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Contents
:
THE LETTER OF THE LAW:
THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF BELONGING TO POLITY
2006 annual theme:
ANTHROPOLOGICAL REFLECTIONSON LANGUAGES
OF SELF DESCRIPTIONOF EMPIREAND NATION
11
:
From the Editors Subjected to Citizenship: The Problem of
Belonging
to the State in Empire and Nation
Myron J. AronoffForty Years as a Political Ethnographer : -
Interview with Peter Sahlins Subjecthood That Happens to Be
Called
Citizenship, Or Trying to Make Sense of The Old Regime on
Its
Own Terms
, , -
23
I. METHODOLOGYAND THEORY 10
17
39
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/Contents
versus XVII . ( / )Natalia YakovenkoLife Space vs. Identity of
the Rus Gentleman (the Case of Jan/
Joachim Erlich)
Ltat cest nous? , -
- (1819-1820 .)Alsu BiktashevaLtat cest nous? Local Citizenship,
Imperial Subjecthood, and
the Revision of Government Institutions in Kazan Province,
1819-1820
Olga MaiorovaSearching for a New Language of Collective Self:
The
Symbolism of Russian National Belonging During and After the
Crimean War :
: - - (1860- .)Mikhail Dolbilov The Tsars Faith: Mass
Conversions of Catholics to Ortho-
doxy in the North-Western Region of the Russian Empire (ca.
1860s)
James Kennedy, Liliana RigaMitteleuropa as Middle America?
The
Inquiry and the Mapping of East Central Europe in 1919 ,
Mitteleuropa ? The In-quiry 1919 .
, :
XIX XX Benno GammerlNation, State or Empire: Subjecthood and
Citizenship in British
and Habsburg Empires at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
271
137
225
101
HISTORYII. 100
187
59
, , XVIII .: Alexander Kamenskii Subjecthood, Loyalty, and
Patriotism in Imperial Discourses
in Eighteenth Century Russia: Outlining the Problem
301
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329
371
401
ARCHIVEIII. 328
, Ernest Gyidel On Ukrainofilia of George V. Vernadsky, Or
Miscellaneous Notes
on the Topic of National and State Loyalties
: -George V. Vernadsky: I Think of Myself Both as a Ukrainian
and a Russian
Rebecca Chamberlain-Creang The Transnistrian people?
Citizen-
ship and Imaginings of the State in an Unrecognized Country -
?
, ,
SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY,
POLITICAL SCIENCE
IV. 370
347
410
R-FORUM
IMPERIAL CITIES
Felix Driver and David Gilbert (Eds.), Imperial Cities:
Landscape,
Display and Identity (Manchester and New York: Manchester
Uni-
versity Press, 2003). 272 pp. (=Studies in Imperialism). Index.
ISBN:
0-719-0 6497-X (paperback edition);
Julie A. Buckler,Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and
Cityshape
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005). 320
pp.
Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 0-691-11349-1.
Elena Hellberg-Hirn, Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet
St.-Petersburg
(Helsinki: SKS / Finnish Literature Society, 2003). 446 pp.
Bibliogra-
phy, Index. ISBN: 951-746-491-6 (hardback edition).
d
BOOKREVIEWSVII.
Reviews 400
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/Contents
419
437
415
432
428
Richard Stites, Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial
Russia: The
Pleasure and the Power(New Haven: Yale University Press,
2005).
xii+586 pp. ISBN: 0-300-10889-3 (hardback edition).
Louise McReynoldsLutz Hfner, Gesellschaft als lokale
Veranstaltung. Die Wolgastdte
Kazan und Saratov (18701914) (Kln: Bhlau Verlag, 2004). 594
S.
(=Beitrge zur Geschichte Osteuropas; Bd. 35). ISBN:
3-412-11403-0;
Guido Hausmann (Hg.), Gesellschaft als lokale Veranstaltung.
Selb-
stverwaltung, Assoziierung und Geselligkeit in den Stdten des
ausge-
henden Zarenreiches (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2002).
485 S. (=Brgertum. Beitrge zur europischen
Gesellschaftsgeschich-
te; Bd. 22). ISBN: 3-525-35687-0.
. . . (-
XIV XV .). : -
, 2006. 160 . , -
, , , ,
. ISBN: 5-9273-1017-6.
Charles Halperin
Frithjof Benjamin Schenk,Aleksandr Nevskij: Heiliger, Frst,
Nation-
alheld; eine Erinnerungsfigur im russischen kulturellen
Gedchtnis
(12632000) (Kln: Bhlau Verlag, 2004). 548, [32] S. Ill.
(=Beitraege
zur Geschichte Osteuropas; Bd. 36) Quellen- und Literaturverz.
ISBN:
3-412-06904-3.
Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland,
Ukraine,Lithuania, Belarus, 15691999 (New Haven and London: Yale
Uni-
versity Press, 2003). xv+367 pp. ISBN: 0-300-08480-3.
Nicholas V. Riasanovsky,Russian Identities: A Historical Survey
(Ox-
ford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 278 pp.
Index.
ISBN: 0-19-516550-1.
453
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464
476
481
509
469
Susan P. McCaffray, Michael Melancon (Eds.),Russia in The
Europe-
an Context, 17891914: A Member of the Family (New York and
Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 256 pp. Index. ISBN:
1-4039-
6855-1.Natalie Bayer
. . 19972002 .
: , 2004 (=: -
). 816 c. .
ISBN: 5-86793-300-8.
Marina Peunova
/ ., ., , . .. . . -:
-, 2003. 396 . ISBN: 5-94380-
024-7.
Alexander Ogden
Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone: Church Architecture
From
Byzantium to Berkeley (Oxford & New York: Oxford University
Press,
2004). 372 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 0-19-515466-5.
ii. i i. -:
, 2003. 243 . ISBN: 5-94716-032-3.
Caroline Milow, Die Ukrainische Frage 19171923 im Spannungs-
feld der europischen Diplomatie (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
Verlag,
2002) (=Veroffentlichungen des Osteuropa-Instituts Mnchen.
Reihe:
Geschichte; Bd. 68). 572 S. ISBN: 3-447-04482-9.
. . . . - /
1968 . -: -
- , --
, 2004. 252 c., . , ,
. ISBN: 5-98187-042-7.
490
503
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/Contents
List of Contributors
Ab Imperio 2007 /Books for Review
535
538
547
541
516
524
Rebecca Kay, Men in Contemporary Russia: The Fallen Heroes
of
Post-Soviet Change? (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006). 246 pp.
Bibli-
ography, Index. ISBN: 0-7546-4485-5.
Richard Sakwa (Ed.), Chechnya: From Past to Future (London:
An-
them Press, 2005). 300 pp. ISBN: 1-84331-165-8.
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11
Ab Imperio, 4/2006
:
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23
Ab Imperio, 4/2006
Myron J. ARONOFF
FORTY YEARS
AS A POLITICAL ETHNOGRAPHER*
I, on my side, require of every writer, first or
last, a simple and sincere account of his own life,
and not merely what he has heard of other menslives; some such
account as he would send to his
kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sin-
cerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.
(Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854)1
I choose the autobiographical approach in this discussion of
political
ethnography for several reasons. First, I know my own work best
and donot presume others familiarity with my publications beyond
specialists in
* An earlier draft was presented as the keynote address on
October 26, 2006 at a workshop
on Political Ethnography: What Insider Perspectives Contribute
to the Study of Powerheld at the University of Toronto. All further
references will be cited as op. cit., workshopon Political
Ethnography. I thank Edward Schatz for inviting me to give the
address and
for his helpful comments on it. I am grateful to my fellow
participants for a moststimulating exchange of experiences and
ideas. I am indebted to Marina Mogilner andAlexander Semyonov for
soliciting this essay for publication and for their probing
comments and questions.1 Cited by Dvora Yanow. Reading as
Method: Interpreting Interpretations // Op. cit.
Workshop on Political Ethnography.
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24
Myron J. Aronoff, Forty Years as a Political Ethnographer
my fields.2 This approach, therefore, affords an opportunity to
broaden
awareness of the fruits of four decades of my own ethnographic
research
while discussing a number of important general problems and
issues. Sec-
ond, I hope that young scholars at the outset of their careers
may benefitfrom my experiences so they do not constantly attempt to
reinvent the same
wheel. Finally, my self-referential approach introduces the
self-reflexivity
that presently dominates in anthropology to scholars in other
disciplines. I
shall illustrate, for example, how the unintended consequences
of choices I
made influenced my career, my work, and my life.
