Experiencing the State

by Rudolph, Lloyd I.; Jacobsen, John Kurt

• ISBN13: 9780198063544
• ISBN10: 0198063547
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This collection of essays by 13 well-known contributors departs from a conventional analysis of the state that universalizes and standardizes what the state is, does, and means. The contributors engage state and stateness as it is encountered in everyday life, ranging from village and urbanlife to big dams, war, torture, hospital treatment, cinema attendance, and art exhibitions. The essays locate the state in time, space, and circumstance so that it is contingent and evocative rather than definitive and authoritative. The study discusses formative discourses on the state, what we may think or say about the state, and what images are evoked by its various manifestations through social and cultural forms. This volume begins with a non-essentialist perspective on state formation, and concludes with an account of howthe state is experienced in the post-9/11 world scenario, in India and South Asia, the US, Europe, including the former Soviet Union, and the Far East. The contributors include James C. Scott, Arundhati Roy, Sudipta Kaviraj, Lloyd I. Rudolph, Philip Oldenburg, and Paul R. Brass.

Author Biography

Lloyd I. Rudolph is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

John Kurt Jacobsen is Research Associate in the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Introduction--Framing the Inquiry: Historicizing the Modern State

Experiencing High Modernist States in America, India, and the Soviet Union

High Modernist Social Engineering: The Case of the Tennessee Valley Authority

The Cost of Living: The Narmada Dam and the Indian State

Understanding the Collapse of the Soviet Union

How Political Scientists Experienced India's Development State

Experiencing the State from Below in Village India and Germany and Urban Karachi

Experiencing Reunification: An East German Village after the Fall of the Wall

The Dynamics of Bureaucratic Rule in Pakistan: A Personal View

Face to Face with the Indian State: A Grass Roots View

Experiencing the State from Outside: Psychiatry Film and Art

Experiencing Care: Psychotherapy and NHS Mental Health Reform in Britain

In Cahoots? Cinema Cynicism and Citizenship

Forest of Logos: Empire of Signs

Gandhi's Trial and India's Colonial State

Experiencing Repressive States in America and the Koreas

Conclusion - Sovereignty Unbound: Experiencing the State after 9/11

Notes on Contributors

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