The Aporia of Power: Crisis and the Emergence of the Corporate State

Kapferer, Bruce

doi:10.3167/sa.2010.540108

Cited by 20 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Critically, the company that shutters the factory in question is Polish, and, when viewed along with further off -shoring toward Poland, this ethnographic analysis fur-ther complicates the multi-scalar ramifi cations of both the austerity joint venture between corporate and state policy, and what are the currents crises of an overheated globalization (Eriksen 2016). Given Bruce Kapferer's (2010) recent contributions on the corporate state, it is our assumption, here confi rmed by ethnography, that austerity is a phenomenon of state/ corporation common enterprise.…”

Section: Overview Of Articlesmentioning

confidence: 84%

The anthropology of austerity

Powers

Rakopoulos

2019

Focaal

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This introduction posits that austerity is an instantiation of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and thus must be revisited in two ways, involving its historical and geographical rendering. First, anthropological accounts should think of austerity in the long term, providing encompassing genealogies of the concept rather than seeing it as breach to historical continuity. Second, the discipline should employ the comparative approach to bring together analyses of SAPs in the Global South and austerity measures in the Global North, providing a more comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon. We are interested in what austerity does to people’s temporal consciousness, and what such people do toward a policy process that impacts their lives. We find, in this comparative pursuit, instead of Foucauldian internalization, dissent and dissatisfaction.

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Section: Overview Of Articlesmentioning

confidence: 84%

The anthropology of austerity

Powers

Rakopoulos

2019

Focaal

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“…Manuel DeLanda ( 2006) has developed an entire 'theory of assemblages'. For a discussion of the state as a political assemblage, see Kapferer (2005bKapferer ( , 2010. 3.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The re-forming state: Actions and repercussions in preparing for future biological events

Samimian-Darash

2011

Anthropological Theory

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The article analyzes the heterogeneous forms of action within the state's preparedness assemblage for biological threats in Israel. By examining preparedness practices in two biological preparedness events -the smallpox vaccination project (a possible event) and the ongoing preparations for pandemic influenza (a virtual event) -the analysis maintains that there are a number of simultaneous state practices that emerge in response to various events. This multiplicity points to the complexity of the state not only institutionally (as a form) but also in terms of its (forms of) action. A focus on complexity contrasts with dominant anthropological approaches, which conceive of the state as a monolithic imaginary tending toward homogeneity rather than as heterogeneous, dynamic and constantly changing in practice. To study the state's dynamic form of action, I highlight a particular analytical mode that I term the 'conceptual mode'. This mode of analysis lies between the object mode of analysis (concerned with the structure and form of the state) and the idea mode of analysis (interested in how the state, as an imaginary encompassing entity, increases its power).In a study of preparedness for biological threats in Israel, 1 I observed the emergence of the state's preparedness assemblage. 2 Rather than a monolithic, static apparatus, this assemblage involves varying elements that interact and affect one another, constituting a complex and dynamic state form. 3 In this article, I look at this form by examining preparedness practices for two specific biological

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“…18 In this sense, the author's predigital treatment of the party-state renders his book almost immediately obsolete for understanding threats to democracy that appear already within this state/capital global convergence. 15 Kapferer 2005Kapferer , 2010Kapferer , 2018Nonini, forthcoming. 16 McKinsey Global Institute 2017 17 Liang et al 2018. 18 Lu et al 2015. Related to the author's failure to reread the vexed conflict between liberalism and illiberalism relative to the present era of digital platform-based social control is his limitation of racialized discourse in China to the Hong Kong protestersand indeed his biting criticism of the protesters as occupying a racist privilege perspective vis-à-vis the working-class "mainlanders" may have much going for it.…”

Section: The Arguments Of the Bookmentioning

confidence: 99%

China’s illiberalism and liberalism’s ills

Nonini

2020

Critical Asian Studies

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This is a deeply important book for all scholars of China, and it is a timely one as well. It is timely in a number of ways that in 2019 not even the author (nor any of us) could have foreseen. Since the publication of the book, the Covid-19 pandemic emerged in southern Chinasomething that the author's concern with intensified urbanization in China, the environmental crisis this process causes, and its coming developmental impasse are actually quite relevant to, as I point out below. Since 2019 we have also witnessed the progressive breakdown in the intergovernmental relationship between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States, in terms of the ongoing trade dispute, but far beyond that in the direction of an xenophobia and nationalism initiated by the ugly racist attacks by the Trump administration and its white supremacist allies on Chinese students, Chinese public health (e.g. "kung-flu"), cultural attacks on Chinese diets, and most recently initiated threatened sanctions against members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their families. These attacks are all driven by the narcissism of a U.S. president hell-bent on his own reelection at any cost. The animosity has become mutual, as Chinese nationalism under Xi Jinping has intensified, with deportations of foreign journalists investigating the PRC government's treatment of Uyghurs and the Hong Kong protests against PRC rule, and the probable suspension of study abroad programs for students from both countries. As Covid-19 continues to spread in the United States, PRC students find the U.S. visa and immigration regime increasingly onerous, and the Chinese government retaliates in kind. One cannot help but sense that scholars of China now find themselves facing a conjunctural tipping point that threatens not only the future of US-China relations in a broad sense, but also the specific futures of the research and cultural collaborations that many of us have built assiduously with Chinese colleagues over the last several decades. And this process of schismogenesis may continue even if Trump is not reelected in November 2020. Much is at stake in the current moment, and much is in play in such a conjunctureprecisely where a good public intellectual intervention like Daniel Vukovich's book and its circulation can make a real difference. It is therefore now not only timely but also important to consider the arguments set out in

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The Aporia of Power: Crisis and the Emergence of the Corporate State

Cited by 20 publications

References 7 publications

The anthropology of austerity

The anthropology of austerity

The re-forming state: Actions and repercussions in preparing for future biological events

China’s illiberalism and liberalism’s ills

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