I have been fascinated by politics for as long as I can
remember. I was
the only kid in Middletown, Ohio in 1952 proudly sporting an
Adlai Steven-
son campaign button. My liberal Democratic family was likely
considered
by most of our neighbors in the bible belt of southwestern Ohio
to be com-
munist. My fascination with other cultures began while working a
summer
in Israel and traveling through Europe during the Fall of 1960.
I discovered
ethnography in graduate school at UCLA (1962-1965). As a
political sci-
ence major with an area concentration in African studies, I was
obliged to
choose an additional major outside of political science.
Anthropology
was a natural choice for understanding the postcolonial politics
of nation
building and identity formation in Africa. These developments
were part of
a general redefinition of the field of political science that
began after WWIIand received greater impetus in the 1960s with the
independence of the
new African states.
Among the outstanding scholars with whom I studied the political
theo-
rist (philosopher) David C. Rapaport and the anthropologist
Michael G.
Smith had the greatest intellectual influences on me. By
studying classical
and more contemporary political theory with Rapoport I learned
to ask
important questions particularly about the nature of political
legitimacy,
which has remained the central conceptual focus throughout my
academiccareer. Smith introduced me to ethnography in his course on
traditional
political systems. I delved more deeply into the nature of
legitimacy in his
seminar on Max Weber. I decided that I must do ethnographic
field work
for my doctoral dissertation because I felt that the only way I
could under-
stand the meaning of politics was to observe the people involved
in the
2 I earned Ph.D.s in both political science (UCLA) and social
anthropology (ManchesterUniversity) and have spent my career
attempting to build conceptual and methodological
bridges between the two. My forthcoming volumeAnthropology and
Political Science:Politics, Culture, and Identity (co-authored with
Jan Kubik) (New York: Berghan)
represents the culmination of this career-long project.
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processes I wanted to study and learn how they understood what
was going
on.3 Nation building was the hot topic at the time for Africa.
However, for
reasons beyond my control I was unable to do the fieldwork I had
planned
in Africa. As an ABD (all but dissertation) I turned down an
attractive, wellpaid tenure-track job offer at a respected
university in the United States in
order to accept a very poorly paid position on a research team
from Manches-
ter University (UK) directed by Professor Max Gluckman to
conduct field-
work in Israel. In other words, I chose the opportunity to
conduct ethno-
graphic fieldwork over my fascination with Africa and over a
decent salary
and the promise of potential job security. I was bitten by the
ethnographic
bug and have remained infected ever since. As I shall elaborate
below, once
you have the opportunity to observe and interact with people who
are en-
gaged in the activities that fascinate you and that you are
attempting to
understand, you realize that there is simply no better way to
understand
what is going on, and no other way to understand what these
events mean
to the participants themselves, than through participant
observation.
Strangely enough there were no courses offered, nor was there
any for-
mal training in ethnographic methods in the department of social
anthro-
pology at Manchester University in 1965.4 We picked up informal
tips from
gossip about famous anthropologists in the field and personal
anecdotes in
the common room and in the pubs to which we retired after our
seminars.We learned by an almost Talmudic reading of classical
ethnographic texts.
For example, we learned about extended-case analysis by reading
the clas-
sic formulations by Max Gluckman and by J. Clyde Mitchell.5
The
(in)famous Manchester seminars when classes were called off for
intensive
critiques by professors and graduate students of the work of
those just re-
turning from the field was a baptism under fire through which we
became
initiated in the Manchester school approach. Maxs only direct
method-
ological advice to me as I set out for Israel was to keep your
eyes and ears
3 I was asked on my oral comprehensive Ph.D. exam at UCLA: Is
political science ascience or an art to which I immediately
replied, If we are to succeed in understanding
people and politics, it must combine both.4 One of my
professors, A. L. Epstein edited: The Craft of Social
Anthropology.London,1967, when I was in the field in Israel.5 Max
Gluckman. Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand (Rhodes
Living-stone Papers # 28). Manchester, 1958 (republished by
Manchester University Press, 1968);J. Clyde Mitchell. The Kalela
Dance (Rhodes-Livingstone Papers # 27). Manchester, 1956
(republished by Manchester University Press, 1968). See J. Van
Velsen. The Extended-case Method and Situational Analysis // A. L.
Epstein. The Craft of Social Anthropology.
Pp. 129-149, for one of the earliest descriptive formulations of
the approach.
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Myron J. Aronoff, Forty Years as a Political Ethnographer
open and your mouth shut tight. The former was easier than the
latter for
me. The only stricture he placed on us was that we were required
to study a
community small enough to employ participant observation as our
primary
research method.Although I received an excellent education at
Manchester, training in
ethnographic methodology was not the only gap. Most of my
professors
had worked with Gluckman at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute of
Social
Studies in central Africa and were African specialists.6 Emrys
Peters taught
the only seminar dealing with Middle Eastern cultures. (Peter
Worsely taught
a more general third world seminar.) I have never taken a course
at the
undergraduate or graduate level that dealt with Israel even in
passing. Also,
like my British trained professors of anthropology at UCLA, M.
G. Smith
and Hilda Kuper, my professors at Manchester were all British
social an-
thropologists. We studied social structure and networks, not
culture. In some
ways this was closer to the political science I studied than is
the work of
Clifford Geertz and other American cultural anthropologists who
I read
outside my formal education. Whereas the methodological
innovations of
extended case analysis, particularly of protracted political
strife, developed
by the Manchester school are highly relevant for political
scientists, I shall
suggest below the cultural focus on the semiotic and hermeneutic
analysis
of the interpretation of meaning is the most important
contribution ofAmerican cultural anthropology to understanding
politics.
I chose to study one of the two newest of Israels thirty
development
towns that had been recently established in the Negev desert.
Two sociolo-
gy students had conducted surveys for their masters theses in
town so the
residents were familiar with what sociologists do. I explained
that I was a
political anthropologist doing an ethnographic study. It later
became ap-
parent that not everyone understood what ethnography involved.
Many
thought I was just a lazy sociologist and asked when I was going
to conductmy interviews. Others bluntly suggested I get a job. One
local recent immi-
grant who was serving in the border police manned a check point
on the
border between the West Bank and the pre-1967 war border. When I
ar-
rived at his check point he excitedly called his colleagues over
to introduce
me as an American astronaut living in town.
The leader of the opposition who was elected mayor during my
study
was shocked when he read a copy of my dissertation saying he had
no idea
6 Gluckman attempted to replicate the spirit of the
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in theteam he assembled to study
Israel that was funded by the Bernstein family (owners of
Granada television in the United Kingdom).
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it would be so personal. He pointed out a dissertation on local
government
in Israel on his desk written by a political scientist which he
thought was
the kind of work I was writing. He objected that my study was so
personal
that publishing it would be like publishing an x-ray of his
ample stomach.
7
He was the son-in-law of the prime minister at the time and had
higher
political ambitions. In fact, he eventually became finance
minister.
I lived with my wife and infant daughter in town, participating
in the
life of the community from October 1966 through the summer of
1968
(including the war of June 1967). Toward the end of my stay I
conducted a
survey to test a hypothesis developed from my observations and
to prove
not only that I was not a lazy sociologist, but that I was a
competent political
scientist. After months of getting data that made no sense based
on my
intimate knowledge of the population, I discovered that the
magnetic tape
had broken and a piece of someone elses data had been
accidentally spliced
into mine. Had I not known the population as well as I did,
under the pres-
sure to complete my dissertation, I might have been forced to
attempt to
make an interpretation of spurious data. On the other hand, the
multivariate
regressions I ran once the problem had been corrected
corroborated the
central hypothesis of my analysis derived from the ethnography:
the con-
struction of a strong collective identity and sense of communal
pride within
a remarkably short time was due primarily to the mobilization of
the resi-dents through competing local socio-political factions.
Whereas I certainly
agree with Ed Schatz that one need not utilize multiple-methods
in all re-
search, there are definitely contexts when they are not only
useful, but per-
haps even essential.8
My analysis ofFrontiertown was framed in the context of Victor
Turn-
ers political phase development in which social situations were
presented
as phases in an ongoing process of political strife over an
extended period
of time.9
Each phase was analyzed using the method developed by the
7 I negotiated with him and agreed to delete a few of the most
personal matters which
did not detract from my analysis. He finally consented to the
publication of my disserta-
tion. The town and its inhabitants were all given pseudonyms in
the tradition of anthro-
pology.8 Edward Schatz. The Problem with the Toolbox Metaphor:
Ethnography and the Limits
to Multiple-Methods Research. A paper presented at the annual
meeting of the Ameri-
can Political Science Association, August 31-September 3, 2006.
