ANTH 425 Power and Change
Susan Vincent
Fall 2011
Sept. 13: Introduction and overview:
Gledhill, John (2009) "Power in Political Anthropology." Journal of Power 2(1): 9-34
- article provides an overview of how anthropologists have studied power since the 1970s
- thus, rather than being argument driven, it is content driven; nevertheless, his critical analysis of the work does reflect a specific perspective about how power should be studied and what should be studied.
Themes:
- in general, the trend since political anthropology began in the 1940s or so, has been toward greater complexity.
- in the beginning ...
- analysis focussed on small scale societies and avoided discussion, analysis or even mention of the wider contextual circumstances, such as colonialism or recent political upheaval.
- in the early 1990s, while Wolf argued that anthropologists had not studied power enough, Sahlins argued that there was nothing but studies of power and that culture had been lost.
- this is revisited through the paper as the trend to see power everywhere has often meant that party politics, etc. has been ignored; also notes some tendencies to invoke static and bounded concepts of culture, rather than dynamic ones.
- as colonialism vanished, anthropologists revisited earlier work and made impact of global processes a key part of their analyses;
- in anthropology of state: research emphasizes that there are different forms of state, and that people interact with them in different ways (e.g. to solicit its aid against local oligarchs, as in Nugent’s Peruvian work)
- Gledhill wants to push for more than simplistic domination-resistance paradigms
- sometimes people engage in what seem to be dominating state practices and we need to understand why (e.g. Nuitjen’s "hope generating machine")
- also wants to emphasize that the state is actually a set of social practices, rather than a fetishized thing
- discusses Ferguson’s approach (Foucauldian argument that discourse of development depoliticizes development by identifying the problems and solutions as technical; Ferguson extends the analysis to argue that the effect of development is to extend the state’s reach into areas); Gledhill presents Mosse’s critique of this perspective as functionalist and does not take into account actions and goals of other actors such as NGOs, the people.
- also in the Foucauldian field are Trouillot’s idea of "state effects"; Ong on "graduated sovereignty," various works on governmentality;
- is positive about Abu-Lughod’s use of Foucault to diagnose power by looking for resistance – Abu-Lughod also points out that resisting one form of power may put people into the grip of another form (notes argument that this may be a Gramscian rather than Foucauldian position)
- re "resistance literature" spawned by James Scott, refers to Ortner’s critique: often ethnographically thin; frames people as "individual rational actors" rather than looking at the various structures of power which may combine or contradict each other.
- is very appreciative of Wolf’s idea of "structural power", although notes the critiques made of it: a marxist view (with concessions to Foucault), that tries to understand the big picture of how decisions are made more possible – wanted to promote analysis of "devastating social effects and political consequences of the late twentieth century transformations associated with the rise of neoliberal capitalism and the USA’s position as sole global military superpower" (p. 22).
- also sees Wolf as understanding the structures as arising from what millions of people do; therefore not easily changed by a single actor.
- also fairly positive about Comaroffs’ work, although notes how pessimistic they have become; i.e. discussions of how profound class inequalities are hidden by being manifest through concerns about religion, witchcraft, identity, etc.
- goes on to Hale and Nelson who also examine the paths of power through identity-making or complex state programs that may help, even while they may also serve to dominate and oppress.
- concludes with his research on candomblé and neo-Pentecostal churches in Bahia, Brazil to demonstrate how complex and unexpected the political processes are.