The Social Life of the State: Relational Ethnography and Political Sociology

Abstract

Political sociologists have typically studied the state as a self-enclosed institution hovering above civil society. In this formulation, the state is rendered as omniscient, gazing out over a passive civil society as if it were a naturalized landscape. But in this special issue, we think about how states "see" in relation to whom and what is seen, and how these subjects and collective actors become visible in the first place. We advocate a relational political ethnography that views the state and civil society as inextricably intertwined and mutually co-constitutive. People's experiences with the state shape their visions of that state, which in turn inform their strategic decisions and everyday engagements. And these decisions and engagements affect how the state views them. To put it differently, in this special issue, we explore the dialectical relationship between how the state "sees" and how it is "seen." They are inseparable processes. As we argue here, the very unity and coherence of the state apparatus turns not just upon its self-representation but equally upon how people make sense of these representations. How people understand this apparent state in the context of their everyday lives is a crucial source of its power and authority; it explains the reproduction of the state as a social institution. We conclude by introducing the seven empirical contributions to this issue, all of which practice relational political ethnography.

Theorizing Omission: State Strategies for Withholding Official Recognition of Personhood

“…Studying strategic omissions, however, is not impossible. These methodological challenges demonstrate the value of organizational ethnographies of the state (Annavarapu and Levenson 2021;Auyero 2012;Hull 2012a;Mountz 2007). Ethnography can illuminate what by other methods might be the inscrutable social lives of law and bureaucracy (Latour 2010;Levi and Valverde 2008), providing insight into how policies are written and implemented, the spaces of discretion in which formal rules are interpreted and deviated from, and the mutable interests and motivations of different actors-which can bring to light the sources and processes of omission.…”

Narratives of Volunteering and Social Change in Wartime Ukraine

“…We were guided by relevant work on civic norms while also remaining sensitive to the dynamics of the data. We were particularly influenced by Annavarapu and Levenson’s (2021) push for researchers to examine how people see the state, including their understandings of the state’s power, responsibilities and limitations. We were also influenced by Dalton’s (2008) distinction between two types of citizen norms, including duty-based citizenship and engaged citizenship explored in the previous section.…”

“…For example, Bennett et al (2013) describe how members of civic organizations that disavow politics identify principles for their idealized future democratic system, including inclusivity, representativeness, respect and responsiveness to citizens. Annavarapu and Levenson (2021) call for researchers to adopt a relational model that focuses on how the way political actors see the state – their understandings of the state’s power, responsibilities, and limitations – guides their actions as well as the state’s actions. These works help us to recognize how the beliefs that guide activists’ actions may promote new civic norms – expectations about the appropriate roles and responsibilities of citizens and the state in civic and political life (Dalton, 2008; Shah et al, 2017), but research into this dimension of volunteerism remains underexplored.…”

“…What happens after we kick out the Russians?’ (Interview #7), highlighting the stakes of actively participating in governance through their grassroots initiatives. These narratives show how volunteers’ efforts are shaped by how they ‘see’ the Ukrainian state (Annavarapu and Levenson, 2021). The imaginaries of the state and its military are rooted in the fact that the volunteer-driven, grassroots forms of military–civilian cooperation are not always scalable and hardly translate into the country’s civil society helping the country’s military; to the contrary, in this instance we can see the romantic narratives of volunteerism feed directly into the geopolitical outcomes, even if this means at times bypassing the military institutions in the process.…”

The Narrative Construction of State (il)Legitimacy in Colombia's Peace Laboratory1,2

“…Political ethnographers have described how the state comes to life as both institutional structure and symbolic force as people encounter routine bureaucratic practices, symbolic representations like monuments and currency, and popular discourse (Aretxaga 2005; Gupta 2012; Hansen and Stepputat 2001; Sharma and Gupta 2006). Communities evaluate these experiences of the state to guide their engagement with it, which then affects how the state views and engages with them, a circular process Annavarapu and Levenson (2021) call “the social life of the state.”…”