A similar argument is
made by: Sanford F. Schram. Why I am not an Interpretivist //
Op. cit. Workshop on
Political Ethnography.9 Myron J. Aronoff. Frontiertown: the
Politics of Community Building in Israel.
Manchester & Jerusalem, 1974; Victor Turner. Social Dramas
and Ritual Metaphors //
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Myron J. Aronoff, Forty Years as a Political Ethnographer
Manchester school known as the extended case method and
situational
analysis. One case constituted what Turner termed the deployment
of ad-
justive or redressive mechanisms. I analyzed the ritual
interaction be-
tween representatives of local merchants and housewives
employing ErvingGoffmansEncounters,which analyzed the ritual nature
of face-to-face in-
teractions.10 A confrontation over economic issues on the eve of
a hotly
contested local election in which violence had been threatened
was defused
by the skillful employment of framing through what Goffman
metaphori-
cally termed an interaction membrane that excluded direct
reference to
politics and disguised references to ethnicity.
The encounter, which began with considerable tension, ended in
good
humored laughter prompted by a joking exchange between the
unofficial
leader of the housewives and the head of the merchants
association. Coin-
cidentally, they were the only two people present who were of
Middle East-
ern background. The housewife, who was from Yemen, joked about
the
incongruity between her dark complexion and her European
(married) name.
She also called the leader of the merchants, who was from
Morocco origi-
nally, habibi using the Arabic pronunciation rather than the
common pro-
nunciation used by Israelis of European background. I suggested
that the
use of the Arabic term, rather than the Hebrew equivalent, in
this context
was a subtle reference to their common ethnicity after the two
had con-fronted each other over economic issues. It successfully
brought the en-
counter to a conclusion because of the relative absence of
ethnic prejudice
and tensions among the participants.
When I gave my presentation back at Manchester, Professor Emrys
Pe-
ters, who had worked among the Bedouin in Libya and in a
Lebanese vil-
lage, insisted that there was a sexual innuendo in the exchange
and that she
was actually coming on to him. As we sat in the pub after the
seminar
continuing the discussion I asked my professor to listen to the
conversationtaking place next to us. One of my fellow graduate
students was engaged in
a conversation with a stranger in the booth next to ours. The
stranger asked
Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY, 1974. Pp. 23-59. The
model was formulated
earlier in the introduction to: Marc J. Swartz, Victor W.
Turner, and Arthur Tuden (Eds.).
Political Anthropology. Chicago, 1966. His co-editors credit
Turner for the major
contribution in formulating the approach. Turner was one of
Gluckmans most prominent
students. He moved to the United States where he had a
significant impact on American
anthropology as well as British anthropology.10 Erving Goffman.
Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction.
Indianapolis,
1961.
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my friend his name. He replied, Len Mars. The man asked if that
was his
original name. Len replied that the family name was originally
Margolis.
When I asked what had transpired, my professor gave a very
literal inter-
pretation. I then explained that the two strangers were simply
establishingtheir mutual Jewish identity which is exactly the point
I had made about the
two in the encounter I had analyzed.
When I gave the same analysis at Tel Aviv University there were
also
differing interpretations of my data. My Israeli Palestinian
graduate research
assistant supported my interpretation. He stated that the
meaning ofhabibi
varies contextually. He explained that when his fianc called him
habibi it
meant exactly what Professor Peters suggested. When his buddy
called him
habibi, it meant my friend. When his Jewish boss in the
Histadrut labor
federation used the term my student considered it condescending
and pa-
tronizing. He confirmed that in the context I described the term
was clearly
as I had interpreted it. One essential contribution of
ethnography is the
understanding of the meaning of words and actions in specific
contexts
through deep immersion in the culture and mastery of the
language. Even
verbatim stenographic minutes of the meeting (had they existed,
which they
did not) would not have enabled the nuanced analysis of such an
exchange
because the nonverbal communication and good-natured laughter of
the
participants was essential for an accurate explanation of the
significance ofthe exchange.
My second major research project involved eight years of
participant
observation of the national institutions and local branches of
the Israel La-
bor party which dominated Israeli politics for nearly fifty
years. This re-
search was conducted during the period I taught at Tel Aviv
University.
The book that resulted from this research, Power and Ritual in
the Israel
Labor Party was first published in 1977.11 The book essentially
anticipated
and explained the defeat of the party that year that was so
shocking that itwas popularly known in Hebrew as the
earthquake.
I utilized the conceptual repertoire of political science to
explain the
politics of factionalism, the nomination of leaders, the
analysis of represen-
tation on national party institutions, and the relationship
between the party
center and the local branches. At the time there was much debate
in politi-
cal sociology and political science about non-decision making
and non-
11 Myron J. Aronoff. Power and Ritual in the Israel Labor Party:
A Study in PoliticalAnthropology. Assen, the Netherlands, 1977;
revised and expanded edition published
by M. E. Sharpe (Armonk, NY, 1993).
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Myron J. Aronoff, Forty Years as a Political Ethnographer
issues. I was able to add conceptual clarity to this discussion
and empirical
evidence through my analysis of the suppression of extremely
important
and controversial issues from the national convention of the
party. Scholars
dependent upon archival evidence and interviews were completely
unawareof this phenomenon which never appeared in previous studies
of this party
or any other. However, I feel that my greatest theoretical
contribution in
this study is to the analysis of ritual, the refinement of
Gluckmans notion
of rituals of rebellion, and the conceptual challenge to the
predominant
reified, mutually exclusive, dichotomous distinction between
traditional and
modern societies.
I had not planned to study ritual in my research design. But
after ex-
hausting the explanations for much of my data there remained a
significant
range of activity, particularly in one closed top party forum,
which defied
explanation by the aforementioned concepts. The more I examined
the sym-
bolic dimension of behavior in this assemblage of the secondary
echelon of
national party leaders, the more I was reminded of Gluckmans
classic es-
say Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa (1952).12 It met
Gluck-
mans key criteria that the outcome was known in advance and that
the
social unit must end united as a consequence of the ritual. The
rebellious
criticism by the secondary leaders of their patrons in the top
party elite was
strikingly similar to that of the Lozi priests of Barotseland
analyzed byGluckman and to the chiefs designated by the king of
Baganda reported by
Lucy Mair.13 Yet, Gluckman argued quite explicitly that with the
develop-
ment of proto-classes you cannothave rituals of rebellion
because when
actors can opt for alternative social roles you get genuine
revolts rather the
ritualized rebellions. By explicitly delineating the conditions
that prevented
the actors in my study from opting for alternative roles (e.g.
overthrowing
the top leaders or switching parties), I eventually convinced
Gluckman that
what I observed was, indeed, a ritual of rebellion. By showing
the limitedscope and efficacy of such ritualized solutions and the
suppression of
issues that were highly salient to the public I was able to
document Labors
loss of ideological dominance and legitimacy and to anticipate
its loss of
political dominance in the forthcoming election. I note that no
other politi-
cal scientist and only one (little known at the time) pollster
predicted the
defeat of Labor in 1977. If I had not managed to observe the
events ana-
12 The most accessible version of this classic essay was
republished in Gluckmans
collected essays: Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa. London,
1963. Pp. 110-136.13 Max Gluckman. Rituals of Rebellion in
South-East Africa; Lucy P. Mair. An African
People in the Twentieth Century (Baganda). New York, 1934.
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lyzed I would not have been able to make either this theoretical
contribu-
tion or the successful prognosis. In 1993 I published a
substantially ex-
panded and updated edition of this book dealing with Labors
years in op-
position and eventual return to power.My third major research
project (which resulted inIsraeli Visions and
Divisions)was even more unconventional since it was an
ethnography of
Israeli society, culture, and politics in the period from 1977
to 1990, which
was a period of major cultural and political transformation and
polariza-
tion.14 Based largely on fieldwork in Israel during 1982-1983
and 1987-
1988, I utilized a wide range of methods. I engaged in
participant observa-
tion of selected meetings of the Ministerial Committee on
Symbols and
Ceremonies, the Knesset plenary, parliamentary committees, and
the dele-
gates dining room, the activities of several peace movements
(particularly
Peace Now), the major settlers movement (Gush Emunim or Bloc of
the
Faithful), academic conferences, theater performances, movies,
television
programs, e.g., a documentary series on the 1981 election
campaign, and
the first Palestinian uprising (intifada). I interviewed more
than a hundred
political, religious, cultural, and educational leaders. I also
examined an
archive of more than twenty years of meetings of the Ministerial
Commit-
tee on Symbols and Ceremonies (housed in the Prime Ministers
office),
from which I selected for analysis two major decisions that
focused on themanipulation of political culture.
