The sociologist and the state. An assessment of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology

This paper provides an assessment of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology based on a reading of his posthumously published lectures on the state in Sur l'État. It argues that the state was a foundational element in Bourdieu's rendition of the symbolic order of everyday life. As such, the state becomes equally pivotal in Bourdieu's sociology, the applicability of which rests on the existence of the state, which stabilizes the social fields and their symbolic action that constitute the object of sociology. The state, which Bourdieu considers a ‘meta'‐ordering principle in social life, ensures that sociology has a well‐ordered object of study, vis‐à‐vis which it can posit itself as ‘meta‐meta’. The state thus functions as an epistemic guarantee in Bourdieu's sociology. A critical analysis of Bourdieu's sociology of the state offers the chance of a more fundamental overall assessment of Bourdieu's conception of sociology that has relevance for any critical sociological perspective that rests on the assumption of a meta‐social entity, such as the state in Bourdieu's work, as a final ordering instance.     

Mapping Strategic Engagements: WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS AND THE STATE

Abstract

Given that all women's movements share a unique relationship to the State – their exclusion from political power, often legally and occasionally constitutionally underpinned, has this exclusion shaped women's movements' strategies, which have had as their general goal women's political inclusion? Some similarities are evident across types of women's movements and across nations. In this article, I discuss the ‘strategic dilemmas’ that women's movements are likely to face, and I attempt to identify the range of strategic responses employed by feminist movements. I begin with a definitional distinction between women's movements and feminist movements, followed by a discussion of women's relationship to the State. I identify similarities across feminist movements in four strategic dimensions: (1) movement autonomy vs state involvement; (2) insider vs outsider positioning; (3) separatist vs coalitional stances; and (4) discursive and influence-seeking politics. These strategic dimensions shape different opportunities for women's movements across different state configurations, offering openings for some types of women's movements that may be unrecognized or unexploited by others. The article concludes with speculations concerning women's movements' strategic action in the context of state reconfiguration.     

The State Connection in China's Rural‐Urban Migration1

This study explores the role of China's rural local state‐owned and urban state‐owned units in its rural‐urban migration process. Most studies on Chinese migration have focused on migrants moving from rural to urban areas through informal mechanisms outside of the state's control. They therefore treat the Chinese state as an obstructionist force and dismiss its facilitative role in the migration process. By documenting rural local states' “labor export” strategies and urban state units' employment of millions of peasants, this article provides a corrective to the existing literature. It highlights and explains the state connection in China's rural‐urban migration.

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If it didn't exist we'd have to invent it … Further reflections on the ontological status of the state

In this brief response to Bob Jessop's probing yet sympathetic critique, I clarify further the ‘as if realist’ political ontology of the state. I suggest that critical realism's appeal to the ontological stratification of social reality and to the logic of retroduction are the principal stumbling blocks for ‘as if realists’, that the appeal to state power(s) as distinct from the state as real cannot circumvent the ‘as if realist’ ontological objection to the state as real since both remain conceptual abstractions, but that there is a natural affinity between the strategic‐relational approach developed by Jessop and others and the ‘as if realist’ ontology of the state that I here elucidate.     

Franz Oppenheimer (1926), Die soziologische Staatsidee. (Die Eroberung) [The Sociological Idea of the State (The Conquest)]

F. Oppenheimer's System der Soziologie is a multivolume publication that contains a general sociology as a common basis for all social sciences; a theory of development; as well as specialized sociologies: sociology of the economy, of law, of the state, etc. Oppenheimer conceived sociology as a historically grounded universal science. Ibn Khaldun came into play in relationship with Oppenheimer's state theory. His approach directly built on Gumplowicz's “sociological state theory”. An overview on Oppenheimer's works shows that Ibn Khaldun was by no means the starting point of theorization on the state. We do not find any reference to him in an earlier publication, Der Staat (1912), that already contained the full elaboration of Oppenheimer's theory. Nevertheless, his reception of Ibn Khaldun is important: Ibn Khaldun was mobilized within the framework of a scholarly debate that was ongoing amongst European sociologists at the time, and whose key representative, Ludwig Gumplowicz, contributed significantly to his reception in the concerned period. In this context, Oppenheimer did not merely mention Ibn Khaldun in an encyclopaedic endeavor to present a complete overview on “precursors” of sociology, but as a representative and contributor to a theoretical approach which, Oppenheimer believed, they both shared.     

