to picture consumption as a civil right (Diaz Rosaenz 2017). Besides the government’s efforts, the room of maneuver for Kirchnerism diminished. During this period, the interplay between the three structural constraints of the Argentinian economy became evident, and hegemonic capacities crumbled. By the end of the previous period, Argentina’s current account had turned into a deficit for the first time (Fig. 1). One reason for the increasing deficit was the collapse of global commodity prices in 2013 that affected Argentinian exports. In addition, the rising value of imports negatively affected the Argentinian economy. As mentioned in part one, the consequences of the end of the resource boom for the distribution policies of progressive governments have been discussed extensively. The dependency of peripheral states on raw material exports and thus their dependence on fluctuating world market prices is a classic topic of development studies. In contrast, current debates pay less attention to the progressive governments, to the second structural limitation, i.e., the question of imports, which is why I would like to take a closer look at it in the following. Two factors were crucial regarding the increasing imports. First, Argentina had become an energy importing country in 2011 due to an energy deficit. The energy deficit led not only to a draining of foreign reserves, but also a huge increase in public spending to cover the costs of energy subsidies, which grew enormously. In

With the intervention of the INDEC in 2007, macroeconomic figures became questionable. While the old figures display a growth rate of the GDP of 0.5 for 2014, after the government of Mauricio Macri took office in 2015 numbers were reviewed and show a decline of 2.5 of the Argentinian economy for the same year.

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20000 10000 0 -10000 -20000

change in foreign exchange reserves balance of trade current account

Fig. 1 Argentinian balance of trade, current account, and changes in foreign exchange reserves in US$ million, 2002–2015; Source: INDEC, author’s figure, * provisional data

2003, these subsidies made up 0.08% of the GDP; in 2013, they had increased to 2.59%. Secondly, the import of consumer goods, especially electrical goods and household appliances, had a negative impact on the trade balance. Both led to a draining of foreign exchange reserves of the Argentinian central bank. As a response, the government took respective measures: With the already mentioned credit programs (one example was the Ahora12 program) it tried to boost the consumption of national products. Additionally, the government implemented import restrictions and further regulations for the acquisition of US dollar. The government had already imposed stronger import restrictions in 2009. In 2012, the government changed to a system of import licenses monitored by the secretary of foreign trade. The number of products handled by an automatic license procedure decreased significantly, while the number of products which had to go through a non-automatic procedure increased to over 600 (in 2006, there were only 58) (World Trade Organization 2013, 77). Particularly affected were consumer products of the sections like textiles, household appliances, and electrical goods. Another regulation pointed to the acquisition of foreign currencies. In 2011, the government had introduced the so-called cepo cambiario (exchange rate claw) to stop flight of capital caused by the fear of a possible devaluation of the Argentinian peso (Schorr and Wainer 2017, 165). In 2012, the government tightened the cepo which then started to impact the possibility to acquire US dollars (Porta et al. 2017, 129–130). Furthermore, the government started to tax up to 30% on credit card spending and airline tickets. While these steps were rational from an economic point of view, these policies touched on the “moral economy of the middle class” (Boos 2020). On the one hand, the access to US dollar in Argentina has a high symbolic value for these classes (Bercovich and Rebossio 2013). Rooted in previous experiences of devaluation, especially the Argentinian middle and upper class tries to acquire US dollars for saving. The same is true for the symbolic importance of foreign consumer goods.

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Therefore, the government’s economic measures were seen by the upper and middle class as “politicization of the economy” and illegitimate political intervention into their individual mode of living. The discontent was finally expressed in 2012 and 2013, when urban upper and middle classes mobilized against the government. Mobilizations on 13 September and 8 November 2012 and 18 April 2013 displayed very heterogeneous demands; however, they overlapped in their categorical rejection of the government that was portrayed as corrupt and authoritarian (Gold 2015; Pereyra 2016). In addition to the revolting upper and middle classes, this was generally a moment of further polarization for Argentina. The unions stayed divided during the last few years of Kirchnerism. The economic scenario became increasingly difficult, which was felt in everyday life by a large part of the population through high inflation rates. Various social actors expressed their growing discontent with the government. The CGT called for several general strikes during these last few years. However, in 2015 first rumors surfaced about a possible reunion (finally occurring in August 2016) as it was clear that after the elections in October 2015 a totally reshuffled political scenario was to be expected (Morris and Natalucci 2016). Equally, mobilization and organization of the popular classes enhanced in this period. In this regard, the most important development was the foundation of the Confederación de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular (CTEP) in 2011. Founded as a union that organizes workers of the informal sector and the popular economy, it became one of the most important actors within the resistance against the subsequent government of Mauricio Macri (2015–2019). The same applies to Argentina’s feminist movement, which attracted more visibility in the public from 2015 onward, especially through the niunamenos-mobilizations, the campaign for the legalization of abortion, and the international feminist strike (Gago 2020). Summarizing, the last period of the Kirchnerist hegemony project was shaped by increasing economic problems. These problems were exacerbated by the structural constraints of the Argentinian economy. With regard to the alliances of the Kirchnerism, partners increasingly disengaged from the government and the hegemony project was increasingly reduced to its core cadres. The defeat of the Kirchnerist candidate Daniel Scioli in the 2015 presidential elections was thus the logical consequence of the developments of the preceding years. At the same time, the first traces of the reorganization of the field of social power relations already became visible in these years.

Conclusion In the introduction, I have argued that materialist approaches must take as their starting point the analysis of the concrete social relation of forces. From a Poulantzian perspective, the state is a condensation of these forces but also an arena of (class) struggle. This arena is shaped by the social context and structural conditions. Especially the latter have their particularities in the case of capitalist

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states at the periphery. I have tried to describe this circumstance with the term of hegemonic capacities which shape the economic and political room of maneuver for every hegemony project. Departing from these theoretical insights, I have proposed a periodization of the Kirchnerist hegemony project in four periods. In the course of the project, not only did political allies change decisively, but shrinking hegemonic capacities increasingly shaped Kirchnerism. Especially in the last period, the structural constraints of the Argentinian economy played a decisive role. Both declining international prices for raw materials and negative effects of rising imports caused severe trouble for the Kirchnerist hegemony project. The government’s attempts were met with fierce resistance from oppositional groups, while in the meantime concessions to allies of the hegemony project could not be sustained. Applying materialist state theory for the concrete empirical analysis remains a challenging task. This chapter does not pretend to answer the numerous questions that arise when complex theoretical abstractions are applied to the analysis of concrete social relations. In the preceding pages, however, I have tried to suggest some possible starting points that might prove helpful in deciphering some of the driving forces and structures that shape the complexity of capitalist societies.

References Acanda, J. L. (2007). Traducir a Gramsci. Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Adamovsky, E. (2012). Historia de la clase media argentina: Apogeo y decadencia de una ilusión, 1919-2003. Planeta. Altamirano, C. (2013, September 13). El kirchnerismo es el peronismo de las clases medias [Agencia Paco Urondo]. http://www.agenciapacourondo.com.ar/cultura/el-kirchnerismo-es-elperonismo-de-las-clases-medias Arceo, E. O., Basualdo, E. M., & Arceo, N. (2009). La crisis mundial y el conflicto del agro. Centro Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini; Página/12; Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Basualdo, E. (2006). La reestructuración de la economía argentina durante las últimas décadas de la sustitución de importaciones a la valorización financiera. In E. M. Basualdo & E. O. Arceo (Eds.), Neoliberalismo y sectores dominantes: Tendencias globales y experiencias nacionales (pp. 123–177). CLACSO. Beasley-Murray, J. (2011). Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America. Univ Of Minnesota Press. Becker, J. (2002). Argentina: Anatomía de una crisis. Carta Global Latinomamericana, 3, 1–8. Bercovich, A., & Rebossio, A. (2013). Estoy verde: Dólar, una pasión argentina. Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Argentina. Boos, T. (2017). Pact of Consumption – Kirchnerism and the Argentinian Middle Class. Journal Für Entwicklungspolitik, 33(4), 37–62. https://doi.org/10.20446/JEP-2414-3197-33-4-37 Boos, T. (2020). Rebelión, progresismo y economía moral. Nueva Sociedad, 285 (84–96), 13. Boos, T. (2021). Populismus und Mittelklasse. Die Kirchner-Regierungen zwischen 2003 und 2015 in Argentinien. Bielefeld: transcript. Boos, T., & Brand, U. (2020). State Transformation. In O. Kaltmeier, A. Tittor, D. Hawkins, & E. Rohland (Eds.), The Routledge handbook to the political economy and governance of the Americas (pp. 221–230). Routledge.

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Brand, U., & Dietz, K. (2014). (Neo-)Extraktivismus als Entwicklungsoption? Zu den aktuellen Dynamiken und Widersprüchen rohstoffbasierter Entwicklung in Lateinamerika. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Sonderheft 48 (Entwicklungstheorien), 88–125. https://doi.org/10.5771/ 9783845250298 Buckel, S., Kannankulam, J., Wissel, J., & Georgi, F. (2012). ‘. . .Wenn das Alte stirbt und das Neue nicht zur Welt kommen kann.’ Kräfteverhältnisse in der europäischen Krise. In Forschungsgruppe Staatsprojekt (Ed.), Die EU in der Krise. Zwischen autoritärem Etatismus und europäischem Frühling (pp. 12–48). Westfälisches Dampfboot. Burchardt, H.-J., & Dietz, K. (2014). (Neo-)extractivism – a new challenge for development theory from Latin America. Third World Quarterly, 35(3), 468–486. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01436597.2014.893488 Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1979). Dependency and Development in Latin America (Dependencia Y Desarrollo en América Latina, Engl.). University of California Press. CIFRA/CTA. (2015). Documento de trabajo No 14—La naturaleza política y la trayectoria economica de los gobiernos kirchneristas (Documentos de Trabajo No. 14; Documentos de Trabajo). Centro de Investigación y Foramación de la República Argentina (CIFRA/CTA). Damill, M., & Frenkel, R. (2015). La economía bajo los Kirchner: Una historia de dos lustros. In Carlos Gervasoni & Enrique Peruzzotti (Eds.), ¿Década ganada?: Evaluando el legado del kirchnerismo (pp. 115–164). Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Argentina. Delfini, M., & Ventrici, P. (2016). ¿Qué hay de nuevo en el sindicalismo argentino?: Relaciones laborales y reconfiguración sindical en el kirchnerismo. Trabajo y Sociedad, 27, 23–41. Diaz Rosaenz, M. (2017). Consumidores y Ciudadanía en la Argentina Kirchnerista: ¿Un Nuevo Discurso Presidencial? European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 104, 89–112. https://doi.org/10.18352/erlacs.10222 Etchemendy, S., & Collier, R. B. (2007). Down but Not Out: Union Resurgence and Segmented Neocorporatism in Argentina (2003 2007). Politics & Society, 35(3), 363–401. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0032329207304318 Felix, D. (2015). Interrelations between Consumption, Economic Growth, and Income Distribution in Latin America Since 1800: A Comparative Perspective. In H. Baudet & H. van der Meulen (Eds.), Consumer Behaviour and Economic Growth in the Modern Economy. (pp. 131–178). Routledge. http://www.doc88.com/p-7826953916033.html Frenkel, R., & Rapetti, M. (2007). Argentina’s monetary and exchange rate policies after the convertibility regime collapse (pp. 1–42). Center for Economic and Policy Research, Political Economy Research Institute. http://itf.org.ar/pdf/documentos/36-2007.pdf Furtado, C. (1973). Externe Abhängigkeit und ökonomische Theorie. In D. Senghaas (Ed.), Imperialismus und strukturelle Gewalt: Analysen über abhängige Reproduktion (pp. 316–334). Suhrkamp. Gaggero, A., Schorr, M., & Wainer, A. (2014). Restricción eterna: El poder económico durante el kirchnerismo. Futuro Anterior. Gago, V. (2020). Feminist international: How to change everything. Verso. García Linera, Á., Prada, R., Tapia, L., & Vega Camacho, O. (2010). El estado: Campo de lucha. CLACSO. Gerstenberger, H. (1978). Class Conflict, Competition and State Functions. In J. Holloway & S. Picciotto (Eds.), State and capital: A Marxist debate (pp. 148–159). E. Arnold. Giarracca, N., & Palmisano, T. (2012). Soja-Expansion und Agrarstreik. Anmerkungen zu den Vorkommnissen der Jahre 2008 und 2009. In Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung & Forschungs- und Dokumentationszentrum Chile-Lateinamerika (Eds.), Der Neue Extraktivismus – Eine Debatte über die Grenzen des Rohstoffmodells in Lateinamerika. (pp. 66–81). FDCL-Verlag. http:// www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Ausland/Lateinamerika/Der_Neue_ Extraktivismus_web.pdf Gold, T. (2015). Cacerolazos y legitimidad política en la Argentina reciente. Del “13-S” al “8-A”. In R. Annunziata (Ed.), Pensar las elecciones. (pp. 182–210). CLACSO, Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani.

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Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (8. pr). International Publ. Grigera, J. (2017). Populism in Latin America: Old and new populisms in Argentina and Brazil. International Political Science Review, 28(4), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0192512117701510 Gudynas, E. (2009). Diez tesis urgentes sobre el nuevo extractivismo. Extractivismo, Política y Sociedad, 187–225. Hirsch, J. (2017). Retrospectiva sobre el debate. In A. Bonnet & A. Piva (Eds.), El debate alemán sobre la derivación del Estado (pp. 27–39). Herramienta. http://vientosur.info/spip.php? article12906 Holloway, J., & Picciotto, S. (Eds.). (1978). State and capital: A Marxist debate. E. Arnold. Jessop, B. (1985). Nicos Poulantzas: Marxist Theory and Political Strategy. Macmillan. Jessop, B. (1990). State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place. John Wiley & Sons. Katz, C. (2018). La Teoría de la Dependencia, cincuenta años después. Batalla de Ideas. Kay, C. (1989). Latin American theories of development and underdevelopment (1. publ., reprint). Routledge. Kessler, G., & Virgilio, M. M. D. (2010). Impoverishment of the Middle Class in Argentina: The “New Poor” in Latin America. Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research, 2(2), 200–220. Kitzberger, P. (2016). Media Wars and the New Left: Governability and Media Democratisation in Argentina and Brazil. Journal of Latin American Studies, 48(03), 447–476. https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0022216X15001509 Leiva, F. I. (2008). Latin American Neostructuralism: The Contradictions of Post-Neoliberal Development (NED-New edition). University of Minnesota Press. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.5749/j.cttttg1j Lucita, E. (2012). Diez años del Kirchnerismus. http://www.elecodelospasos.net/article-entrevistaal-economista-eduardo-lucita-diez-a-os-de-Kirchnerismo-113221846.html Marx, K., Engels, F., & Marx, K. (1998). The German ideology: Including Theses on Feuerbach and introduction to the critique of political economy. Prometheus Books. Miliband, R. (1969). The state in capitalist society. Basic Books. Morris, M. B., & Natalucci, A. (2016). La unidad de la CGT en prospectiva (2004-2016). Socio Debate Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 2(4), 33–62. Musacchio, A., & Becker, J. (2007). La crisis argentina: ¿sólo un problema cambiario? In J. Becker (Ed.), El golpe del capital. Las crisis financieras en el Cono Sur y sus salidas (pp. 109–135). Coscoroba. Natalucci, A. (2015). Corporativismo y política: Dilemas del movimiento obrero durante el kirchnerismo. Población & Sociedad, 22(2), 5–25. Natalucci, A. (2016). Las recientes transformaciones en el mundo sindical (2003-2015). Espectros, 1(2), 1–9. Oszlak, O. (2014). Políticas públicas y capacidades estatales. Forjando, 3(5). Ozarow, D. (2019). The Mobilization and Demobilization of Middle-Class Revolt: Comparative Insights from Argentina. Routledge. Pereyra, S. (2016). La estructura social y la movilización: Conflictos políticos y demandas sociales. In G. Kessler (Ed.), La sociedad argentina hoy: Radiografía de una nueva estructura (pp. 233–255). Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Fundación OSDE. Petras, J. (1982). The “Peripheral State”: Continuity and Change in the International Division of Labour. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 12(4), 415–431. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 00472338285390351 Pimmer, S. (2017). Relative Autonomie in Zentrum und Peripherie. In T. Boos, H. Lichtenberger, & A. Puller (Eds.), Mit Poulantzas arbeiten: Um aktuelle Macht- und Herrschaftsverhältnisse zu verstehen (pp. 207–231). VSA.

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Piva, A. (2011). Una aproximación a los cambios en la Forma de Estado en Argentina (2002 2009). Theomai: Estudios Sobre Sociedad, Naturaleza y Desarrollo, 23, 1–23. Piva, A. (2015). Economía y política en la Argentina kirchnerista. Batalla de Ideas. Piva, A. (2016, 7.12). La conformación de una ‘norma deconsumo’ internacionalizada entre las ‘clases medias’. IX Jornadas de Sociología de la UNLP. http://www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/ trab_eventos/ev.8917/ev.8917.pdf. Piva, A. (2018). Política económica y modo de acumulación en la Argentina de la posconvertibilidad. Perfiles Latinoamericanos, 26(52), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.18504/pl2652006-2018 Porta, F., Santarcángelo, J. E., & Schteingart, D. (2017). Un proyecto político con objetivos económicos. Los limtes de la estrategia kirchnerista. In A. R. Pucciarelli & A. G. Castellani (Eds.), Los años del kirchnerismo: La disputa hegemónica tras la crisis del orden neoliberal (1a ed, pp. 99–144). Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Poulantzas, N. (2000). State, power, socialism (S. Hall & P. Camiller, Eds.; New edition). Verso Books. Retamozo, M., & Morris, M. B. (2015). Sindicalismo y política. La Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina en tiempos kirchneristas. Estudios Sociológicos, X XXIII(97), 37–87. Rocca Rivarola, D. (2017). Las militancia kirchnerista. Tres momentos del compromiso activo oficialista (2003 y 2015). In A. R. Pucciarelli & A. G. Castellani (Eds.), Los años del kirchnerismo: La disputa hegemónica tras la crisis del orden neoliberal (1a ed, pp. 319–439). Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Rodríguez, M. (2013, May 1). Diez años luz. El Dipló - Le monde diplomatique Cono Sur, 167. https://www.eldiplo.org/167-kirchnerismo-balance-de-una-decada/diez-anos-luz/ Saad Filho, A. (2005). The Rise and Decline of Latin American Structuralism and Dependency Theory. In J. K. S. & E. S. Reinert (Eds.), The Origins of Development Economics: How Schools of Economic Thought Have Addressed Development (pp. 128–145). London: Zed Books and New Delhi: Tulika Books. https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/2247/ Schorr, M., & Wainer, A. (2017). La economía argentina bajo el kirchnerismo: De la holgura a la restricción externa. Una aproximación estructural. In A. R. Pucciarelli & A. G. Castellani (Eds.), Los años del kirchnerismo: La disputa hegemónica tras la crisis del orden neoliberal (pp. 145–174). Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Svampa, M. (2001). Los que ganaron: La vida en los countries y barrios privados. Editorial Biblos. Svampa, M. (2012). Resource Extractivism and Alternatives: Latin American Perspectives on Development. Journal Für Entwicklungspolitik, 28(3), 43–73. https://doi.org/10.20446/JEP2414-3197-28-3-43 Svampa, M. (2014). Revisiting Argentina 2001–13: From “¡Que se vayan todos!” to the Peronist Decade. In C. Levey, D. Ozarow, & C. Wylde (Eds.), Argentina since the 2001 crisis: Recovering the past, reclaiming the future (pp. 155–173). Palgrave Macmillan. Svampa, M. (2016). Debates latinoamericanos: Indianismo, desarrollo, dependencia y populismo (Primera edición). Edhasa. Svampa, M., & Pandolfi, C. (2004). Las vías de la criminalización de la protesta en Argentina. Observatorio Social de América Latina, 5(14), 285–296. Svampa, M., & Pereyra, S. (2003). Entre la ruta y el barrio: La experiencia de las organizaciones piqueteras. Editorial Biblos. Sztulwark, S. (2010). Políticas e instituciones de apoyo a las pymes en Argentina. In C. A. Ferraro & G. Stumpo (Eds.), Políticas de apoyo a las pymes en América Latina: Entre avances innovadores y desafíos institucionales (pp. 45–96). Naciones Unidas, CEPAL Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe. Thwaites Rey, M. (Ed.). (2012). El Estado en América Latina: Continuidades y rupturas. CLACSO.

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Vázquez, M., & Vommaro, P. (2012). La fuerza de los jóvenes: Aproximaciones a la militancia kirchnerista desde La Cámpora. In A. Natalucci & G. Pérez, (Eds.), Vamos las bandas. Organizaciones y militancia kirchnerista (pp. 149–174). Nueva Trilce. Veltmeyer, H. (2013). The political economy of natural resource extraction: A new model or extractive imperialism? Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue Canadienne d’études Du Développement, 34(1), 79–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2013.764850 World Trade Organization. (2013). TRADE POLICY REVIEW Report by the Secretariat ARGENTINA Revision. https://www.wto.org/spanish/tratop_s/tpr_s/tp377_s.htm Wortman, A. (2010). Las clases medias argentina 1960-2008. In R. Franco, M. Hopenhayn, & A. León (Eds.), Las clases medias en América Latina: Retrospectiva y nuevas tendencias (1. ed, pp. 117–167). CEPAL: Secretaría General Iberoamericana : Siglo Veintiuno Ediciones.

Part IV

Analyzing the State from Constructivist and Critical Realist Perspectives

Abe Shinzō’s Neoliberal Nationalism: A Discourse of Transcendence Richard Bärnthaler

Introduction: Transformation and Preservation This chapter takes its point of departure in a seeming contradiction that has permeated Japan’s recent political discourse—proclamations to restore Japan’s past, while at the same time radically breaking with it.1 As will be shown, this paradox has been built upon two forces: (1) transformation and (2) preservation. The transformative discourse argues that the prevailing global economic conditions demand change—in a hyper-globalised world, Japan needs to adapt to the global “rules of the game”, which dissolve the old order. The preservative discourse, on the contrary, declares that Japan has the right to make its own political decisions, in which foreign actors are not allowed to intervene: Japan as a sovereign nation makes its own history. In this narrative, the nation’s strength builds upon its inimitable historical uniformity and homogeneity. This discursive interplay of forces has co-evolved with two politico-economic developments: 1. Since the late 1980s, Japan has undergone radical changes in its economic policies. After World War Two, it became known for its “post-war miracle”— between 1955 and 1982, its GDP increased 17-fold and Japan became the world’s second largest economy. Its type of capitalism, however, differentiated from the Anglo-Saxon model and drew its heritage from Japan’s pre-war institutional regulations, which were characterised by so-called zaibatsu, family-owned

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I thank Andreas Novy, Hans Pühretmayer, Wolfram Schaffar, Elmar Flatschart, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on drafts of this chapter as well as John Billingsley for proofreading.

R. Bärnthaler (*) Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_7

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conglomerations of companies with interlocking ownership. After World War Two, the United States largely overthrew this system, transforming the zaibatsu clans into stock corporations. This modification, however, left the regulation of Japan’s form of competition largely untouched. The old zaibatsu merged to form keiretsu, based on close collaboration between a house bank, a merchant house, and several production firms (Fuchs 2000). Both zaibatsu and keiretsu were characterised by an institutional structure based on long-term relationships that constrained short-term investments and divestments, speculative corporate acquisitions, and job changes. They shielded firms from global market pressures for short-term performance, encouraged banks to act as creditors rather than shareholders, limited opportunism, provided suppliers with stable markets and assistance from core firms, and allowed sacrifice of short-term profits in the interests of long-term strategies and goals (McGuire and Dow 2008; Rosenbluth and Thies 2010). Since the late 1980s, however, Japan’s political leaders—under US pressure to relax capital controls, lower trade barriers, and reduce anticompetitive regulation—have relinquished its “coordinated capitalism” for a process of neoliberaliation. This “disorganised form of capitalism” (Shibata 2015) is characterised by short-term profit maximisation and trade liberalisation, as well as deregulation of financial and labor markets. These policies have undermined Japan’s traditional consensus-based employment relations and the keiretsu (Shibata 2015). With the bursting of Japan’s asset price bubble in 1991 came a period of economic downturn known as the “lost two decades”—wages decreased, and price levels stagnated. 2. At around the same time, nationalist sentiment emerged from the early 1990s (Williams 2015), gaining ground during the Prime Ministership of Junichiro Koizumi (2001–2006) and further accentuating following Abe Shinzō’s accession in 2006. In this chapter, I seek to make sense of this dialectics of transformation and preservation that found expression through the transformative power of neoliberalism and a concurrent preservationist nationalist sentiment. After outlining my methodological approach, I will provide a précis of my core object of study: a policy speech by Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, who held office in 2006–2007 and 2012–2020. This summary is structured into three parts. The first focuses on Abe’s neoliberal economic policies, the second on his specific construction of national sovereignty and identity, and the third outlines his attempt of conciliating the two. My succeeding analysis follows the same stylistic device: it first analyses the two sides of the discourse, and subsequently its attempt at a synthesis.

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Theoretical and Methodological Considerations This research was conducted in the context of my master’s thesis during a 6-month research exchange in Tokyo in 2016. Although I had extensively read about Japanese culture, its history, as well as historical and contemporary political developments, I did not speak Japanese. Under these circumstances, my data-gathering was necessarily limited to sources that did not require Japanese fluency. To begin with, the Japanese Prime Minister’s Cabinet Public Relations Office offers an online collection of the Prime Minister’s interviews, press statements, and foreign as well as domestic policy speeches, translated into English. After reading through these copious materials, one policy speech by Prime Minister Abe, given in February 2015 to the 189th session of the Diet, took my attention as particularly rich in content (Abe 2015). It addressed a broad variety of aspects concerning Japan’s economy, society, and politics, and became my central object of study. Its analysis comprised three interrelated levels. On a discursive level, as Abe has been one of Japan’s most powerful political actors the speech had particular discursive power and was vested with authority. On a symbolic level, I sought to ask what the variety of acts, statements, and analyses2 addressed in the speech actually stood for. Lastly, on an institutional level, I aimed to make sense of actual changes to and within the institutions addressed in the speech (e.g. schools, kindergartens, companies, banks, military apparatus, economic regulations, political cabinets, constitution, jurisdiction, and media). This triangulation implied a diversification of empirical data beyond the textual speech. The mass, complexity, multiplicity, and messiness of the data gathered around this matter of concern reflected my understanding of the social world as contingent and performed. Such an understanding does not mean neglecting structural elements, but highlights the need to demonstrate how they are actually produced. The widely scattered data were eventually condensed through a Polanyian theroretical lens. In his major work, The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi (2001/1944) discussed the dialectics of change and stability (see also Berman 2010/1988), progress and tradition, as a dialectics of “improvement” (i.e., specific accumulation strategies to increase productivity, profitability, and economic growth) and “habitation” (i.e., a prevalent mode of living characterised by certain traditions, habits, customs, routines, and a sense of belonging).3 He illustrates these concepts as follows. With regard to “improvement”, he notes how the process of enclosure in the eighteenth century triggered substantial improvements: “Enclosed land was worth

2

For example, economic and social policies, security policies, historical remarks, future visions, public invocations, references to traditions, educational policies, commemorations, constitutional changes, foreign policies, and remarks on the restructuring of the governmental administration. 3 In The Great Transformation, the dialectics of improvement and habitation is not as elaborated as the double movement. However, Polanyi’s increasing concern with the “machine age” and his critique of progress that radicalised with the threat of nuclear destruction show his lifelong concern with the dialectics of modern improvement.

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double and treble the unenclosed. Where tillage was maintained, employment did not fall off, and the food supply markedly increased” (Polanyi 2001/1944, 35f). Similarly, in the nineteenth century the “modernisation of legislation”, extending the “freedom of contract” to land, fostered the “owner’s right to improve his land profitably” (Polanyi 2001/1944, 191). But alongside these improvements came “grave dislocation in habitation” (Polanyi 2001/1944, 191), causing “devastation” for “social order” and “ancient law and custom”, thereby disrupting the social fabric of communities (Polanyi 2001/1944, 21, 36f). Polanyi, however, was no antimodernist. He did not axiomatically prefer “habitation” over “improvement”. Acknowledging their respective merits, he favoured modernisation at a moderate pace, as slow change permits the mitigation of destructive effects arising from improvement (Polanyi 2001/1944, 35, 39). As Holmes (2018, 29) observes, “the social value of habitation and improvement are, in Polanyi’s account, simply incommensurable” and decisions, as well as compromises, are thus unavoidable. Rapid and “blind improvements” (Polanyi 2001/1944, 257), on the contrary, cause social ruptures and threaten “habitation”. Hence, Polanyi argues that efforts towards rapid and uncontrolled economic “improvement” lead to planned and unplanned counter-movements for social protection; the whole rationale of The Great Transformation was to understand how fascism could have become a successful habitation-seeking counter-movement: “In order to comprehend German fascism one has to go back to Ricardian England” (Polanyi 2001/1944, 32). While this dialectic between “improvement” and “habitation” characterises modern industrial civilisations (Berman 2010/1988; Cowen and Shenton 1996), and is thus a permanent question in modern history, it never takes a pure form, but is historically and spatially contingent (Novy et al. 2019b). The quest for “habitation” engenders a variety of reactions. My use of this (Western) Polanyian theoretical lens in the context of Japan needs further clarification. This is particularly expedient since nihonjinron, the discourse on “Japaneseness”, has an all-encompassing power of interpretation in Japan’s selfperception. It culminates in the idea that outsiders would simply not be in a position to understand the Japanese way of life. It points to the notion that Japan’s “indigenous” concepts—such as zaibatsu and keiretsu—cannot be explained by Western ideas. In this sense, nihonjinron—an “indigenous” interpretation of Japanese society—may resemble decolonial discourses in Latin America (see Rodas 2021). A noticeable difference, however, is that unlike Latin America, this discourse does not occur at the margins of society, but prevails in well-recognised universities as well as publishing companies, which gives the discourse particular authority. These considerations bring about specific theoretical challenges of how to “translate” these concepts, and whether they can be used to refer to globally observable phenomena. Although in some cases (see Rodas 2021), such a translation may be impossible, I argue that this is not the case with Japan. Despite Japan’s self-perception as radically different from all other nations, especially Western, the United States’ central role in Japan’s post-war reconstruction, as well as Japan’s active pursuit of a modernist development model explicitly oriented towards the West, urges us to “situate contemporary Japan in the broader conjuncture, despite the locally specific ways it has chosen to express this global force” (Harootunian 2019, 329).