The leader of the nationalist Likud party, Menachem Begin,
became
prime minister in 1977 and set out to overcome the pariah image
with which
Labor had stigmatized him and his movement. He attempted to
eradicate
the last vestiges of Labors ideological legitimacy and to
establish the Likuds
political dominance and ideological hegemony. Begin utilized
state agen-
cies to reinterpret Israeli history; to elevate his movements
ideological
leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, to the national political pantheon;
to enshrineas heroes the martyrs of the dissident underground
movements particular-
ly the one he commanded; and to establish the authority of their
myths. The
Begin government made extensive use of ceremonies commemorating
his-
torical figures whose actions were used to attempt to lend
legitimacy to
Begin, his movement, and his governments policies. The most
elaborate of
these ceremonies was an official state funeral held on May 11,
1982, in the
Judean desert for the purported remains of the fighters and
followers of
14 Myron J. Aronoff. Israeli Visions and Divisions: Cultural
Change and Political Conflict.
New Brunswick, NJ, 1989; 1991 (paperback edition).
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Myron J. Aronoff, Forty Years as a Political Ethnographer
Shimon Bar Koziba, popularly known as Bar Kochba, who led the
second
Jewish revolt against Rome in 132-135 CE.
I contrast the elaborate official state ceremony attended by
state offi-
cials and representatives of foreign countries who were brought
by heli-copter to the remote dessert site with an unofficial parody
of the event. The
central event of the official ritual was the prime ministers
eulogy. Premier
Begin, frequently referring to the liberation and unification of
Jerusalem,
emphasized the historic link between the Bar Kochba revolt and
the rise
and expansion of the new Third Jewish Commonwealth. He
reminded
the audience that it had been the Roman emperor Publius Aelius
Hadrianus
who had given Judea the name Palestine, a name that still haunts
us. He
declared, Our glorious fathers, we have a message for you: We
have re-
turned to the place from whence we came. The people of Israel
lives, and
will live in its homeland of Eretz Israel for generations upon
generations.
Glorious fathers, we are back and we will not budge from here.
15 The full
ceremonies were covered by Israels only television channel (at
the time)
as well as by radio broadcasts, thereby reaching a wide section
of the deep-
ly divided population.
A group of twenty-four young protestors wearing Roman-style
togas
and carrying spears parodied the official ceremony chanting You
are mak-
ing a laughing stock out of history. When Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi
ShlomoGoren emerged from his helicopter they broke out in a song
about chasing
darkness from the land which is traditionally sung on Hanukkah.
Although
the police and soldiers eventually succeeded in destroying their
signs and
forcibly removing them from the ceremonies, their protest
dramatized the
opposition of approximately half of their fellow countrymen
including
the majority of the educational and cultural elite, many of whom
boycotted
the ceremonies. A respected rabbi and Labor member of the
Knesset claimed
the ceremony perverted Jewish tradition. Opponents of the
governmentsexpansive settlement policy in the territories Israel
occupied during the war
of June 1967 were particularly critical of the obvious political
implications
of the ceremony. Even a very senior member of the government
avoided
the ceremony which he told me he considered to be a farce.
Israel became embroiled in a polarized national debate over the
mean-
ing of Bar Kochbas revolt and its implications for the
contemporary quan-
dary caused by Israels occupation of land on which two million
Palestin-
ians reside. The national debate arguing contradictory
implications of the
15 Aronoff. Israeli Visions and Divisions. P. 59.
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Bar Kochba revolt for contemporary political dilemmas facing
Israel re-
flected deeply polarized ideological interpretations of the
Zionist vision.
Yet, the fact that secular scholars and leading rabbinic figures
engaged in
public debate with one another and with the prime minister and
other leadingpoliticians over the implications of two thousand
year-old events for con-
temporary problems implies the sharing of an underlying
Zionist/Israeli
world view that made the debate over interpretations of this
root cultural
paradigm both possible and significant. In the past two decades
since then
Zionism has been seriously challenged from various internal and
external
groups, which has loosened its hegemonic hold on the public,
although it
still retains considerable salience for the majority of Israeli
Jews. I have
analyzed the contested nature of Israeli identity in other
publications since
the publication of this book most recently at a workshop in
Antwerp in
October 2006.16
My most recent book, The Spy Novels of John le Carre: Balancing
Ethics
and Politics, employs an ethnographic approach to the analysis
of works of
fiction.17 Although not based on participant observation as were
my previous
studies, it is based on what Jan Kubik calls ethnographic
problematization
and framing.18 I reverse the trend of many post-modernist
scholars who
interpret the words and actions of real people as literary
texts. By contrast,
I interpret the plight of fictional characters in literary texts
as representativeof real life situations and moral dilemmas. This
approach is consistent with
the authors intent. As he told Melvyn Bragg, at the moment, when
we
have no ideology, and our politics are in a complete shambles, I
find it [the
espionage novel] a convenient microcosm to shuffle around in a
secret world
and make that expressive of the overt world.19 I suggest that le
Carre is the
ethnographer, having experienced the secret world personally and
imagi-
natively recreated it in fiction. I then supplied an
interpretation of the cen-
16 See, for example, Myron J. Aronoff. Temporal and Spatial
Dimensions of Contested
Israeli Nationhood // Brigitta Benzing and Bernd Herrmann
(Eds.). Exploitation and
Overexploitation in Societies Past and Present. Berlin and New
Brunswick, 2003. Pp.
269-272.17 Myron J. Aronoff. The Spy Novels of John le Carre:
Balancing Ethics and Politics.
New York, 1999; 2001 (Palgrave paperback edition).18 Jan Kubik.
Ethnography after Post-Modern (De)construction: Is It Still Useful
for
Political Science? // Op. cit. Workshop on Political
Ethnography. Italics are in the original.
Kubik refers to: Roger Peterson. Resistance and Rebellion,
Lessons from Eastern Europe.
Cambridge, UK, 2001, which uses an ethno-historical approach.19
Melvyn Bragg. The Things a Spy Can Do John le Carre Talking // The
Listener.
1976. 27 January. P. 90.
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Myron J. Aronoff, Forty Years as a Political Ethnographer
tral tension in his work between ethics and politics. I treat
the novels as
extended cases which I interpret very much as I did the data I
gathered in
my previously discussed political ethnographies.
Using the notion of ideological temperament, which Wilson
CareyMcWilliams defined as dispositions of the soul as distinct
from more
codified ideological doctrines, I suggest that high tolerance of
ambiguity is
one of the key defining features of the liberal temperament.20
George Smi-
ley best represents the liberal temperament and skeptical
balance that I ar-
gue are the core concepts in Le Carres political ethics. Smiley,
who ap-
pears in eight novels, is le Carres most fascinating, enduring,
and endear-
ing character. I devote an entire chapter to him as the center
of an extended
case-analysis of skepticism. Le Carre writes of Smiley in his
second novel,
A Murder of Quality (1962), It was a peculiarity of Smileys
character that
throughout the whole of his clandestine work he never managed to
recon-
cile the means to the end. Smiley constitutes the moral center
in those
novels in which he appears, as do other Smiley-like characters
in those
novels in which he does not appear.
The chapter in which I most fully explore the concept of
skepticism is
titled Learning to Live with Ambiguity: Balancing Dreams and
Realities.
My analysis ofThe Little Drummer Girl constitutes the central
case for the
elucidation of this theme. It is the story of the recruitment of
an Englishactress to infiltrate a Palestinian terrorist ring
operating in Europe against
Jewish and Israeli targets. She is recruited by an agent of the
Israeli Mossad
as bait to track down the leader of the Palestinian cell in
order to assassinate
him. The agent, Gadi Becker, a younger and more physically
attractive
version of George Smiley, is the moral center of the novel. The
novel forces
the reader to consider the psychological and ethical price paid
by the agent
and her handler (and by inference by Israel as well) for the
successful ac-
complishment of this goal. It also symbolically addresses the
future ofIsrael/Palestinian relations in the twice promised
land.