'The State': A Comment on Abrams, Denis and Sayer

Abstract This paper answers the question,‘what is the state?’as posed in Abrams (1988) and Denis (1989), by examining Sayer's (1987) realist reconception of ‘relations of production’ and their ‘ideal superstructures’. It suggests that Sayer's alternative to ‘traditional’ marxism warrants a reappraisal of the relationship between Marx and Foucault. It concludes that ‘civil society’ and ‘the state’ are Janus-faces of production relations, generated by Foucault's ‘disciplinary practices’.     

Managing the micro-self: the governmentality of real name registration policy in Chinese microblogosphere

This paper investigates the real name registration (RNR) policy introduced by Chinese authorities in 2011 to regulate its vibrant microblogosphere by encouraging users to manage their ‘micro-self'. Foucault's concept of governmentality is adopted to understand how the Chinese state ‘governs at a distance' its colossal microblog population through technologies of the state and technologies of the self. We provide a critical case study of the governmentality of the RNR policy in Chinese microblogosphere by detailing the broad range of user experiences based on 22 in-depth interviews conducted in 2012 and 2013 with users and weibo editors. Shedding a new light on the practices of Chinese Internet regulation through the perspective of governmentality, we challenge the notion of the Chinese state as an omnipotent agent, contest popular media's portrayal of the Chinese microblog subject as either obedient or resistant, and foreground the importance of Internet firms in mediating the negotiation between the state and users.     

Love's Cruel Promises

The paper argues that citizenship needs to be understood as a multi-layered construct, in which one's citizenship in collectivities in the different layers - local, ethnic, national, state, cross- or trans-state and supra-state - is affected and often at least partly constructed by the relationships and positionings of each layer in specific historical context. This is of particular imporance if we want to examine citizenship in a gendered non westocentric way. The paper explores some of the central issues which affect contemporary citizenships, in particular those relating to constructions of borders of boundaries, starting from the boundary between 'private' and 'public' and then looking at state borders and collectivities' boundaries. The effects on citizenship of the new modes of communication and transport, as well as the contradictory expansions and defensive closures of people's identities states are also explored.     

Towards a political ontology of state power: a comment on Colin Hay's article

This article offers some critical realist, strategic‐relational comments on Colin Hay's proposal to treat the state as an ‘as‐if‐real’ concept. The critique first develops an alternative account of ontology, which is more suited to analyses of the state and state power; it then distinguishes the ‘intransitive’ properties of the real world as an object of investigation from the ‘transitive’ features of its scientific investigation and thereby provides a clearer understanding of what is at stake in ‘as‐if‐realism’; and it ends with the suggestion that a concern with the modalities of state power rather than with the state per se offers a more fruitful approach to the genuine issues raised in Hay's article and in his earlier strategic‐relational contributions to political analysis.     

Achieving the Optimal Vaginal State: Using Vaginal Products and Study Gels in Uganda,Zimbabwe, and South Africa

Preferences and practices related to the vaginal condition have implications for the use of vaginal HIV prevention products. The authors used qualitative methods to explore narratives relating to the vaginal state amongst women in South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe who had previously participated in a biomedical HIV prevention trial. They investigated women's behaviors related to optimizing the vaginal state, experiences and perceptions of the gel's effect on the vaginal state and on penile-vaginal intercourse, women's narratives on male partner perceptions, and how preferences relating to the vaginal state may have interfered with gel use.     