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Methodologically, my analysis is based on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which fits well into the Polanyian framework. As Jessop and Sum (2019, 155) recognise, although Polanyi “did not employ the specialized tools of semiotic analysis (originating with Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiology and Charles Peirce’s semiotics and much refined since then for mainstream and critical purposes), he can be regarded as a pre-theoretical critical discourse analyst”. CDA focuses not only on language and how it is used, but on the “linguistic character of social and cultural processes and structures” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 271). Ideologies are not to be understood as “a nebulous realm of ‘ideas’, but as tied to material practices embedded in social institutions” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 261). Thus, my discursive, symbolic, and institutional triangulation follows CDA’s principles to make “connections between social and cultural structures and processes on the one hand, and properties of text on the other” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 277). Furthermore, CDA’s interpretive and explanatory nature moves beyond textual analysis and stresses that “discourses can be interpreted in very different ways” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 278). Different readings have different implications for social action (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 279). The analysis, in other words, must already be understood within a particular theoretical problématique, i.e., in this study, the Polanyian dialectics between “improvement” and “habitation”. Words and concepts, upon which research is based, cannot be considered in isolation; they only exist within a specific theoretical framework. A problématique and its more specific theoretical components are both enabling and constraining, as they influence which aspects of an object of study can or cannot be analysed (Althusser 2011/1965, in Pühretmayer 2017). It gives new meaning to the dialectical discourse under analysis, as it affects the empirical phenomenon’s systems of explanation. It examines how this specific phenomenon (as well as its concepts, terms, and arguments) functions within the theoretical framework. This understanding highlights two important aspects. First, knowledge is not merely a mirror of reality (or of the object of study). Second, theoretical thinking as well as the production of knowledge does not simply depict reality’s conditions and developments, but has a relative autonomy (Althusser 2011/1965 termed this concept theoretical work); thus, its relation to knowledge is not passive (Pühretmayer 2017).

To Take Japan Back, This Is the Only Path Forward This section provides a brief interpretive summary of Abe’s policy speech to the 189th session of the Diet,4 which started with the proclamation that “to take Japan back—this is the only path forward” (Abe 2015). The summary is structured into three parts: (1) Abe’s economic policies in a hyper-globalised world, (2) his specific

4

Subsequent unreferenced quotations in Sect. 3 refer to this speech.

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construction of national sovereignty and identity, and (3) his attempt to reconcile these two.

Transforming Japan in a Hyper-Globalised World Under Abe’s premiership, Japan’s economic approach, commonly referred to as “Abenomics”, was based upon the three “arrows” of monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms. While monetary easing to end deflation follows a Keynesian approach, fiscal stimulus sought not only to boost the economy in the short term, but also to advance Japan’s budget consolidation subsequently through measures such as increases in consumption taxes. The most comprehensive arrow, the structural reforms, embraced neoliberal strategies. Its primary goal was to liberalise the Japanese economy, opening it to global market forces and thereby to enhance corporate competitiveness. Abe made several specific points: • Relentless dedication to finalising free-trade agreements: “We have finally come to see the way forward in the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement [. . .]. On the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), we will also accelerate negotiations [. . .].” • Employment reforms to increase labour flexibility: “Expanded flexitime arrangements will allow employees to opt to work longer hours . . . For highly specialized jobs, I will see that a new work arrangement becomes an option, allowing employees to be evaluated based on performance rather than work hours.” • Cut in corporate tax rates: “We will also reduce the effective corporate tax rate by 2.5%. We will reduce the current rate of nearly 35% to the 20–29% range over the next few years, advancing corporate tax reforms that will bring taxation to levels that compare favourably in international terms.” • Relaxation of requirements for corporations to enter the Japanese market: “We will relax requirements for agricultural production corporations, which will serve to promote diverse participants’ entry into the agricultural sector. Further steps will be taken to eliminate the so-called gentan practice5 [. . .] and ensure that agricultural land is fully utilised. We will advance structural reforms to ensure the agricultural sector is competitive and market responsive. [. . .] The retail gas business will similarly be fully liberalised, thus eliminating all barriers to market entry.” These are not all the proposals, but considering just these, it is not surprising that, in this view, “in the face of an ever-more globalized economy, any company that cannot be internationally competitive cannot hope to survive”. Economic policies take precedence over social ones and subject them to market logics. For example, the implementation and success of social-security policies, as well as the protection of

5

The so-called gentan practice artificially maintained rice prices.

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national interests, are declared to fully depend on economic growth: “The fruits of Abenomics are being tasted to enhance social security as well. [. . .] Guaranteeing Japan’s national interests, we will work to ensure certain growth”. In the same vein, attracting more women into the workforce became part of a growth strategy, rather than a socio-political endeavour: “Women participating actively in society is something that tends to be mentioned in the context of social policy. However, I see it quite differently. I view it as forming the central core of my Growth Policy” (Abe 2013b). Abe established a clear sense of political-economic direction: an unfettered focus on competition and competitiveness to subject Japan’s industry to global market forces. He insisted that Japan’s radical reforms were unavoidable and required not only that “we dramatically reform the existing work system with its uniform working hours”, but also “our social mind-set”. It had to be accepted that the ultimate responsibility “to rebuild [Japan’s] confidence” lies with the individual. Those “who desire it” would be upgraded to permanent employment and young people would be provided with information about working conditions in respective companies to know the individual “opportunities presented by these enterprises”. Such rhetoric is reminiscent of Hayek (1960, 83): “And if the smug pride of the successful is often intolerable and offensive, the belief that success depends wholly on him is probably the pragmatically most effective incentive to successful action”.

Preserving the Nation-State. The Construction of National Sovereignty and Identity While demanding the expansion of global market forces to formerly protected social and economic arenas, Abe constantly emphasised the collective concept of the nation as an instrument of homogeneity, stability, belonging, and protection. He began his speech by stressing that “the Government will continue to take all possible measures to secure the safety of Japanese nationals at home and abroad, including the enhancement of measures at our borders”. Above all, safety and protection had to take priority: “It is first and foremost important that people lead safe and secure lives”. The Prime Minister addressed Japanese citizens as one entity and stressed that they must work together with “a single mind”—as they had in earlier times: After witnessing for himself the world powers of Europe and the United States, where modernization had progressed, Tomomi Iwakura, one of the builders of the foundations of the Meiji State, stated the following: ‘Japan may be a small country, but if the people can work together with a single mind to build up our national strength, it will be by no means impossible to become a nation that participates actively in world affairs’. There is no reason why the Japanese people of today cannot achieve what their predecessors achieved in the Meiji era.

The Meiji era (1868–1912) to which Abe refers is generally accepted as the time of Japan’s transformation from a feudal agrarian system to a modern state. In this era, Japan became a leading world power. While this process was based on Western

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models, a sense of Japanese nationalism was promulgated, based on a subjective impression of ethnic superiority over China and Korea, but also arising from a feeling of inferiority towards the West. Based on this new understanding of the Japanese nation, the pre-war Shōwa period (1926–1945) saw greater Japanese involvement in wars, and extreme nationalism with fascist underpinnings. These developments can be characterised as capitalist and colonial-imperialist. The slogan that led to the third phase of the Asia-Pacific War from 1941 onwards was euphemistic, but imperialist: daitô-a-kyôei-ken, “the Great East Asian prosperity sphere”. The supposed liberation of the Asian People from the Western Powers constituted the moral justification of Japan’s imperial endeavours and formed Japan’s nationalistic consciousness, particularly within the reading population. Abe’s repeated references to these times indicate “a rather sudden resurgence of radical conservativism . . . bordering on recalling the forms of pre-war fascism and a concerted state effort to remove all difference with breathtaking speed by demanding from the general population sacrifice, conformity, and acquiescence” (Harootunian 2019, 329). Such conformity, the “single mind”, was to be understood as the only way that “we, the Japanese people” might achieve “our common goal” and regain the strength and confidence lost after World War II—“to take Japan back—this is the only path forward. These are the words that I have lived by and expended every effort towards achieving over the past two years [. . .] if the Japanese people of the Showa era could do it, then there is no reason why we, the Japanese people of today, cannot do the same.” In line with this exhortation, efforts were made to cast a different light on Japan’s past, as well as to detach the country from its consequences, especially through altering the post-war constitution: “We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.” Abe discursively construed the Japanese nation as a homogeneous and essentialist instrument of solidarity in a climate of global competition, to provide an imaginary of belonging (and identity), protection, solidity, and longevity. Those imaginaries, however, always need to be constructed in relation to something: belonging to and protection from. While the inward gaze is essentialist (the homogeneous Japanese nation), the outward gaze is consistently antagonistic towards non-members: “We will secure fully and resolutely the lives and peaceful livelihood of the Japanese people by developing security legislation that enables seamless responses to any situations.” In September 2015, the parliament decided to bring about Japan’s biggest shift in defence policies since the establishment of the postwar military in 1954, creating the possibility for Japanese troops to fight overseas. This move marked the culmination of various measures seeking the revitalisation of Japan’s military forces. It was preceded by a relaxation of restrictions on arms exports, a 5% increase in military spending for the period 2014–2019 following a decade-long decline in defence expenditures, and efforts to assert the right to collective self-defence (see Charter of the United Nations, Article 51), which would strengthen Japan’s role in its security cooperation with the United States (“The Japan-US Alliance is the linchpin of our diplomacy”). Further examples of Japan’s antagonistic imaginaries are manifold: active ongoing mutual provocations

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between Japan and its neighbouring countries, territorial island disputes, military operations and training with strategic partners, military expansion, deliberate encirclement strategies, and a number of other symbolic acts.6 Domestically, a variety of capillary power processes further produced a social fabric based on a specific form of national identification, e.g. campaigns for stronger national defence; Abe’s request for public schools and universities to raise the national flag and stand to sing the national anthem at ceremonies; the establishment of a national holiday called “Restoration of Sovereignty Day”; financial contributions to ultranationalist kindergartens (moritomo gakuen) in which 3- to 5-year-old children have to memorise the imperial educational edict from 1890, which demands the citizen’s readiness to sacrifice their life for the Japanese nation; and discussions around the revision of the constitution. The very nature of these imaginaries, as well as their strategically media-fuelled presentation, evokes deep emotional attachment.

Abe’s Attempted Synthesis of Hyperglobalisation and National Sovereignty Abe’s mode of reasoning implied no contradiction between a simultaneous unleashing of market forces and the promotion of the nation-state as a safe haven. The reshuffling of Japan’s institutional arrangements to promote neoliberalism— which is supposed to reward and punish each individual fairly for their self-actuated success or failure—was presented merely as an adaptation to an external and inevitable process of hyperglobalisation that lay beyond Japan’s scope of action: “We cannot shirk from reforms that are fixed firmly on an open world”. Re-establishing a strong state offering not only protection and belonging, but also “confidence”, can thus only be achieved through an unswerving focus on economic growth: Now is the time. Through our efforts, Japan can achieve growth once again. We can shine once more on the world’s centre stage. We are regaining our confidence. [. . .] Now then everyone, let us make a new start, right here and now, and turn this budding confidence into full-fledged conviction!

To preserve sovereignty and assure protection means transforming the nation (and thus the individual) into a global competitor. National sovereignty can only be preserved if everyone adapts individually—and thus together—to a hyper-globalised world. As a result, individualism is reduced to individual competition and the

6 For example: Abe’s controversial visit to Yasukuni war shrine in 2013; downplaying of Japan’s role in World War II by rhetorical strokes such as questioning the legitimacy of the post-war trials, stressing public support of Japan’s military activities during wartimes, and denying Japan’s invasion of other countries, as there “are no set academic or international definitions of the word [invasion]. It depends on the point of view of individual countries” (Abe 2013a, in The Korea Foundation 2013).

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imperative to make oneself exploitable or utilisable, whereas nationalism designates a public-collective operation which does not consist of politically responsible citizenship, but is a homogenised part of a larger economic entity. There is no space for deviant behaviour—those who revolt against Abe’s neoliberal policies revolt against Japan as a nation, whose sovereignty depends on the competitive individual. To belong to the Japanese nation means to follow Abe’s unavoidable reforms. His leadership style thus became authoritarian, since it denied the nation as a polity with diverging interests and the political space as a field of power, conflict, and struggle. Abe’s strong leadership claim and authoritarian tendency towards political homogenisation surfaced subtly but frequently in the speech: I continue to bear the heavy responsibilities of the Prime Minister of Japan. ‘Press forward ever more dynamically along this path, under stable political conditions’. This is the message the people of Japan sent me in the recent general election. I will also carry out administrative reform. I will transfer parts of the responsibilities of the Cabinet Secretariat and the Cabinet Office, which have continued to burgeon over the course of past administrations, to other ministries and agencies, and put in place a structure that allows the Government to fully and flexibly leverage the overall coordination capabilities of the Cabinet for carrying out important policy measures. I will consolidate seventeen existing independent administrative agencies into seven agencies. However, my administration’s reforms are not merely about numbers. The purpose of this consolidation is to allow us to push forward strongly with our different reforms, such as the promotion of agricultural policy on the offensive. Knowledge and action as one. These were the words of the scholar Shoin Yoshida, who prized actual practice over all else, and who mentored the young patriots who would later act as the driving force behind the Meiji Restoration. I will follow through on my growth strategy. By carrying out bold regulatory reform, I will boost productivity and raise Japan’s global competitiveness. We will step out into the open world and harness global growth. It is clear what we must do. The fundamental question is, will we take action or will we stay put? What we need here in the Diet is not merely back and forth criticism. No, what we need is action. What we need is to carry out reform. I ask you all to join me in implementing bold reforms, with an eye on Japan’s future.

In a Hayekian spirit, Abe demanded that “some must lead, and the rest must follow” (1960, 45). In such a paradigm, “true political power resides in the ability to make the decision to ‘suspend’ the market in order to save the market” (Mirowski 2013, 85). Thus, like Hayek—whose “own political ‘solution’ ended up resembling Schmitt’s ‘total state’ more than he could bring himself to admit [. . .] effectively advocating an authoritarian reactionary despotism as a replacement for classical liberalism” (Mirowski 2013, 85)—Abe replaced “the Führer” with “the figure of the entrepreneur, the embodiment of the will-to-power for the community, who must be permitted to act without being brought to rational account” (Mirowski 2013, 85). During his administration, Abe often sought to extend his leadership power through influencing mass media and key positions (as in the appointment of Ambassador Ichiro Komatsu as new Director General of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau in 2013, and Katsuto Momii as the new chairman of Japan’s public broadcasting corporation Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai). Other examples included the enactment of the “Official Secrets Act” in 2013, which has the potential to limit freedom of speech, and also

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the choice given to the kisha club (press club) which provides media with governmental information—self-censorship or exclusion from governmental sources. Finally, Abe systematically weakened and undermined Japan’s separation of powers. In the Constitution, legislative power is concentrated in the Diet (which is therefore the sole law-making organ of the state), judicial power in the courts, and executive power in the Cabinet (which consists of the Prime Minister and his ministers, collectively responsible to the Diet). Abe not only violated the separation of powers discursively—for example, his remark during a Diet session in 2016 that he was the “legislative branch head” (Japan Press Weekly 2016)—but also instrumentally, such as by commissioning the Council on Security and Defence Capabilities to develop proposals for a reinterpretation of Japan’s post-war constitution, which constituted a breach of the separation of powers and a usurpation of legislative and judicial power by the executive. This tendency became even more evident with Abe’s demand to change Article 96 of Japan’s post-war constitution to remove hurdles for constitutional changes, which created tensions between the Cabinet and the Courts.

An Authoritarian Transcendence of “Improvement” and “Habitation” In what follows, I seek to analyse the above interpretive summary within a Polanyian framework, proceeding in three steps. First, the discursive force of transformation will be re-described through a regulation theoretical lens, focusing on Japan’s mode of competition as an attempt to expedite “improvement”. Second, the discursive force of preservation will be analysed as a specific construction of nationalism that seeks to provide a sense of “habitation”. Finally, I will argue that Abe offered “a mode of reasoning in which the tension between improvement and habitation could be transcended conceptually, if not in practice” (Holmes 2018, 88). I aim to show that Abe was pursuing a strategy in which “habitation” could be claimed achievable only as or via “improvement”. Although this strategy was (rhetorically) successful at the ballot boxes, it failed to offer social protection from the unleashed market forces. Habitation, as I will argue, thus became an (effective) illusion.

“Improvement”: Neoliberalisation in a Hyper-Globalised World In this section, I seek to demonstrate how “improvement” has been framed and implemented since the 1980s and particularly under Abe’s premiership. In this context, a regulation theoretical (RT) approach is useful to make sense of the transformation of Japan’s form of capitalism before and since the 1980s. RT is

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influenced by institutionalism and analyses capitalist economies as a function of institutional and social systems, focusing on the political role in the regulation of the economy. In Polanyi’s words (2001/1944, 71), “regulation and markets, in effect, grew up together”. In the second half of the twentieth century, Toyotism typified Japan’s model of development. It was characterised by a remarkable stability of institutions. This trend changed drastically at the end of the 1980s, and neoliberalism became Japan’s development model. RT suggests an analysis of such models through their specific modes of regulation, i.e. the unity between diverse structural forms—wage relations, form of competition, monetary restriction, and ecological restriction (Becker 2002). It expresses a certain stability across time and space. The neoliberal mode of regulation essentially arose after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1973 and especially after the rapid revaluation of the yen after the Plaza Agreement in 1985, which led to a long-term banking crisis. Due to the restricted scope of this chapter, I will focus on just one structural aspect of the neoliberal mode of regulation in the Japanese context: its form of competition. The form of competition essentially represents a horizontal conflict among capitals (“Einzelkapitale”), which consequently translates into a conflict between workers (Becker 2002). Until the end of the 1980s, the main feature of Japan’s coordination mechanism, distinguishing it from a “pure” market mechanism, was a kind of cooperation to improve competitiveness. It constituted a spatio-temporal compromise, which merged internal cooperation (within a keiretsu) with external competition, through practices and institutions such as interlocking shareholdings, executive gatherings (shacho-kai), group-wide projects, performance-levelling through mutual assistance, and intragroup lending and trading. It fostered Japan’s “export miracle” identity between 1955 and the late 1980s while simultaneously offering protection from global market forces. This keiretsu-inherent internal cooperation was also represented in the close relations between house banks and their manufacturers. The traditional practices of the long-term relations between banks and firms, as well as among firms within a keiretsu (based on co-dependency), mitigated the detrimental effects of competition (e.g. through the offset of short-term losses or employment adjustment mechanisms) and provided stability and protection. While conflict between capital and labour is capitalism-inherent, Japan’s particular mode of regulation mitigated and contained it. This became especially apparent in the 1960s when industrial capital’s need for higher flexibility and mobility was accepted by workers and labour unions under the coordination of the two workers’ confederations Sōhyō and Domei, which were politically linked to the left opposition to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party; their trade-off was an increase in employment security (e.g. lifelong employment), the extension of opportunities for (in-house) advanced training, and social protection (Fuchs 2000). This compromise was achieved through a series of walkouts, which subsequently became institutionalised into annual collective bargaining known as shunto (spring struggles), which strengthened labour unions and their bargaining power (Fuchs 2000).

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The neoliberalisation of Japan’s economic system changed the conflict situation on multiple levels and largely destroyed labour’s hard-won successes. Financialisation has significantly weakened the traditional stable ties between banks and firms. This has led to new economic practices and institutions, resulting in substantial rises in non-bank financing and foreign investment,7 increased influence of new financial stakeholders pressing for shareholder value maximisation, and higher financial pressures on banks leading to a reluctance to working with troubled firms (McGuire and Dow 2008). The undermining of the previous main-bank system kicked off higher competition not only among financial institutions, but also among firms concerning the provision of external capital. Companies unable to keep pace with their competitors’ (short-term) profit rates could not access cheap external capital. This situation directly affected workers: the perpetual necessity to increase productivity has become an all-encompassing imperative, and, as Abe declared (2015), those who cannot keep pace “cannot hope to survive” (at least economically). This tendency is accompanied by worrying trends of karōshi (death through overwork) and karō jisatsu (fatigue-induced suicide).

“Habitation”: The Construction of Nationalism Japan’s institutional fabric (e.g. keiretsu, union activities, far-reaching social-security policies), which offered protection from global market forces, has been steadily dismantled since the 1980s, particularly under Abe’s leadership. The pre-1980 period was characterised by an explicit compromise between the incommensurable values of “improvement” and “habitation”—shunto was one of many examples. The neoliberal mode of regulation eroded this relationship of forces by gradually demolishing those institutions that customarily limited the expansion of market forces. Moreover, neoliberalism also transformed the understanding of individualism. Both Polanyi and Keynes appreciated the aspect of non-conformism that traditionally accompanies individualism. However, the neoliberal concept of negative freedom—freedom from state coercion—only encourages non-conformity towards a certain kind of authority—that which is claimed to limit individual market freedom and is embodied in institutions such as taxes and social welfare. Insurrection against a specific form of authority does not equate to a rejection of the state per se—the neoliberal perception of freedom only revolts against certain kinds of state practices and institutions, namely those that are not in line with its market dogmatism.8 The

7

Companies with higher rates of foreign-owned shares are more likely to dismiss unproductive workers and annul existent relations with suppliers (McGuire and Dow 2008). 8 Along these lines, I consider the state a form rather than an independent entity (Demirović 2017). Understanding the state as a capitalist relation suggests that the rise of a specific form of capitalism, namely neoliberalism, changed the form of the state rather than straightforwardly rejecting it, and brought about new relationships of forces. Demirović (2017) argues that, as a result, new techniques are developed that can be understood as governance of the uncertainties of the market or authority through contingency.

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sanctity of market principles brings about a tendency to identify restrictions on freedom—which is, in fact, often restricted by the neoliberal paradigm itself (particularly by its tendencies of financialisation and commodification)—in other spheres such as immigration and in other countries. While the traditional institutionalised forms of social protection and belonging no longer operate in such an environment, the quest for habitation has not vanished. In an increasingly individualised world, when one’s workplace and traditional form of life is endangered by global market forces, the quest for belonging and protection becomes even stronger. But when the traditional institutions no longer function, “habitation” needs to be sought elsewhere. It is here that we see how regulatory actions of the state “dock” with specific rationalities of populations and enter into relation with them (Adolphs 2015). In a desperate search for habitation, “the compulsive quest for certainty takes off, the desperate search for solutions able to eliminate the awareness of doubt begins—anything is welcome that promises to assume the responsibility for certainty’” (Bauman 2000, 21). Abe’s discursive construction of the (essentialist and antagonistic) nation-state as promising protection and belonging can thus be considered a specific strategy of state authority—a strategy that Anderson (2006/1983, 159) termed “official nationalism”. It is “official” since it is “emanating from the state, and serving the interests of the state first and foremost” (Anderson 2006/1983, 159). Such mystifications are co-produced with various concrete political practices aimed at holding together and shaping a particular imagined community that is inextricably linked with forms of identification. It is worth remarking some of these discursive and instrumental practices that demand envisaging the ways the present preserves a past while invariably de-historicising the past “in such a way as to ensure its identity with the present” (Harootunian 2019, 333): • A political emphasis on regaining the national pride, strength, loyalty, and confidence of Japan’s past • An ongoing rhetorical reference to the Meiji and Shōwa era • A neglect of specific historical periods, e.g. the 250-year Tokugawa period, which do not fit into a suitable historic construct at least partly because they were not characterised by a particular sense of national pride (Kwak and Matsuda 2014) • The active departure of the post-war regime • A revisionist view of history, which, among other measures, finds expression in the alteration of history textbooks and the perpetual enshrinement of Japan’s World War II soldiers • Other media-fuelled spectacles (as mentioned in Sect. 3.2) The display of a particular vision of the world and especially the nation, and the making and breaking of history, plays a powerful role in the creation of imagined communities and the subsequent instrumentalisation of solidarity (Anderson 2006/ 1983). The rejection of flawed liberal, normative-democratic theoretical doctrines that associate civil society with a rational and debating public allows for the conclusion that individual and collective moral reasoning is highly affected by such hegemonic discourses. It shows how concrete forms of discursive and

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instrumental practices express themselves on different levels of societal existence and influence the creation of identity, which is inherently based on distinctive features. This distinction is not necessarily one of “friend” and “enemy”, but always maintains that potential (Mouffe 2005). Since identity would not exist without distinction, what is more important than the insight that these narratives and spectacles have solidified into “us” and “them” categories is the manner in which these categories of identification are shaped and presented. The Japanese nation, “us”, is framed as utterly consistent and uniform, as one essentialist entity with a single mind. This homogeneous national community demarcates itself, and thus forms its own identity, through a promise of protection based on a competition-driven antagonism towards “them”, i.e. non-members. Protection does not mean protection from global market forces and thus foreign investors and companies, but from foreign “political” actors that are said to endanger, threaten, and provoke Japan as a nation, and thereby, due to its essentialist construction, each individual.

Transcending the Struggle Between “Improvement” and “Habitation” While the imagination of the nation-state as a safe haven is constantly discursively reproduced (not least in the media), it fails to offer protection from expanding market forces. On the contrary, the state becomes a central accomplice in neoliberal strategies.9 The political-ideological function of the state becomes subordinated to the state’s economic role, which has the immediate task to shift the prevailing ideology towards technocracy, towards the image of the state as a guarantor of growth (Poulantzas 2014/1978). Hegemonic strategies and ideologies are assimilated in a specific capitalist relation, i.e. a neoliberal form of the state, and manifest themselves in a concept of the nation as a single essentialist economic entity that has to compete in a hyper-globalised world. Following Abe’s reasoning, radical changes arising from hyperglobalisation are unavoidable and the only way to keep abreast of them is economic revitalisation through radical competition. The nation is construed as a definite entity competing in a global environment for “its position in the international growth league tables” (Dore 2000, 3). Japan’s strength is considered entirely dependent on its (market-) economic performance, which becomes an end in itself and, as Aristotle (in Politie) recognised astutely, consequently becomes unlimited in its aspirations. It takes “for granted the essence of purely economic progress, which is to achieve improvement at the price of social dislocation” (Polanyi 2001/1944, 36). Therefore, “habitation”, conceptualised in an economistic-nationalist construal of the nation-state, only reassures “each one that fighting the troubles alone is what all the others do In this regard, Japan fundamentally differs from other “illiberal democracies”, notably Hungary, which explicitly pursue anti-neoliberal policies (Buzogány and Varga 2018).

9

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daily—and so to refresh and boost once more the flagging resolve to go on doing just that” (Bauman 2000, 35). In this sense, the nation-state becomes a legitimation of, rather than a protection from, market capitalism. Abe seemed to pursue a mode of reasoning in which the conflict and incommensurability between “improvement” and “habitation” could be transcended, conflating processes of economic “improvement” and needs for “habitation” into one abstract vision. Abe’s market ideology attempted to impose a single essence on economy and people, to replace a messy and heterogeneous reality with a transcendent and universal economistic worldview. Such reasoning implies that there should be no need for political decisions between “improvement” and “habitation”; the latter could always be achieved via or as the former. It is this path that Abe (2015) presented as the only rational one: “It is clear what we must do. [. . .] What we need here [. . .] is not merely back and forth criticism. No, what we need is action.” Against such reasoning, Polanyi reminds us that both “improvement” and “habitation” have great social values, but that their incommensurability and non-substitutability make political decisions as well as compromises inevitable and open debates on the plurality of these values a precondition. The disregard of this conflict and the subsequent dismissal of open debates shows why Abe’s authoritarian leadership style is necessary; according to Hayek’s (1960) logic of freedom, individual liberty—which, in his reasoning, depends on free choices on the market—is the greatest good.10 Its achievement justifies the jeopardising of democracy. Hayek was by no means a nationalist; plain authority is, in his view, sufficient to establish an environment of individual freedom. Hayek and Abe share an economically liberal, but politically anti-liberal, conviction: “it is conceivable that an authoritarian government may act on liberal principles” (Hayek 1960, 103). In contrast to Hayek, however, Abe’s authoritarianism can be understood as a concrete nationalist strategy, used as an instrument of co-option through an aggregation and assimilation of diverse interests into a supposedly harmonious essence of the (economistic) nation. Individuals are free to make their market choices, but at the same time, democratic institutions such as a political opposition, media, civil society, and the separation of powers are undermined and remodelled. The achievement of such a national goal inevitably requires individual sacrifices for the benefit of an economic unit: the nation. The suppression of debates around diverse imaginaries of the economy and the plural needs for social protection not only enables the fallacious pursuit of “habitation” via “improvement”, but fosters antagonistic politics, which thrive in a radical-competitive hyper-globalised world. Above all, in such a scenario, “habitation”—as protection from market forces—becomes nothing more than an illusion.

10

Abe’s attempt to merge economic individualism with Japanese nationalism was particularly risky since Japan, socio-culturally, attributes high priority to group values. In other words, nationalism itself is traditionally based on collectivist imaginings and therefore radically differs from other forms of nationalism such as that of the United States, which upholds the nation for its individual opportunities. This makes Abe’s balancing act even more precarious.