With reference to my analysis, former Senator Bill Bradley (who
served
on the Senate intelligence committee) wrote: Aronoff poses
challenges,
20 Wilson Carey McWilliams. Ambiguities and Ironies:
Conservatism and Liberalism in
American Political Tradition // W. Lawson Taitte (Ed.). Moral
Values in Liberalism and
Conservatism. Austin, TX, 1995. Pp.175-212; Michael Schatzberg
(Evacuating the
Emic // Op. cit. Workshop on Political Ethnography) urges us to
seek ambiguity and
embrace it. I suggest that his advice to the ethnographer is
reflective of a liberal tem-perament and of what Eviatar Zerubavel
(The Fine Line. New York, 1991) defines as a
flexible mind.
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such as the limits to which democracies can go in using
nondemocratic
means to protect democratic freedoms for example, in the war
against
terrorism without undermining those very freedoms.21
Democracies,
unfortunately, sometimes violate the spirit of liberty and
freedom in thename of their defense especially under perceived
threats to national secu-
rity. The discussion of the implications of this has never been
more salient
than it is today amidst the current war on terror. I suggest
that the ethno-
graphic reading of novels helps elucidate this by allowing the
reader to
enter into the hearts, minds, and souls of individuals engaged
in this activity
and exploring the personal, institutional, and national costs
and implica-
tions of these ethical compromises. It thereby makes abstract
Jeffersonian
principles concrete and more understandable in the present world
context.
My approach weds an ethnographic spirit of inquiry with what
political
scientists call a political theoretical (philosophical) analysis
of ethical is-
sues.22 The combination of ethnography with political philosophy
explores
the broader moral public implications of private actions. This
is done im-
plicitly without invoking a broader academic discussion of the
relevant
philosophical literature. I deliberately avoided such an
academic discus-
sion precisely because I wanted to address a broader audience
than my
colleagues in academe who specialize in these issues. Moral
dilemmas are
discussed without invoking contractual theory, natural rights,
and notionsof sovereignty. The problems facing us are too important
to be limited by
obfuscation by self-segregating academic jargon. Although this
work may
not constitute a conventional ethnography, to me it is
ethnographic in spirit
and it helps clarify dilemmas which date back to the Hebrew
bible and
classical Greek philosophers, not to mention other cultural
traditions.
My most recent major project in collaboration with my colleague
Jan
Kubik,Anthropology and Political Science: Culture, Politics,
Identity, and
Democratization,23
is near completion. In it we explore the
ontological,epistemological, methodological, and conceptual
similarities and differences
between the two disciplines. A key observation is the paradox
that as polit-
ical scientists have become more interested in ethnography and
the concept
21 Back book jacket of the hardbound edition of M. Aronoff. The
Spy Novels of John Le
Carr. (1999).22 My late colleague Carey McWilliams used to tease
me about being a closet political
theorist. After reading the manuscript of this book he said:
Mike, you have finally
come out of the closet as a theorist.23 It is to be published in
a series edited by William Beeman and David Kertzer by
Berghan Books.
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Myron J. Aronoff, Forty Years as a Political Ethnographer
of political culture, anthropologists have undergone a
soul-searching and
scathing critique of the value of both participant observation
and the con-
ceptualization of culture.24
Our main argument is that there is considerable added value
whenethnography is incorporated into political sciences repertoire
for example
in evaluating the symbolic dimension of politics such as in
ritual, the con-
struction of collective memory (and amnesia), and the constant
contesta-
tion over collective identity. This is essential in analyzing
problems of le-
gitimacy the transformation of power into authority and the
challenging
and undermining of legitimate authority.25 Alternatively,
anthropology ben-
efits from the experience and conceptual repertoire of political
science
for example in taking into consideration the importance of party
systems
and the nature of regimes. Too frequently anthropologists jump
from the
local to the global. No one would argue against the importance
of under-
standing the trans-national nature of our contemporary world,
but we ig-
nore the continuing importance of the state and its institutions
at our peril.
Most scholars tend not to read across their disciplinary (or
even sub-
field) boundaries. In fact, being interdisciplinary, or
bi-disciplinary, can be
professionally marginalizing. For example, I have been
introduced both as
half a political scientist and as half an anthropologist by very
promi-
nent scholars in both disciplines. For some it is apparently
difficult to con-ceptualize a person who earned a Ph.D. in two
disciplines as being an equal
member of each field. With noteworthy exceptions, like James C.
Scott,
David Laitin, Susanne Rudolph, and Lloyd Rudolph, few political
ethnog-
raphers have gained high visibility in political science. James
Scott, who
was honored with a plenary panel discussion of his contributions
at an an-
nual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, may be
more
widely read and cited by anthropologists than by his fellow
political scien-
tists. In this, he is clearly a dramatic exception to the rule.
Perhaps notcoincidentally, all of the aforementioned scholars with
the exception of David
Laitin have played leading roles in the perestroika movement in
political
science.
Theperestroika movement is a reflection of, and a catalyst
contributing
to, the opening up of the discipline of political science to a
wider range of
24 Myron J. Aronoff. Political Culture // Neil J. Smelser and
Paul B. Baites (Eds.-in-
chief). International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral
Sciences. Kidlington, UK,
2002.25 Myron J. Aronoff (Ed.). The Frailty of Authority;
Political Anthropology. Vol. V.New
Brunswick, NJ, 1986. I am particularly proud of this edited
volume.
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approaches than strictly positivist ones. Kristen Monroe called
the move-
ment that has challenged the hegemony of positivism the raucous
rebel-
lion in political science in the subtitle of her edited
volume.26 Among the
contributors to this volume Rogers M. Smith was one of the
movementsmain leaders, Jennifer Hochild was the first editor of the
new journal Per-
spectives on Politics, Robert Jervis was one of the leaders of
the new qual-
itative research section of the APSA,27 Dvora Yanow and
Peregrine
Schwartz-Shea, editors of the recently publishedInterpretation
and Method
have been active in the organization of panels on ethnography
and interpre-
tation at APSA meetings in which many young scholars have
participated.28
It is noteworthy that Bob Jervis and Susanne Rudolph are recent
past presi-
dents of APSA signifying the success of theperestroika movement
and the
legitimization of the diversity of approaches it represents.
Last, but certain-
ly not least, a group of scholars gathered in Toronto in October
2006 thanks
to the efforts of Ed Schatz at a stimulating workshop on
Political Ethnog-
raphy: What Insider Perspectives Contribute to the Study of
Power. It is
particularly gratifying to witness these positive developments
and to feel
that I may have made a modest contribution to them. Jan Kubik
and I
were asked to organize a new section on Political Anthropology
for the
forthcoming annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science
Associa-
tion. I am honored to share my thoughts on this subject with the
readers ofAb Imperio.
SUMMARY
,
, - ,
. -
-
, ,
.. -
26 Kristen Renwick Monroe (Ed.). Perestroika: The Raucous
Rebellion in Political
Science. New Haven, CT, 2005.
27 American Political Science Association.28 Dvora Yanow and
Peregrine Schwartz-Shea (Eds.). Interpretation and Method:
Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn. Armonk,
NY, 2006.
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Myron J. Aronoff, Forty Years as a Political Ethnographer
,
.
; -
; -
,
-
. , ,
,
,
.
( )
: , ,
, -
, -
.
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Interview with Peter SAHLINS
SUBJECTHOOD THAT HAPPENS TO BE CALLED
CITIZENSHIP, OR
TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THE OLD REGIME
ON ITS OWN TERMS*
* Interviewer Sergei Glebov.
Sergei GLEBOV: Professor Sahlins, thank you for your interest in
thegeneral questions we sought to discuss in the framework of our
thematicissue The Letter of the Law: the Institutionalization of
Belonging to Poli-ty and for your willingness to share your
thoughts with our readers. Letme begin by asserting that the
narrative of Modernity is essentially a narra-tive of the nation:
the revolutionary nation as the political body and theeternal
nation as the physical body of the society, united by a common
language, culture and memory. All contradictions and ruptures of
Moderni-ty are mysteriously brought together when viewed through
the nationalperspective: the inevitable monological form of
narrative finds its ultimatesubject in the singularity and
homogeneity of society as embodied by thenation. The
revolutionizing effect of forging the common narrative of thenation
(parallel to the forging of national identity itself) is well
known, notleast thanks to your seminal studies.
