Robert W. Blunt
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226655611
- eISBN:
- 9780226655895
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226655895.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
The epilogue reflects on colonial understandings of ritual, elderhood, and sovereignty after the end of Moi’s rule. It explores emergent fantasies of sovereign power and capacity—the ability to ...
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The epilogue reflects on colonial understandings of ritual, elderhood, and sovereignty after the end of Moi’s rule. It explores emergent fantasies of sovereign power and capacity—the ability to dissimilate—as a distinctive imaginary of sovereignty after 2002 and the Kibaki era of constitutional reform, and whether reform represents a real break from Kenyan understandings of sovereignty in the pastLess
The epilogue reflects on colonial understandings of ritual, elderhood, and sovereignty after the end of Moi’s rule. It explores emergent fantasies of sovereign power and capacity—the ability to dissimilate—as a distinctive imaginary of sovereignty after 2002 and the Kibaki era of constitutional reform, and whether reform represents a real break from Kenyan understandings of sovereignty in the past
Anne McNevin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231151283
- eISBN:
- 9780231522243
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231151283.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Public Policy
This book investigates the role of irregular migrants in the transformation of citizenship, and argues that irregular status is an immanent (rather than aberrant) condition of global capitalism, one ...
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This book investigates the role of irregular migrants in the transformation of citizenship, and argues that irregular status is an immanent (rather than aberrant) condition of global capitalism, one that is formed by the fast-tracked processes of globalization. It describes how irregular migrants complicate the boundaries of citizenship and stretch the parameters of political belonging. It explains that this group is comprised of refugees, asylum seekers, “illegal” labor migrants, and stateless persons, and argues that they occupy new sovereign spaces that generate new subjectivities. The book casts irregular migrants as more than mere victims of sovereign power, shuttled from one location to the next. Incorporating examples from the United States, Australia, and France, it shows how migrants reject their position as “illegal” outsiders and make claims on the communities in which they live and work. It says that, for these migrants, outsider status operates as both a mode of subjectification and as a site of active resistance, forcing observers to rethink the enactment of citizenship. The book connects irregular migrant activism to the complex rescaling of the neoliberal state. Mapping the broad dynamics of political belonging in a neoliberal era, the book provides an insight into the social and spatial transformation of citizenship, sovereignty, and power.Less
This book investigates the role of irregular migrants in the transformation of citizenship, and argues that irregular status is an immanent (rather than aberrant) condition of global capitalism, one that is formed by the fast-tracked processes of globalization. It describes how irregular migrants complicate the boundaries of citizenship and stretch the parameters of political belonging. It explains that this group is comprised of refugees, asylum seekers, “illegal” labor migrants, and stateless persons, and argues that they occupy new sovereign spaces that generate new subjectivities. The book casts irregular migrants as more than mere victims of sovereign power, shuttled from one location to the next. Incorporating examples from the United States, Australia, and France, it shows how migrants reject their position as “illegal” outsiders and make claims on the communities in which they live and work. It says that, for these migrants, outsider status operates as both a mode of subjectification and as a site of active resistance, forcing observers to rethink the enactment of citizenship. The book connects irregular migrant activism to the complex rescaling of the neoliberal state. Mapping the broad dynamics of political belonging in a neoliberal era, the book provides an insight into the social and spatial transformation of citizenship, sovereignty, and power.
François G. Richard
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226252407
- eISBN:
- 9780226252681
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226252681.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
Chapter 1 opens with an ethnographic look at Siin’s rural landscapes and the political marginalization that the province has suffered since the days of independence in 1960. Moving away from ideas of ...
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Chapter 1 opens with an ethnographic look at Siin’s rural landscapes and the political marginalization that the province has suffered since the days of independence in 1960. Moving away from ideas of space as map, physical setting, or background, it builds on Seereer people’s relationship to their agrarian milieu to develop a theory of political landscape. This approach centers on three elements: first, landscapes are multi-temporal they conjoin the remains of many historical times at once, making it possible to track the traces different histories left on them; second, landscapes are inclusive. They conserve material traces of elite and nonelite communities alike. Political worlds are not the sole province of the powerful but contrarian terrains constructed in dialogue with those the powerful seek to control; and, lastly, landscapes are ‘chancy’; that is, they are not completely amenable to political engineering. This unpredictability confers a certain reluctance to Siin’s landscapes, in that they sometimes get in the way of power, testing the wills and designs of political actors. For these reasons, landscapes open a unique, long-term window onto material struggles over sovereignty and autonomy in coastal Senegal.Less
Chapter 1 opens with an ethnographic look at Siin’s rural landscapes and the political marginalization that the province has suffered since the days of independence in 1960. Moving away from ideas of space as map, physical setting, or background, it builds on Seereer people’s relationship to their agrarian milieu to develop a theory of political landscape. This approach centers on three elements: first, landscapes are multi-temporal they conjoin the remains of many historical times at once, making it possible to track the traces different histories left on them; second, landscapes are inclusive. They conserve material traces of elite and nonelite communities alike. Political worlds are not the sole province of the powerful but contrarian terrains constructed in dialogue with those the powerful seek to control; and, lastly, landscapes are ‘chancy’; that is, they are not completely amenable to political engineering. This unpredictability confers a certain reluctance to Siin’s landscapes, in that they sometimes get in the way of power, testing the wills and designs of political actors. For these reasons, landscapes open a unique, long-term window onto material struggles over sovereignty and autonomy in coastal Senegal.