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Concluding Remarks My study of policy speeches by Abe Shinzō, and particularly my in-depth analysis of his speech to the 189th session of the Diet, revealed a dominant dialectical political discourse in Japan, characterised by two opposing forces: (1) transformation and (2) preservation. It claimed that Japan must adapt to the global “rules of the game”, while retaining its historical identity, uniformity, and consistency as a precondition for national sovereignty. I interpreted this dialectic through the lens of the Polanyian struggle between “improvement” and “habitation”, as follows: 1. Abe’s construction of “improvement” follows a strategy of neoliberal globalisation, which Rodrik (2012) termed “hyperglobalisation”. Hyperglobalisation describes a world economy in which trade can be conducted largely without transaction costs. There are no market-limiting barriers to trade or investment. Hyperglobalisation differs from globalisation through its deep economic integration, which is above all about removing non-tariff trade barriers. Thus, in addition to import quotas, technical standards, preferences in state procurement, and even social and environmental standards are rejected as potentially restricting trade. This goes far beyond the free trade of goods and sets rules for national economies. Hyperglobalisation narrows national decision-making to market-liberal instruments to support markets and property rights. It promotes financialisation and commodification and opens up opportunities for transnational corporations and investors to maximise profits at the expense of national and democratic decisionmaking scope. This strategy has dismantled Japan’s traditional institutional regulations. Until the 1980s, Japan’s post-war era was characterised by political compromises between “habitation” and “improvement”. There was unprecedented growth and capital increased its flexibility, but at the same time institutional structures shielded people and firms from overly fierce market pressure. Since the 1980s, however, and particularly after Abe became Prime Minister, navigation between these incommensurable values has no longer been on the agenda, but a full-fledged conviction to “the alleged self-healing virtues of unconscious growth” (Polanyi 2001/1944, 35) has been pushed forward. Institutions that guaranteed protection from market forces were dismantled, and those forces penetrated new areas of life and work. 2. The quest for habitation, however, does not disappear. On the contrary, in such an atmosphere the need for protection from the ever-expanding market forces becomes even stronger. The response to this quest found its expression in Abe’s “habitation” strategy: a purposive and strategic form of nationalism (“official nationalism”) “docked” with habitation-seeking rationalities, entered into relation with them, and promised a feeling of belonging, sovereignty, protection, tradition, and security in an antagonistic world. “The ‘we’, as Richard Sennett insists, [becomes] ‘an act of self-protection. The desire for community is defensive [. . .] To be sure, it is almost a universal law that ‘we’ can be used as a defence against confusion and dislocation’” (Bauman 2000, 179). Abe’s “official nationalism” was strategic in two ways: On the one hand, it followed the idea that Japan

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can only retain its national sovereignty by developing hyper-competitiveness in global markets; otherwise, it would find itself subordinated to more competitive global players. On the other hand, Abe’s “official nationalism” offered the illusion of making a seemingly hopeless situation—an antagonistic hyperglobalised world—bearable by encouraging “nostalgia for a world in which order supposedly prevailed” (Harootunian 2019, 336). It is a strategy of “sensemaking”, which delivers an imaginary of social location in a nebulous habitat via reducing complexity, moulding identities, giving meaning to the world and in so doing “fram[ing] lived experience, limit[ing] perceived courses of action, and shap[ing] forms of social contestation, alliance-building and domination” (Jessop and Sum 2013, 149). The question emerging from these two opposing forces is whether they can be reconciled, and if so, how such reconciliation might be framed. Rodrik (2012) claims that nations face a trilemma: hyperglobalisation, national sovereignty, and democracy cannot be obtained together; at least one of these must be sacrificed in political decision-making. While the ideas of hyperglobalisation and national sovereignty have been discussed above, (liberal) democracy provides citizens with the opportunity to influence social and economic policy decisions, to regulate markets, and, if necessary, to restrict economic freedom. This trilemma points to the ever-present potential for capitalism to join forces with authoritarianism. Such illiberal political constellations (Polanyi 2001/1944; Adorno and Horkheimer 1947) are rooted in the incompatibility of unregulated market capitalism and democracy. I have sought to demonstrate that Abe was prepared to sacrifice a particular form of democracy: a compromise-oriented form of liberal democracy (Novy et al. 2019a). This sacrifice would find expression in a discourse of transcendence asserting only one rational path to follow: combining hyperglobalisation with a strong nation-state, whereby the state’s strength, and thus the possibility of sovereignty, is said to fully depend on its competitiveness in global markets. This restricts the democratic scope of decisionmaking. The only desired regulations are those that secure the market and property system. As markets are seen to create the best possible economic order, they should be largely free from political interference. This also applies if such interferences were democratically legitimised. In such an understanding, democracy does not include the right to democratic regulation of the economic system, but is reduced to further development of the given market order. Although Abe’s neoliberalism would undermine democratic procedures, it does not preclude scope for political action to create the best possible conditions for markets and competition. The nationstate, under this schema, is being developed into a competition-state, to create the most attractive conditions for international capital. Privatisation, liberalisation, and financialisation should strengthen national competitiveness. This economistic discursive construction of the nation-state fails to offer protection from the expanding market forces, but becomes a central part of the “improvement” strategy. In such a framework “habitation” can only be understood through the rationalities of “improvement”—productivity, efficiency, profitability, and growth.

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It is exactly these “systems of thought that seek to transcend the tension between the desire for improvement and the need for habitation through idealized visions” (Holmes 2018, 39) that Polanyi urged us to uncover, since they fallaciously imply that there should be no need for political decisions between “improvement” and “habitation”; the latter can always be achieved via or as the former. It is here where we find the instrumental necessity of Abe’s authoritarian leadership style— “improvement” is pressed forward through the disregard of society’s plural values, needs, desires, and fears. The imaginary of an economistic antagonistic-competitive nation gains its efficacy through its authoritarian construction, which safeguards “liberal economies through the elimination of a democratic political sphere and the subsequent reorganization of economic life” (Harootunian 2019, 337–338, in reference to Polanyi 1935). At this point, the ideological and instrumental characters of nationalism merge: prevalent individual values can only be preserved through the formation of a competitive market society. In that sense, it is certainly true that Abe’s return to power in 2016 pleased the political class less by his reinstatement of conservative values which never went away and the prospect of a remilitarized Japan that has been on its way for decades, than by the reappearance of a form of fascism, which promises to fortify the nation’s independence through the implementation of the authority of greater moral discipline among the populace and increased military expansion. (Harootunian 2019, 327)

In such a framework, material “habitation” is said to fully depend on the selfactuating, hard-working, and compliant individual, while socio-cultural “habitation” is promised via the quasi-religious blessing of ultranationalism, reinforced through the construction of enemy stereotypes said to threaten Japan; many of these stereotypes are accepted, but one—those who expand the market order—is explicitly excluded. Nationalism becomes a plea for consensus and uniformity towards a community of (economic) interest and emergency. As the nation is treated as one essence, these interests and emergencies are said to be homogeneous. The task of enforcing national competitiveness in a world of hyper-globalised markets takes priority over everything else. Individual sacrifices not only have to be accepted, but are inevitable in stormy weathers and troubled times. In such an economisticnationalist framework, those who cannot keep pace in an environment increasingly typified by competition will be sacrificed first.

References Abe, S. (2013a). Interview with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. https://www.washingtonpost. com/world/transcript-of-interview-with-japanese-prime-minister-shinzo-abe/2013/02/20/e751 8d54-7b1c-11e2-82e8-61a46c2cde3d_story.html?noredirect¼on&utm_term¼.6a9fb6a30d06 Abe, S. (2013b, April 19). Speech on Growth Strategy by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Japan National Press Club. http://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/statement/201304/19speech_e.html Abe, S. (2015, February 12). Policy Speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the 189th Session of the Diet. http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201502/policy.html

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Pühretmayer, H. (2017). Zur materialistischen Wissenschaftstheorie in Nicos Poulantzas’ Gesellschafts- und Staatstheorie. In T. Boos, H. Lichtenberger, & A. Puller (Eds.), Mit Poulantzas arbeiten: ... Um aktuelle Macht- und Herrschaftsverhältnisse zu verstehen. VSA. Rodas, M. M. (2021). Latin America. The Refounding of the State. In M. Fahimi, E. Flatschart, & W. Schaffar (Ed.), State and statehood in the global south. Cham: Springer. Rodrik, D. (2012). The Globalization Paradox. Oxford University Press. Rosenbluth, F. M., & Thies, M. F. (2010). Japan Transformed: Political Change and Economic Restructuring. Princeton University Press. Shibata, S. (2015). Neoliberalization, contestation and Japan’s contradictory dis-accumulation regime. La théorie de la régulation à l’épreuve des crises, Paris. https://www.eiseverywhere. com/retrieveupload.php?c3VibWlzc2lvbl8xMTQzMDJfNzU2MjMyLnBkZiplc2VsZWN0 The Korea Foundation. (2013). Korea Focus—June 2013. 한국국제교류재단. Williams, B. (2015). Militarizing Japan’s Southwest Islands: Subnational Involvement and Insecurities in the Maritime Frontier Zone. Asian Security, 11(2), 136–153.

Resource Frontiers and Indigenous Mobilization in Myanmar: A Critical Realist Approach to Empirical Research in the “Global South” Rainer Einzenberger

Introduction In December 2014, I visited Yangon once again, this time to meet my future colleagues from Vienna University, and show them around the city. Walking around downtown Yangon we soon stumbled upon a makeshift camp made of bamboo poles and plastic sheets at Maha Bandula Park just opposite the Yangon region court and next to the city hall. The banners, written in Burmese language as well as partly in English, along the campsite made it clear that it was a protest camp of villagers “whose lands were taken by force and illegally.” Villagers who had gathered at the camp demanded the return of their land, which they claimed was taken by the Myanmar military (the Tatmadaw). The statements on the banners read for instance, “Our land is our life: compensation is NOT the solution” and “the distinguishing feature of universal poverty is landlessness.” The sight of the camp was highly symbolic, at least in my perception: In recent years following the 2010 general elections and the change in government, from a military dictatorship to a semicivilian government public protest became increasingly visible and widespread in Myanmar (Buschmann 2017; Egreteau 2016; Egreteau and Robinne 2015). Prior to 2010, they happened “once in a blue moon” and were usually put down by the military junta with deadly force (Human Rights Watch 2009; Lintner 1999). In addition, the particular problem raised by the protesters at this campsite was illustrative for the general situation of Myanmar. Land grabs and conflicts over land and resource had become a central political issue (Asian Legal Resource Centre 2012; Buchanan et al. 2013; Scurrah et al. 2015) in times of “transition” or “metamorphosis” as the process of economic and political change was called in the academic literature (Bünte 2016; Egreteau and Robinne 2015). This ongoing transition included at least three different but closely intertwined processes. First, the transition

R. Einzenberger (*) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_8

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from an isolationist post-socialist economy to an open market economy embedded in the circuits of global capitalism. Second, the transition from a military dictatorship ruled by decree to a “disciplined democracy” with a nominal civilian government (at least partially). Third, moving from a state of ongoing civil war and ethnic conflict in several parts of the country to a stable nationwide ceasefire and political dialog (Burma News International 2017). Already before 2014, politics around land and natural resources became an obvious and pressing topic in domestic media (Buchanan et al. 2013; Denmark 2013). Also, international (development) organizations, which increasingly flocked to Myanmar to set up their offices and programs, took up the issue. In 2012 for instance, the secretariat of the Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) was invited to Myanmar by the government, to improve transparency in the countries’ notoriously secretive extractives sector (Bünte 2017). Subsequently, a coalition of local organizations formed around the issue of EITI under the Myanmar Alliance for Transparency and Accountability (MATA n.d.). While an increasing number of civil society organizations and networks began to work on technical issues and launched initial research and advocacy, a more profound critical and contextualized analysis was often absent, yet with some notable exceptions (Jones 2014a, b; Schaffar 2008; Woods 2011). Working for an international development organization in Myanmar I felt the need to further investigate and critically reflect on the “main causal mechanisms” and different “drivers” of land and resource conflicts in Myanmar in the context of contemporary economic and political changes. My interest was further encouraged by a colleague, who had previously worked as a land rights and human rights activist in Cambodia and who observed familiar patterns and parallels. Other analysts as well saw Myanmar at risk “going down the path of Cambodia, where land grabbing is so rife and the political and economic systems so heavily bound up in the statesponsored theft of land that it is too late for the international community to do anything effective to stop it” (Asian Legal Resource Centre 2012). Building on the political economic analysis by Schaffar (2008), Woods (2011), and Jones (2014a, b) who had investigated the central role of the periphery and its resource base in the context of the political transition and formation of the state in Myanmar, I also decided to focus my analysis on a peripheral area of Myanmar. My initial research question was addressing the impact of the transition on Myanmar’s periphery areas, mostly consisting of upland areas in ethnic states, regarding access to land and resources. What kind of land conflicts could be empirically observed and why? Of particular interest were on the one hand the structural changes due to the states’ increasing penetration into its periphery and its implications. On the other hand, I was interested in the agency of (local) social actors on different levels. How did they respond to the states’ expansion and incorporation of the periphery? This chapter gives a brief overview of the methodological approach and methods applied over the course of the empirical research project tentatively titled “Contested Frontiers: Indigenous Mobilization and Control over Land and Natural Resources in Myanmar’s Upland Areas” which lasted from 2015 to 2019 (Einzenberger 2016). It also seeks to describe how a Critical Realist (CR) approach can inform a research

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project, which empirically investigates a state in the “Global South” or more precisely the (changing) center-periphery relationship involving different actors and its material base. The focus lies more on the research process itself and selected methodological questions rather than on the outcome of the research project (see Einzenberger 2018, 2020). While the chapter does not aim to provide a “blueprint” it will show the potential of a CR paradigm and approach for empirical research on “the state” or state relations.

Taking a CR Approach The critical perspective I took in my preliminary analysis of the empirical problem (briefly described in the introduction) suggested a Critical Realist (CR) research paradigm. This approach follows a “middle path” between a strong constructivism and a naïve realism. While still far from becoming a “mainstream” approach (Gorski 2013), in recent years CR has become a more widely accepted metatheory adopted in postgraduate studies in the social sciences (Mark 2017; Schweitzer 2015; Smallwood 2015). Accordingly, rather than following a strong constructivist approach, limited to a “literary method” and focusing on discourses and meanings alone (Yashar 2005, 13), I decided to also consider structural conditions and material transformations along with constructions of subjectivities and identities in the periphery. Referring to the Marxist reading that “men make their own history, but they do not make it. . . under circumstances chosen by themselves” CR postulates that there is a “dynamic relationship between the generative potential inherent in social structures and human agency” (Rees and Gatenby 2014, 147). It is the interplay between structure and agency over time that needs to be considered, neither privileging the individual, nor social institutions and structures (Danermark et al. 2002, 178–182). After comparing different epistemological approaches CR seemed to correspond closest to my own understanding of doing social science which ultimately seeks “the explanation of social phenomena by revealing the causal mechanisms which produce them” (Danermark et al. 2002, 1). CR does not necessarily postulate regular causal powers (let alone mathematical laws on social behaviors) in open social systems, as open social systems are different from closed natural systems (Sayer 2000). Rather what can be uncovered in open social systems are tendencies. According to Danermark et al. “social scientists do not discover new events that nobody knew about before. What is discovered is connections and relations not directly observable, by which we understand and explain already known occurrences” (2002, 91). Methodologically CR is mainly based on modes of inference, whereas the “thought operations” of abduction and retroduction are important tools to draw conclusions from empirical observations (Danermark et al. 2002, 74). In simple terms, abduction re-describes and contextualizes observable events in a more general way. Thus, the re-contextualization can show the studies of social phenomenon

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in a new light, highlighting new relationships between objects, which might add new meaning. For instance, in the case of this particular research, a public street protest concerning a conflict over land ownership can be re-described in the context of an anti-dispossession movement and the production of state space and commodification of land in the periphery. Retroduction seeks to discover “the real underlying structure(s) or mechanism(s) that is (are) responsible for producing an observed reality” (Blaikie 2007, 9). It asks the question what the context must be like (basic prerequisites or preconditions) for the observed social phenomenon to exist. This mode of abstraction tries to isolate the most important conditions from other contingent elements. Danermark et al. (2002) give some examples, including the case of the Holocaust and the question: “what made it possible.” By means of retroduction, renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman could identify a main cause in the structure of rational modern society with its “strategies to control and create perfect order. . .” (Baumann 1989 cited in Danermark et al. 2002, 99). In a similar way, as we will see below, materialist state theory postulates the production of a “spatial matrix” that reshapes existing socio-spatial institutions (Poulantzas 2000). In practice, abduction and retroduction are often done in one thought “movement” by the researcher (O’Mahoney and Vincent 2014). Through abduction and retroduction, it is possible to examine inner connections and structures which are hidden and not obvious in the empirical everyday reality. From a CR perspective, scientific research needs to be guided by theories in an “repeated movement between the concrete and the abstract, and between particular empirical cases and general theory” (Sayer 2000, 23). Unlike other approaches, it does not seek to falsify a working hypothesis or necessarily generate new theory ex post. It rather looks for the “best theory” applicable to explain or analyze the empirical data in an iterative movement. Thereby theoretical pluralism is not only allowed but also helpful in particular at the outset of the research process. However, CR acts more as a “general orientation to research practice,” providing some basic concepts which help create more accurate explanations of (social) phenomena than those which currently exist (O’Mahoney and Vincent 2014, 13–14). It does not, unfortunately, provide readymade concepts (or prescribe the methods) for successful empirical research as will be shown in this chapter.

Initial Literature Review A CR inspired approach to social science starts with a literature review, to “discover the ideas and theories that already existed” in order to identify “the mechanism the researchers might expect to be at play at the research area [. . .] and to identify gaps” (O’Mahoney and Vincent 2014, 13–14). This necessarily involves much theoretical work, which is never finished but improved over time. According to CR knowledge about the “real world” and theories about it are always fallible, but some explanations are better than others (Danermark et al. 2002). In research areas where there is no previous existing research, or little is known about the expected mechanisms

Resource Frontiers and Indigenous Mobilization in Myanmar: A Critical. . . Fig. 1 Levels of realist theorizing as applied in this empirical study (adapted from O’Mahoney and Vincent 2014, 15)

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General Realist Meta-theory Domain Specific Meta-theory World-system theory Historic-geographic materialist theory Materialist state theory Domain Specific Theory Theory of Frontiers (and borderlands) History of Non-State Spaces/Anarchist history of ‘Zomia’

involved, a grounded theory approach may be applicable. However, it is recommended to start with a literature review where possible, to look for already existing scientific theories. The aim is to identify a “best-fit” theory, which might change or develop over the course of the research as more and more data is collected and analyzed. The theories involved may be differentiated according to the relevant ontological levels, range, and related mechanisms they describe. The general critical realist metatheory provides the philosophical “underlabouring” theory. Yet for the empirical research, “domain-specific metatheories” and “domain-specific theories” are needed to guide the research (O’Mahoney and Vincent 2014, 13–14). In the case of this particular research project, some (but not all) of the domain-specific(meta)theories are listed in Fig. 1. A theoretical starting point for my preliminary investigation to land conflicts in Myanmar was David Harvey’s theory of “accumulation by dispossession” (2003) informed by his historic-geographical materialist approach. This theory strongly resonated with the developments I could empirically observe “on the ground” in Myanmar at that time (see introduction). In his work Harvey links the Marxian concept of primitive accumulation (Marx and Engels 1909) and Luxemburg’s theory of imperialism (Luxemburg 1970), showing that “all the features of primitive accumulation that Marx mentions have remained powerfully present within capitalism’s historical geography up until now” (Harvey 2003, 145). This includes “the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations. . .and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources)” (Harvey 2003, 145). Harvey’s emphasis on the “crucial role” of the state led me to investigate the nexus between land—and ultimately “space”—and the state from a theoretical perspective (Brenner et al. 2003). In his materialist state theory

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Poulantzas (2000) examines, among others, the interrelation of the state and “state space” in global capitalism. According to his theory, the state produces a “spatiotemporal matrix” in order to extend the reproduction of capital and the separation of labor and capital (Poulantzas 2000, 116). The state seeks to expand markets, capital, and territory to its frontiers by inscribing its “spatial matrix” in it. However, according to Poulantzas, the state is not a homogenous actor or institution, “it is the specific material condensation of a relationship of forces among classes and class fractions” (Poulantzas 2000, 129). The production of “state space” and its expansion to the frontier is a conflictive political process where different actors compete over access to land and resources. Following Poulantzas’ notion of the state frontier I further investigated different frontier theories as a broader analytical framework to capture the process of the expansion of (capitalist) state space in the periphery. While originating from historical studies (Turner 1893), the frontier concept had been adjusted to “postcolonial” contexts and increasingly used by social sciences in recent years to explain conditions at the “fuzzy edges” of states (Geiger 2009, 195). For instance, Peluso and Lund (2012), following a political ecology approach, understand frontiers as spaces “where authorities, sovereignties, and hegemonies of the recent past have been or are currently being challenged by new enclosures, territorializations and property regimes” (2012, 669). This definition seemed to capture the processes very well which were at play in contemporary Myanmar, in particular in the country’s periphery. It also relates closely to processes of “accumulation by dispossession” while embedding it into a wider analytical framework. Combining frontier theory with world-system theory, Cottyn (2017), regards the land frontier as the most important frontier in the expansion of global capitalism. In her discussion of land frontiers, she proposes a theoretical framework of the frontier, which entails a three-dimensional approach to analyzing frontiers, namely time (phases), space (zone), and agency (negotiation) (Cottyn 2017, 520). The time dimension refers to the different phases of incorporation that is changing with expanding or contracting frontiers. Space refers to the production of space in the frontier zones and the transformation of spatial settings, in particular changing property relations (formalization and fixation). Agency refers to the active role of frontier populations in the shaping and negotiation of center-periphery relations. This framework was also adopted for the present study in order to analyze the contemporary land frontier in Burma/Myanmar. It also considers the interplay between structure and agency as emphasized in Critical Realism. Regarding the historic context of my case study, I initially drew on James Scott (2009) and his thesis on Zomia among others. Scott, looking at the state from an anarchist and regional studies perspective, regarded the uplands of Southeast Asia (including Myanmar) as one of the “largest remaining region of the world whose peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into nation-states” (Scott 2009, ix). Yet Scott saw the late twentieth century as a crucial period which brought major transformations to Zomia in a process he described as “last enclosure” (2009, 4) when nation states tried to extend their territorial sovereignty into the farthest corners of

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their territory. Yet it was not clear if this process was already completed in the uplands of Myanmar or whether it was still ongoing.

Accessing the Field A critical moment in any empirical research is the first entry into the “field” and establishing contacts and trust with research partners (Girtler 2009; Dannecker and Vossemer 2014). This is particularly complex in a politically sensitive context such as Myanmar, where a history of authoritarian rule and conflict makes empirical research particularly challenging (Glasius et al. 2018; Helbardt et al. 2010; Matelski 2014). Establishing first contacts in a country unfamiliar to the researcher can also be challenging and time-consuming. Fortunately, due to my previous work engagement in the country, I had access to an existing network of contacts including former colleagues, local development professionals, as well as civil society organizations. Before developing a research proposal, I discussed my initial ideas with former colleagues and friends in Myanmar. Many of them had studied abroad in academic institutions following the Anglo-American model and shared a similar perspective on current developments in the country. Since many of my contacts originated from Chin State, soon the idea developed to select Chin State as a “case study” for the research project. Previously this region received little academic attention since it was off-limits for “outsiders” after the military coup in 1962 until the ceasefire of 2012 (Chinland Guardian 2013). In addition, very few local and international NGOs had any programs in the area at that time. Thus, I decided to conduct a preliminary “explorative” field visit over several weeks in early 2015, to assess the feasibility of an empirical research in the area. Former colleagues from the region introduced me to the field and helped me to get access to local organizations and community representatives.

Developing a CR Research Design Following the preliminary literature review and explorative field trip, which confirmed the feasibility of an empirical research in principle, I drafted a more comprehensive research design. As mentioned above, a CR approach does not suggest a ready-made design or “one-size-fits-all” approach. The design and approach are rather flexible and adaptive, depending on the context, objectives, and research questions. In general, CR distinguishes between an intensive and extensive research design. For this study, I choose an intensive research design, which focuses on the “discovery of generative mechanisms” (Danermark et al. 2002, 163) or “causal explanations” (Ackroyd and Karlsson 2014, 25). A common approach used in intensive studies is the case study. It allows us to better identify specific mechanisms in the context of reduced complexity. In my empirical research, I considered Chin

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State, a sub-national administrative entity located on the western border of Myanmar as the study “case.” Nevertheless, a “case” does not need to be defined in too narrow terms but can also be understood more broadly (Ackroyd and Karlsson 2014). Rather than being a single case, the case study design in this study was divided into multiple smaller cases. The “case” of Chin State was also not strictly bound to the administrative unit itself. It included individuals, groups, and organizations related to the region who were not necessarily located in the region itself. The case was not defined by spatial relations alone but by actual relations (for instance, networks or organizational structures). This necessitated a multi-sited empirical research covering different geographic locations as well as political and social scales (Barnard and Spencer 2010, 485). Research sites therefore included towns and villages in Chin State (Falam, Hakha, Thantlang, etc.), as well as the town of Kalay in Sagaing Region and the economic center of Yangon. The fieldwork itself lasted for a period of about 6 months in total and was divided into three research phases over 3 years: First, an exploratory phase of about 2 months in spring 2015, in order to confirm the feasibility of the planned research (since there had been little research in those areas prior), to get first impressions, and to establish further research contacts. The second and main empirical research phase in late 2016 lasted over a period of about 3 months and was based on the findings of the exploratory phase and followed a more comprehensive research design. The main purpose was data collection including interviews and participant observations and more (see below). According to the analytical dualism, proposed by CR, which highlights the necessity to “link structure and agency to one another” (Danermark et al. 2002, 182), both structural social dimensions and the level of the individual were taken into account during the field research through different methods. A third field trip was conducted 1 year after the main data collection in the winter of 2017 over 1 month. The intention for this field trip was to follow up on some research questions, which had emerged, from previous interviews and to close some “empirical gaps.” Thereby the previous (interview) data was built upon in an iterative process moving back “from the abstract to the concrete” and re-considering the theoretical concepts and explanations.

Methods of Data Collection According to Danermark et al., “there is no such thing as the method of critical realism” (2002, 73). For researchers guided by CR there are no “cookbook prescriptions” of methods to be used (Sayer 2000, 19). They may include a wide range of different qualitative methods, such as interviews, observation, or ethnography, as well as quantitative methods, such as quantitative surveys and statistics, as long as they help to improve the researcher’s understanding of a certain phenomenon. CR actually does not see a dichotomization of methods in qualitative or quantitative methods—as it is common in other epistemological traditions—as very productive. In essence, there are no limitations and pluralism of methods (or “critical

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methodological pluralism”) is encouraged (Danermark et al. 2002, 2). The point, however, is to find the appropriate method to “connect the inner world of ideas to the outer world of observable events as seamlessly as possible” (Ackroyd and Karlsson 2014, 21). This will depend to a large extent on the ontological and epistemological position of the researcher and does not mean an arbitrary (“anything goes”) approach to the selection of methods. For my empirical research, I decided to apply a mix of methods, including ethnographic methods with other qualitative methods. I was neither following a “classic” political scientist approach (often limited to interviews with experts from the political center) nor did I engage in a lengthy ethnographic study spending months at a time on the “village ground” (see Thiemann 2021). The principal methods applied in this empirical study were qualitative (open) interviews (Dannecker and Vossemer 2014) and observation (Girtler 2009; Slezak 2014). Interview partners were initially selected from a list of preexisting contacts (and contacts collected during the explorative field trip) as well as from public NGO directories and other databases, according to their social functions, field of expertise, and experience. Another important method later on was the snowball sampling whereby interview partners were asked to recommend other possible contacts (Given 2008). This worked particularly well in local contexts where impersonal communication (for instance, via email) oftentimes failed. Sometimes it also led to unexpected and particularly fruitful encounters and invitations. Yet, the uncertainties and surprises, which come along with field research, in particular in authoritarian contexts, remained a major challenge often spoiling research plans and demanding the flexibility to adapt to ever changing situations.

Interviews Interviews form an important part of most empirical research in social science (Dannecker and Vossemer 2014). They are an “indispensable starting point of social inquiry” irrespective of the epistemological position informed by a constructionist, grounded theory approach, or positivist approach (Bhaskar quoted in Smith and Elger 2014, 122). Yet, different approaches vary in their use of different forms of interviews (from highly structured and formalized to open, informal, and narrative interviews) as well as in their interpretations and readings of the interviews. The aim of the interview from a CR perspective is to “appreciate the interpretations of their informants and to analyse the social contexts, constraints, and resources within which those informants act. This entails a non-relativist conception of these social relations and structures, and thus an evaluation of the adequacy of competing accounts. . .” (Smith and Elger 2014, 111). Taking a CR approach to interviewing also suggests a more theory-driven approach whereby an analytical framework guides the interview and the interviewer takes a more active role in steering the situation (Smith and Elger 2014, 119). Theories are developed in this process in a

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rather “cooperative manner” with interviewees and not separated from the data collection and theory generation upon leaving the field. In the context of this case study interviews were conducted with representatives of civil society networks and organizations, local activists, farmers, religious leaders, and government representatives. The interviews were guided by a preliminary theoretical framework (see above), but the questions were “grounded in the lives of the conversational partners” as much as possible (Rubin and Rubin 1995 cited in Dannecker and Vossemer 2014, 154). In many cases, this involved asking the interview partners about their activities relating to subject of interest or inquiring about concrete events and experiences. While the interviews were loosely structured by a guideline, I tried to remain open to unexpected outcomes and perspectives. Also, creating an atmosphere of trust and reciprocity whereby I shared my own understanding or analysis or revealed personal information was important to facilitate a dialogue. The interview partners were ensured anonymity, to protect them from eventual repercussions given the still authoritarian political context. All were informed prior about the purpose and the objective of the research and consent was given verbally. I did not use written forms for acquiring informed consent since it would have created more distrust rather than trust in such a sensitive context (Wilson 2018). I soon learned about the interviewee’s different assessments of the situation and about concrete cases and events relating to land and resource conflicts. It became clear that the interview partners shared a basic analysis that the country’s economic and political transformation had an impact on land relations, land use, and resource governance in the region. Yet it differed from the experiences voiced by the group in the protest camp in downtown Yangon in the country’s political center. While in some cases there were claims of military involvement in land grabs, large-scale cases of “violent dispossession” were the exception in the region. Rather a perception of “legal dispossession” was shared by different actors referring to the legal infrastructure surrounding land, which had been introduced by civilian-military government since 2012 (Oberndorf 2012). As one informant put it: “The Union government does not care about our Chin customary law. In British times, this was practically applied even in the high courts, but this government does not care at all. There is no land which is not occupied by our own people in Chin State. The villages have exact boundaries and they occupy all areas. There is not even a single inch of land not occupied in our Chin customary land use system. But this is not accepted by our government” (Interview with villagers near Mwetaung, November 2016). Apart from insights into the changing structural conditions, what also emerged from the interviews was a discourse of “indigeneity” and “indigenous rights” that related to the perceived encroachment of a “centralized” state (legislation) and business interests. It was often highlighted that local institutions until recently followed “customary rules” which, however, were not accepted by the central state’s legislation. This left many communities with a level of insecurity regarding their “rightful” access to land and resources. The discourse of indigeneity and related constructions of identity and meanings reflected an aspect of agency in the frontier in response to the changing structural conditions as exemplified in the following

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statement: “My personal perspective is that we (Chin people) are an indigenous people, we have our own land since our forefather’s time. We are not a minority; we are indigenous people. I accept myself as indigenous people and we should know or rights and responsibilities that’s why we are concerned about the Indigenous Peoples Rights” (interview with local pastor/environmental activist, Hakha, April 2015).

Ethnographic Methods In comparison to other methods, “interviews do have distinctive weaknesses, largely because of the uncertain relationship between talk and action” (Smith and Elger 2014, 115). Therefore, according to a CR approach interviewing people will be “most valuable when it is conducted and analysed as part of a wider research design, both in terms of iterative interviewing and other research methods” (Smith and Elger 2014, 131). A useful supplement can be ethnographic methods, which provide a means of “gaining insights into causal mechanisms and structures through their effects” (Rees and Gatenby 2014, 17). Ethnographic observations were an important method for the empirical field research particularly during the initial exploratory phase, when entering an unknown field in an environment where also language barriers complicate initial communication. The observations were recorded in field notes together with the reflections on the observations and experiences. The level of “participation” during the observations varied as well as the form of participation. In some cases, it involved very physical active participation, for instance during long transect walks through villages and across hills in order to observe land use practices and village boundaries, while inquiring local farmers and community leaders about their daily lives and (agricultural) practices. It also involved active participation in village meetings when, on some occasions, the usual interview situation was reversed, and I had to answer questions from my research partners. Other “participant” observations involved conferences at the regional and national level, as an observer and participant (speaker) in some cases. In general, participation in events and conferences provided a welcome opportunity to get further perspectives and insights in addition to the interviews. Conferences also provided an opportunity to identify further interview partners. In December 2016, the “Indigenous Farmers Union” organized a particularly interesting conference in Hakha, the capital of Chin State, to which I was invited. It was the first such conference in the region, which focused on “indigenous” issues and “customary land use” on a sub-national level (including delegates from other ethnic states). It explicitly discussed issue of state legislation and its conflicting relationship with local customary land tenure systems. On the one hand, it was a visible manifestation of discourses and statements already voiced during interviews (see quote above). On the other hand, observations during the conference concerning the participant’s attires, some wearing “traditional” ethnic dresses including headdress (for instance, by Karen participants), and group dynamics, provided some hints concerning the self-representation and level of organization among others.