What remains understudied yet is the functioning of societies
that have
not fully experienced the integrating potential of
nationalization. Old re-
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Interview with Peter Sahlins, Trying to Make Sense of the Old
Regime...
gime polities, as well as contiguous empires of the nineteenth
century (Rus-sian but also Habsburg) did not overcome local
particularities (in both aregional and social sense) as rival
sources of group identification, parallel
to the pan-imperial narratives of unity and loyalty. In the
twentieth century,the Soviet Union represented a modern
post-revolutionary polity, yet it nevermanaged to become a proper
nation state because a federalist model wasemployed to accommodate
deep cultural, economic and ethnic inequalitiesconcealed by the
umbrella of political loyalty to the regime. Today we wit-ness
attempts to reshape Europe as a supranational community. What
isimportant in all those different cases is that the internal
heterogeneity ofsociety goes far beyond a normal diversity, to the
extent that it includesthe co-existence of different political
subjects holding different degrees ofsovereignty, competing
principles of social identification, and narratives ofmemory. We
believe that your interest and experience in studying the
be-ginning of the synthesis of national narrative provide you with
a uniqueperspective on the world before and beyond the nation.
To begin our conversation, let me ask you how accurate is the
veryperception of the national ideal as a monologue (even if
established as aresult of disputes and conflicts)? A decade ago,
James Lehning1 challengedthe perceived wisdom of Eugene Webers
model of forging a nation through
institutional standardization, suggesting instead a more
complicated visionof national unity as a result of negotiations of
mutual projections by socialactors. What is your attitude to
Lehnings model, and does it change theperception of the nation as a
normative monologue?
Peter SAHLINS: It is worth beginning with Eugen Webers model
ofthe transformation ofPeasants into Frenchmen,2 since, Id like to
suggest,Lehnings attempt to revise Webers formulation is still very
much framedby the same kind of oppositions that he purports to
disrupt between the
traditional and modern on the one hand, and peasants and
Frenchmen onthe other. What this suggests, to me at least, is the
deep-seated nature of theparadigm of cultural modernization and the
difficulty, even within theframework of cultural history, of
disrupting it or dislodging it in some sig-nificant way. In my
earlier work, on boundaries,3 and also in my work on
1 James Lehning. Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural
France During the
Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA & New York, 1995.2 Eugen
J. Weber. Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernization of Rural
France, 1870-
1914. Stanford, 1976.3 Peter Sahlins. Boundaries: the Making of
France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Berkeley,1989.
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peasant rebellion in the nineteenth century,4 I was very
critical of Webersmodel and by extension of Lehnings attempt to
reformulate it, largely be-cause of the implicit model of
collective identity it contained. Specifically,
I would suggest that such models still imagine identity to be
constructed asa series of expanding concentric circles, in which
identity and loyalty de-crease in correlation with geographic
distance from a specific social ego atits center, such that a
peasants attachments, in this schema, would be pri-marily to his or
her family, and would be diluted in their extension to a
kinnetwork, then to a neighborhood, then to the village community
itself, thenperhaps to a valley, a region, and only distantly and
weakly to the nation asa whole. Implied here is also a paradigm of
nation-building that assumesthat when nations are built from
distant centers, they reverse the vectors ofloyalty and
identification, effacing the embedded concentric circles, suchthat
a direct and unmediated identification between the peasant and the
na-tion, in this case France, is achieved. This is what youve
called the nationas normative monologue. To my mind, deploying this
model is not alwaysthe most useful way of making sense of the
regularities in the historicalrecord because to do so presupposes,
including in Lehnings reformulation,an original position occupied
by peasants as outside of the discursive, insti-tutional or
political community called the nation. My own work included
an effort to re-imagine the peasantry as part of France, to
write the historyof the peasantry, however marginalized and
peripheralized with respect to adistant political center, as
nonetheless engaged, or at least articulated with-in the same
historical processes. In doing so I tried to rethink the
modelitself, abandoning the metaphor of circles for the notion of
segments, whichI borrowed from a certain anthropology, and which
was well known, atleast among the structural functionalists,
through the work of Evans-Prit-chard.5 In this segmentary model,
identity is conceived in all of its possi-
ble iterations as an oppositional and contingent and relational
quality, capa-ble of collapsing lesser distinctions into more
inclusive ones. In my work,this meant that peasants might express
their identities in village communi-ties at the same time that they
could consider themselves Frenchmen orSpaniards, and this occurred
in an historical context that we might considerprecocious, since
the institutional mechanisms outlined by Weber that linkpeasants
and the nation roads and railroads, schools and military
service
did not yet exist. Still, through segmentary oppositions,
peasants could iden-
4 Idem. Forest Rites: the War of the Demoiselles in
Nineteenth-Century France.Cambridge, MA, 1994.5 See Mary Douglas.
Edward Evans-Pritchard. New York, 1981.
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Interview with Peter Sahlins, Trying to Make Sense of the Old
Regime...
tify themselves as part of France, but only in opposition to an
Other. In thePyrenean borderland in the Pyrenees, the Other was
Spain, even if Spainhad just as ephemeral an institutional
existence in the pre-modern world, at
least in terms of the homogeneous creation of national
institutions. Never-theless, discursively, the Spanish nation or
Spain as a nation was an entity,which became strategically deployed
within peasant society in order to statea set of claims about local
and national identity. Key here were the ways inwhich the national
as a category became articulated with the local, in sucha manner
that neither effaced or erased the other: a localizing of the
national
and a nationalizing of the local. So I was most interested in my
early workin critiquing the expectation that nation-building
involves the complete ef-facement of other kinds of identities and
other kinds of differences. Notthat this wasnt, in fact, the
political project, since it really was a goal ofstatesmen and
politicians (and educators and army officers) who built na-tions,
but it was never a successful project, and not even in the most
preco-cious and developed of the nation-states, England or France,
or to a certainextent Spain, did the effort ever come to
approximate the lived experienceof peasants and others. All the
more important, I think, turning to imperialand post-imperial
histories further east on the continent, to emphasize theextent to
which national-building agendas, agendas of nationalization,
with
their integrating, homogenizing efforts, were never nearly as
successful asnation-builders imagined them to be.
SG: I wonder if I can interject a question at this point
regarding some-thing that you mentioned in your answer, namely,
your reliance upon andindebtedness to anthropological models. Could
you elaborate on how im-portant anthropology has been to your
intellectual project, and, further-more, what, in general, is your
perception of the relationship between an-thropology and history?
Are we indebted to anthropologists and if so, what
kind of an intellectual debt do we owe to them? Is it
methodology, analyti-cal concepts, or a conceptualization of the
language of social sciences?
PS: There are, obviously, two histories here that come together.
There isthe history of the disciplines, but also a personal
trajectory. My own expo-sure to anthropology took shape as a
contingent and accidental develop-ment, namely my birth and
education in a family which lived all over theworld, and in which
anthropology and culture was the stuff of the dinnertable
conversations. I was never trained in anthropology but I grew up in
aworld in which the concepts and key categories of anthropological
knowl-edge, at least of a certain moment, were part of an everyday
language, so
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generally speaking my training as an anthropologist comes from
home.More generally, I think that history as a discipline has
developed and flour-ished during the last century through a process
of cannibalizing, if you will,
collateral disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.
One can pointto different decades in the twentieth century in which
different auxiliarydisciplines, from economics to sociology to
anthropology to literary theoryto geography, have been not just
helpful but necessary for history as a dis-cipline in its
continuous self-re-invention. The anthropological moment
ofhistorical inquiry has in some sense passed, meaning that the
heyday of thisborrowing can be seen in the works of E. P. Thompson
or Natalie ZemonDavis or any of the so called new historians of the
Anglo-Saxon world,whose research agendas came out of an interest in
social history and history
from below, beginning in the late 1960s. This was an especially
creativeand fertile time for the marriage of anthropology and
history, a momentduring which a single collateral discipline, in
this case anthropology, reallyallowed history to pose new questions
about the collective logics of be-havior, or invent new objects of
inquiry (such as kinship, ritual, or othersymbolic practices). The
marriage also provided historians with a vocabu-lary with which to
investigate and to answer queries that, at least in theirmost
successful iterations, were never efforts to import wholesale the
meth-
ods of anthropological inquiry onto history, which of course
wouldnt workin that the field is not the archive, and historians
will always be bound to agreat extent and constrained by this
silence of their informants Rather,historians imported not the
research methods of anthropology but its vo-cabulary, its
questions, and certain of its intellectual concerns and agen-das
All this is not to say that this moment has definitely receded into
themists of time, but there is an enduring legacy to be found in
the everwidening set of legitimate historical subjects, and there
is still fruitful cross-
fertilization that can occur at this point in time, particularly
around themuch studied question of identity. At the same time, it
should be empha-sized, that history as a discipline its central
paradigms and informingprinciples has already learned its lessons
from anthropology and has movedon to other disciplines, from which
it takes equally in measure to think ofnew sets of problems and
ways of interpreting them. Similarly, when history
turned to literary theory in the 1980s, what was at stake was
less a whole-sale importation of methods even if there are
historians who would arguethat history is a text and should be read
in the same way as a literary cre-ation but most practicing
historians still work in archives and now under-stand that they are
working with texts in an important, literary sense, and
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that all of the aporia and explicit meanings of a text that need
to be studiedas part of the way of making these texts speak to a
particular intellectualproblem thats been posed. So I would not be
a historian who continuouslywaves the flag of anthropology feeling
that this is in any way a definitivesolution or even the first
steps down a particular path, but, rather, one of themany tools in
the rather capacious toolbox of the historian that can be usedto
make sense of a changing and evolving set of problems that we
willcontinue to invent and give our best to answer.
