affect, emotions, anthropology of the state, bureaucracies, public servants, ethnography
Abstract :
[en] With the affective turn, scholars pay increased attention to the emotional dimensions of everyday life. This Special Issue builds on this work through an explicit focus on bureaucracies, to show what a more sustained attention to affects and emotions can bring to the study of the state, both as an apparatus and as an image. Contributions highlight the importance of ethnographically studying the affective relations and emotional engagements of public servants to understand how representations and practices of the state are brought together in often intangible, sometimes unspoken, but nonetheless powerful ways. In this Introduction we situate our wider contribution and the individual articles in debates about the social lives of the state, and the daily practices of public servants. We postulate how affective intensities give rise to particular political imaginations and subjectivities, and we reflect on ethnography’s unique position within the study of emotions and affects in political anthropology.
Disciplines :
Anthropology
Author, co-author :
Andreetta, Sophie ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Institut de recherche en Sciences Sociales (IRSS) > IRSS: Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle
Pauline Jarroux
Susanne Verheul
Luisa Enria
Language :
English
Title :
Introduction to States of Feeling Public Servants’ Affective and Emotional Entanglements in the Making of the State
Publication date :
2022
Journal title :
Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
ISSN :
0305-7674
eISSN :
2047-7716
Publisher :
Berghahn Journals
Special issue title :
States of Feeling. Public Servants’ Affective and Emotional Entanglements in the Making of the State