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Social Media and Audio-Visual Data Since access to the field is usually restricted to limited periods of time and few selected locations, also participant observation has its limits. In one particular case, I just missed a significant event that turned out to be one of the biggest public protests concerning land confiscation in Chin State. Luckily, I received a link to a Facebook page of a local news outlet, which had filmed parts of the protest and uploaded the audiovisual material on their Facebook page. Several persons I had previously interviewed also appeared in the video, answering questions from a local journalist about their reasons for staging the public protest in the streets of Hakha. The documentation of the public protest confirmed the accounts I had gathered during interviews. The protest was mainly criticizing the plans of the Chin State government to expand the municipal area surrounding Hakha city. According to the protestors, the expansion area included agricultural “ancestral” land, which they were farming according to customary practices. They were upset that they may lose their land and demanded among others to stop expansion of municipal lands, respect the rights of local farmers, and ancestral lands, recognize shifting cultivation, and punish corrupt officials. A villager interviewed in the video complained: I don’t understand why the government decided to grab village land. Recently, Hakha municipal government came and placed municipal boundary pillars near our village without any consultation. Compared to other villages, our village area is much smaller. Much of the village land was also destroyed by the landslide in 2015. We planned to move our resident areas to safer places as the current village resident areas are unsafe from landslides. But sadly, the government has taken almost all the remaining village land. (Chinland News 2017 [translated transcript of Facebook video])

In another video document obtained available on the Internet, exile communities referring to themselves as Zomi indigenous people protested in Washington D.C. in front of the Chinese Embassy against a mining project bordering Chin State, known as Mwetaung Nickel Smelting Project or Gullu Mual project (Einzenberger 2018, 2020). The project was planned as a joint venture between a Chinese company (North Mining Investment Ltd.) and the Myanmar government. Local and exile communities warned of possible “land grabbing” and exploitation of natural resources in Chin State and called for an immediate stop of the project. In a speech delivered in front of the Chinese embassy in 2013, one speaker said: We are here today as Zomi National Indigenous people from Burma who are oppressed by our government. The reason we are here for today is that the Chinese government and the Burmese government are mining in our land, our indigenous land [. . .] As the indigenous people in Myanmar we have the right to claim according to UNDRIPS [United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples] article 25 and 27. That is why the Gullu Nickel project is our own property and we are here to stop today. Therefore, until the Burmese government gives us the constitutional law that will give us the right to own our land we will stop this project. (World Zomi Congress Channel 2013 [transcript of YouTube video, min. 8:45-11:16])

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Policy Documents and “Gray Literature” The participation in regional and national conferences and workshops also provided an opportunity to collect several documents and “gray literature” such as legal documents, policy documents, NGO (research) reports, and pamphlets. Gray literature provides a particularly important source of information to broaden the scope of research and fill the gaps left by standard academic literature. In general, it is understood as “not produced for commercial publication, not available through standard distribution means, no standard bibliographic controls, not peer-reviewed, ephemeral and historically difficult to find” (Mahood et al. 2014, 222). In the case of the “Indigenous Farmers Union Conference” in addition to legal texts, a new Chin National Land Use Policy in Burmese language was circulated among the participants for discussion. The policy document provided insights into the group’s internal understanding of their local historical context and practice of “customary land tenure.” It also included the draft of a “sub-national land use policy” with the objective “to recognize and protect customary land tenure rights and procedures of the ethnic nationalities,” and to “develop transparent, fair, affordable and independent dispute resolution mechanisms” among others (Indigenous Farmers Union 2016). Other important documents obtained from local civil society actors included a pamphlet on “Land rights and Indigenous rights” published by a local civil society organization in a local dialect. These suggested a perceived relevance of “indigenous rights” discourses on a local level which were also linked with religious discourses in the pamphlet (Rights Watch n.d.). Other documents obtained included an official complaint letter from a community near Hakha, addressing the local authority concerning the enclosure of a communal “grazing pasture land” which had been taken by a local businessman with the support of local authorities (“Mithun complaint letter” 2014). NGO reports provided other important sources of “gray literature” since little had been published on the issue in standard academic literature. A local civil society network calling themselves the Chin Natural Resource Watch Group (CNRWG) provided a “self-documentation” report of their activities concerning the Gullu Mual nickel mining project on the border to Chin State. The report documented the activities of the coalition of civil society actors and the events that finally led to the halt of the mining project which threatened several communities (CNRWG 2013; Einzenberger 2018). However, not only written reports were important sources of information to be collected during the field research. In addition, several interview partners showed me maps of protected forest area and documents of land titles as “material evidence” of competing claims over access to land and related resources. In one village, a local teacher showed me an unofficial map of a planned national park. The villagers obtained the map from forest department officials during a “consultation” meeting. They claimed that rather than being consulted, the authorities pushed them to consent to the demarcation of the national park area even though it overlapped with the village boundary and communal pasture areas. However, villagers were not

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ready to agree to give away part of their village territory without further negotiations. The border of the protected area drawn on the map in straight lines suggested that authorities gave little consideration to existing actual village boundaries and land use patterns on the ground. Another interviewee presented his “land title”—a piece of paper from colonial times with a drawing of topographic features on it. The piece of paper was to prove his “customary” claim over a huge plot of land in an urban area. However, local authorities did not recognize his claim and “document.”

Preliminary Analysis: From the Empirical to the Abstract and Back The first phase of my empirical research was guided by initial theories such as accumulation by dispossession (ABD) (Harvey 2003), theory of state space (Poulantzas 2000), and frontier theory, among others (Cottyn 2017; see above). As I started gathering more empirical data in the field, I could identify a number of cases of land and related resource conflicts in different locations in the case study area, which at first appeared quite different from each other. The cases included communities threatened by dispossession through (proposed) mining projects, “classic” enclosures and privatization of communal land, dispossession through urban expansion (urbanization), major infrastructure development, conservation projects (national parks), and more. However, the main drivers or “causal mechanisms” behind these cases, sometimes involving different actors, were still vague and needed to be further conceptualized, again moving back to the theoretical level. What the cases appeared to have in common was some general tendency toward increasing privatization, formalization, and regulation of land which led to processes of dispossession. What used to be embedded in a customary system regulated by communal institutions was transformed into a commodity, to be sold on a land market. Karl Polanyi described this mechanism in “The Great Transformation” (2001). He famously called land a “fictitious commodity” (along with capital and labor) because it was not “produced” by anyone but provided by nature and thus is not a “commodity.” Yet, a market economy, according to Polanyi, must include markets for labor and land, which means to “subordinate the substance of society itself to the laws of the market” (Polanyi 2001, 75). The establishing of capitalist relations is not only achieved by “violent dispossession” but also through other means such as “legal dispossession” involving the state (Pichler 2015). Thereby new state legislation (for instance, land laws) plays a crucial role to establish a basis for a new land market through codification of ownership. This relates to what Poulantzas means by the “spatial matrix” produced by the capitalist state. “Within this very space are inscribed the movements and expanded reproduction of capital, the generalization of exchange, and monetary fluctuations” (Poulantzas 2000, 104). Another aspect, which became apparent from the empirical data, was an increasing response by social actors on different scales to (threats of) dispossession. This

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culminated in public demonstrations including in the Chin State capital Hakha, where affected communities took to the streets to defend their “ancestral lands” from being grabbed by the local authorities (Chinland News 2017). As mentioned, demonstrations in relation to land conflicts were even recorded oversees among the “ethnic diaspora communities” supporting their fellow communities at home against an extractive mining project proposed by Chinese investors (WZC 2013). In several interviews with local actors, I repeatedly came across discourses of “indigeneity,” “indigenous rights,” and “customary land” (see above). Sometimes it emerged in conversations more implicitly, for instance through historical claims of ownership over contested land. These discourses seemed quite recent and raised several questions. What was behind the apparent emergence of “indigeneity”? Approaching it from a CR and not purely constructionist perspective, it seemed reasonable that the increasing self-representation of social actors as “indigenous” was a response to increasing contestations over access to land and resources in times of transition. In many documented cases, the politics of indigeneity was discursively linked to rights over access to “ancestral” land, often referring to international indigenous rights declarations such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The emergence of indigeneity in such circumstances is not entirely surprising. It can be argued that—similar to other countries in the region—indigeneity was consciously adopted in times of transition at a particular political and economic conjuncture that provided an enabling environment. Some of the enabling factors were the historical conditions of differentiation and marginalization of ethnic groups in the frontier areas (as a legacy of colonial frontier making), changing state–society relations following the ceasefire agreements, expanding political associational space, increasing economic pressure on land, and existing networks with the transnational indigenous peoples movement. The adoption of indigeneity can be seen as an attempt to proactively negotiate and shape the contested process of incorporation at the frontier and center-periphery relation during times of transition. Indigeneity is the latest in a series of identity constructions in Myanmar’s frontier region, with ethnic-nationalist discourses as the most important and still dominant ones. According to Hall (2012), the frontier is a place where ethnic identities are created and modified in particularly flexible ways. This flexibility is the main source of strength of the frontier, which allowed its peoples to respond to different phases of frontier expansion and contraction. Indigeneity can be interpreted as another political resource available to innovate the ideological repertoire of the frontier actors. In the words of Scott (2009): Hill people have, in a sense, seized whatever ideological materials were available to them to make their claims and take their distance from the lowland states. . . At different times, both socialism and nationalism have offered the same apparent promise. Today, ‘indigenism’ backed by international declarations, treaties, and well-heeled NGOs, offers some of the same prospects for framing identities and claims (Scott 2009, 323)

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Conclusion This chapter provided an example of an empirical research project informed by Critical Realism focusing on methodological aspects. Taking up the case of land and resource conflicts in Myanmar’s periphery, the aim was to understand the underlying generative mechanisms as well as emerging local responses. Starting with the search for the “best-fit” theory, materialist state theory in this regard helped to understand the expansion of state territory with a specific “spatial matrix” as a constitutive element of the capitalist state. With critical realist metatheory as the philosophical supporting theory, further “domain-specific metatheories” and “domain-specific theories” were drawn upon to re-contextualize the social phenomenon under study and show it in a new light. Thereby repeatedly moving between the concrete and the abstract, and between the empirical cases and general theory, a best possible “explanation” was sought. In particular, the frontier turned out to be a useful abstraction and generalized account of processes related to the expansion of capitalism and the state in peripheral areas. Methodologically the study followed an intensive approach choosing an empirical “case study” design. The empirical research tried to take advantage of the “critical methodological pluralism” encouraged by CR (Danermark et al. 2002, 2). Guided by initial theoretical concepts, several methods were adopted during the field study, ranging from qualitative interviews, ethnographic observations, and analysis of policy documents, also including audiovisual data. This should ensure the necessary openness in the field, also including the wider research context, neither privileging the individual level, nor social institutions and structures on a macrolevel. Of interest were the structural conditions and changes as well as the dimension of human agency and dynamic relationship between them. The preliminary results show how recent political and economic changes in Myanmar translated into new legal and administrative frameworks (creating a “spatial matrix”) in the frontier, increasing privatization and dispossession of land and resources. On the other hand, the states increasingly reach into the periphery engendered responses by social actors on different scales. This led among others to a reshaping of political identities reflecting the changing center-periphery relations. One eminent example is an increasing “indigenous mobilization” including street protests, but also on regional and national scales. It could be argued that the recent emergence of indigenous identity constructions is an example of frontier agency. It is an attempt to proactively negotiate and shape the contested process of incorporation and the center-periphery relation during times of transition. While CR has many advantages in terms of its flexibility, holistic approach, and its relative openness it can also be challenging for the researcher, since it does not provide any ready-made “blueprint or guideline.” While some progress had been made to make CR as a metatheory better applicable for practical research (Edwards et al. 2014), it still faces considerable limitations. However, this chapter was an attempt to show the potential of CR as a general orientation for empirical research. It

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is hoped that future researchers will accept the challenge and continue to further develop this approach.

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Polanyi, K. (2001). The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time (2 edition). Beacon Press. Poulantzas, N. A. (2000). State, power, socialism. Verso. Rees, C., & Gatenby, M. (2014). Critical realism and ethnography. In P.K. Edwards, J. O’Mahoney & S. Vincent (Eds.). Studying organizations using critical realism. A practical guide (pp. 132-147). Oxford University Press. Rights Watch. (n.d.). Land Rights and Indigenous Rights (unofficial translation). Sayer, A. (2000). Realism and social science. SAGE Publications Ltd. Schaffar, W. (2008). Birma: Gescheiterter Staat oder (neue) Form peripherer Staatlichkeit? Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, XXIV(2), 33–62. Schweitzer, E. (2015). The making of Griqua, Inc. Indigenous struggles for land and autonomy in South Africa. LIT Verlag. Scott, J. C. (2009). The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press. Scurrah, N., Hirsch, P., & Woods, K. (2015). The political economy of land governance in Myanmar. Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG). http://www.mekonglandforum.org/ sites/default/files/Political_Economy_of_Land_Governance_in_Myanmar.PDF Slezak, G. (2014). Von Wahrnehmung und Erfahrung, Überlegungen zu explorativen Beobachtungsverfahren. In P. Dannecker & B. Englert (Eds.), Qualitative Methoden in der Entwicklungsforschung. Mandelbaum. Smallwood, G. (2015). Indigenist critical realism: Human rights and first Australians’ wellbeing. Routledge. Smith, C., & Elger, T. (2014). Critical realism and interviewing subjects. In P.K. Edwards, J. O’Mahoney & S. Vincent (Eds.). Studying organizations using critical realism. A practical guide (pp. 109-131). Oxford University Press. Transnational Institute (TNI). (2013). Access denied: Land rights and ethnic conflict in Burma. Burma policy briefing. https://www.tni.org/ files/download/accesdenied-briefing11.pdf Thiemann, A. (2021). Moral Appreciation. Caring for post-socialist Cows in contemporary Serbia. In M. Fahimi, E. Flatschart, & W. Schaffar (Ed.), State and statehood in the global south. Cham: Springer. Turner, F. J. (1893). The significance of the frontier in American history. Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 197–227. Wilson, J. (2018). Sabotage of development: Subverting the censorship of renegade research. Journal of Extreme Anthropology, 2(1), 5. Woods, K. (2011). Ceasefire capitalism: Military–private partnerships, resource concessions and military–state building in the Burma–China borderlands. Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(4), 747–770. World Zomi Congress. (2013, September 4). Zomi Nickel Movement Part 1. [YouTube video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼HGQHnKRK4u8 Yashar, D. J. (2005). Contesting citizenship in Latin America: The rise of indigenous movements and the postliberal challenge. Cambridge University Press.

Part V

Ethnographical and Postcolonial Approaches to State and Statehood

Moral Appreciation: Caring for Post-socialist Cows in Contemporary Serbia André Thiemann

Introduction I never could have imagined a village household without a cow. (Rajka Janković, spring 2010). If I torment myself now, I’ll do it till the end. (Olga Jovanović, 4 August 2016).

These quotes from two agriculturalists from Donje Selo, a village in central Serbia, stake out the problematic of this article.1 Rajka Janković (born in 1953) and Olga Jovanović (born in 1959), belonged to the 158 ‘registered agricultural households’ in Donje Selo (Trezor 2009) that until recently had considered dairy farming a reliable income source and a way of sustaining the family and the nation. But after the liberal revolution that ousted Milošević in 2000, and successive neo-liberal economic transformations, Rajka and Olga found their hard work devalued and their profits squeezed. Throughout the first years after the privatisation of the cooperative dairy-chain IMLEK in 2003, both farmers clung to their dairying routines. But after 2008 their strategies diverged. Rajka, who in the entry quote voiced the small-farmers’ ideology of a deep connection between life in the village and caring for cows, stopped milk production in 2009. Meanwhile, Olga, who took a critical stance on dairying, acquired more cows. And here is the paradox. Influential studies on rural moral economies have been read as positing pre-capitalist socioideological relations as resources for resistance against capitalism and the state (Thompson 1963; Scott 1976, 1985). But the precapitalist moral economy that Rajka voiced did not prevent her from giving up animal husbandry. Meanwhile,

This chapter was first published in 2019 as part of the special issue ‘The Village’ in the journal Etnofoor 31: 13–31. Places and personal names are anonymised.

1

A. Thiemann (*) Riga Stradiņš University, Riga, Latvia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_9

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Olga embraced the capitalist moral economy of utility maximisation—and remained in business. Two classes of small agriculturalists emerged, those with and those without cows to care for. In line with recent anthropological work on moral economy, I therefore aim to bring capitalism and class back into the moral economic analysis of rural transformations, prying open the ‘macro and micro dynamics of capital, and [. . .] the way in which they intertwine with norms, social institutions, and the state’ (Palomera and Vetta 2016, 422). Facing ‘moral depreciation’ (Marx 1982 [1867], 528) (the relentless devaluation of productive facilities and arrangements through capitalist competition) most Serbian small farmers quite rationally disinvested. But I argue that a minority responded by ‘morally appreciating’ village life in new ways, by reassembling and revaluing human and more-than-human relations. Adding dairying to other moral economic strategies in shrinking capitalism, this case study conceptually contributes to our understanding of ‘Life in Capitalist Ruins’ (Tsing 2015a). Small-scale, intensive dairy farming is particularly well-suited for a moral economic analysis of agricultural transformations, because for over a century its products have symbolised well-being in Europe, North America, and India (Freidberg 2010, 197–234; Dunn 2011; Valenze 2011; Wiley 2014).2 Despite disappointing results, small-scale dairying with high-yielding, ‘modern’ milk-cows in cowsheds is still promoted as ‘rural development’ in contemporary Tanzania, even though openrange grazing with disease-resistant local breeds is ecologically much better adapted (Green 2017). Such modern ideologies of small-scale farming are challenged by recent transformations in the dairying sector. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, milk has become a globalised commodity (Pichler and Drewing 2017). The increasing demand for dairy products in China, for instance, has led to globally increased butter (fat) prices and simultaneously reduced milk (protein) prices since 2015.3 Four partially conflicting trends characterise globalised dairying: First, ever larger and more technologically advanced cowsheds are being installed. A spectacular example is the ChineseDanish joint venture ‘Mengniu’ dairy, one of the biggest dairies in China. Its largest cowshed, run by its associate China Modern Dairy, registers 38,000 head of cattle (Donnelly 2015; CGTN 2019). Second, the sector is increasingly dominated by large retailers enforcing stricter standards, an overall trend Anna Tsing (2009) has dubbed ‘supply-chain capitalism’. Third, defying these oligopolistic tendencies, microdairies and cheese-creameries spring up and cater to urban middle-class tastes. For example, in the United States today organic craft cheeses compete with technologically advanced mega-dairies and with industrial cottage manufacturing dating back to the nineteenth century (Paxson 2013). Fourth, small-scale dairy farming is itself 2

In 1990, old villagers remembered that their biggest childhood delight after litije, a churchorganised spring and fertility procession through the village neighbourhoods (discontinued in 1947 and reinstituted in 1990), had been their parent’s tacit approval to pillage the household creamery (personal communication, Slobodan Naumović). 3 https://www.dairybusiness.com/why-are-milk-prices-low-when-butter-and-butterfat-are-atrecord-highs/, (accessed 30 June 2019).

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reorganising, as the smallest producers give up or slowly enlarge and ‘genetically improve’ their herds. Thus, in Serbia, the dairy stock declined from 750,000 in 2000 to 550,000 in 2008, while milk production went up slightly due to productivity increases per cow, and per farm (Berkum and Bogdanov 2012, 83). The small-scale dairy producers Rajka Janković and Olga Jovanović represent this bifurcation. Rajka was one of the estimated 90% of Serbian farmers who until 2008 held one to two cows (Božić et al. 2009, 8). She regretfully stopped dairy production in the autumn of 2009, seemingly corroborating the widespread moral panic that the ‘Serbian village is dying’ (umire srpsko selo).4 Most inhabitants of Serbia take it for granted that one-fifth of its approximately 5000 villages are becoming void—of inhabitants, livestock, and a meaningful human economy. The villagers of Donje Selo regularly see, hear and read about the dying villages on TV, in the newspapers or on the web. However, the discourse can suggest diametrically opposed remedies, from founding a radical land-workers’ movement as in 2011, over a nationalist-romantic ‘return to the roots’, to calls to establish cooperatives.5 The villagers regularly debated ways to counter the dying village. During a common agricultural work action, organised by Olga’s household, someone quipped their work proved Donje Selo was still a ‘living village’. Indeed, Olga, who now had nine cows, seemed set to join the 1% of dairy farmers with 11 cows or more (Božić et al. 2009, 8). In sum, Rajka’s disinvestment was a rational reaction to the merciless global competition and fluctuating profitability in the dairy sector since the mid-1990s.6 Olga’s resilience, in contrast, needs explanation—and hers was not an age-old, unchanging peasant’s ‘fixation to the soil’. As I will show, her work regime has been flexible, and with its recurrent transformations the relational dynamics of her household changed, too. The article is based on 20 months of ongoing multi-sited fieldwork in central Serbia since 2009. For most of the time I lived in Donje Selo, a slightly shrinking village with some 1000 inhabitants in 300 households (down from 2000 inhabitants in the mid-twentieth century). The population was on average 43 years old. Donje Selo was considered a typical ‘agricultural village’ by almost everyone I talked to in the village and in the Municipality. My mixed-method design included participant 4

Rajka’s earliest memories included herding the family cow in the commons. In autumn 2009, when her excellent milk-cow (it gave 20 litres of milk daily) died of meningitis, Rajka experienced that as ominously linked to the death of her father-in-law a month earlier. In spring 2010, when a neighbour died in a work accident, Rajka refused to buy his good cow for a preferential price, because of labour shortage in her household. Rajka’s husband had heart problems and her son and daughter-in-law commuted daily to jobs in town. Rajka instead bought raw milk from a neighbour to produce cheese and cream for subsistence. More recently, she acquired a goat for milking. 5 http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/9/politika/981754/osnovan-pokret-radnika-i-seljaka.html; http://www.zdravasrbija.com/lat/Zdrava%20Srbija/1642-Tragedija-srpskog-sela.php; https://www. telegraf.rs/vesti/934199-pusto-i-sablasno-u-selima-sirom-srbije-145-000-kuca-u-kojima-niko-nezivi, (accessed 12 January 2021). 6 Western milk consumption has been shrinking for decades. In the UK, between 1996 and 2006 the size of the cowherd fell by 20% (Valenze 2011, 279–291).

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Fig. 1 Auxiliary structure made of oak beam, Jovanovićs

observation, unstructured interviews, over 90 taped qualitative interviews, and a quantitative questionnaire with 61 rural households. In the first section, I describe how Olga Jovanović’s agricultural strategies were embedded within wider contradictions on several levels. In the second section, I engage with the recent discussions in the anthropologies of the state and rural capitalism. I then elaborate on my concept of the ‘moral appreciation’ of capital, land, and people in the third section. The fourth section ethnographically analyses how moral appreciation played out within labour exchanges in Donje Selo. The final section tracks back to understand how moral appreciation was embedded in the political-economic and moral economic transformations of an increasingly market-dependent village.

Meet the Jovanovićs On Saturday, 19 May 2012, a day before the run-off for the Serbian Presidential elections, the official ‘pre-election silence’ led me to follow ostensibly ‘non-political’ fieldwork interests. Having long planned a narrative-biographical interview with the dedicated farmer (and recent local party candidate) Boro Jovanović, I drove to his household on the neighbouring hillcrest. I pulled up next to the long-drawn 1970s stable adorned with the white-blue IMLEK billboard. Walking through the gateway entwined with roses, I entered a wide courtyard framed by a brand-new vehicle bay and a 1970s two-story family house on one side, three well-preserved farm buildings with carved oak beams on the other, and a greenhouse at the far end (Fig. 1).

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Fig. 2 Serbian Simmental cows, dual-purpose bred for milk and beef production

Boro (born in 1953) received me with his warm, informal hospitality, but asked me to postpone the interview. His wife Olga and their two sons had left for his parents-in-law’s family celebration (slava) in another municipality, and he had taken over their responsibilities—feeding their dozen cows, heifers, and calves, milking the four lactating cows, and cleaning the sheds. He also expected to stay up to assist a cow in calving. I returned the following day at noon. Boro’s elderly mother and a maternal cousin entertained me and the many visitors who stopped by to ‘toast to the new-born life’ and to discuss politics. Boro, who had voted earlier and had just wiped dry his baby calf, joined the joking and talking politics, while I learned about the household history from his relatives. When I returned in the brightly moonlit evening for another interview attempt, Boro was already asleep. His wife Olga closed the greenhouse, served me snacks on the veranda, and opened up the conversation. Because I had delayed their routines, but we wanted to continue, by 11 PM Olga allowed me into the half-empty stable draped by spider-webs and with some roofsheets loose, where she and her sons catered for the expectant stock (Fig. 2). The Jovanovićs were considered to be ‘full agriculturalists’. This was a respected status, and it helped Boro as a relatively young man to become a member of the municipal restitution commission in the early 1990s and to be repeatedly elected into local state positions.7 He also loved to perform the ideal of the pater familias

7

Boro’s election into the Local Council (Mesna Zajednica), and into the Municipal Parliament (Gradska Skupština), exemplify a ‘bridging’ of the ‘sublocal’ and local scales of the state (Thiemann 2016).

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(domaćin) who lavishly hosts his guests and properly cares for his home and farm, which explained the large number of friends showing up on election day.8 At the same time, the strain of agricultural work was evident, since the family did not visit Olga’s parents together, and caring for the livestock kept them up long hours, including sleepless nights. Finally, the lovingly upkept household’s architectural design referenced its economic and political standing in the village prior to World War II (see later). Yet, although the Jovanovićs shared a pride in the past, their ambitions for the present and hopes for the future differed. Boro, his elderly mother, and one son were dedicated agriculturalists. Proudly working over 20 hectares of land, mostly leased from neighbours, they avoided openly voicing concerns about their struggles to keep profiting from agriculture. Meanwhile, Olga and another son were more critical. Asked what she would do if she could choose professions again, Olga emphatically replied: If it was like it used to be, it wouldn’t be bad, but choosing agriculture today? Not for anything in the world. . . . Regardless if in the West or elsewhere, in every job you have many obligations, investments, work, and effort, but in return some kind of security should exist. But here at our place—we don’t have security!9

While living in a state that Olga perceived as uncaring, she still yearned for a state-capitalist meritocratic order that valued and properly paid her work.10 When I sought her opinion on what was to be done, Olga discussed the agricultural advisors who had recently started to visit the Local Council to assist with the paperwork for state subsidies. She evaluated this kind of agricultural advice as largely in the interest of the Trezor (the local branch of the Ministry of Finance): ‘to chase my rights, what do I need that for?’ Instead, she thought that the advisors should mediate with markets: ‘Say, the advisor places the product on the market, and if it is mediated by him, he should earn something—but so that I can sell my goods and at least earn what I invested’. She implicitly modelled her suggestions for contractual buying-up of agricultural products on practices of the now-defunct socialist cooperative, where she had worked from 1978 to 1992.11 Olga assumed that few would listen to her ideas, and she regretfully admitted that it might be ‘too late’ for her elder son, a driver by professional training, to get out of farming, because ‘he loved agriculture too much’. But she still had hope for the younger one, she said, for he was good in middle school, where he trained as a mechanic. Summing up her aspirations, Olga said she strove ‘to build up something for my two sons, and that I also make something easier for me. I do not look for some enjoyment, but for a normal life and that we own something’.

8

Group interview with Olga, Boro, and his mother, 4 September 2013. Direct quotes by Olga are taken from our narrative-biographical interview on 20 May 2012. 10 Jansen (2015) provides a related discussion of Sarajevans ‘yearning in the meantime’ for a responsive state. 11 In 2013 the rural advisory service was discontinued. Villagers ‘chase their rights’ in town again. 9

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To better situate Olga’s pursuit of a ‘normal life’ (Greenberg 2011; Jansen 2015) by morally appreciating the village, I turn now to recent anthropologies of the state and of rural capitalism.

The Anthropology of the State and Rural Capitalism The ‘New Anthropology of the State’ (Das and Poole 2004; Krohn-Hansen and Nustad 2005; Sharma and Gupta 2006) arose more than a decade ago. In what has since become a hegemonic definition, Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta argued that the state was ‘produced through everyday practices and encounters and through public representations and performances’ (Sharma and Gupta 2006, 27). While this statement contains two highly productive elements for contemporary analyses of the state, namely discourses and practices, four noteworthy critiques have been advanced. Anthony Marcus (2008) assailed its conservative ‘neo-pluralist orthodoxy’ that veiled the material interests of powerful actors. Thomas Bierschenk (2009) criticised its ignorance of the history of anthropological theory and its empirical superficiality, taking Veena Das and Deborah Poole (2004) to task for following the old anthropological reflex of sighting the political ‘at the margins of the state’, instead of confronting the state in its centre (as I do in central Serbia). Tatjana Thelen, Larissa Vetters and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (2017b) identified a gap between the images and the practices of the state and proposed focusing on the social relations that mediate between them. And finally, Stef Jansen (2014, 2015) has critiqued the undercurrent of libertarianism in the anthropology of the state that has tended to exaggerate egalitarian resistance against the hierarchical ‘State’s grid’ (Scott 1998). When beginning to take seriously Olga’s muted ‘hope for’ and not only against the infrastructuring, regulating and social-security-providing state, we may better grasp the transformations in the relationship between discourses and practices, material interests and social relations at the core of the capitalist state.12 Variously inspired by these new perspectives, most recent anthropologies of the state in former Yugoslavia have nonetheless treated rural capitalist change as contextual. I, therefore, refocus anthropological attention on the material, situational, and relational embeddedness of rural agency within political-economic conjunctures (Li 2014, 1–19). I particularly follow Anna Tsing (2015b), who argued that late capitalism relies on ‘salvage accumulation’, that is ‘the conversion of stuff with other histories of social relations (human and not human) into capitalist wealth’. In this case study, that stuff includes the ‘capitalist ruins’ (Tsing 2015a) of Yugoslav socialism. Yugoslavia’s unorthodox socialist self-management project had veered between two models in reaction to shifts in the global political economy (Woodward 1995).