SG: Despite some efforts to undo the boundary between the modern
andpre-modern forms of citizenship, historians still operate under
the assump-tion that there occurred, at the time of the French
revolution, a profoundbreak with citizenship based on privilege (or
private law). To what extenthas your own work contributed to
complicating that boundary? Has thestory of the passage from a
foreigner to a subject altered our perception ofthe roots of modern
citizenship?
PS: Its harder to imagine in a French institutional context and
histori-ography, but there have been a lot of efforts in English to
de-center theFrench Revolution itself as the origins of modernity,
at least within theaccepted narrative of the development of modern
citizenship. My own work,and that of other historians of the
eighteenth century, has helped us to de-mythologize, in some sense,
the central place of the French Revolution inthe discipline itself,
especially as its been developed in France and in Eu-rope. This is
not to say that we, historians, who are deeply attracted to
themutations of the eighteenth century long before the French
Revolutionnecessarily see the Old Regime as inevitably containing
all of the elementsof modernity that would come to maturity in the
nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. The problem, rather and this a
theme that recurs in your ques-tions lies in trying to imagine an
Old Regime that is independent of its
outcome, or of what we see retrospectively as some kind of
inevitable out-come, meaning 1789 and all that. Many historians
using different approachesand drawing on different methods,
especially in intellectual and culturalhistory, are finding
possibilities to talk about the ways in which the discur-sive
contributions and transformations of the eighteenth century find
theirexpression in the French Revolution but cannot be situated as
a cause. Weare far beyond the conservative reactions during the
revolutionary upheaval
itself that linked the rhetoric of Enlightenment and the
revolutionary pro-
cess: its Rousseaus fault, its Voltaires fault. So my work, in
thatsense, like the work of Keith Baker, Roger Chartier, and
younger scholarslike Michael Kwass and others, is very much part of
this effort to move
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back from the Revolution as some inevitable outcome of the
Enlighten-ment or eighteenth century developments, and to think
through the kinds ofmodernity that took shape in the eighteenth
century, but that were not struc-
turally determined to produce, inevitably, a revolutionary
outcome.All this to preface my comments on citizenship itself. What
struck meand what got me started on the project that became my last
book,6Unnatu-rally French, was an initial surprise, and indeed
astonishment, about thevocabulary that I discovered when reading
juridical texts in the seventeenthand the eighteenth century. I
never expected to find the word citizen,citoyen, and indeed, to
find it recurring frequently, albeit within a relativelyisolated
linguistic domain, among lawyers. More, it was a bit of a
revela-tion to read how the category was quite elaborated in
jurisprudential terms.That was the starting point for re-thinking
what it would mean to actuallyuse a term we associate with certain
characteristic features of modernity, inparticular with political
participation, equality, and cultural homogeneity.What do we mean
when use such a term in which the referent had nothingto do with
the modern world? One possible response might simply end theclaim
there and say well, the word is used but it had nothing to do with
thething as we know it and as we practice it in the
post-revolutionary world.That was not my choice because I did
believe that there was something
intrinsically important about the way in which the word was
used, whichstood in some relation, but again, not easily
predictable or inevitable one,to the development of the modern
notions of belonging, attachment, andloyalty. And one of the ways
of thinking about what that relationship mightbe between the modern
and the pre-modern forms of citizenship was toexplore, in some
important sense, what the difference would result in notusing the
word. Some of my critics have said, well, in fact, all youre
talk-ing about is subjecthood that happens to be called
citizenship, or more
accurately, subjects who happen to be called citizens, but there
is nofundamental distinction. And that is actually a position that
comes, amongothers, from Rousseau himself at the moment of a great
intellectual andcultural mutations of the eighteenth century and
the Revolution this ideathat all inherited linguistic categories
were wrong and that the world can belinguistically created anew.
Rousseau himself was quite critical of what hecalled the egregious
error of the sixteenth century jurisconsult Jean Bodin,
who had relied heavily on the term citizen in his treatises. For
Rousseau,
6 Peter Sahlins. Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old
Regime and After.Ithaca, NY, 2004.
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the citizen was unimaginable before the time that he himself
could think itup, in its modern iteration. In my own understanding,
there is an importantand subtle distinction between subject and
citizen in the Old Regime, in
both discursive terms and in their practical consequences. I
think that thesubtle distinction has to do with the fact that
although all citizens weresubjects, and although in fact most
subjects were citizens, the distinctionmade a difference, that is,
it had had practical consequences to name some-one a citizen. True,
as Bodin himself had seen, the category of citizenwas heterogeneous
and internally differentiated; citizens were by their na-ture
unequal in obligations, in their privileges, in their liberties, in
theirfranchises, to use all the terms of the Old Regime. But
despite this hetero-geneity, there was in fact an underlying unity,
and one with real life practi-
cal consequences, that emerged not from efforts to create
homogeneity outof difference, but that appeared by drawing
distinctions between citizensand foreigners, that is, those outside
the boundaries of citizenship. Foreign-ers suffered any number of
legal disabilities, including, most importantly,the inability to
deed and inherit property from natural-born Frenchmen andwomen (the
gendering is important here because unlike modern citizenshipin its
initial iteration, Old Regime citizenship was a status to which
womenas well as men could both aspire and acquire). That
oppositional nature of
citizenship actually places the category of citizenship much
closer to a no-tion that did not exist linguistically in the Old
Regime, the category ofnationality. This is a tricky and
complicated arena, because in so manyways the notion of pre-modern
citizenship leads not in some evolutionarysense towards modern
citizenship, but rather towards a modern conceptionof nationality
itself, at least in a juridical sense. So the confusion is
doubled,
because on the one hand the term citizen doesnt seem to belong
in theeighteenth century, and on the other hand, when it does
appear in the Old
Regime, its read better through the lens of nationality and
nationality law,then it is through citizenship as political
participation, as a conditional equal-ity, or as corresponding to a
certain cultural homogeneity. And so my ownwork in some sense has
followed this slippage and contributed, hopefully,with some
productivity and fruitfulness to the confusion by stressing
theextent to which in examining the pre-modern citizen and
pre-modern citi-zenship, what I am really after is the well, the
French title of myAnnalesarticle, Nationality avant la lettre,7 the
history of nationality before theword itself had come into
being.
7 Peter Sahlins. Nationality avant la lettre: les pratiques de
la naturalization sous lAncienRgime // Annales: Histoire, Sciences
Sociales. 2000. Vol. 55. No. 5. Pp. 1081-1108.
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SG: Your complex vision of nationality avant la lettre inAncien
RgimeFrance suggests a definition of the citizen as someone not
subject to thelimitations imposed upon a foreigner; albeit, of
course, citizens were not
equal before the law or to each other. Then to what extent does
pre-modern or pre-revolutionary citizenship in France compare to,
or help ourunderstanding of the phenomenon of subjecthood in
composite imperialstates? To put it simply, does such citizenship
equal subjecthood, given thatit was defined by obligations,
privileges, and rights particular to ones so-cial position?
PS: It is always a struggle, and frequently a productive one, to
try tomake intellectual linkages between the pre-modern and the
modern that arenot over-determined. Some sites and regions of the
modern world wouldseem to lend themselves more easily than others
to certain kinds of com-parisons. So, for example, in thinking
about the modern experiences ofempire and nation among the
sprawling polities of the nineteenth centuryempires, that is,
Russian but also Habsburg, an obvious point of referencein the
pre-modern world might be Spain and the Spanish Habsburg monar-chy
of the early modern period. The Spanish Habsburg empire, like
moststates in the pre-modern period, has been usefully identified
by John Elliotamong others as a composite monarchy, that is, one
that is literally com-
posed of distinctive polities. It is thus quite similar in
structure to the nine-teenth century Habsburg Empire as described
by Benedict Anderson, whopoints out inImagined Communities how the
emperor himself holds literal-ly dozen of separate titles
corresponding to the component polities of theempire, from king of
Bohemia to duke of Carinthia to Margrave ofIstria and so forth.
