Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977)

Abstract

The state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. It is itselfthe mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is. There is a state-system: a palpable nexus of practice and institutional stucture centred in government and more or less extensive, unified and dominant in any given society. There is, too, a state-idea, projected, purveyed and variously believed in in different societies at different times. We are only making difficulties for ourselves in supposing that we have also to study the state -a n entity, agent, function or relation over and above the state-system and the state-idea. The state comes into being as a stucturation within political practice: it starts its life as an implicit construct: it is then reified -as the res publica. the public reifkation. no less -and acquires an overt symbolic identity progressively divorced from practice as an illusory account of practice. The ideological function is extended to a point where conservatives and radicals alike believe that their practice is not directed at each other but at the state; the world of illusion prevails. The task of the sociologist is to demystify; and in this context that means attending to the senses in which the state does not exist rather than to those in which it does.

Large-Scale Mines and Local‑Level Politics

“…Hence the observation made by one community leader involved in negotiating the development of the Lihir gold mine, that 'the State is only a concept' (Filer 1995: 68). Some social scientists have made similar observations about the 'state as such' (Abrams 1988;Alonso 1994), but even if the state is only a product of some political imagination, some states may have more imaginary power than others.…”

Movimentos sociais na Amazônia: articulações possíveis entre gênero, religião e Estado

“…2 Sigo a proposta de Souza Lima (2002) ao trabalhar com a noção de 'administração pública' como forma de enfatizar as práticas levadas a cabo por sujeitos concretos, revestidos da autoridade conferida burocraticamente (Weber, 1974), embora, como veremos, mantenha a noção de 'Estado' para me referir à categoria empregada pelos interlocutores da pesquisa. No plano da teoria sobre o conceito de 'Estado', Abrams (1988) diferencia duas dimensões do termo: 'Estado-sistema' e 'Estado-ideia'. Para esse autor, entender o Estado nestas duas dimensões implica tanto uma abordagem que observe as práticas efetivas levadas a cabo pelos agentes que ocupam posições específicas dentro da estrutura institucional quanto, por outro lado, compreender que tais práticas não são concretizadas de forma independente das ideias que as constituem.…”

From the “state-idea” to “politically organized subjection”

“…(Abrams 1988: 82) A few years ago, I was teaching an undergraduate class in anth ropology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara. One of the assigned readings referenced Philip Abrams's (1988) argument that the belief in the state as a unifi ed, autonomous agent acting in a common interest was obscuring our understanding of the actual disunity and interestedness of political practice. While explaining this argument and looking at somewhat confused faces, I realized that this would not make any sense to my Turkish students, today less than ever.…”