12

Sometimes the state regulates better than citizens demanding state gridding acknowledge (see Thelen et al. 2017a).

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The ‘socialist development model’ (‘Foča’) enhanced primary production through capital-intensive growth, sucking agricultural surplus labour into industrial production. During early socialism, capital for this development strategy was accumulated for example through high taxation of richer peasants, whose land base was legally restricted and land surpluses redistributed (Woodward 1995, 31–97).13 Meanwhile, the ‘socialist-liberal’ (‘Slovenia’) approach relied on ‘incentives to manufacturing and processing firms for export markets and consumer demand in retail markets’ and emphasised ‘world-market standards of productivity’ (Woodward 1995, 264–265).14 In this context, the ‘human factor’ was re-valued: ‘the public sector was to be “modernised” [. . .] by improving skills through retraining and workers’ education’. This ‘allowed the firing of unskilled and otherwise redundant labour’, leading to the paradox of socialist unemployment (Woodward 1995, 268). Surplus labour should return to the small-farmers’ countryside to prevent a pauperisation of the ‘reserve army of labour’, but this rendered underemployment ‘invisible’ and created a second-order citizenry (Woodward 1995, 312–327). During the ‘Green Plan’ (1973–1985), Yugoslavia sourced World Bank credit at low interest rates and raised the productivity of the underemployed in agriculture (Allcock 2000, 125–136). But starting in 1982, the IMF induced austerity measures and barred further investment in the industrial sector. Yugoslavia became re-peripheralized (Schierup 1992). Between 1991 and 2003, in the wake of several secessionist wars, Yugoslavia disintegrated into six successor-states. In Serbia, embargo conditions led among other things to drastically shrinking markets and hyperinflation. Later, in the post-Milošević era of the 2000s, neo-liberally inspired privatisations led to asset stripping, and further investment lags. Ensuing large-scale unemployment and rising social inequalities were inadequately buffered by an underfinanced welfare state (Horvat and Štiks 2015). Meanwhile, semi-industrialised agriculture provided an unravelling safety net for impoverished ‘quasi-proletarians’ (Schierup 1992). An anthropological study of the first Agricultural Twinning project between Serbia and the EU in 2005 elucidates the pitfalls of the recent liberal alignments with European agricultural ‘best practices’ (Naumović 2013, 43–132). The twinning project’s goal of negotiating innovative solutions for Serbia’s predominantly small-scale agriculture came under pressure from the Serbian Minister of Agriculture to ‘copy-and-paste’ Dutch agricultural law. The new law unsurprisingly failed to protect Serbia’s small-scale farmers and favoured a transnational class of large landowners (Berkum and Bogdanov 2012; Naumović 2013, 43–132). Increasingly, cheap imports flooded the country, and land grabbing by alliances of national landowners with transnational corporations ensued (Naumović 2013, 133–170). Serbian dairy farmers consistently criticise that when milk becomes scarce, the dairies avoid raising prices to stimulate production, instead

13

Owing to peasant resistance, only about 10% of agricultural land was socialized or cooperatively managed. Private property in land was capped at 10 hectares (Allcock 2000). 14 Similar oscillations between socialist accumulation strategies existed elsewhere; Yugoslavia only experimented earlier with liberal socialism.

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they import cheap powdered milk from neighbouring countries. However, while transnational competition has become fierce and economic government apparently non-responsive, agricultural production did not implode as feared, and the milk prices have increased slightly in recent years. To explain this, I draw on the term ‘moral depreciation’ from Marx’ critique of political economy, and re-insert ‘moral appreciation’ into the economic history of post-Yugoslavia.

Moral Appreciation Marx importantly recognised that a ‘moral’ (social code of conduct) factor can depreciate the productivity of a machine and by analogy of factories, infrastructures, and other spatio-temporal fixes of capital (see Harvey 2006; Jessop 2006). Marx distinguished ‘moral depreciation’ from two kinds of ‘physical depreciation’— erosion by use and corrosion by abandonment. In Capital volume 1, he argued that ‘in addition to the material wear and tear, a machine also undergoes what we might call a moral depreciation. It loses exchange-value, either because machines of the same sort are being produced more cheaply than it was, or because better machines are entering into competition with it’ (Marx 1982 [1867], 528). Moral depreciation, then, refers to two processes: the tendency of the ‘socially necessary labour time’ for producing machines—and thereby the machine’s ‘value’—to fall; and second, the tendency of the falling value of the commodities produced by more productive machines (by analogy, a high-yield cow that produces 40 l instead of 20 l of milk per day imparts less of her cow-value per litre). Especially the latter moment— falling commodity prices because of technical innovation—occurs under the ideal conditions of an expanding capitalist market, where an extra-profit could be reaped by using more productive capital to undersell less productive rivals (such conditions are approximated in the Chinese Mengniu dairy today). However, in a shrinking capitalist market like in Serbia, competitors can partially counter more innovative competition by using cheaper capital or labour.15 Morally depreciated machines, infrastructures, land, animals and land-workers, if amortised (or schooled) and still vital, are cheap.16 Here moral appreciation—living from and salvaging value from the devalued substance of work past and present—kicks in materially, affectively and ethically. Materially, ‘infrastructures shape the rhythms and striations of social life. Class, gender, race, and kinship are all refracted through differentiated access to the infrastructure’ (Anand et al. 2018, 6). Thus, Olga’s household owned some of the 15

For an account of early vegetable production capturing an extra-surplus with greenhouse technology, see Thiemann (2014). Industrial capitalists in Serbia (like their counterparts in nineteenthcentury England) rarely reduce the socially necessary labour time per product, if they can extend the working day while keeping wages flat, see http://www.masina.rs/eng/real-price-geox-shoes/, (accessed 12 January 2021). 16 A local saying goes: ‘In Serbia labour power is the cheapest commodity’.

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most extensive—if physically and morally depreciated—stables and auxiliary buildings in the environs. Materially fixing these infrastructures was cost-effective and allowed Jovanovićs to enlarge production. But equally importantly, the household invested in breeding higher-yielding cows, and in accessing advanced machinery—a hygienic Lacto-freeze milk cooling system—when the opportunity arose through vertical integration. Affectively, the family had grown fond of their infrastructures and machinery. In line with recent anthropologies of infrastructure that foreground the affective dimensions of materiality (Schwenkel 2013; Reeves 2017; Isenhour and Reno 2019), the elder son of Olga maintained their MTZ Belarus tractor bought in the early 1970s, even after a newer Serbian tractor had replaced it for most tasks. Olga’s family salvaged morally depreciated capital including tractors, hay cutters, hay balers, beef stables, milk machines, and underused land, and put them to work. They did not forage, as Tsing’s (2015a) mushroom collectors in the North-West of the USA, but they asked the owners, and in return offered payment, aid, and ethical revitalisation. Ethically, the Jovanovićs revitalised customary agricultural support, literally directing ‘pleas for help’ (mo[l]be) to their social relations. In Donje Selo, where most families had in-migrated during the nineteenth century, social networks were ‘inherited’ across generations, and long-term collaborative institutions in village life, like pozajmica (symmetrical-reciprocity labour exchange) and moba (generalisedreciprocity labour pooling), persisted, while undergoing transformations, throughout the twentieth century (see Matić 2009). According to a definition drawing on classic 1950s fieldwork in the village of Orašac, a moba is called for threshing or for hoeing corn. Called to take part are those who cannot do their threshing alone. It is like a holiday. Bachelors, maidens, and young people come. The work begins about 4 [sic!] in the afternoon. In former times it began at noon, and then it really was true help. (Halpern and Kerewsky Halpern 1984 [1972], 53)

Meanwhile, for a pozajmica you come and hoe or thresh at my place, and tomorrow I'll help you out. Whoever serves another poorly, if he arrives late or leaves early, no one will then be in his debt. A day of threshing must be returned by three days of hoeing, while a day of reaping is returned with two of hoeing. (Halpern and Kerewsky Halpern 1984 [1972], 52).

The following vignette shows how effective a hybrid moba/pozajmica organised by Olga’s household can be in Donje Selo today.

Moba/Pozajmica, Summer 2010 The afternoon sun glistened as Zoran Pavlović, on his second-hand hay baling combine from Germany, drew circles over the rolling hills of Donje Selo. For the second day, his combine dotted the Jovanović’s cut and dried meadows with long, parallel lines of bales. During the work action, 500 bales would be hauled in— keeping two tractors with trailers in motion. Each tractor had a team of a driver and

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two stackers, who drove back and forth to the large meadow below the Jovanović household. To reach it, the tractors traversed steep and slanted patches of grass. Mounting these slopes required careful balancing. At difficult passages, the stackers dismounted, and the driver was alert. More than one neighbour had lost their life due to a buckling tractor—only recently, while bringing in hay from a pozajmica on the Janković hill a tired helper dozed off, lost his grip, and broke his neck. Every second household owned one of these ‘devil’s machines’, and schoolboys learned to drive them. The hay bales on the waggons were piled two metres high by able men like Darko Janković (born in 1982). On the meadow, a dozen others shouldering pitchforks walked besides the tractor and lifted the bales up. Most were neighbours of retirement age, village-born men who had worked in town, retaining a weekend house in the countryside. They emphasised the drudgery and insecure returns of agriculture in their conversations with me. Yet, despite the toil, sweat, and dangers, they cherished the reinvigoration of their strength and rituals of male bonding which, they told me winking an eye, confirmed that they still belonged to a ‘living village’. They bantered joyfully while circulating sips of water and plum brandy (rakija). At dusk, I sat on the last tractor uphill. In the tall, modern hay barn, a small chain of tired helpers, artistically balancing on shaky ground, frantically threw and piled the last bales that radiated the heat of the day. In this pulsating rhythm, sweat oozed on bodies covered with dust. Most helpers declined to stay for a meal, saying they wanted to shower and eat at home. Thus, under the star sky, Boro and Olga served three helpers and their sons a hearty supper of cabbage, maize bread, and cream. We were merrily entertained and borrowed clean T-shirts and later jumpers, as the evening air became cooler. I took part in several mobe and pozajmice, but the one recounted here was the largest and most complex one, which points to the centrality of the Jovanovićs for the reproduction of agricultural and social relations in Donje Selo and its adaptation to the post-socialist political economy. In the moba/pozajmica just described, waged relations (for Zoran Pavlović’s hay baling services) were intertwined with symmetrical and generalised reciprocity and debt relations. Symmetrical reciprocity (pozajmica) flowed between larger land-working units. Darko Janković, who had packed the bales on the wagon, came from a household that owned eight hectares and lived from fattening young bulls, as well as from several wage-earners (Darko, his brother and his father were drivers). Darko expected the help of the Jovanovićs on his own meadows in return for his work. Their exchange, close to equalising but open ended, fit into the classic definition of a pozajmica. Old kinship relations connected the households, too: Darko’s deceased grandmother was Boro’s maternal aunt. They and their two sisters had all married into larger landowning families.17 Generalised reciprocity (moba) was exchanged between the Jovanovićs and their neighbours-pensioners. Too old to participate fully in agriculture, they nevertheless

17

Zoran Pavlović’s paternal grandfather was Boro’s maternal uncle.

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sometimes helped with free manual work. Their moba made do without the flirting of mid-century Orašac but retained aspects of the feasting, by offering refreshments and food after work. Even the fact that most men declined the evening meal was a variation of older practices in the historical Takovo region, to which Donje Selo belonged. A moba ‘did not exist because of the food’ (Vlajinac 1929, 299, own translation). Instead, the moba had retained its earlier function of ‘true help’, and by de-emphasising lavish entertainment it was significantly performed like the help to a ‘poor household’ with pressing agricultural work (Vlajinac 1929, 299–300). The Jovanovićs returned the favour by paying land rent and selling fresh milk, vegetables, or piglets to neighbours. Debt relationships (obaveze) in the neighbourhood were decades old. A former Local Council clerk told me that in 1996 Boro ‘had single-handedly asphalted the whole street of his neighbourhood, so strong was he then’.18 More precisely, as a Local Council member, Boro had persuaded the municipal construction firm to work in his neighbourhood, and then lent money free of interest to neighbours so they could contribute their customary share of the road costs. For this purpose, Boro sold four bulls, which ended his beef-rearing career (see later). Some neighbours paid him back, others did not, and this initiated their debt relationships, without re-establishing the patron-client aspects previous Jovanović generations had relied on. I discuss in the next section how Jovanović’s defiant moral appreciation of work in a still living village, tied into the twentieth century history of the household.

Agricultural Transformations Before World War II, the Jovanovićs were the largest landholders, possessing 40 hectares worked through patron-client relations. When the household head, who was also the mayor of Donje Selo, died unexpectedly in 1943 without a direct heir, his sister’s son moved in and married a young Pavlović girl, Boro’s future mother. In 1947 their holdings were reduced to six hectares by confiscations, as the Communists posthumously proclaimed the dead mayor an ‘enemy of the people’. The machinery and auxiliary buildings were dismantled and reconstructed at the heart of the new village cooperative (zadruga) in the creek valley. However, the Jovanovićs persisted in agriculture and obtained auxiliary buildings and machinery from elsewhere. In the early 1970s, they were among the first to access Yugoslavia’s Green Plan. Under Boro’s name they contractually produced baby-beef for the agriindustrial combine PIK Moravac, to be exported to the Italian market. PIK offered cheap credit to build a stable and provided young bulls and fodder concentrate without advance payment. While Boro’s sister married out, he became a full farmer. The fattening of male calves returned prosperity to the family, so that in the late

18

Interview with former council clerk Pavle, 19 May 2012.

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1980s the Jovanovićs could help to build the first church in the village, with Boro’s father heading the church council. Since the 1990s, Boro was repeatedly elected into the local political office: ‘He is like Tito, always poised for action’, Olga loved to tease him.19 Their beef-rearing business faltered by the mid-1990s, after PIK unravelled, hit by restitutions and a war embargo. Meanwhile, in 1992, Boro had married Olga, the salesperson from PIK’s local shop. Olga bore two sons and later engaged in agriculture. When asked about their first years together, she reminisced: ‘It was quite a good situation [. . .]. His father, mother and he worked. One could solidly live then. They produced mostly potatoes—but no vegetables—as well as grains and beef’. Their painful reorientation from export to national markets was ironically favoured by the embargo situation: as imports were blocked, staple foods earned good prices. With the lifting of the sanctions in 1996, agricultural profits plummeted again, but the family’s value system as diligent agriculturalists made it hard to contemplate alternative employment, although Olga could have leased a private village shop in 1999, as she regretfully recalled. In the same year, the Jovanovićs contracted with then state-owned Industrija Mleka (IMLEK). Serbia’s largest dairy chain founded in 1953 became the household’s second vertical integration after PIK. As custom stipulated, large animals were now cared for by husband and wife as a team: Olga became responsible for the feeding, milking, milk storage, processing, and sales; Boro for fodder production, healing, and assisting in birthing the cows. IMLEK fetched the milk directly from the farms with a small truck.20 The Jovanovićs revalorised their now morally depreciated technology. Their large empty stable for fattening 50 yearlings was refurbished for milk cows. To utilise their large stable and strong Belarusian tractor to capacity, the Jovanovićs needed many cows and large meadows—relative to central Serbian farm sizes with an average of 2.12 hectares (RZS 2010, 222). Thus, the Jovanovićs rented approximately 20 hectares of fallow land from neighbours, friends and acquaintances, in lots rarely exceeding 1 hectare. Yearly lease prices have been minimal (€ 100–€ 300 per hectare), so that their modest scale of agriculture generated profits. Some landlords have bemoaned the low rents, while others gave their land for free, because ‘land needs to be worked’. At times the Jovanovićs even took on small lots so far away that returns did ‘not cover fuel costs’. Jovanovićs revalued the productivity of the land by weeding and tilling fields, mowing pastures, and manuring both, thereby keeping the land in good village hands. But moral appreciation extends beyond land and capital (machinery, stables, road infrastructures, et cetera). According to Marx’s critique of political economy, capital depreciates labourers’ working power. Indeed, for Marx, capital is ‘dead labour’. In other words, on one level of abstraction labour and capital can be subsumed, as capital’s nature is ‘vampire-like, [it] only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the

19

See footnote 8. During socialism, the women carried milk on yokes down the muddy path to the cooperative’s buying point, as Boro’s mother remembered.

20

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more, the more labour it sucks’ (Marx 1982 [1867], 342). A small self-exploiting unit like the Jovanović’s cannot survive from sucking labour power and know-how out of dead labour (capital) and the living labour of persons and animals alone. It needs to apply self-caring work to reproduce this labour power. Olga’s and Boro’s intense nurturing and care for their family, animals, kin, friends and neighbours, were praised by other villagers. Such ethical moments of moral re-appreciation became salient for the survival of the Jovanović’s dairying, as the neoliberal transformations of agriculture advanced. In 2003, IMLEK was privatised and acquired by the transnational Salford Investment Fund.21 Relying on new cooling technology, IMLEK subsequently centralised its milk processing in Belgrade and closed its regional dairy plants, like the one in Moravica. The milk prices were swiftly adjusted to transnational levels—that is drastically deflated—rendering small-scale dairy farming suddenly unprofitable. As a result, between 2005 and 2009 the number of milk cows in Serbia fell by 19% from 62,000 to 52,000, with cattle sales (often for slaughter) peaking in 2005. Between 2005 and 2013, the amount of milk produced fell by over 10%, even though the yearly productivity per cow rose from 2600 litres to 3200 l (RZS 2010, 195–222; RZS 2014, 236).22 Some farmers retained cows but used their milk for subsistence—‘as a hobby’, one grandmother, who nourished two grandchildren, maintained. Others turned to dairy cottage production for personal customers, or established small brands for green markets (see Thiemann 2014, 35). IMLEK’s milk truck serviced an everdwindling number of villagers waiting with milk buckets along the road. To increase hygiene and speed up the collection process, by 2005 IMLEK installed a lacto-freeze (a milk refrigerating unit made of hygienic chrome) in the garage of my landlady (and Boro’s school mate) Rajka Janković (Figs. 3 and 4). Rajka Janković and her husband had volunteered to account for the milk quantities and qualities their neighbours provided. However, if the pooled milk was contaminated, or if the local fat measurements differed from those in the lab, payment to all contributing farmers was reduced. This led to quarrels, and Olga Jovanović stopped providing milk that way and concentrated on manufacturing her own cheese and cream for green markets. In 2008, IMLEK removed the refrigeration equipment from pooling points like Rajka’s garage and began to source milk solely from bigger producers.23 Olga opted in. Her daily workload has since involved cleaning the lacto-freeze with three different brushes in ice-cold water. Meanwhile, IMLEK has continued to refine its laboratory tests, paying ‘stimulations’ as well as deducting ‘destimulations’ for overand underachieving standards. As of 2017, it measured the amount of milk, the proportions of fat, protein, and dry matter, the temperature, and indicators of health

21

IMLEK controls over 50% of the Serbian dairy market. It was resold in 2010 to the Danube Foods Group, in 2015 to Mid Europe Partners. 22 By summer 2010, this led to temporary milk shortages in supermarkets. 23 In 2009 a private dairy took over trading with farmers rejected by IMLEK.

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Fig. 3 New milk-cooling technology: a lacto-freeze

Fig. 4 The garage of Rajko Janković, where IMLEK placed its lacto-freeze 2005–2008

concerns: N-trimethyl chitosan, listeria monocythogenes, somatic cells, antibiotics, and aflatoxin. Thus, when the basic milk price hovered at EUR 0.16/l in 2017 (up from 14 Eurocents in 2010), Olga gained twice as much. She was also paid state subsidies of 7 Eurocents per litre (again mediated by IMLEK). With her enlarged

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Fig. 5 The pump of an integrated milk piping system (upper left)

and improved Serbian Simmental herd and her new lacto-freeze, Olga cashed in on two stimulations: for guaranteed production of over 1000 l/month and for hygienically cooled milk, but during summer she was also ‘destimulated’ for low milk fat content (under 3.5%), because she could not afford expensive soy bean mixes to add to the hay and silage fodder. To ensure a third premium for an absolutely contamination-free liquid, Olga would have to connect her milking machine via piping to the lacto-freeze (Fig. 5). But the necessary reconstruction of the stable had to wait, given more urgent expenditures on Boro’s deteriorating health. After a long struggle, Boro died from a severe illness in 2015. His bereaved family had to sell two milk cows to cover the medical and funeral expenses. Today, Olga and her children still run the farm, with Olga handling the despised paper work for IMLEK and the state. Neither heroes nor victors of new capitalism, but creatively transforming social configurations, the Jovanovićs have incorporated a capitalist rationale of exploiting given value maximally by morally re-appreciating the land, capital, animals and people that have circulated through the household for a century. They installed new machinery (a lacto-freeze) while successfully performing the ‘peasant ethos’ of the living village, pleading for mutual work exchange relations that were essential to the survival of their farm until they could buy more sophisticated hay baling technology. A peculiar dialectic was at play that I described by using a moral economic approach to capitalism and the state. Only because villagers like Rajka Janković succumbed to the moral depreciation of their dairying practices, did the opportunity

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arise for Olga Jovanović to morally re-appreciate the idle forces and relations of production. Olga’s household was not dissimilar from their neighbours. In fact, it upheld widespread ideas about the need to work the land. While the Jovanovićs did muster some ideological resource—a family reputation as dedicated farmers of long standing—they also lacked resources elsewhere, like alternative income opportunities (which they had blocked by forbidding Olga to lease the shop). Holding out just long enough, their opportunity to morally appreciate the care for post-socialist cows arose on two scales. On the moral economic scale, the Jovanovićs could access morally depreciated land, stables, tractors, machinery and so forth, their own and those of their neighbours. They put these infrastructures and machines to use through household labour, and, drawing on older moral debt obligations, by re-arranging customary agricultural labour exchanges. But significantly, their mix was competitive because the Jovanovićs could also employ innovative technology (the lacto-freeze) through vertical integration with IMLEK. On the political economy scale, IMLEK at some point realised that its dairy farmers needed to enhance milk production to stabilise access to its primary product. The state was interested in retaining its tax base and in keeping those caring for a living village from (perhaps) reinventing the food riots described by the classic moral economists. Consequent re-regulations of the sector provided quantity incentives— state subsidies per litre, stimulations above certain thresholds per month by IMLEK— and quality stimulations (and provision of a lacto-freeze) by IMLEK. At the conjuncture of these moral and political-economic processes, Olga managed the operations and steered her farm on a marginally profitable course of quantity and quality production.

Conclusion Many small-scale farming practices lose viability under the worldwide tendencies of a falling rate of profit in capitalist agriculture, accompanied by intensification, concentration, specialisation and competition. In the Serbian dairy industry, smallscale farmers have been squeezed out, as low global milk prices have made dairying unprofitable. However, contrary to many of their neighbours who disinvested, some managed to create a mini-economy of scale that not only made a profit and contributed to nurturing the nation, but also retained dairy farming as an element of the landscape, allowing villagers to claim they were part of a living village. Such caring for post-socialist cows however threatened to wear out the substance of these households, thereby transfiguring their position in the moral-economic community. Moral appreciation—materially, affectively and ethically using up the substance of undervalued work past and present combined with access to some novel technologies—proved economically viable under the conditions of relentless capitalist competition. Hidden under a veneer of peasant tradition, caring for post-socialist cows revealed the dynamism of the moral economy within the rural European

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semi-periphery, and arguably beyond. A variety of moral appreciation may succeed whenever producers, be they agriculturalists, workers, or entrepreneurs, salvage value from the ruins of shrinking capitalism. Acknowledgements Funding for the research came from the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology Halle; the ZiF—Center for Interdisciplinary Research Bielefeld; the Institute of Advanced Studies at CEU Budapest; the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at CEU; Rīga Stradiņš University, and the Latvian postdoctoral research grant 1.1.1.2/VIAA/2/18/ 271, Nr. 9.-14.5/87.

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Latin America: The Refounding of the State Mónica Mazariegos Rodas

Introduction This chapter proposes a critical analysis of concepts that are central to the debates and learnings on the idea of refounding of the State in the twenty-first century in Latin America.1 These have emerged around proposals that are based both on the critics of colonial continuities within the structures of the modern State and on the impugnation of the battering that structural adjustment measures have inflicted over the life of social majorities from the decade of the 90s up to this day. The refounding of the State poses a disruptive language and content against nineteenth-century Latin American constitutional epistemology, articulated from a monist and liberal thought that granted a central place to private property and defended a Eurocentric root that would sustain the notion of indigenous peoples’ backwardness and the justifications of their territorial expropriation. As constituent processes, the cases of Bolivia and Ecuador are representative for the region. Some other cases as Colombia and Venezuela in the nineties, and more recently the process in Chile, also present characteristics of that disruption. Along the last decade, the goal of refounding is also debated in Guatemala from the grammar of indigenous, social, and popular organizations and movements, posing a concern that spins more around the legitimacy of the constitution’s contents than around their legal validity. From a regional perspective, these voices openly question a system that reproduces multiple domination schemes (patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, etc.) which are materialized in the model of the State. 1

The ideas presented in this chapter reproduce and expand central discussions posed in the article (published in Spanish): Mazariegos Rodas, Mónica. Refounding of the State: assuming contradictions and exploring possibilities of an epistemic rupture. Eutopía Journal. 5: 3–48.

M. M. Rodas (*) Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala, Currently guest researcher at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_10

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The chapter proposes a historical and conceptual approach to the notions and relations between “State” and “refounding” from the point of view of Latin American constitutionalism and thought, and from an analysis of the crucial contributions of indigenous and popular movements to constitutional axiologies, finally approaching some hermeneutic and methodological challenges in the scholarly research on these categories and processes.

Refounding of the State Latin America has experienced a series of conceptual, institutional, and relational mutations starting out from refounding processes taking place from the first decade of the twenty-first century: some States that are sustained by the classical formulas of liberal democracy and the economic scaffoldings of neoliberalism begin to be articulated from categories that transcend such horizons to acknowledge, beyond the already known existence of various indigenous, mestizos, and Afro-descendant peoples, nations, and nationalities, their own visions and aspirations regarding how to live and coexist within the same time and space (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 5). From a constitutionalist point of view, the “refounding of the State” refers to processes that seek to transform the Rule of Law model, integrated by a series of axiological statements which inspire the common living (rights and principles), as well as institutional designs that regulate, organize, and set boundaries to public power. In order to materialize, refounding is sustained by the founding premise of classical constitutionalism: the idea that the original constituent power resides on the people and is exerted through a process that calls upon a constituent assembly to write down a new constitution. From a rupturist view before classical liberal paradigms such as unitary Nation State, juridical monism, or abstract and homogeneous citizenship, this assembly stops being “national” and acquires a “plurinational” and “popular” nature. The opening of a constituent process usually coincides with the convening of the assembly, and its closing, with the promulgation of the constitution. From a less formalist perspective, this process also comprehends a series of juridical and non-juridical dynamics that unfold in the crises of the regimes which they refute, up to the sedimentation of the new constitutional orders (Pisarello 2014, 12). Refounding puts at stake not only the social, political, juridical, cultural, and economic bases—the very model of development—of the Rule of law, but more widely a “common sense” to think the State. At this point, juridical pluralism is key as an analytical frame about the nature, role, organization, and composition that all the powers and institutions of the State must have in a culturally plural society (not only the judicial power, as is traditionally debated) including political parties that channel the constituent assembly. The reflections on refounding of the State connect us inevitably with the “reformrevolution” dialectics debated by Luxemburg since 1898 and with the debate about the tactics of the movements that claimed important social transformations

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throughout the twentieth century: refounding pursues goals that can be considered revolutionary by their transformative consequences, as they imply epistemic ruptures and structural changes. However, it is important to remember that it operates (like reforms do) from the institutional channels of legality and liberal democracy, without a transgression of the constitutional order. From this formulation, refounding constitutes a novel process that in the twenty-first century may be considered an example of counterhegemonic use of the law, because it implies a creative appropriation of juridical instruments by the popular and indigenous movements in order to move forward their agendas, beyond the political-economic frame of the liberal State and the capitalist economy), and likewise, because it integrates the law and the grammar of rights within much wider struggles, with the intention of taking them out of the hegemonic pattern and promoting them to be politized before being legalized (Santos 2005, 387; Santos 2009, 575–581). Constituent processes for the refounding of the State do not begin or end with that moment of exercising “originating power” through constituent assemblies. These would not be possible without the subjects of law that questioned the status quo long time before (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, 9), until they became what Laudani calls “destituent forces” of the previous constitutional order (Laudani 2012).2 It is from this destituent/constituent subject that the process emerges and develops. For this reason, the crucial questions have to do with the articulation of this subject in terms of what follows to the constituent assembly: if the constitution is conceived as a means to the refounding process, and not as an end in itself, who pushes forward, criticizes internally, socially monitors, and gives a sense of process to this proposed paradigmatic transition? Who promotes the development and implementation of the foundations of the new constitutional order? Who grants power and empirical contents to the difficult project of hegemonic transformations, beyond a text with novel axioms and institutional designs? (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 9).

A Polysemic Concept Refounding, in its original meaning, embodies projects that start out from questioning the colonial continuities within the State’s structures, and the possessive liberal individualism that imbues its common sense (Macpherson 2005). Likewise, the critics to the battering that the neoliberal structural adjustment measures— derived from the Washington Consensus—has inflicted upon the social majorities of the region during the 1990s.

The idea of “destituent forces” has taken an unexpected momentum in Latin America, starting from processes that challenge the lack of legitimacy of institutionalized power and its legality, in contexts of evident discrepancies between the compliance with its constitutional duties before the population and the interests to which it responds.

2

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But refounding is also a polysemic idea. There is a series of debates around the application of the term: on the one hand, there is a debate among the actors that promote the processes, to define if this is a “foundation” of the State (given the historical treatment of indigenous peoples, that cannot be considered merely “marginalized” from the State, since they were directly excluded from the constitution of the republics), or if this is a “refounding” that would search for a type of reengineering, acknowledging the possibility to take advantage of existing institutional scaffoldings (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 26–27). On the other hand, the notion has also been subject to ideological inversions, appearing on the discourse of certain elites and conservative groups in different countries, in contemporary processes that adopted supposed refounding speeches. This inversion of the term has been confirmed not only in the processes that have been undertaken in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, but also in other countries like Colombia or Guatemala, where conservative elites use the notion (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, 15). In Colombia, for example, ex-president Alvaro Uribe incorporated the idea of the “refounding of the motherland,” precisely in the speech he used to oppose the peace agreements (Orjuela 2015). Similarly, in Guatemala the idea of refounding is used in the discourse of groups that are composed of military and former military allegedly linked to massive human rights violations during the recent war (1936–1996), and who use the refounding grammar to correct historical problems (Fonseca 2017). The critical examination of the pertinence of these proposals as “refoundatory” is essential in order to avoid validating a mechanical transposition exercise of a scheme with emancipatory purposes. In this case, derives into the instrumentalization of such an ideal against its very holders since this can finally end up “emptying” it from all its potential opposition content from a human rights point of view.

