Synopses & Reviews
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 urban life 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.
Experiencing the State 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 how the 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.
Review
"In this enterprising volume Rudolph and Jacobsen assemble a galaxy of South Asian, European and American stars who illuminatingly analyze the varieties of subjective experience of the state. Many toes are stepped on and a few sacred cows are gored in amusing and consequential ways in the course of reexamining the state as the central organizing concept in political science"--Brendan O'Leary, Lauder Professor of Political Science, Director, Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, University of Pennsylvania
Synopsis
This volume on the state departs from a conventional analysis that universalizes and standardizes what the state is, does, and means. The authors in this volume mean to engage state and stateness as it is encountered in everyday life. They locate the state in time, space, and circumstances that it is contingent and evocative rather than definitive and authoritative. The study discusses what we may think or say about the state, what images are evoked, the formative discourse dealing with the state and its various manifestations through social and cultural reforms. This non-essentialist perspective has eight essays which deal directly with India and South Asia with contributors ranging from James Scott, Arundhati Roy, Sudipta Kaviraj, Lloyd Rudolph, Phil Oldenberg, and Paul Brass.
About the Author
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,
Lloyd I. Rudolph and John Kurt JacobsenPart One: Experiencing High Modernist States in America, India, and the Soviet Union
1. High Modernist Social Engineering: The Case of the Tennessee Valley Authority, James C. Scott
2. The Cost of Living: The Narmada Dam and the Indian State, Arundhati Roy
3. Understanding the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Hyung-Min-Joo
4. How Political Scientists Experienced India's Development State, Paul R. Brass
Part Two: Experiencing the State from Below in Village India and Germany and Urban Karachi
5. Experiencing Reunification: An East German Village after the Fall of the Wall, Helmuth Berking
6. The Dynamics of Bureaucratic Rule in Pakistan: A Personal View, Tasneem Ahmed Siddiqui
7. Face to Face with the Indian State: A Grass Roots View, Philip Oldenburg
Experiencing the State from Outside: Psychiatry, Film, and Art
8. Experiencing Care: Psychotherapy and NHS Mental Health Reform in Britain, Nicholas Temple
9. In Cahoots? Cinema, Cynicism, and Citizenship, John Kurt Jacobsen
10. Forest of Logos: Empire of Signs, Patricia Bickers
11. Gandhi's Trial and India's Colonial State, Sudipta Kaviraj
12. Experiencing Repressive States in America and the Koreas (Bruce Cumings); Conclusion - Sovereignty Unbound: Experiencing the State after 9/11, Lloyd I. Rudolph and John Kurt Jacobsen
Notes on Contributors