Now, in the pre-modern world, what is important, andthis is in some
sense a pertinent observation for the 19th century empires aswell,
is that each of these polities that together compose the empire
is
constituted not simply of subjects of a particular jurisdiction
but also bya legal framework of rights and disabilities that comes
to approximate amodern notion of nationality. So, for example, in
the early modern Spanishempire, each of the composite polities,
that is, the Kingdom of Aragon, orof Castile, or of Naples, had its
own institutions, its own legal frameworkof privileges and
prerogatives and rights and obligations, but also of dis-abilities
and exclusions political, professional, legal for those who werenot
members of that particular group. In other words, I think we can
speak,
with some caution and many caveats, of the existence of
nationality law inthe pre-modern Spanish empire in the same way
that we can make thisobservation for the more politically
homogeneous monarchies in the same
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period, such as France. Now, whats interesting about Spain is
that themovement of political modernization, including the reforms
of the Bour-bon monarchy at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, produced an in-
stitutional and legal framework of belonging that transcended
the moreparticularistic and heterogeneous framework of an early
modern polity, andwas thus more modern in the sense that a broader,
national set of insti-tutions and laws came to displace, however
slowly and incompletely, thedistinct privileges and franchises of
the composite polities of the empire.The Bourbon reforms of the
early eighteenth century in Spain were alreadyanticipated and
reflected in the so called Indies Laws, in these laws of
theHabsburgs, in which it is possible to tease out the notion of a
Spanishidentity, and indeed, a Spanish nationality that transcended
and displacedthe different legal frames of belonging within the
composite monarchy.Projecting this model onto the contiguous
empires of the nineteenth centu-ry, its altogether possible to
imagine how the movement toward a legalidea of nationality as both
a project of state building from above but also aproject of
resistance to imperial structures was not dissimilar to
processesfound in the pre-modern world. Im not saying that
pre-modern states at-tempted the kind of nation-building that later
empires undertook (withoutmuch success), but I am suggesting that
the conditions under which it be-
came possible to develop a claim that was rhetorical but also
institutionalabout the separateness and identity of a component
part in a monarchy wasnot entirely dissimilar from the structures
and processes of group member-ship as these took shape in the early
modern world.
SG: Well, its an interesting perspective. I am curious, though,
aboutyour use of the term nationality, especially when it is
applied to pre-modernand composite polities. Am I right in assuming
that your reference is reallyabout an anthropological perspective
of the sense of belonging to the polity
first of all?PS: No, not quite. Im pulling the term much more
into its juridical
framework, away from the more anthropological sense of
homogeneouscultural identity, which really accrues somewhat later
and becomes evermore important as the nineteenth century
progresses. And its certainly truethat the term nationality appears
in European languages with both mean-ings: the first literary uses
of the term, say in Germaine de Stahls Corinneand Italy in 1807,
refer to an idea of belonging thats founded on some deepcultural,
we might today say, ethnic sense of collectivity; but the term
na-tionality also makes a near simultaneous appearance in
administrative dis-
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course and then a little bit later in legal terms to describe a
juridical notionof belonging empty of a particular cultural
content, that is, which doesntdepend on a shared similarity of
custom, language, culture, or even histori-
cal experience In short, it doesnt depend on the notion of
shared culture,but on a legal framework that identifies the formal
rules of inclusion andexclusion.
SG: To what extent did the revolutionary nation exist in a
latent formwithin the ancien rgime society, or did it emerge
completely from scratchunder the impact of revolutionary experience
and to be further developedduring the struggle with the remnants of
the Old Regime and new challenges
of the moment? What part of the legacy of the ancien rgime was
inherited
by the revolutionary nation, either positively or by negation of
the old world?Could we trace elements of the revolutionary
discourse (in a literal sense,as rhetorical devices and tropes) in
the pre-revolutionary cultural milieu,beyond usual references to
the radical representatives of the Enlightenment?Is it possible to
imagine the French Enlightenment not resulting in the revo-
lutionary outburst of the type that actually did take place in
1789?
PS: The hardest assignment I ever faced as a professor was
teaching theeighteenth century, for in this period all of the
difficult and hoary questions
are brought to the surface history as outcome, history as
origin, historyas condition for the possibility of other histories,
and history as a frame-work for being able to account for
modernity. In brief, its nearly impossible,
Ive found, to teach the eighteenth century without knowing and
anticipating
the outcome, that is, without teaching the outcome. Its very
hard to treatthe ancien rgime as a period in and of itself, without
teaching that theancien rgime, at least in France, comes to an
explosive end in a ratherabrupt and unexpected way. This presents
enormous obstacles for trying to
make sense of the ancien rgime on its own terms starting with
the nomen-clature that we use to describe the eighteenth century.
In calling somethingthe Old Regime, were obviously implicitly
positioning a new regimethat succeeds it. In French, ancien rgime
is perhaps better translated aspast regime as opposed to old
regime, and the ancien rgime was in-vented by the revolutionaries
themselves at the beginning of the revolutionin order to describe
something that was quite new. Indeed, one could arguethat there
were certain critical moments such as the decrees that cameout of
the night of August 4th, 1789 in which the ancien rgime
wasliterally invented in order to be dismantled, and laws proposed
at thesemoments become a kind of systematic inventory of the
institutions of the
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Old Regime, described for the first time in their
institutionalized, reifiedform as old precisely in order to be
dismantled. As historians, as teachers,
were confronted with this very deterministic and teleological
reading of
the eighteenth century that requires us to at once make sense of
the fact thatthere is a revolutionary rupture at the end, and to
avoid the argument thatrevolution was in constant preparation in
the course of the eighteenth cen-tury. So, to return to your
question, yes, many historians have tried to re-think in many
different kinds of ways the relation of eighteenth
centurydevelopments, especially intellectual ones, and the French
Revolution. Somehave located a revolutionary discourse as a set of
rhetorical devices or tropesin a pre-revolutionary set of contexts.
Consider the work of Keith Baker,who isolates three different
discursive strands that will appear in the Revo-lution but whose
intellectual origins he locates at different points in
theeighteenth century. This is not to say that their utterance or
their iterationduring the course of the eighteenth century was a
cause of the French revo-
lution; indeed, most intellectual and cultural history these
days stresses con-ditions, not causes, trying to disengage
Enlightenment and Revolution atleast from an over-determined
relationship. But this can go too far as well.The reductio ad
absurdum of trying to disengage the Enlightenment fromthe French
Revolution in the work of Roger Chartier, for example, self-
consciously and almost perversely states that the Enlightenment
did notcause the French Revolution but the French revolution caused
the En-lightenment, in the sense that it gave it coherence and
identity and thehistorical role that the Enlightenment or
Enlightenment thought would nothave had had there not been a
rupture with the Old Regime.
SG: Your work has played a very important role in applying
anthropo-logical methods to the study of group formation. In recent
years, manyscholars questioned not just the concept of identity (I
have in mind the
works by Frederick Cooper and Rogers Brubaker) but also the
usefulnessof operating with notions of groupness. For historians,
however, the taskbecomes increasingly complex because in our
research we are constantlyin need of terms and concepts to describe
groupness (e.g., nations, classes,
ethnic, confessional and linguistic groups). How can we
reconcile an un-derstanding of groups as constructed and invented
with the need to writereadable and comprehensible histories taking
into account how people de-scribed their own sense of belonging to
a group?
PS: Right, well, this is a problem that periodically reappears
throughoutthe social sciences, not just in history, and its often
framed as the classic
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contrast between an emic and an etic approach. These are terms
that comefrom the linguistic anthropology of Kenneth Pike in the
1950s,8 who triedto distinguish, without necessarily stating what
the relationship was be-
tween the two, between approaches and categories of
interpretation thatemerged from the lived experience of the
subjects who are the objects ofstudy (the phonemic tools that the
users of a language might have), andcontrasting that with the
phonetic grammar that is the etic, rules and cate-gories imposed by
non-users (and indeed incomprehensible to users them-selves). Its a
classic opposition; never resolved, frequently invoked, anddebated
in particular as concerns the relation between the two
perspectives.How do we reconcile, as you say, our use of these
terms with more indige-nous ways of formulating belonging and
identification especially in the lastcouple of decades as weve come
to understand the problem of identity as aconstruc