Refounding and Decolonial Latin American Thought Refounding grammars hold the idea of colonial continuities, that is, the end of colonialism—the appearance of independent States—did not mean the end of colonial relations (internal colonialism). In this way, they converge with decolonial Latin American thought, a critical thought articulated around Latin America’s historical and political specificity, although it is not circumscribed to it.3 This thought has several meeting points with postcolonial thought referring to the colonial experience of Africa and Asia in the nineteenth century, but also has differences and contrasts which is important to bear in mind in discussions over

3

Decolonial thought arises from within the modernity/coloniality group. At its base there is a deconstructive reading of the traditional view of modernity, a special attention to colonialism, to the cultural and epistemic subalterization of non-European cultures and a critic to eurocentrism (Escobar 2003, 51–86; Pachón 2008, 8–35).

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the analysis of the State: decolonial Latin American thought proposes the category of coloniality as a phenomenon whose dimensions are epistemic and ontological and not only political, economic, and military. Coloniality alludes to a live process, as opposed to colonialism as a historic “episode” in order to point out the continuity between colonial times and the so-called postcolonial times (Quijano 2000a, 777–832). Decolonial thought refers to the colonial experience in Latin America starting from the sixteenth century, as a moment in which modernity begins, unlike the eighteenth century, a distinction that postcolonials do not do (Dussel 2001, 349–358, 1994, 69–81, 2000, 41–53). In contrast, the genealogy of postcolonial theory or postcolonial studies is in French poststructuralism (Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida) rather than in the dense history of decolonial global thought. Thus, this theory is halfway between European critical theory and the experiences of the intellectual elite in the former English colonies in Asia and North Africa (Mignolo 2007, 26–27). Decolonial Latin American thought holds a close relation with the paradigmatic rupture proposed by the refounding: first, because both approach the fact that colonial power relations are not just limited to the political-economic and juridical-administrative domain of the centers over the peripheries, but they possess an epistemic, that is, a cultural dimension (Castro Gómez and Grosfoguel 2007, 19).4 Second, because emergent “decolonial insurgencies” related to these projects are contributing to a rethinking of theoretical and political perspectives and paradigms (Walsh 2008, 13). Finally, because their goal is not to incorporate or to leave behind (nor to hold a mere resistance), but to achieve the radical rebuilding of beings, power, and knowledge, that is, the creation of radically different conditions of existence, knowledge, and power that may contribute to the building of different societies (Walsh 2005, 24). When analyzing the relation between State, refounding, and decolonization, it is important to bear in mind four axes of analysis proposed by Walsh, which integrate a colonial matrix that serves as a foundation for the ambiguity of the Nation State (Walsh 2008, 136–139): The coloniality of power, as a pattern of power and domination, originated from the European colonization of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, in which two historical processes met: on the one hand, the codification of the differences between conquerors and conquered based upon the idea of race, an allegedly different biological structure that placed some human beings in a natural position of inferiority to others. The population of America, and later of the world, was

4

The notion of internal colonialism arises in the 1960s, in a work of Wright Mills. It was developed for the Latin American context by Stavenhagen and González Casanova, who link it to conquest phenomena in which the native populations are not exterminated and are part of the colonizing State at first, and then of the State that acquires a formal independence or that begins processes of liberation, transition to socialism or re-colonization, and return to neoliberal capitalism. The peoples, minorities, or nations that are colonized by the Nation State suffer similar conditions to those of colonialism and neocolonialism on an international level (Wright Mills 1963, 154; Stavenhagen 1981, 15–84; González Casanova 2003).

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classified according to this pattern of power. On the other hand, the articulation of the historic forms of control over labor, its resources, and products, around a world capital and market. This notion links together the process of colonization of the Americas and the constitution of the capitalist economy world as a part of the same historic process (Quijano 2000a, 342–386, b, 201–246). The coloniality of knowledge, which refers to a cognitive pattern linked to the pattern of power, is founded on coloniality: a new perspective of knowledge within which the non-European is the past and in this way inferior, always primitive. This idea defines Eurocentrism in the production of knowledge, producing in turn epistemic inferiority in relation to non-Western knowledge (Lander 2000; Quijano 2000b). The coloniality of being refers to the existential dimension of coloniality, the dimension of the lived experience of colonization and its impact on language. Fanon would enter this existential dimension, defining the “zone of non-being”: that zone below the line of what is human, where he locates those beings without a right or an access to subjectivity, subhuman or non-human beings (Maldonado-Torres 2007; Fanon 1975, 24). The coloniality of mother nature takes the debate beyond the environment. It is based on the idea that nature, both as a biophysical reality (plants, fauna, human beings, the biodiversity of its ecosystems) and as its territorial configuration (the social-cultural dynamics that articulate those ecosystems and landscapes), appears, in the face of the global hegemonic thought and the local elites, as a subaltern space that may be exploited, laid to waste, reconfigured according to the needs of the accumulation regimes. This idea is based on the binary nature/society division, ruling out the millenary relation between the biophysical, human, and spiritual worlds, including those of the ancestors of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, which sustains integral systems of life and mankind itself (Alimonda 2011, 22; Walsh 2008, 138–139). Departing from these axes, as it will be discussed along this text,5 relation between refounding and decolonial thought exists in the goal to transcend the fragmentation of multicultural normative and institutions. Behind this goal is the idea of breaking colonial continuities: recognizing coloniality as a pattern of the State in the present (internal colonialism as well as colonialism in international relations) and not only in the past. Constructing a State based on the “dialogue between peoples and nations” will be the goal, instead of indigenous peoples historically claiming rights before the State—a horizontal relation between collective subjects in terms of rights. Some concrete characteristics of refounding processes can expose more concretely this relation: (1) the questioning of Nation State as a unity, through the incorporation of plurinationality and plurinational State, self-determination of indigenous peoples, and good living; (2) the recognition of collective rights of diverse peoples, but also rights to nature; (3) the participation and promotion of the process,

5

Particularly constitutional description in Section 2.1.

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not just by political parties, but by different peoples and social actors; (4) constitutional drafting processes that did not take place “behind closed doors,” but through unprecedented mechanisms of participation, such as open telephone lines, district and itinerant assemblies, etc.; and (5) the recovering of the idea of “popular sovereignty,” endowing the original constituent power to the people, replacing the tradition that gave that voice to the “fathers of the country”: mostly urban men, heterosexuals, property owners, lawyers (Mazariegos Rodas 2018b).

Refounding and Character of the State The relationship between refounding and the reflections on the character of the State presents diverse problematizations. In times of neoliberal extractivism, the refounding debates pose the challenge of analyzing the State in our contexts beyond the isolated analysis of the processes of corporatization—and its special impacts in indigenous contexts, where the conception about the relationship between human beings and nature from an epistemological point of view differs from the hegemonical conception in the development model. State corporatization processes refer to the phenomenon that expresses a symbiotic relation between States and multinational corporations that adjust public policies and legislations to protect private economic interests (Mazariegos Rodas 2019, 8). Refounding also poses the need to analyze the context of non-consolidated Rules of Law, from the phenomenon of coopting or coopted reconfiguration of the State. This focus considers the existence of illegal actors (criminal networks) that infiltrate and have incidence in the State, generating its institutional weakening and even redefining, reconfiguring, or substituting its interests (Garay et al. 2008, 94). Some authors have theorized this type of complex crime phenomena. They explain the State from the interaction between criminal networks, traditional elites, and public officials, mainly in Guatemala, Mexico, and Colombia (Garay et al. 2008; Garay and Salcedo-Albarán 2012). This cross-analysis must add geopolitical relations. In this regard, from a decolonial point of view of international relations which considers the different level of influence of political dialogue, international cooperation, or even political interference, it is not the same analyzing Bolivia as analyzing Guatemala. All these elements imply thinking from a concrete and relational conception of State, beyond both the theoretical framework of institutional currents based on an ideal type of liberal State, as well as the instrumental focus of the State as a system of oppression of one class over the other. This problematization moves us to the analysis of State as a complex framework of heterarchical relations containing multiple power regimes and oppression relations (epistemic, cultural, economic, political, sexual, etc.) all linked together.6

6

The analysis of heterarchical relations beyond economicist determinisms is proposed by Castro Gómez and Grosfoguel (2007, 13–23).

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García Linera states that if the State was a monolithic machine at the service of a class and the warrantor of consecrated domination, then there would be no space for liberation by those who are dominated. And if this is the case “emancipation can only come from a conscious “vanguard,” immune to the illusions of domination, that is, of some illuminated ones and specialists that would be situated on the margins of the domination that crushes the brains of the popular classes,” a matter that is hard to prove since being on the margins of domination would imply being on the very margins of society (García-Linera 2015, 37). These reflections on refounding of the State considering elements of the character of the State as corporatization, cooption, and the internal colonial continuities as well as in international relations challenge us to revise, expand, and enrich the theory of the State, which takes us closer to the forms of the contemporary State in Latin American contexts. Likewise, they invite us to question, what is protecting the current core of the Rule of Law which must be refounded? Is it protecting national interest, common good, human rights, popular sovereignty? Or is it rather protecting private economic interests zealously guarded by a “common sense” that, even though has suffered adaptations due to the mutation of elites and factual powers throughout history, can be traced to the foundation of our republics?

Refounding and Latin American Constitutionalism The idea of refounding in Latin America is linked to social processes that waved an explicitly decolonial discourse, expressed in the aspirations of the twenty-first century socialism7 and in the statements of the new Latin American constitutionalism, through State refounding principles like Buen Vivir (good living) and plurinationality.8 The epistemic-theoretical-axiological rupture represented by this idea was promoted by Constituent Assemblies permeated by the participation of “non-traditional” actors, considering the classical elitism of representative democracy. 7

Twenty-first century socialism is an ideal of the Bolivarian revolution that Hugo Chávez declares at the Fifth Social World Forum in 2005, retaken by the governments of Bolivia and Ecuador (with their own discourse) with shared principles of rupture with colonial continuities. As Atilio Borón states, the specific forms that its construction would assume would be very varied, resulting from the struggle of the peoples more than from conceptual disquisitions or orders issued from a central commando. The transition state to reach this idea was identified as the “Revolutionary Democracy” in Venezuela, the “Citizen Revolution/Democracy” in Ecuador, referring to the radical change toward the socialism of Well Living or Sumak Kawsay, and the “Community Revolution/Democracy” in Bolivia, given the constitutional recovery of democratic forms of the indigenous-originarypeasants nations and peoples (Borón 2008, 96; García-Linera 2015; Movement País 2012, 13). 8 There are countless works on the characterization of the new Latin American constitutionalism. See references to the work of Santos, Viciano, Martínez-Dalmau, Ávila Santamaría, Aparicio, and Noguera, among others.

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Peasant movements, indigenous peoples, women, and human rights and ecology activists, among others, claimed the exercise of an originating constituent power. That process gave a twist to the traditional lead of political processes and questioned classical dogmas of Law and State theory (the equations “State-Law” and “one Stateone nation”) as well as the individualistic imprinting on the formulation of human rights (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 10)—the latter not only in terms of acknowledgment of collective rights to diverse peoples (indigenous, native, peasant) but also to nature as subject of rights, in the case of Ecuador.9 Assuming the paradox represented by the proposal to decolonize from the law, these projects expand their discussions beyond the liberal horizon, taking distance from theoretical imposition and trying to stick to the historical complexity of social reality as a primary preoccupation of the law. Thus, the “new Latin American constitutionalism” takes place, starting out not only from political mobilizations developed “from below,” which would imprint a non-traditional character to the constituent subject. It also starts within a frame of epistemic tensions between hegemonic thought and indigenous and popular world visions that proposed ruptures with colonial continuities and presented novel axiological challenges.10 These processes have been described in diverse ways, alluding to the novelty represented by these wider, more democratic forms of constituent representation: constitutionalism “from below,” “transformative constitutionalism” (Santos 2010a, 153, 2010b, 76–87), “plurinational and intercultural constitutionalism” (Grijalva 2008, 49–50), “transformative neo-constitutionalism” (Ávila 2011), etc.

The scaffoldings of the refounding of the State The era of State refounding begins in Latin America because of several moments of social-economic crisis: the policies of structural adjustment of the 1990s had failed, achieving no growth or “economic overspill,” but rather sharpening a situation of historic poverty. This analysis could be extended to the more recent Chilean case, with the 2020 consultation for the convening of a Constituent Assembly. The benefits of the commercialization of land and its transformation into latifundia for agro-industry, mining and oil activities, patents, sweat shop industrialization, or privatization of public goods fell in the hands of the transnational capital with a certain overspill for local elites. The security discourse and social control were intensified as protests grew, but the State’s capacity of contention in the management of conflict started to run out as the model opted to devour more victims instead of

9

See: Chapter Seven, Rights of Nature, constitution of Ecuador. This process is different to the case of “neo-constitutionalism” which marked a breaking point in the constitutional grammar in Europe up to the twenty-first century, seeking warranties for the effectiveness of economic and social rights, and was characterized mainly by a debate that does not transcend the coordinates of liberalism (García 2009, 115).

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reorienting its way (Aparicio 2012, 99–101). These effects generated social mobilizations of great reach, which had their summit in Venezuela with the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, in Ecuador with the expulsion of several presidents, and in Bolivia with a wide mobilization and articulation of indigenous peoples against the privatization of water and gas (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 11). In the first decade of the twenty-first century, we find a displacement of the classical constituent debates toward axiological cores such as plurinationality, free determination of indigenous people, plural economy (both social and solidary), and good living. These debates start out from an explicit decolonial motivation that seeks to recover popular sovereignty and vindicates historically denied indigenous roots. They are imbued of criticism toward liberalism that founded modern constitutionalism. From the point of view of the social-political process, the origins of a will of State refounding and popular recovery of sovereignty and constitutional control are usually found in the process of Colombian Constitution of 1991. This is due more to the plural integration of the constituent subject (social movements, representation of indigenous peoples, women, demobilized guerrilla organizations, etc.) than to the results of the process: the constitution, which although on the one hand was committed to a social Rule of Law and a participative democracy, on the other opened the door for neoliberalism to enter.11 The expression of refounding will shall crystallize later in the Bolivarian constitutions (Venezuela 1999; Ecuador 2008; Bolivia 2009) which incorporated axiological foundations that are in explicit contrast with neoliberalism and with the philosophical bases of modernity (liberty, equality, and reason). In order to understand the breaking point that these processes suppose in the face of classical liberalism, those constitutions must be read like the result of historical processes founded in social movements instead of political parties, and not like fixed texts. All three texts express refounding purposes from their preamble, but decolonial grammar will show up explicitly in the constitutions of Ecuador (the citizen revolution/democracy) and Bolivia (the community revolution/democracy) (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 12). All three texts are committed with the recovery of popular sovereignty, endowing a voice made up of human beings from different peoples with originating power, and replacing the traditional way that granted such a voice to the “fathers of the motherland” or to the representatives of the people. The most plural and inclusive integration of these assemblies produced a new “fatherless” constitutionalism (Martínez Dalmau 2012).12

11

See on this analysis: Noguera and Criado (2011, 15–49) and Mejía (2002, 148–169). In the past, the approval of a Constitution was a pact of elites, carried out by their representatives, in which the agreements were based on common interests. Currently, on the other hand, it is constitutionalism “without fathers” because “nobody, save the people, may consider themselves to be the creators of the constitution, due to the participative dynamics that accompanies constituent processes. From the activation of constituent power itself through a referendum to the final voting to have it come into effect, passing through the participative introduction of its contents, the processes move further and further away from those conventicles of wise men, to move more and more, with

12

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The plurality of this integration would be later reflected in the constitutional texts, making evident a greater legitimacy of constituent power. In the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia, that allows the appearance of plurinational constitutionalism (2006–2009); both texts define the character of the state as plurinational and affirm the colonial fact as constitutive of the republic and of constitutionalism. The Constitution of Bolivia establishes among the essential ends and functions of the State: “i. To build a just and harmonious society, founded on decolonization, without discrimination or exploitation, with full social justice to consolidate plurinational identities. . . .”13 In the case of Ecuador, the constitutional preamble acknowledges the people as the heir of “the social struggles for liberation in the face of all forms of domination and colonialism,” also establishing as a principle for international relations the condemnation of all forms of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, acknowledging the right of the peoples to resistance and liberation from all forms of oppression.14 The acknowledgment, not only of a colonial past, but of a colonial present, of colonization as a constant and not as a historical moment, also takes place when assuming the precolonial existence of indigenous peoples. When this sharp turn took place, it was not free of a series of contradictions and conflicts. On the one hand, the paradox of posing the anticolonial discourse using the causeways of the law (the modern and colonial artifact par excellence) creates doubts regarding the “new paradigm” (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 14)15: the political action of indigenous movements has been pivoting around how to avoid colonial dynamics in the process of negotiating their demands. Some criticize the fact of “asking” the State for a recognition of rights, which implicitly accepts the denial of a native indigenous sovereignty, while others adopt the path of the human rights discourse to push actions oriented to widen their margins of acknowledgment.16 On the other hand, all constituent processes had (and still have) setbacks and

its advantages and inconveniences, into its own chaos, from which a new kind of constitution, wider and more detailed, more original and more capable to serve the people, will be obtained, once again close to the revolutionary dream” (Martínez Dalmau 2008). 13 Art. 9. It also establishes within its principles of international relations the “rejection and condemnation of every form of dictatorship, colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism” art. 255. II.2 (Italics are mine). 14 Preamble and article 416 section 8, respectively. 15 Even in the case of Bolivia, we cannot speak of a new paradigm, but of a complex mixture of aspects that are rooted in the purest liberal constitutional tradition, with elements of a dialogical, decolonized constitutionalism (Aparicio 2013, 245–272). 16 Anaya exposes this tension between two argumentative lines in the debates on indigenous rights: the first one from a frame that is State centered, which ascribes a nationality to indigenous peoples, postulating them as political communities within international law, acknowledging an “original sovereignty” suppressed by the colony. The second one centers the argument around the modern discourse of rights and focuses on the well-being of human beings as an objective, having only a secondary interest in sovereign entities. The first line invokes the rules of international law over the acquisition and transference of territories by and among States, to show the illegitimacy of the assault on indigenous sovereignty and on the rights over lands and natural resources, demanding

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immense difficulties which derived in procedure blockings, a destabilizing role played by the media, and even violent actions, due to the relentless opposition of the traditional elites (Ávila 2011, 958–961; Aparicio 2012, 102).

The Case of Guatemala. An Open Debate The refounding debate in Guatemala is posed in the face of a history that talks about constitutions whose formation processes were characterized by an elitism that was unable to represent the interests of the majorities. World visions, knowledge and indigenous authorities, institutions, and normative systems have been historically excluded from constitutional grammars that have rather reproduced colonial and patriarchal imprint of nineteenth-century liberal constitutionalism. A brief acknowledgment of indigenous rights arrives with the multicultural and neoliberal constitution of 1985. The text incorporated recognitions regarding cultural identity, a chapter on “indigenous communities,” and mandates for specific legislation that would be relatively widened with the signing of the peace accords in 1996, after 36 years of internal war. The subject of indigenous rights is not acknowledged as “a people.” Therefore, neither does it acknowledge key rights like free determination, authority and justice systems, previous, free, and informed consultation, or common property and disposition of ancestral territories understood in their integral conception, beyond land (elements of the soil, the subsoil, and the environment) (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 25–26). From a critical point of view on the character of the State, there is a list of almost 40 proposals related to transformations that indigenous peoples have demanded since the 1970s, although their resistances go back to colonial times.17 Several of these proposals contain elements that are clearly refounding the (or founding a new) State, such as the principles of plurinationality and good living (utzilaj k’aslemal): the proposals of the Mayan National Coordination and Convergence Waqib’ kej (2016), of the Peasant Development Committee (CODECA) (2016), and of the Council of Peoples of the West (CPO) (2014).18

historic compensation. The second one invokes the historic narrative only to identify past acts of oppression that have continuity in present oppressions, in the light of the principles of human rights (Anaya 2005, 237–258). 17 A detailed synthesis of these proposals can be consulted in Coordinación y Convergencia Nacional Maya Waqui’ Kej. Demandas y propuestas. Anex 3, 27 and ss. See also: Confluencia Nuevo B’aqtun, El Utzilaj K’aslemal- El Raxnaquil Kj’aslemal. El buen vivir de los pueblos de Guatemala, 2014. 18 See: Coordinación y Convergencia Nacional Maya Waquib’ Kej. Demandas y propuestas, 37–96. Comité de Desarrollo Campesino. Guatemala, Vamos para un proceso de asamblea constituyente popular y plurinacional. (Guatemala: Codeca 2016) 11, 26. A wide analysis of refounding proposals, subjects, and dilemmas in Guatemala can be found in Fonseca 2017.

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These proposals share a formulation that emerges from juridical pluralism as an analytic frame to think and understand not only justice, but the very character of the State beyond the categories of liberal legalism. They all break with the positivist paradigm of the Kelsenian pyramidal structure, with the classical State-Law identity, with juridical monism, and with the idea of the “Nation State” understood as one people, one culture, one language, and one religion (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 28–29). Besides, they imply an internal reconfiguration and displacement of sovereignty, when speaking of empiric and historic realities, legal realities (Griffiths 1986, 4–5) that are not inexistent just because they are invisible in legal texts: the refounding proposals in Guatemala are articulated from the vindication of all those “unofficial” channels (systems of organization, institutions, and norms) through which life goes by and conflicts and agreements are solved in the real world. The proposals share the denunciation of the excluding character of the majorities as a founding trait of the State, a bet for solidarity, for the recovery of a sense of community, for an intergenerational dialogue, for a harmonious coexistence with nature which, in this context, is linked to the causes and approaches of socioenvironmental conflicts. They propose the plurinational and popular character as a novel feature of a constituent assembly that is necessary to write down a new constitution (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 28–29).

Background and Scaffoldings of Plurinational Constitutionalism As we have seen, refounding is sustained, among other principles, upon plurinationality and good living as foundations that transcend the codes of liberal multiculturalism, classic republicanism, and neoliberalism: they propose a sense of decolonization that implies incorporating the projects of indigenous peoples and all peoples to the State, breaking the dichotomy of State-indigenous peoples and promoting dialogue in a condition of equity among peoples, beyond the multicultural “liberal persuasion” of the State toward indigenous people (Kymlicka 2009, 109). Good living and plurinationality are posed as elements of the other side of the history in the face of a Eurocentric, elitist reason of State upon which the Latin American republics were founded in the nineteenth century. They are associated with a paradigmatic transition that supposes questioning the republican and liberal tradition and proposes leaving behind colonial relations they represent, from the point of view of their historical continuity. Both notions are the foundation for plurinational constitutionalism, which entails a rupture in the face of multicultural constitutionalism and, more radically, of the monist, liberal constitutionalism that was inherited from the nineteenth century.

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To understand this transit, it is important to start out from three cycles in the history of Latin American constitutionalism: (a) multicultural constitutionalism 1982–1988, (b) pluricultural constitutionalism 1989–2005), and (c) plurinational constitutionalism 2006–2009 (Yrigoyen 2011, 149–141).19 The first one appears in the decade of the 1980s, with the emergence of multiculturalism. It acknowledged the right to identity and cultural diversity, together with the inclusion of specific indigenous rights. Guatemala (1985), Nicaragua (1987, systems of autonomies), and Brazil (1988) start this wave. The 1990s represent a second cycle. The critical commemoration of the Fifth Centenary (1992), the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala, 1992), the Zapatista uprising (México, 1996) and the strengthening of indigenous mobilization, the representation in political parties, and the adoption of ILO’s Agreement 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples (that moves toward the acknowledgment of the right to free determination of development) mark the history of international indigenous advocacy. The multiethnic nation or pluricultural state, both forms of juridical pluralism, was acknowledged, as well as a series of rights like natural resources, territory, or previous consultation. Colombia (1991), México (1992), Paraguay (1992), Peru (1993), Bolivia (1994), Argentina (1994), Ecuador (1996 and 1998), and Venezuela (1999) are part of this wave. In this cycle, important contradictions emerge, because the reforms were incorporated into neoliberal constitutions—inspired in Hayek’s “liberty constitution” ideal—which were the scaffoldings for the opening of markets and the privatization of public goods.20 Liberal multiculturalism endowed them with an “armor” of legitimacy given by a cultural acknowledgment that would recreate the grammar of human rights. The regression that this implied in the matter of economic and social rights was in contrast to the advancement of a cultural recognition whose material conditions of possibility were being inevitably deactivated. This trait, which has been critically described as the cultural logic of global capitalism (Žizek 1997, 28–51) or as neoliberal multiculturalism in a Latin American context, since it sustains the strategic convergence between neoliberal economic structuring and the acknowledgment of minimum cultural rights in a single political project (Hale 2002, 485–524, 2005, 10–19), is a sort of “original handicap” that has prevented indigenous rights to gain It is important to note that the “multi” (which has roots in Western countries) points out to a diversity of cultures unrelated between each other, in the frame of a dominant culture, and the “pluri” (a concept that is used in South America to reflect the reality of coexistence among indigenous, Afro-descendant, and mestizo peoples) indicates a coexistence of cultures in the same space, although without a deep, equitable interrelation. In Latin American constitutions, it is frequent to use both terms interchangeably to refer to a country’s diversity (Walsh 2008, 140). Both are notions that describe a factual situation of cultural diversity without a relational component or questioning of the economic and developmental model. 20 The “liberty constitution” was posed by Hayek in the 1960s, integrating norms that warrant both liberty and private property, as well as general well-being. This work, which was widened in the 1970s, is positioned against distributive justice because it is an attempt against the warranties of private law over private property (Hayek 1960). 19

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more binding strength and power. The right to previous, free, and informed consultation (which is not binding) on the frame of social-environmental conflicts in the face of the extractive model in our times is an emblematic example. The third cycle takes place during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Plurinational constitutionalism arrives with the refounding projects in Bolivia (2006, 2009) and Ecuador (2008) and has impact on the definitions about the character of the State. Changes bring together a notion of juridical pluralism which implies an analytic frame to think about the State as a whole, defining plurinational institutions that will go beyond acknowledging the indigenous in isolated norms. This cycle arrives parallel to the acknowledgment of the United Nations’ Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (2006–2007), the first international instrument that acknowledges the right to free determination. The indigenous peoples then demand to be acknowledged as peoples and nationalities, collective political subjects with a right to dialogue and relate, in a horizontal manner, to other peoples and nationalities coexisting within the same State.

Plurinationality Plurinationality is a concept that makes reference to the coexistence of several peoples, nations, or nationalities which preexisted the foundation of the State, within the same territory. This trait marks a paradigmatic rupture in the face of the unitary and centralist character of the idea that equals the State with “one nation,” vindicating the idea of nation as people (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 19). The approach is in contrast with multiculturalism which tried to articulate a policy of recognition within the classical scheme of a unitary nation with a diversity of cultures.21 Plurinationality refers to the non-liberal, community concept of nation, which does not necessarily lead to the State: it is a community tradition related to nations without a State and it bears with it an idea of self-determination, but not of independence. The indigenous peoples have never vindicated independence, but ways of self-determination. That is why plurinationality forces to refound the modern State to combine different concepts of nation within the same State (Santos 2007, 31).22

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These ideas are presented from the strategic grammars of indigenous vindication, without an animus of simplifying a debate of deep implications like the one over nationalisms: without overlooking criticisms against notions as historically built artifacts that may lead to dogmatic essentialisms, nor to readings from Marxism, which held that the surge of transnational enterpises modifies the consensus of State viability and is benefited by separatism, thus being dangerous to adopt nationalism, more as a program and ideology than as a fact (Anderson 1993; Hobsbawm 2000). 22 Plurinationality is also vindicated beyond the Latin American spectrum. This demand exists both in Asia and Africa, in a process derived from a disqualification of the modern, unitary State due to the attacks of neoliberalism (Santos 2007, 36–37).

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There is a substantial difference between plurinationality and pluriculturality: it is different that a nation acknowledges itself to be culturally diverse than that a State accepts itself to be composed as nationally plural. Just in this later case would the need of a deep reconstitution be acknowledged, even under new principles. It is difficult to acknowledge plurinationality through a mere constitutional reform without reconsidering the whole constitution, while pluriculturality has managed to be always acknowledged this way, through “touch-ups” (Clavero 10, 3–4). Finally, it should be said that plurinationality has a relational imprinting: the institutional transformations it proposes are given from the rupture of the identity between State and nation. It poses the need not only to get recognition, but to have a relation between the different historic communities coexisting in a territory, sharing or disputing natural resources, territories, historic narratives, political institutions (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 20).

Good Living The most novel and controversial debate in plurinational constitutionalism is the one derived from the constitutional incorporation to the notions of “good living” (Buen Vivir in the Constitution of Ecuador) or to “live well” (Vivir Bien in the Constitution of Bolivia) which are translations of the notions of sumak kawsay (in quechua) and suma qamaña (in Aymara). They are traditional expressions of the indigenous world in several points of Latin America. This conception was coined in the Viceroyalty of Perú by Guamán Poma de Ayala, approximately in 1615, in his “New Chronicles and good government” (Quijano 2011).23 Its recognition poses an “epistemic rupture” since in indigenous worldviews there is not necessarily one single view of progress or development associated with a linear conception of time, nor the conception of poverty associated with the lack of consumption of material goods or richness linked to its abundance. That is why it moves away from classical visions of development as perpetual economic growth, linear progress, and anthropocentrism, and what is at stake in its debate is life itself, in which nature is a whole that cannot be dissociated from mankind (Acosta 2008, 33–35). This idea refers to a longing for a “good living” for everyone and not for a “better living” for just a few at the expense of the others, and it is distinguished by “being a shared way of life, that is, a good “coexistence”, due to the tight relation of mankind with nature thanks to an element of indigenous spirituality which is the sense of being a part of something greater, and for the inner satisfaction for the good living, which implies a community celebration” (Albó 2009, 2).

Carolina Ortíz Fernández was the one who noticed this fact. See: “Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, Clorinda Matto, Trinidad Henríquez y la teoría crítica. Sus legados a la teoría social contemporánea,” in Yuyaykusun Num. 2. (2009). The quote is in Quijano 2011.