The Voice of the Dead: Commentary on Cornelia St. John's Paper

This commentary celebrates the evocativeness and acuity of Cornelia St. John's case study, while offering a slightly elaborated rereading. This rereading has a few major elements. First, the fragmentation of language enacted in the patient's stutter does indeed function as a “rupture” in the fabric of consciousness, but this is not as categorically gendered as St. John seems to suggest. Second the case study is framed by a melancholia that is both classical and contemporary in reflecting a state of “being in love with loss” that seems to be sweeping the culture. Third, in this particular case the melancholy is deeply abjected, having its origins in the overwhelming power of the mother's depression, a state that envelops the patient and also touches off fantasies of melancholic dissolution in his analyst. Finally, the relatively muted consideration of the patient's cultural “foreignness” is discussed.     

Redrawing the Contours of the Nation‐State in Uruguay? The Vicissitudes of Emigration Policy in the 2000s

This study analyzes Uruguay's recently launched emigration policy. It argues that the redrawing of the boundaries of the nation‐state along non‐territorial basis is still an incipient and contested process. The findings highlight some relatively under‐explored explanatory factors: emigrants' profile; political junctures requiring immediate commitment; the impact of rhetorical changes and post‐neoliberal projects; presidents as policy drivers and sources of inconsistencies; and institutional deficiencies, inertias, lack of reform, and society's conflictive notions of nation and belonging as brakes. The conclusions indicate that the sustainability of emigration policy is contingent on the state's progress toward internal reform and society's ability to acquire a greater voice and more organizational capacity. Exploring emigration policy characteristics and sources of setbacks in Uruguay unveils the inter‐mestic character of state transnational outreach efforts, qualifies and refines existing explanations, expands our understanding of new governance techniques, and provides some insights into the requirements for emigration policies to work effectively.     

THE 2000 NORTH CAROLINA RELIGIOUS ADHERENCE RATE: A DEMOGRAPHIC EXPLANATION

An area's religious adherence rate may be impacted by such factors as community stability, deregulated religious markets, educational attainment, income level, the sex ratio, and a population's age structure. Utilizing 2000 Glenmary and census data for each of North Carolina's 100 counties, the impact of these demographic factors on the religious adherence rate is assessed. North Carolina is an interesting case since it has traditionally been a strong Southern Baptist state. However, in recent years the state has experienced significant growth through migration. As a result Baptist primacy has eroded slightly. Findings indicate that the religious adherence rate varies directly with a community's income level and the percentage of the population that is elderly. More importantly, support is given to Stark's claim that monopolistic and competitive forces may interact within a given religious market to stimulate religious involvement.     

‘National Machineries’ and Authoritarian Politics

Abstract

Why do authoritarian states adopt ‘state feminist’ policies, and what are the effects of these initiatives? This article expands our understanding of state feminist institutions in non-democracies by examining the development of a women's national machinery in Cameroon. It argues that the Cameroonian state has adopted a national machinery because: (1) it provides low-cost international legitimacy; (2) it attracts international assistance; (3) this assistance fuels domestic patronage networks; and (4) the national machinery channels women's activism toward state-delineated projects and goals. These motives undercut its ability to promote women's advancement. National machineries in authoritarian contexts are not just plagued by technical problems and funding shortages but also by competing agendas within the state apparatus and a lack of a commitment by high-level government officials to improving women's status in society.     

Love the Sin—Pedagogy,Pupils, and Psychology Commentary on Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pelligrini

This article examines the author's reactions to teaching Janet Jakobsen's and Ann Pellegini's Love the Sin in a course titled “Contemporary Issues in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies” at Dartmouth College. He examines not only the students' reactions and the points at which they can or cannot grasp the book's arguments, but also his own responses to their reactions. At the center of the essay is his realization that the students, having been brought up in a liberal mode of “tolerance,” have little access to Jakobsen and Pellegrini's social or political concept of “sexual freedom”; and, while they completely eschew state regulation of sexuality, they do not view it as an essential human right, but rather as a private matter.     

