The Many Hands of the State: Theorizing Political Authority and Social Control

Cambridge University Press, 3/2/2017
EAN 9781316501139, ISBN10: 1316501132

Paperback, 426 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm
Language: English

The state is central to social scientific and historical inquiry today, reflecting its importance in domestic and international affairs. States kill, coerce, fight, torture, and incarcerate, yet they also nurture, protect, educate, redistribute, and invest. It is precisely because of the complexity and wide-ranging impacts of states that research on them has proliferated and diversified. Yet, too many scholars inhabit separate academic silos, and theorizing of states has become dispersed and disjointed. This book aims to bridge some of the many gaps between scholarly endeavors, bringing together scholars from a diverse array of disciplines and perspectives who study states and empires. The book offers not only a sample of cutting-edge research that can serve as models and directions for future work, but an original conceptualization and theorization of states, their origins and evolution, and their effects.

Introduction Kimberly J. Morgan and Ann Shola Orloff
Part I. Locating the State
The Problem of Boundaries
1. Reconciling equal treatment with respect for individuality
associations in the symbiotic state Elisabeth Clemens
2. Beyond the hidden American state
rethinking government visibility Damon Mayrl and Sarah Quinn
3. States as a series of people exchanges Armando Lara-Millán
4. State metrology
the rating of sovereigns and the judgment of nations Marion Fourcade
Part II. Stratification and the Transformation of States
5. Gendered states made and remade
gendered labor policies in the US and Sweden, 1960–2010 Ann Shola Orloff
6. States and gender justice Mala Htun and S. Laurel Weldon
7. The civil rights states
how the American state develops itself Desmond King and Robert C. Lieberman
8. Disaggregating the racial state
activists, diplomats and the partial shift toward racial equality in Brazil Tianna S. Paschel
Part III. Developing the Sinews of Power
9. Democratic states of unexception
towards a new genealogy of the American political William J. Novak, Stephen W. Sawyer and James T. Sparrow
10. Performing order
an examination of the seemingly impossible task of subjugating large numbers of people, everywhere, all the time Christian Davenport
11. Fiscal forearms
taxation as the lifeblood of the modern liberal state Ajay K. Mehrotra
12. Unexpected adversaries
the state and the revolution in war Meyer Kestnbaum
Part IV. States and Empires
The Transnational/Global Turn
13. Imperial states and the age of discovery in transition(s) to modernity Julia Adams and Steve Pincus
14. Making legibility between colony and empire
translation, conflation, and the making of the Muslim state Iza Hussin
15. The octopus and the Hekatonkheire
on many-armed states and tentacular empires George Steinmentz.