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The proposals of good living connect today with other positions that are critical to global neoliberalism, which do not necessarily come from the indigenous worlds. Diverse voices around the world, like the student movement in Chile, the movements of the “Indignant” in Europe or the Occupy Wall Street, and the rural communities that resist the attacks of extractive megaprojects, find multiple intersections with this discourse: first, in the critics toward a model of development as synonymous of unlimited, unequal economic growth, second, in the claim to protect “common goods” like nature, water, and territories, and finally, in the vindication, not of higher life standards but of better life standards, of a quality of life.24 “Good living” has connected with the thought of theorists linked to biocentric ecologism that propose it, together with their own contributions as a “political platform” to discuss, agree on, and apply answers to the devastating effects of climate change at a planetary scale as well as to the recent social marginalization and violence throughout the world (Acosta 2013, 21–26; Gudynas 2011, 49). As a theoretical proposal, it has also been nurtured by the feminism that has transited from a critic to development to the proposal of alternatives, dialoguing about good living from diverse postures that go through the articulation of decolonizing and depatriarchalizing processes (Aguinaga et al. 2011, 55; Cabnal 2010, 11–25; Asociación de Mujeres Indígenas de Santa María Xalapan 2012). This is an algid debate, since it crosses through the main (and most violent) conflict scenarios of contemporary global extractivism: when a principle based on reciprocity, which proposes harmonious coexistence with nature and the community, resides in the same text with a neo-extractivist model inscribed in a rationality of economic growth, a series of contradictions and antinomies are inevitably bringing down the juridical ideology of “neutrality” and revealing an epistemic tension between rights and privileges, as much as it may be presented as “conflicts between rights” (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 24).

Challenges for (the Research on) the Refounding Processes As it has been discussed along this text, the notion of “Refounding of the State” is as novel as complex idea which dialogues with Constitutional Law, Philosophy of Law, and Political Theory, among others. Socio-juridical and interdisciplinary studies on this field bring together a series of challenges, both for a critical analysis of its processes and for the (hermeneutic, methodological) development of its research. See: “We do not want higher standards of life, we want better standards of life. The only sense in which we are communists resides in the fact that we care about common goods. The common wellbeing of nature. The common wellbeing of everything that is privatized by the law of intellectual property. The common wellbeing of biogenetics. For this and for this only we must fight” were the words of Slavoj Zizek in Occupy Wall Street.” Url http://blogs.publico.es/ fueradelugar/1068/slavoj-zizek-en-occupy-wall-street

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On the Mechanical Reproduction of Theoretical Schemes and Emancipation Projects Following the way the mechanical reproduction of European designs in Latin American contexts has been criticized from the Theory of the Law, I will delimit the challenge which, in a likewise manner, implies the need to avoid the mechanical reproduction in any context of axiological fundaments and institutional designs that has produced good results in some countries of South America. The analysis of the Law and juridical theory in the dominant Latin American tradition has shown a noticeable preference toward exegesis and the quoting of authors, but with no reference to the historical-concrete context, to the praxis of the Law or to underlying power relations. This style of analysis tends to be a ventriloquist one: there is a proliferation of local spokespersons of European or US law theorists whose work usually has a philosophical structure or defends postulates that depend deeply on the reality in which they are produced (Rodríguez Garavito 2011, 13–14). As an answer to this tradition, the debates around plurinational constitutionalism are positioned beyond the positivist perspective that is been dominant since Kelsen and are positioned in the sociological point of view that understands law as a system that produces culture and power structures. They support themselves particularly in schools of thought that question the genealogy and the monist axiological bases of Western law. However, it is necessary to point out the risk of mechanical reproduction, even when Eurocentrism may be transcended, and a critical and decolonial perspective adopted. The lessons and learnings that the processes in Ecuador and Bolivia have left us are linked to the idea that, even when this is about realities that share a history and structural problems that entail the vindication of axiological principles like plurinationality and good living, there are factors that condition their practical implementation. These mark important differences such as the position and geopolitical relations; the levels of capture or cooptation of the State; the degree of racism in society; the degrees of impunity, repression, and criminalization exerted by the State (and the economic powers); the existing breaches of structural inequality; the institutional devises open and available; the interests in conflict, privileges at risk, and potential allies. Let us even take two steps back: the debates on the ways and channels for the convening of a Constituent Assembly produce particularly important challenges to the more legalist tradition in Latin America. It is important to remark that every process has been developed within a margin of “alegality” determined by its own context. No provisions on an assembly with original constituent power are stated in Latin American Constitutions, and the ordinary legislation just—naturally—has space for reforms. The countries where the re-foundation has been proposed declared their processes as of “original constituent power,” although the rupture is not done by a revolutionary or illegal route, but within legal or even “alegal” mechanisms, that is, actions that

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are configured within spheres not regulated by the law of the State and are located outside the constitutional provisions and electoral legislation, without becoming illegal (Pisarello 2014, 110). Based on the illegitimacy of the previous order, an ad hoc norm is generally enacted, which is usually submitted to the control of the courts, to call a Constituent Assembly. The very question at this point turns around the social process that “produces” the conditions for “alegality.” Thus, thinking of constituent power as a way implies fundamentally thinking of the subject and thinking of the social process. In this way, the mechanical reproduction of theoretical schemes and emancipation projects is impossible. In every context, as a social process and not only as a juridical text, plurinational constitutionalism must bear these factors (besides the situation analysis and historic memory) quite in mind when it proposes channels for the constituent assembly (conditions of legality and alegality), institutional designs, political routes of negotiation, follow-up, and implementation of refounding processes.

On Intercultural Translation In second place, these processes entail important hermeneutic challenges, from the point of view of the intercultural translation of central constitutional categories to refounding processes (plurinationality, good living, etc.). There is an evident epistemic rupture in these debates, which goes around the recognition of the indigenous and Afro-descendant worlds as political subjects that are fundamental to the State, and not as “regulated” minorities in specific legislation: we are talking about life models that are different and even discrepant to the dominant model and even between each other. Conceptions of well-being and the relation with nature that are unlike, maybe even antagonist to the current extractivist model, both in their philosophical conceptions and in their mechanisms of how to “measure effectiveness,” and that would need a translation that is not currently being done in order to dialogue and search for solutions before current socioenvironmental and other conflicts. Intercultural translating is a procedure that allows for the creation of reciprocal intelligibility between world experiences, both those available and those possible (Santos 2010b, 44). In the human rights debate, its “translation” to other cultural languages would happen from intercultural dialogue, highlighting the fact that human beings have a “contextual” content (Baccelli 2001, 207). This vision affirms that we are not abstract beings, transforming the paradigm of the subject of homogeneous rights, “situating” and “contextualizing” it in its social and cultural environment, in its perception of time and space (Fariñas 1997, 38–39). Translation implies an important challenge to avoid cultural comparison as a guide for normative production. The resource of comparing liberal cultures vs. antiliberal cultures, which is traditionally applied from multiculturalism, starts out from a determined (western) enunciation place. It is founded on the

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epistemic monologue and takes (neo)liberalism as an example of civilization, embracing conclusive prejudice regarding the “other” and closing dialogue possibilities or confrontation of opposites a priori. Influential multiculturalism in Latin America has proposed deontological mechanisms for the normalization and adaptation of liberal cultures to neoliberalism through persuasion (Kymlicka 1996). This focus poses the problem from a Manichaean position that presents liberal nations as granitic units devoid of important dialectics and faced by the threat of an evil represented by antiliberal groups. The predominance of liberalism has produced a debate from the appeal to human rights and democracy as accomplished manifestations of illustrated humanism to an alleged consensus over its universal and transcultural potential. This consensus loses sight that, if democracy and rights can be made universal, it is not due to that “attraction force” that liberal multiculturalism ascribes them, but because, together with the Rule of Law, they form a frame imposed by hegemonic powers during the reconfiguration of the world order during the second post-war and further on, through political relations, international cooperation, and trade (Clavero 1994, 61). In some Latin American contexts, the confrontation of hegemonic thought with the “good living” or plurinationality accused the abuse of indigenous communities for opposing development (good living) and pretending the secession of (plurinational) territories. This confrontation analyzes the problem from a Manichaean comparison that supposes or at least leads to suppose that in their “backwardness” indigenous philosophies have difficulties with understanding that their demands attempt against the “common well-being” and the “national interest.” Thus, a comparison is made between the notion of development (as progress) and the indigenous notions of relation with nature (as backwardness). My argument holds that liberal persuasion as a method unfolds beyond the strict field of vision of human rights and reaches a much wider system of concepts, norms, and institutions that includes development, progress, democracy, governance, and capitalism. The “other” epistemologies, the indigenous ones, are invisible, nonexistent (Santos 2010a, 34–40). The method of cultural comparison discards them a priori for not passing the “civilization test.” That is why when a conflict arises due to the incompatibility with the development vision, the ways out proposed by the law do not get to discuss the root of the problem (the model of development) but remain in the discussion of how to minimize the inevitable damage caused by development. There lies the root dilemma: the difficulty of acceptance of what Santos call the cultural incompleteness (Santos 2010a, 47). This prevents any possibility of dialogue, translation, and furthermore frontal dissent. In his diatopical hermeneutics, Panikkar poses the need to understand the other without presupposing that they have the same self-knowledge and base knowledge as we do. His thesis starts from the awareness that the topoi, places of different cultures, cannot be understood with the comprehension instruments of just one culture. Diatopical hermeneutics attempt to put different topoi, with their own intelligibility models, in touch, in order to achieve a true dialogue: it is the possibility to arrive at a comprehension through those different places or dia-topos (Pannikar 2007).

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On this basis, Santos proposes that the idea of human dignity may be formulated in different “languages,” and therefore before suppressing the difference in the name of postulated universalisms, they should be made mutually intelligible through translation. That implies a dialogue with exchange between different types of knowledge and cultures, between different universes of sense, incommensurable in a strong sense, between constellations of strong topoi.25 He proposes a diatopical hermeneutic based on the idea that culture’s topoi are incomplete just like the culture, regardless of how strong they are. That is why it is necessary to elevate the awareness of reciprocal incompleteness to the maximum possible level from a dialogue made with a foot set in each culture, as a sine qua non condition. This is their diatopical character (Santos 1998, 364–365). Santos, from his “decolonial interculturality,” does the exercise of looking for isomorphic preoccupations between different cultures in order to find mutually intelligible aspirations. He carries out the diatopical hermeneutics between the Western concept of human rights, the Islamic concept of Umma, and the Hindu concept of Dharma.26 He also points out the importance of other two exercises: the translation between different conceptions of “productive life” (conception of capitalist development) and the conception of Swadeshi proposed by Gandhi or that of Sumak Kawsay of indigenous peoples, both based on the notions of sustainability and reciprocity and, on the other hand, the translation between diverse conceptions of knowledge and different world visions like Western philosophy and the African concept of philosophical sagacity (Santos 2010b, 44–47). Transported from the world of ideas to that of law production, cultural comparison has been unable to include different types of knowledge and world visions in institutional and normative devices. History accounts for how fruitless and tragic it is to pretend that indigenous peoples give up their identity and passively and acritically accept a normative formula that entails arrogance, prejudice, lack of knowledge, or—even worse—denial of their cultures. Intercultural translation in a dialogue that is posed in a decolonial manner, that is, that considers the historical asymmetries between cultures beyond the official duration of colonial periods, may contribute to articulate answers, although the process may be highly conflictive. With its lights and shadows, the constitutional transformations in Ecuador and Bolivia, seen as sociopolitical processes, are an unprecedented possibility, still open Topoi are widely extended places of a culture and become vulnerable when they are “used” in a different culture, since understanding a given culture from the topoi of another might be difficult if not impossible (Santos 2005, 395–396). 26 From the view of Dharma and Umma, the Western conception of rights is plagued by a simplistic and mechanical symmetry between rights and obligations: it grants rights only to those to whom it demands obligations. Thus, it is impossible to grant rights to the future generations because they do not have obligations. Diatopical hermeneutics, from the perspective of other cultures, would help to introduce collective rights, natural rights, and rights of future generations, as well as obligations and responsibilities in the face of collective entities (community, world). Likewise, from the topos of human rights, dharma (Rivera Cusicanqui also takes good living into account) stops concerning itself with individual liberty and autonomy. See: Santos (2010, 513–525) and Proyecto Alice (2014). 25

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to the critical discussion of the topoi of Latin American constitutionalism. From an axiological point of view, they opened the discussion over the legitimacy of liberalism as universal episteme, establishing its limits and reaches in order to satisfy the historic justice needs of indigenous peoples. They marked a paradigmatic rupture with classical liberal theses such as representative democracy, private property, juridical monism, State-centrism, and the individual as the only legitimate subject of rights. From a historic point of view, they broke with the constitutional genealogy of indigenous backwardness and the justifications for territorial spoils. From an institutional point of view—making use of plurinationality as dialogue with indigenous people on an equity level—they transformed the matrix of the modern colonial State by “mainstreaming” indigenousness from communitarian to national level. However, they have an intercultural translation task awaiting: even though these constitutions have not transformed the economic model, they have propelled the axiological and institutional devices that lay bare the greatest internal tensions of the development model, helping us clarify (and legitimate) the epistemic matrix of the problem. Good living may have a role in translating the alternatives of development from the juridical arena and may also act as a dialogical bridge between indigenous and non-indigenous bets in the critics of developmentalism and the exploration of alternatives—a titanic task that is finally being incorporated into the constitutional battlefield thanks to these processes.

On the Colonial Paradox in Refounding Processes In third place, I will approach the “colonial paradox” which conveys the analysis of processes that, on the one hand, are conceived and propelled from the categories and devices of colonial modernity even though their purpose is decolonization and, on the other hand, make evident the enormous difficulties of deciding from a sovereign point of view when one is inserted in a system world willing to finish up all the remaining non-renewable resources before taking a step toward another development model (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 23–24). Plurinational constitutionalism tried to reconfigure power through the positivizing of anticolonial vindications, but “stumbled” upon itself, because it developed them from the liberal, centralist devices of a model that is historically functional to the main historic oppression systems (colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy). By attempting to set up the bases for a new hegemony starting out from the contradiction with neoliberalism and developmentalism, refounding runs into a difficult paradox: although the constitutions’ decolonial imprinting—which grants a central place to good living—is incompatible with developmental extractivism, the system depended on these revenues in order to finance the constitutional promises of socio-economic transformation. In consequence, the government discourse was also neo-extractivist, generating an impasse situation in the carrying out of plurinationality and good living itself, as axioms of the new political

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model (Mazariegos Rodas 2018a, b, 23). This contradiction was assumed in several occasions by Álvaro García Linera (former bolivian vice-president): On the one hand, this logic of a relation that dialogues with nature is taken into the ambit of the State; but at the same time, if you are the State, you need resources and growing surplus to see to the basic needs of all bolivians, and of the ones more in need, like indigenous and popular urban-rural communities. And evidently, a tension is generated there. Therefore, you must walk with both feet. (Svampa et al. 2009)

The complexity of this walking with both feet approach is made evident in this precise phase of neoliberalism: the model is not only centered on extractivism and land hoarding for monocultures. Given the progressive influence of supranational private powers, it also questions the classic status of sovereignty, making evident the difficulties to decide with the national interest in mind, ignoring corporations’ influence at global stake and geopolitical relations. Ecuador and Bolivia finded themselves at the crossroads of generating financing for the decolonized refounding of their States, from the income of a development model that is mainly contended today by those who have suffered the most the colonial battering: indigenous and peasant populations. The process is thus imbued with a clear “colonial paradox” by being the flag bearer of an anticolonial discourse within the grammar of a civilizing model that has been inherited from modernity. Within the constitutional formulation of plural economy models (social and solidary) together with the “Andean-Amazonian capitalism,” the extractive model remains intact.27 This implies contradictions between the community and cooperative economies and the entrepreneurial, capitalist, and State economies (recognized in constitution), as well as between developmentalism and the rights that are acknowledged in the frame of good living. Thus, without forcefully having to abandon capitalism, these States entered into that hybrid, transitional definition proposed by Sader: they are post-neoliberal, but not post-capitalist states. They grant the State a central role in controlling natural resources when they seek to nationalize them in order to generate internal revenue while at the same time affirming rights (individual, collective, of nature), values, a public and citizen sphere, against neoliberal principles (Sader 2008, 42–43). The paradoxes of plurinational constitutionalism are thus served. Before them one might hold the impossibility that Law would “devour itself” due to its superstructural character, its incapacity to correct social problems from their root, and its vocation as hegemonic tool. However, it should also be possible to state that it is a clear example of a counterhegemonic invention (in this case “from below”) of hegemonic political and conceptual instruments, whose transformative results should not be discarded so soon. It would not be consistent to evaluate just one decade of new constitutions in the face of centuries of colonialism and liberal

“Andean-Amazonian capitalism” is a new economic model that implies the building of a strong State, which regulates the expansion of industrial economy, extracting its surplus and transferring it to the community ambit to potentiate forms of self-organization and mercantile development that are properly Andean and Amazonian (García-Linera 2006).

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constitutionalism. The words of Martínez Dalmau should be applied to this case when he states that “the force of constitutionalism may reside more in rupture as potential than in rupture as fact” (Martínez Dalmau 2012, 22).

Conclusion Considering current political processes, Latin American governments bet for the path of extractivism: increasing exportations, maximizing mining and hydrocarbon revenue, and commercializing land. They all impose in one way or another that sacrificial logic for the sake of progress, well-being, and the common good to the populations of the areas that are abundant in natural resources. The sacrifice of the rights of some is decided today, in a unilateral and arbitrary manner, by others whose rights remain intact. As Donelly states, intermediate solutions’ tend to involve people that are sacrificed, instead of people that make sacrifices [. . .] ordinary arguments are favorable to economic solutions requiring immense sacrifice by those who have the lesser possibility to sacrifice. (Donelly 1989, 180)

All this demands from us, that we besiege the legitimacy of the system with questions that should be as elemental and urgent as forgotten in these times: what are the limits of obedience to a law that imposes the sacrifice of the rights of some in order to achieve the exclusive economic interest of others? What will the margin of contention of the system be in the face of the growing social agitation of thousands of human beings with an “awareness for themselves,” who are certain of being exploited and instrumentalized in order to achieve profit for others, disguised as common well-being and national interest28? The central matter may lie in asking ourselves, how to depend less on the extraction of resources? What ethical, economical, ecological limits must capitalism and its conception of development must have? How to avoid the paradox of dependent economies, which are not only under the pressure of powerful multinational interests but are also trying to alleviate structural poverty by financing social programs at the expense of (not only environmental conservation, as is usually posed, but also) the devastation of life on indigenous and peasant communities? The central issue may lie in finally posing before us, which would the alternatives of transition to other models be and if and how Law can accompany this road without hindering it?29

28 I am aided by the Hegelian distinction of the “in themselves” (the immediate, natural, unaware being) and “for themselves” (the cultural, conscious being) to allude to the awareness of the subjects of rights about the injustice in which the civilizing model operates in our times, against the hegemonic thought that accuses indigenous peoples and peasants of mobilizing under the effects of “manipulation.” 29 Several proposals in this sense have been elaborated in tune with good living and the rights of nature. Guimarães, for example, proposes to have as a goal a new development ethics, an ethics in

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which the economic goals of progress are subordinated to the laws through which natural systems work, and to the criteria of respect toward human dignity and of improvement of the quality of life of people. In order to do this, we must move from the current anthropocentrism to a “biopluralism,” granting the species the same “ontological” right to life (Guimarães 2004, 101–102).

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Dussel, E. (2000). Europa, modernidad y eurocentrismo. In Lander, E. (Eds.) La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales, Perspectivas latinoamericanas (pp. 41–53). CLACSO. Dussel, E. (2001). Hacia una Filosofía Política Crítica. Desclée de Brouwer. Escobar, A. (2003). Mundos y conocimientos de otro modo. El programa de investigación de modernidad/colonialidad latinoamericano. Tabula Rasa, 1, 51–86. Fanon, F. (1975). Pele negra, mascaras brancas. Paisagem. Fariñas, MJ (1997). Los Derechos Humanos: desde la perspectiva sociológico-jurídica a la “Actitud Postmoderna”. Dykinson. Fonseca, M. (2017). La idea de la Refundación: actores, debates y propuestas sobre la Refundación del Estado en Guatemala. Instituto de Investigación y Proyección sobre el Estado, Universidad Rafael Landívar. García, A. (2009). Criaturas de la Moralidad. Una aproximación neoconstitucionalista al Derecho a través de los derechos. Editorial Trotta. Garay, L. and Salcedo-Albarán, E. (2012). Narcotráfico, corrupción y Estados. Cómo las redes ilícitas han reconfigurado las instituciones en Colombia, Guatemala y México. Random House Mondadori. Garay, L., Salcedo-Albarán, E., de León-Beltrán, I. and Guerrero, B. (2008). La captura y reconfiguración cooptada del Estado en Colombia. Grupo Método, Transparencia por Colombia y Fundación Avina. García-Linera, A. (January 9, 2006). El capitalismo andino-amazónico. Le Monde Diplomatique. García-Linera, A. (2015). Socialismo comunitario. Un horizonte de época. Vicepresidencia del Estado, Presidencia de la Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional. González Casanova, P. (2003). Colonialismo interno. Una redefinición. Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Griffiths, J. (1986). What is legal pluralism? Journal of legal pluralism, 24, 1–55. Grijalva, A. (2008). El Estado plurinacional e intercultural en la Constitución ecuatoriana de 2008. Ecuador Debate, 75, 49–62. http://www.flacsoandes.org/dspace/handle/10469/4170 Gudynas, E. (2011). Debates sobre el desarrollo y sus alternativas en América Latina: una breve guía heterodoxa. In: Grupo permanente de trabajo sobre alternativas al desarrollo (Ed.), Más allá del desarrollo (pp. 21–54). Ediciones Abya Yala y Fundación Rosa Luxemburg. Guimarães, R. (2004). Tierra de sombras: desafíos de la sustentabilidad y del desarrollo territorial y local ante la globalización corporativa. In Tercer Foro Ecología y Política (comp.) Globalización: la euforia llegó a su fin. Ediciones Abya Yala. Hale, Ch. (2002). Does multiculturalism menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala. Journal of Latin American Studies, 34, 485–524. Hale, Ch. (2005). Neoliberal multiculturalism. POLAR: Political and legal anthropology review, 28, 10-28. Hayek, F. (1960). The Constitution of Liberty. Routledge. Hobsbawm, E. (2000). Naciones y Nacionalismos desde 1780. Ed. Crítica. Kymlicka, W. (1996). Ciudadanía Multicultural. Una teoría liberal de los derechos de las minorías. Paidós. Kymlicka, W. (2009). Las Odiseas Multiculturales. Las nuevas políticas internacionales de la diversidad. Paidós Ibérica. Lander, E. (2000). Ciencias sociales: saberes coloniales y eurocéntrico. In Lander, E. (coord.) La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales, Perspectivas latinoamericanas (pp. 4–22). CLACSO. Laudani, R. (2012). Desobediencia. Proteus Editorial. Macpherson, CB (2005). La teoría política del individualismo posesivo. De Hobbes a Locke. Editorial Trotta. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept. Cultural Studies, 21, 240–270. Martínez Dalmau, R. (September 9, 2008). El constitucionalismo sin padres y el proyecto de constitución de Ecuador. Rebelión. http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id¼72367

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Martínez Dalmau, R. (2012). La naturaleza emancipadora de los procesos constituyentes democráticos. Avances y retrocesos. In Aparicio, M., De Cabo, A., Criado, M., Martínez, R., Noguera, A., and Viciano, R. Por una Asamblea Constituyente. Una solución democrática a la crisis. (pp. 13–28) Sequitur. Mazariegos Rodas, M. (2018a). Refundación del Estado: asumiendo contradicciones y explorando posibilidades de una ruptura epistémica. Revista Eutopía, 5, 3–47. http://recursosbiblio.url.edu. gt/publimjrh/Eu/R/5/FLASH/index.html Mazariegos Rodas, M. (2018b). Refundación: ¿existen caminos para una Asamblea Nacional Constituyente? Plaza Pública. https://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/refundacion-existencaminos-para-una-asamblea-constituyente Mazariegos Rodas, M. (2019). Claves de la(s) violencia(s) en las rutas del extractivismo neoliberal en América Latina. In Sierra, A. (coord.) Conflicto y democracia. Espacios ideológicos y culturales. Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad La Laguna. Mejía, O. (2002). La constitución de 1991 como proyecto inacabado. El otro Derecho, 28, 148–169. Mignolo, W. (2007). El pensamiento decolonial: desprendimiento y apertura. Un manifiesto. In Castro, S. y Grosfoguel, R. (Eds.) El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global, (pp. 24–46). Siglo del Hombre Editores. Noguera, A. y Criado, M. (2011). La constitución colombiana de 1991 como punto de inicio del nuevo constitucionalismo en América Latina. Revista Estudios Socio-Jurídicos, 13, 15–49. Orjuela, J. (November 19, 2015). De la refundación de la Patria a la Bandas Criminales. Recuento histórico del fenómeno paramilitar entre 2001-2015. Agencia Prensa Rural. https://prensarural. org/spip/spip.php?article18196. Pachón, D. (2008). Nueva perspectiva filosófica en América Latina. El grupo modernidad/ colonialidad. Ciencia Política, 5, 8–35. https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/cienciapol/ article/view/17029/1789 Pannikar, R. (2007). Mito, fe y hermenéutica. Herder. Pisarello, G. (2014). Procesos constituyentes. Caminos para la ruptura democrática. Editorial Trotta. Proyecto Alice, CES, Universidade de Coimbra. (March 12, 2014). Conversas do mundo. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui e Boaventura de Sousa Santos. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v¼xjgHfSrLnpU Quijano, A. (2011). “Bien vivir”: entre el “desarrollo” y la des/colonialidad del poder. Ecuador Debate. Acerca del Buen Vivir, 84, 77–87. http://repositorio.flacsoandes.edu.ec/bitstream/104 69/3529/1/RFLACSO-ED84-05-Quijano.pdf Quijano, A. (2000a). Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social. Journal or World Systems Research, 2, 342–386. http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/viewFile/228/240 Quijano, A. (2000b). Colonialidad del Poder, Eurocentrismo y América Latina. In In Lander, E. (coord..) La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales, Perspectivas latinoamericanas (pp. 121–151). CLACSO. Rodríguez Garavito, C. (2011). Un nuevo mapa para el pensamiento jurídico latinoamericano. In: El derecho en América Latina. Un mapa político para el siglo XXI. Coord. César Rodríguez Garavito, 139–160. Siglo XXI Editores. Sader, Emir. (2008). Refundar el Estado. Posneoliberalismo en América Latina.Instituto de Estudios y Formación de la CTA y Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, CLACSO. Stavenhagen, R. (1981). Siete tesis equivocadas sobre América Latina. Sociología y Subdesarrollo, Nuestro Tiempo, 15–84. http://cienciasyarte.googlepages.com/ SietetesisequivocadassobreAmricaLati.pdf Santos, B. (1998). De la mano de Alicia: lo social y lo político en la postmodernidad. Siglo del Hombre Editores, Ediciones Uniandes. Santos, B. (2005). El uso contra-hegemónico del Derecho en la lucha por una globalización desde abajo. Anales de la Cátedra Francisco Suárez, 39, 363–420. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/ articulo?codigo¼3340180

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Santos, B. (2007). La reinvención del Estado y el Estado plurinacional. OSAL, CLACSO 22, 25–46. Santos, B. (2009). Sociología Jurídica Crítica, para un nuevo sentido común en el Derecho. Trotta and Ilsa. Santos, B. (2010a). La difícil construcción de la plurinacionalidad. In Secretaria Nacional de Planificación y Desarrollo de Ecuador (Ed.), Los nuevos retos de América Latina: socialismo y Sumak Kawsay, (pp.149–154). Senplades. Santos, B. (2010b). Refundación del Estado en América Latina. Perspectivas desde una epistemología del Sur. Plural Editores y Centro de Estudios Superiores Universitarios, Universidad Mayor de San Simón. Svampa, M., Stefanoni, P. and Bajo, R. (September 2, 2009). El punto de bifurcación es un momento en el que se miden ejércitos. Entrevista con Álvaro García Linera, Vicepresidente de Bolivia. Le Monde Diplomatique, https://rebelion.org/el-punto-de-bifurcacion-es-unmomento-en-el-que-se-miden-ejercitos/ Walsh, C. (2005). (Re) pensamiento crítico y (de) colonialidad. In: Walsh, C. Pensamiento Crítico y matríz (de) colonial, Reflexiones Latinoamericanas. (pp. 14–35) Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar and Abya-Yala. Walsh, C. (2008). Interculturalidad, plurinacionalidad y decolonialidad: las insurgencias políticoepistémicas de refundar el Estado. Revista Tabula Rasa, 9, 131–152. Wright, Ch. (1963). The Problem of Industrial Development Power, Politics and People. In Horowitz, I. (Ed.) The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, Oxford University Press. Yrigoyen, R. (2011). El horizonte del constitucionalismo pluralista: del multiculturalismo a la descolonización. In Rodríguez, C. (Coord.) El derecho en América Latina. Un mapa político para el siglo XXI. (pp. 139–160). Siglo XXI Editores. Žizek, S. (1997). Multiculturalism, or the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism. New Left Review, 225, 28–51.

Constitutions Constitución Política del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, 2009 https://www.oas.org/dil/esp/ constitucion_bolivia.pdf. Constitución de la República del Ecuador (2008). Decreto Legislativo O. Registro Oficial 449 de 20 de octubre 2008. https://pdba.georgetown.edu/Parties/Ecuador/Leyes/constitucion.pdf Constitución Política de la República de Guatemala. (1986). Reformada por Acuerdo legislativo No. 18-93 del 17 de Noviembre de 1993 https://www.oas.org/dil/esp/Constitucion_ Guatemala.pdf. Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela (1999). Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria N 36.860 de fecha 30 de diciembre de 1,999. https://www.oas.org/dil/esp/constitucion_ venezuela.pdf

Further Remarks

Constitutions: Bolivia, 2009 Ecuador, 2008 Guatemala, 1985 Venezuela, 1999

Ethnography of the State in Plurinational Bolivia: Indigenous Knowledge, Clientelism and Decolonizing Bureaucracy Eija Ranta

Introduction VIVIR Bien has guided everything. Everything was inspired by that concept. Vivir Bien continues in the rhetoric, but we have put a lot of focus on the economy. We have lacked the social and cultural aspects of Vivir Bien: reduction of violence, promotion of peace, and resolution of conflicts. Old developmentalist [desarrollista] and industrializing discourse based on economic growth has won. . . Ideological struggles are about the control of discourse; not only about the control of the state. There is a struggle for the construction of the discourse of development. (Interview 2018 Aug 31). The above excerpt, illustrating the contradictions between state policy and practice, is drawn from an interview in 2018 with a former minister of the state on the latest developments in the contested process of decolonizing the state in Bolivia.1 This began in 2006 with peasant activist and union leader Evo Morales’ election as the first Indigenous president (2006–2019) of this impoverished and landlocked South American country, whose majority population is distributed among its many Indigenous peoples. In 2008–2009, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork exploring the contested emergence, meanings, and use of the notion of Vivir Bien (Spanishlanguage term for “living well”) in policymaking and state transformation processes involving ministers, public servants, development experts, and Indigenous activists in the capital of Bolivia, La Paz. This was for the purpose of my doctoral dissertation in the field of development studies (Ranta 2014a; see also, Ranta 2018a). I had also previously lived and worked in La Paz, Cochabamba, and various Indigenous Although the person is a public figure, I have opted to protect their identity due to their contested political position in a volatile situation.