Violence,self-discipline and modernity: beyond the ‘civilizing process’

Norbert Elias's writings on the development of self-constraint and its relationship to state formation are examined in the light of anthropological and historical critiques of his arguments and data. It is argued that state formation should not be seen as essential to self-discipline; that Elias's view of the development of self-constraint rests on a limited reading of the historical evidence on medieval personality and behaviour; and that many other aspects of the history of European society apart from ‘lengthening chains of interdependency’, such as bureaucracy and individuality, should be examined in order to explain modern self-discipline.     

‘Thank you Israel,for supporting America’: the transnational flow of Christian Zionist resources

This article seeks to understand what it means when, in 2006, a noted British pastor and Bible teacher stood up in front of 8000 evangelical Zionists from all over the world at the convention centre in Jerusalem and addressed the audience with the following counter-intuitive words: ‘Thank you Israel, for supporting America!’ Evangelical Christianity has complex relations and ambivalent relations to the nation state and globalisation. Supernaturally speaking, Israel is the only nation state in the world that matters. Contemporary Israel becomes a kind of litmus test, both for manifesting the truth of the word of God and for manifesting the individual's or the nation's commitment to realising God's will in this world. For Christian Zionism, this transnational flow of resources into and out of Israel ultimately redeem locality, offering ‘the nations’ a place in the story, and the opportunity to serve as vehicles for God's will.     

Accommodating strangers: British hospitality and the asylum hotel debate

This article examines the accommodation of asylum seekers through Jacques Derrida's ethical writings on hospitality, generosity and parasitism. The differing hospitable spaces of the asylum and the hotel, and of the strange figures of the asylum seeker and the tourist, are discussed with reference to these discourses of “giving” and “taking”, paralleling Derrida's opposition between unconditional hospitality and hospitality‐as‐economy. This “new racism” towards asylum seekers is thus located within the economic sphere, as asylum control is linked to the welfare state and to fears of strangers' parasiting the host nation. However, I argue that it is the nation‐state that parasites asylum seekers both through their defining difference and their contribution to service economies. Ultimately then the asylum hotel does exist, as Stephen Frears' film, Dirty Pretty Things (2002), illustrates.     

COMMUNICATING THREAT: The Canadian State and Terrorism

Canada's position vis‐à‐vis September 11 differs substantially from the United States’ in both circumstance and rhetoric. Although Canada was not the target of the terrorist attack, the United States is Canada's closest neighbor. In the words of the Prime Minister in the weeks following September 11, the United States is “more like family than friends.” Given this, how has the terrorist threat been interpreted for and communicated to the public by the Canadian state? Through ethnographic content analyses of the documents (speeches and press releases) found on the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) Web site, we consider the communications by the Canadian state with respect to the events of September 11. We analyze this information within the overarching frameworks of risk and trust. In terms of risk, we examine the Prime Minister's communications and the framing of this communication as it relates to the discourse of probable harm and/or benefit. As for trust, we consider the emphasis on reputation and how this affects the information provided and its delivery. These risk/trust underpinnings speak to the Canadian state's construction of security, security threats, and the construction of the Canadian state more generally.     

In transition: The Women's House Saving Action

Ce compte-rendu de la campagne pour la préservation de l'une des grandes institutions féministes à Vancouver est centré sur la relation entre l'État et les mouvements sociaux. Loin de se limiter au simple récit des événements présentés comme une lutte entre les féministes et l'État, il met au jour les complexités d'un mouvement dont les ramifications s'étendent à l'État, à la société civile et à d'autres mouvements sociaux. L'image centrale du changement est tirée des expériences de femmes en transition dont le mouvement doit ětre compris comme une ouverture sur le monde et une réflexion critique sur les relations existantes. C'est ce processus qu'on voit à l'oeuvre dans la campagne de défense de la Maison des femmes de Vancouver. This account of the campaign to save a major feminist institution in Vancouver focuses on the relation between the state and social movements. It goes beyond a simplistic rendering of the story as a struggle between feminists and the state, to reveal the complexities of a movement that overlaps the state, civil society, and other social movements. The central image of change is drawn from the experiences of women in transition, whose movement is best understood as an opening toward the world and a critical rethinking of existing relationships. This is the process we see in the Women's House Saving Action.