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E. Ranta (*) University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: eija.ranta@helsinki.fi © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Fahimi et al. (eds.), State and Statehood in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94000-3_11

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communities in 2001 and 2002. During that time, I had become familiar with the Quechua concept of Sumak Kawsay, or “good life,” circulating in Indigenous communities, networks, and NGOs. Many scholars consider the Amazonian Kichwa in Ecuador the pioneers in its elaboration (Alonso González and Macías Vázquez 2015; Cubillo-Guevara and Hidalgo-Capitán 2015). For them, it meant fertile lands and the control of ancestral knowledge over lands, territories, and the Indigenous lived world (Radcliffe 2012, 242).2 When the conceptualization of Vivir Bien appeared in the title and key contents of Bolivia’s national development policy framework in 2006, I wanted to find out how and why a grassroots Indigenous concept depicting Indigenous struggles for land, territory, and self-determination transnationally across the Andes had made its way into Bolivian state policy discourses. Moreover, what would decolonizing bureaucracy with Indigenous knowledge look like in practice? In this chapter, in order to illustrate how the ethnography of the state works, I present how I planned and performed my ethnographic research among Bolivian state officials at a time when they were attempting to decolonize state bureaucracy through the application of Indigenous knowledge and expertise. In the first section, I explain what doing state ethnography means and meant in my own particular case, while the second sheds light on Vivir Bien as state policy and its contradictions. The third and fourth sections introduce the concrete findings of my research through ethnographic description and explanation: the third focuses on the difficulties in translating Indigenous knowledge into the technical expertise needed by state officials in their daily routines, and the fourth describes the motivations, hesitations, and oppositional activities of public servants when faced with new decolonizing approaches that disrupted their earlier ways of working. These sections also highlight the continuities in—and probably even the intensifying of—clientelism, which, with Lazar (2008), I define in this chapter as a popular political strategy involving MAS voters and leaders (ultimately Morales himself), with the goal of gaining benefits like employment through patron-client relations. Making visible how clientelism operates in the lives of state officials, this chapter aims for a better understanding of the institutional fragilities of state formation processes in the Global South. Throughout the sections, I concentrate on describing encounters between discursive aspects of the notion of Vivir Bien and the institutional and structural aspects of the state as manifested in people’s everyday practices and experiences of state institutions. Indeed, intimate representations of contradictions and ruptures in everyday bureaucratic practices became my main object of ethnographic scrutiny. Using ethnographic examples, I shed light on the practical aspects of the challenging task of incorporating the notion of Vivir Bien into bureaucratic routines. Ultimately, I show that in practice the process of decolonizing state bureaucracy using Indigenous

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I have described the origins of the terminology in more detail in Ranta (2020a). In Ecuador, the notion is typically spelled Buen Vivir when adopted to state policy and legislation. The Buen Vivir term is also more widely used in transnational activism than its Bolivian variant.

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knowledge was a complicated and contradictory process in which different kinds of hopes, needs, and interests met and collided in multiple, and sometimes unexpected, ways.

Doing Ethnography of the State Traditionally, the target of anthropological research was strictly confined to non-state societies such as kin-based collectives, ethnic groups, and Indigenous communities, while the study of state formation and policymaking were considered to belong to the sphere of political scientists, management scholars, political sociologists and so forth (Das and Poole 2004; Sharma and Gupta 2006). In an article discussing relationships between social anthropology and development studies, anthropologist James Ferguson (1997, 161) suggested sarcastically that anthropologists focus on the “description and comparison of societies as little contaminated by development as possible.”3 Gupta and Ferguson (1997, 13) refer to this as the “hierarchy of purity of field sites”: those that are most appreciated ethnographically have typically been rural, face-to-face communities that are arguably “untouched” by outside forces, such as the apparatus of development and state bureaucracy. Yet Das and Poole (2004, 55) have argued that despite anthropology’s disciplinary disinterest in state formation, it has been “in many unacknowledged ways, about the state—even when its subjects were constituted as excluded from, or opposed to, the forms of administrative rationality, political order, and authority consigned to the state.” Launching the idea of “studying up,” Laura Nader (1972) insisted as early as the 1970s that, in addition to local communities, ethnographers should also study elites, corporations, and state institutions. Furthermore, since the late 1980s, the world has dramatically changed with economic globalization, mobile technologies, migrations, and the proliferation of other transnational phenomena, and new methodological orientations like multi-sited ethnography have been developed to respond to this situation (Marcus 1995). Today, so-called anthropology and ethnography of the state are commonly accepted and much needed subfields of anthropological scholarship and other related academic fields (Das and Poole 2004; Sharma and Gupta 2006; Trouillot 2003). By contrast to political science or political sociology, ethnography of the state does not commit to specific normative judgments of what the state is supposed to be. It denaturalizes liberal expectations of its form and content and rather examines its actual practices, representations and meanings as they are experienced. What ethnographic examination can bring to the study of states is the understanding that the state is not a given, fixed entity but a complex set of everyday practices,

3

For a summary about the different phases in the anthropological study of development, see Gould and Ranta (2018).

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discourses, institutions, and structures constructed by a diversity of actors. Ethnographic study, as Sharma and Gupta (2006, 8) have suggested, can bring together the ideological and material aspects of state construction, [providing understanding of] how “the state” comes into being, how “it is differentiated from other institutional forms, and what effects this construction has on the operation and diffusion of power throughout society.” Its starting point is the idea, presented by Trouillot (2003, 89), that “the state is a set of practices and processes and the effects they produce as much as a way to look at them [which is why] we need to track down these practices, processes, and effects.”

Applying an ethnographic approach to studying the state in a context of complete transformation—the pursuit of decolonization, in this case—was a challenging task, yet also a response to the changing circumstances of Indigenous peoples in Bolivia. When representatives of social movements, Indigenous organizations, and peasant unions were nominated as ministers and public servants, the methodological choices of academics who worked with them had to be shaped by the situation. We had to follow them to the corridors of state power. In contemporary Bolivia, Indigenous peoples are no longer fixed in a singular site, territory, or community, if they ever were. In order to grasp what was going on in this highly complex and mobile field, I chose to use various ethnographic techniques of investigation, the crucial ones being policy analysis, participant observation, and interviews.4 These allowed me to follow diverse discourses, documents, and perceptions of Vivir Bien, ethnographically tracing the characteristics of its appearance in diverse social settings. In terms of policy analysis, the main document I examined was the National Development Plan (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo: Bolivia digna, soberana, productiva, y democrática para Vivir Bien 2006–2011), which provided Bolivian ministries with an overall framework for their sectoral policies and bureaucratic practice. Another important document was the new Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, approved in January 2009. In 2010, Morales’ regime launched yet another governmental program (Rumbo a una Bolivia Líder: 2010–2015 Programa de Gobierno), which provided further evidence with which to support my fieldwork observations.5 At the same time, I tracked the notion across the everyday practices of public servants, consultants, and state bureaucracy more generally. Consequently, the second method for gathering data was participant observation. I had an opportunity to observe the functioning of state bureaucracy closely and to become acquainted with political and policymaking actors in a highly volatile political situation. Although I moved back and forth between ministries, development agencies, universities, social movements, and other actors, I most closely observed the internal functioning of the Ministry of Planning, an entity responsible for elaborating and monitoring state policymaking. My initial encounter with one of the ministers was 4

The description of the methodology appears more fully in my unpublished doctoral dissertation (Ranta 2014a, 34–43). 5 Since that time, various other development policy documents have been launched.

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greatly enhanced by my earlier work experiences and contacts within the field of development cooperation, but a personal link between one of the vice-ministers and an Indigenous NGO in which I had earlier volunteered was a crucial factor in establishing confidential relationships and in facilitating my access to the ministry. I was able to visit the premises regularly and observe both pre-scheduled and spontaneous meetings, as well as some internal staff meetings where the notion of Vivir Bien was discussed. With time, I started to meet public servants and consultants outside the office and working hours: in restaurants, bars, parks, and their homes. I was also invited to participate in, and to observe, policy events where the notion of Vivir Bien was being operationalized into state practice. In the context of state bureaucracy, there was the difficulty of not being constantly present in the lives of the people I studied. In traditional, often small and rural ethnographic settings, participant observation of everyday practices is facilitated by the compact size of the location where people operate. Within the state apparatus, it is difficult, or even impossible, to linger in the ministries, and ministers, public servants, and consultants all go in different directions after working hours. This led to my complementing participant observation with the systematic use of interviews. Although ethnographers have tended to prioritize spontaneous conversations and participation in everyday life in order to interfere as little as possible in the data (Wolcott 2005, 155), pre-solicited visits and interviews are a more practical way to conduct research in modern bureaucracies than hanging around in the institutions. My tactic was to use reflexive, semi-structured, in-depth interviews as much as possible, meaning that many were closer to conversations than formal interviews. Furthermore, I had the chance to collect the life histories of a few key interlocutors, while I also used projective techniques such as asking questions related to the future of the interviewed individual and the institution or group they were representing. An obvious benefit arising from the social characteristics of my field site was that in bureaucratic situations there is no restriction on making notes. Indeed, documenting and recording interviews is encouraged as a “natural” part of bureaucratic practices. Interviews were also observational events. Pre-solicited meetings with various kinds of officials and experts gave me the opportunity to enter ministry premises and observe bureaucrats in action, which otherwise would have been difficult to accomplish. In the following sections, I describe some of these premises, events, and encounters to illustrate the kind of data that emerged from the ethnography of the state in a context where policymakers had chosen to decolonize bureaucracy. First, however, I explain what Vivir Bien as state policy meant and the discrepancies between this and state practice.

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The New Policy and Its Contradictions The key aim of the notion of Vivir Bien at the level of state policy was to challenge dominant Western development paradigms and to find locally grounded solutions to questions of poverty, intersecting inequalities, and multiple marginalizations. Gudynas (2011), one of the leading scholars on Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien, has argued that, by rejecting the prime objective of economic growth as development, the approach represented an ecological and communal alternative to Western modernity, knowledge claims, and Eurocentric political thought. The search for alternatives coincided with the so-called Pink Tide, the emergence all over Latin America of leftwing governments opting for post-neoliberal politics of rebuilding the state (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2012). In postcolonial contexts, state institutions and structures have been thoroughly shaped by colonial histories and the continuation of neocolonial relations in the forms of structural adjustments, capital flight, trade and aid, all on unfavorable and often unequal terms. Despite vibrant Indigenous movements and resistance actions, the Bolivian state bureaucracy has tended to exclude Indigenous peoples from its operations, if not as legitimizers of a pact between political parties or as subservient clients to a patron (Albó 2008). Racism, discrimination against and oppression of Indigenous peoples by the nation-state is deeply rooted in Bolivian colonial and republican history (Nuñez del Prado 2015, 205); hence, the motivation for decolonizing the state bureaucracy. Bolivian policy documents portrayed Vivir Bien as a culturally and ecologically sustainable, harmonious, and communal way of life typical of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous people (República de Bolivia 2007).6 Its use in state policy would, it was suggested, help to eliminate colonial inequalities and exclusions, revitalize Indigenous self-determination and regain Bolivia’s national sovereignty vis-à-vis transnational governance (República de Bolivia 2007). As such, its potential as a civilizational alternative to multiple contemporary crises of modernity—climate change, fossil fuel dependency, global extractivism, intersectional exclusions— raised high hopes amongst many activists and scholars worldwide (Chuji et al. 2019). However, much of the anticipation for radical change concerning Morales’s presidency and government in the name of Vivir Bien was misplaced, as the excerpt from the former minister of the state presented at the introduction of this chapter aptly captured. Having been sacked—in his own words—due to internal power struggles in which ministers were intimidated and dismissed if considered a danger to the prevailing presidential discourse, the ex-minister’s view clearly apprehends the difficulties of translating Indigenous knowledge into state practice. There is increasing agreement among Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien scholars that its conceptual introduction into state policies has failed to produce closure to problems associated with the idea of development (Radcliffe 2015, 861). In terms of the economy and 6

The 2015 national development plan presented similar ideas (Ministerio de Planificación al Desarrollo 2015).

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environment, the key contradictions that clash with the environmental values of Vivir Bien have been the intensification of unsustainable agrarian extractivism (McKay 2017) and extractivist conflicts between Amazonian Indigenous groups and the government in Indigenous territories and national parks (McNeish 2013; Ranta 2016a). Bolivian scholars and activists have further criticized the process of change for its resulting concentration of power and weakening of democracy (Komadina 2019; Rojas 2019; Zuazo 2012). Many also indicate that it betrayed much of its commitment to Indigenous self-determination, autonomies, and plurinationalism by strengthening the centralized and extractivist state apparatus (Choque Mamani 2014; Mamani Ramírez 2017; Nuñez del Prado 2015). Despite legislative advances, racism and discrimination continue to be present in state institutions (Ranta 2018b, 379–80). The internal discrepancies and contradictions of the process of change were already becoming visible during my first period of fieldwork within state ministries and institutions in 2008–2009 on which I focus in this chapter.7 In fact, to some extent, the methodology of ethnography of the state utilized for my data collection and analysis helps to make sense of the violent rupture in 2019, when Morales’ 14 years in political power ended in a massive urban uprising against his political party’s (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) alleged electoral fraud. Violent conflict followed, and MAS’s key political figures, including Morales, went into exile. Representatives of the old political and economic elite returned to power and new populist right-wing politicians emerged. As the MAS regained state power in October 2020, reflexivity and self-criticism about the grievances of state operations became crucial for promoting reconciliation, peace and justice in a context of deep polarization, latent hatred, and grave disillusionment (Iturralde et al. 2020; Ranta 2020b). In the following sections, I go back to the early stages of the process of change and illustrate some of its contradictions through the description of specific ethnographic encounters in which diverging hopes, needs, and interests were negotiated.

Translating Indigenous Knowledge into Technical Expertise I start by describing an internal Ministry of Planning event in 2008 when wellknown Aymara scholar-activist Simon Yampara tutored ministry officials on the meaning of the Vivir Bien term. Many recognize Yampara as one of the pioneers of the Aymara concept Suma Qamaña (Burman 2017, 156; Gudynas 2011, 444) which, in addition to Sumak Kawsay, served as the inspirational basis for the Spanishlanguage Vivir Bien terminology. For Yampara, Suma Qamaña represented the

7

I have since collected qualitative data in La Paz in 2018 and early 2020. I write about my data collection, reflexivity, positionality and research ethics of the ethnography of the state in more detail in Ranta (2014b) and Ranta (2016b).

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Aymara way of life and their reciprocal relationship with the living earth. However, according to Yampara, colonialism under the Incas and the Spanish, and the neocolonial practices of the Bolivian nation-state, transnational companies, and development cooperation, had shattered the balance and reciprocity between individuals, communities, and their biophysical environments in the Andes. Consequently, he argued, Indigenous peoples can no longer attain the conditions for living a good life. To rectify the situation, he suggested, Indigenous peoples must revitalize their own sustainable ways of life, strengthen their self-determination and claim sovereignty over Indigenous lands and territories. Indeed, cherishing Indigenous knowledge became one of the core ideological elements in the attempt to transform the Bolivian nation-state into a plurinational state consisting of Indigenous territorial autonomies (Ranta-Owusu 2010). The staff of the ministry consisted of urban middle-class officials who drafted its general guidelines, as well as consultants who, in turn, supported other ministries in mainstreaming these policies. Officers in collared shirts and high heels, and young consultants casually dressed in hoodies packed into a small glass-walled meeting room separated from the large open space of a building dating back to the colonial era. The senior program director responsible for implementing the government program opened the event by saying that the purpose of the meeting was to learn from Indigenous experts such as Yampara how “living well” perspectives could be incorporated into the daily work of ministries. In the past, there had been talks of development plans, development goals, and development projects, he explained; now, in addition to the new jargon, officials should learn new—more communal and ecological—ways of working based on the grassroots experiences of many Bolivian Indigenous peoples instead of universal statistics, analyses, models and indicators. The program director said that his personal interest would be in learning how officers could create concrete tools, such as monitoring and evaluation indicators, based on this new concept. Apologetically, he told Yampara that because the daily routines of ministries are based on “Western culture,” they need to be able to quantify the realization of their plans. Despite the new policy, Bolivia’s development should also be comparable to other countries in the world, where indicators such as the GDP measure the well-being of its citizens. The senior program director clearly hoped that Yampara would act as a “translator” between state bureaucrats and Indigenous communities, as British development anthropologists Lewis and Mosse (2006) call people in such positions. Instead of officials directly operating with the Aymara, Quechua, Guarani, Chiquitano, Mojeños, and other Bolivian Indigenous people, he expected Yampara to mold Indigenous knowledge into a technical form appropriate to the needs of state institutions. These expectations had antecedents. During the 1990s, the notion of Indigenous knowledge had gained currency among development practitioners, alongside the rise of alternative development approaches, ethno-development, and the proliferation of Indigenous rights (Laurie et al. 2005). The World Bank, in collaboration with such UN agencies as the UNDP, UNESCO, and WHO, launched an international Indigenous knowledge initiative, which aimed to apply it in “the development process and establish partnerships with NGOs and local communities”

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(Green 1999, 20). It defined Indigenous knowledge as being “embedded in community practices, institutions, relationships and rituals” and as being “part of everyday life” (Green 1999, 20). This transnational process led to the professionalization of Indigenous expertise that served development purposes (Brysk 2000). Yampara, on the other hand, did not intend to adapt easily to the wishes of state officials. He shifted his gaze slowly from one attendant to another in an embarrassing silence. In the end, he stated accusingly that it seemed to him that the organizers of the event did not take it seriously. “If this was a meeting to be taken seriously,” he said, Coca leaves would be distributed to each participant. We would share coca-leaves with each other as a sign of reciprocity and we would chew coca together as a sign of respect towards our ancestors and ancient Andean civilizations. Only after that we would talk.

The young consultants sighed and looked at each other with smiles. Yampara’s straightforward and slightly aggressive approach seemed to impress them. Perhaps no other commodity has as many conflicting symbolic meanings in the Andes as coca leaves, which crystallize almost all the greatest upheavals in Bolivian history, from the sacred rituals of the Incas to the alleviation of hunger and fatigue of miners in the Andean High Plateau mines. While they symbolize the reciprocity of Indigenous peoples, they are also linked to the operations of coca farmers in the global drug trade, to the aggressive U.S. anti-cocaine policy and even the political rise of Morales as the coca union leader. Thus, Yampara’s introduction placed Bolivia’s painful and complex history, shaped by modernity, capitalism, and colonial continuities, on the table. After a short pause, Yampara began criticizing the use of the Spanish term Vivir Bien by the state administration, claiming that its application was too superficial. “The notion of living well is just words on paper,” he noted. According to Yampara, the National Development Plan (2006–2011) reflected the “monocultural logics” of Western bureaucracies, although it should rather be based on the logics of plural Andean worldviews. Yampara declined to obey the program director’s wish that he outline concrete tools, stating that the Spanish term Vivir Bien should correspond to the philosophy of Andean cosmological conviviality (cosmo-convivencia andina), with the notion of Suma Qamaña being the Andean paradigm of life. “Suma Qamaña is life,” he said, continuing that life cannot be measured by quantitative measures alone. Yampara thus made a distinction between how Indigenous activists and state ministries understood and used Indigenous terminology. After the meeting, I discussed its content with three young consultants in their office space. One of them, with a background in left-wing student movements, suggested that, in their opinion, many Indigenous scholars, Yampara included, present overly idealistic images of Indigenous knowledge. By contrast, another consultant, originating from a highland Aymara community, said that they could recognize the ideas of Suma Qamaña from their own experiences at home. The third consultant, also of Aymara background, commented that they had great sympathies for Indigenous intellectuals, such as Yampara, feeling that their ideas, were responses to centuries of dominance by “Western universalist views of knowledge.”

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What was important, they said, was that Yampara was showing that Indigenous communities have positive features, such as reciprocity and harmony, principles that each of us should cherish. The consultant with the left-wing background noted that, nonetheless and despite good intentions, as technical advisors and consultants they were in trouble because they were supposed to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into viable planning mechanisms and they had no idea how to do it. Yampara’s presentation had not given them technical tools, yet these young consultants at the Ministry of Development were in charge of generating guidelines for the implementation of the notion of Vivir Bien throughout state institutions.8

Middle-Class Fragility and Clientelism In addition to the young consultants recruited by Morales’ ministers, many state officials had worked for their respective ministries for a long time, under various governments. Morales’ government constituted a clear ideological rupture with the earlier regimes, which had followed structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and poverty reduction programs with the support of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other development donors (Kohl and Farthing 2006; Ranta-Owusu 2008). From the mid-1980s return to electoral democracy until Morales’ election, Bolivian political parties from left to right had collaborated in a variety of political pacts that supported the dictates of transnational neoliberal governance. In contrast to the nationalized economy and corporatist politics launched by Bolivia’s nationalist revolution in 1952, neoliberal politicians opened up the economy for foreign investments, initiated a process of decentralization, and aimed at modernizing the state. The nationalist revolution, on the other hand, had aimed at building a developmental, unified nation-state through universal suffrage, land reform, and the nationalization of industries, mainly mining (Gray Molina 2003). At the same time, it created a massive network of state patronage involving public works, state contracts, land, development projects, political positions, and technical jobs, through which patrons channeled state resources to their supporters and militants (Gray Molina 2003, 350).9 In the initial stages of the revolution, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) party and worker’s unions formed this kind of corporatist and clientelistic relationship. Throughout the military rule of the 1960s and 1970s, a similar arrangement developed between the military and peasant unions. By the late 1990s, neoliberal reforms had withered away state

8

I discuss this event in more detail in Ranta 2018a. In Kenya, where I have also investigated political patronage, clientelism coincides closely with ethnicity, the patron and clients being part of the same ethnic group (Ranta 2017). In Bolivia, on the contrary, patrons have traditionally been white, upper-class males, while clients have typically been workers, peasants and Indigenous peoples. 9

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resources through privatization and decentralization, which seriously weakened opportunities to create patronage networks (Gray Molina 2003, 351). Although the SAPs reduced the number of state employees considerably, especially in mines and other industries, between 1996 and 2005 the number of state officials increased in senior professional, directorial and technical positions (Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo 2007, 271), markedly surpassing the number of state-provided working-class jobs (Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo 2007, 262). There were also increasing attempts to institutionalize and professionalize the public service career path. At the time of Morales’ election, a World Bank report celebrated Bolivia’s neoliberal administrative reforms by noting that they had clearly diminished the constant turnover of professionals with every change in political regime, and, in general, the informality of state operations (Mosqueira y Azul del Villar 2006). It noted that during the early 2000s, approximately 25% of public servants entered their professional career through the formal public service career path, based on their professional merits rather than political affiliations (Mosqueira y Azul del Villar 2006, 486). Most of them stayed in their positions despite regime changes (Mosqueira y Azul del Villar 2006, 486). At the beginning of his presidency, Evo Morales appeared to be trying to avoid institutional destabilization by arguing strongly for the sustainability of the public service in order to maintain institutional memory and the technical capacity of state institutions. Many public servants with whom I talked seemed to be both proud of the stability of labor conditions and supportive of the new proposals for decolonizing the bureaucracy. I attended many policy events where I observed people’s tremendous enthusiasm for reflecting on and jointly designing new ways to build a more inclusive state administration. I participated in sectoral planning workshops organized by the Ministry of Planning for sectoral groups including education, macroeconomics, decentralization, and foreign policy, that tried to mainstream the concept of Vivir Bien into their planning and implementation mechanisms. In my presence, most of the public servants taking part in the workshops appeared to be eagerly defending the decolonization process, although, if conducted profoundly, it could have seriously challenged the presence of predominantly white, urban, middle-class employees in state institutions by bringing in more Indigenous and Afro-Bolivian professionals. After one of the workshops, I started to call and make appointments with the public servants involved in order to learn more about their experiences in translating policy ideas into bureaucratic practice. One case, in particular, led me to question whether the response of public servants to Indigenous ideas was, in fact, as positive as it appeared. I had been trying to make contact with a particular state official whose views had caught my attention at the sectoral workshop. After various refusals made over the phone by their secretary, I finally managed to get them to talk to me. Before I was able to introduce my research interests and motivations, the public servant started a long and apologetic monolog in which they explained why their sector had not yet been able to send their sectoral plan to the Ministry of Development Planning. Then they hung up. The following weekend, while spending free time in

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a park, I saw them there. Delighted, I approached, but when they saw me, they quickly hid and left. The phone call had confused me, but I was now seriously puzzled. I decided to call and to meet with another public servant who had acted as a committed promoter of Vivir Bien at the sectoral workshop, generously congratulating the Ministry of Development Planning for its efforts. This time we met at a cafeteria without the presence of political authorities, work colleagues, or other public servants. Mentioning my strange encounter with their colleague, I explained my research more clearly, which resulted in a candid burst of criticism about the process of decolonizing bureaucracy. Now, alone with me, the public servant stated that they could not care less about any Indigenous policy change and that at the institution where they worked, the other public servants do not know or care about the notion of Vivir Bien either. “Daily routines at the office are the same as always,” they said, further explaining the strategy whereby “the concept is just put into the documents but it is not practiced.” They called this strategy “make-up” that hid the fact that there was “zero, or very little, implementation.” They stated that personally their main interest was merely to retain their employment, which is why they acted at official meetings as if they complied with the government’s process of change. It also explained the hesitant attitude of state officials toward me when they did not yet know me well. Employment in the public sector has been considered desirable by many Bolivians. Unlike in the large informal economy, working for the state has provided stability of jobs, the potential for social benefits and pensions and clearly defined work contracts, working hours and so forth (Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo 2007, 271). Therefore, for many of the interviewed state officials, their main motivation to work in the public administration was not primarily ideological, nor based on a motivation to contribute to the MAS’s process of change, but to remain in employment. However, the position of civil servants in Bolivia is—and has always been— fragile. Despite neoliberal attempts to professionalize the public service, and initial governmental goals of securing institutional stability, pressures started to rise in the MAS to employ more people from its own ranks. This became clear in random moments when I happened to be speaking to some minister and witnessed people asking directly for a job in exchange for voting for the MAS. It also emerged in interviews with Indigenous activists and peasant unionists who told me that they did not agree with the president’s decision to allow “neoliberals” to continue to work in the sphere of the state; rather, they felt that they deserved a greater share of jobs and resources as an act of solidarity recognizing the support that they had provided the MAS (see Komadina Rimassa 2019, 424). The MAS leaders also wanted to strengthen their direct linkages with their support base. The strategy for many public servants fearing for their jobs was to respond politically as if they belonged to the MAS. One of MAS’s vice-ministers was aware of the situation, made apparent when stating to me that “in Bolivia, public servants have membership in all the political parties.” One of the young consultants mentioned earlier in reference to Yampara noted having been “lucky in not having had pressures to affiliate politically in order

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to get a job.” Nevertheless, although recruited by Morales’ regime, the consultant noted that: [T]his government is continuing with the same political practices, such as nepotism and the use of party networks in assigning jobs, as previous governments. It seems that for this government, it is very important that you belong to the MAS if you want to be recruited to the state bureaucracy. Of course, the same happened before too, but it seems that the government is no longer interested in combating this phenomenon. It rather seems to serve them in the process of state transformation to recruit people who are loyal to the party.

Lazar (2004, 232) has suggested that party-related public sector jobs in Bolivia that are very important in terms of income generation and employment, cannot be considered solely as gifts from the regime in power to its voters or as a sign of corruption, “rather they are part of citizens’ expectations.” In weakly institutionalized states like Bolivia, citizens seek individual and collective benefits, such as jobs and public investments (obras), from patrons. Clientelism enables them to create at least some kind of direct engagement, albeit brief, with the state. When Morales’ political party obtained power, many public servants who had worked for previous governments became active defenders of the new governmental agendas in the public sphere in order to retain their positions in the face of public pressure to open employment in state institutions to previously marginalized peoples. In practice, however, they had mixed views about the process of change, and some even opposed it by rhetorically adapting to policy changes, but in practice continuing with previous ways of working.

Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated how the methodology of ethnography of the state worked in a context of processes of major state transformation. In Bolivia, the election of Evo Morales as the country’s first Indigenous president led to a discursive and ideological change whereby Indigenous knowledge, ideas, and expertise gained more prominence in state policymaking. The notion of Vivir Bien, which originated in Indigenous grassroots struggles for lands, territories, and biocultural rights, became the key policy concept as the MAS regime started a process of decolonizing bureaucracy, whose aim was to make the state more inclusive for Bolivia’s majorities: its Indigenous populations. My ethnographic findings from the period of Morales’ first regime demonstrated that the political attempt to reconstruct Indigenous peoples from marginalized and oppressed groups into active agents and governors of the state transformation process through the notion of Vivir Bien was indeed a challenging task. As the case of Yampara’s capacity-building session at the Ministry of Planning illustrated, the hopes, needs, and interests of Indigenous activists and public servants differed substantially. Development cooperation has supported the growth and professionalization of Indigenous technical expertise since the 1990s, but Yampara showed no interest in this role. Instead, he stressed that Suma Qamaña was a lifestyle and a

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worldview, a way of being in the world for the Aymara, meanwhile reiterating the primacy of Indigenous peoples’ own territories and self-determination. During my ethnographic fieldwork in state institutions, state officials and public servants were in the process of translating new policy ideas into sectoral plans, program documents, monitoring indicators, and other technical instruments. They needed concrete technical tools for their daily operations. Although it appeared, on the surface, that public servants complied with political commands to translate the notion of Vivir Bien into bureaucratic practice, a closer look at their views showed that their responses varied from compliance in order to maintain employment, to quiet resistance visible in the continuation of old bureaucratic practices. In conclusion, there were ruptures between decolonizing discourses and bureaucratic practices that ethnographic methodologies clearly delineated, exposing the internal dynamics and discrepancies in processes of change that might otherwise have remained hidden. Observation of the complex and contested interactions between Indigenous activists, public servants, consultants, and ministers also revealed important issues about the operations of state formation in the Global South. The ethnographic approach enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of the complex continuities of clientelism and fragilities of institutionalism as manifested in people’s lives and experiences. Battles over resources, meanings, and development in countries with deep inequalities and ethnic and class asymmetries are a lived phenomenon. They manifest in the actions, strategies, and maneuverings, both of the many who fight for the dissolution of global injustices, but also of those who have become more aware of their middle-class fragility in the course of a much-needed transformative process toward a more inclusive and redistributive society.

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