Around the world, border walls and nationalisms are on the rise as people express the desire to "take back" sovereignty. The contributors to this collection use ethnographic research in disputed and exceptional places to study sovereignty claims from the ground up. While it might immediately seem that citizens desire a stronger state, the cases of compromised, contested, or failed sovereignty in this volume point instead to political imaginations beyond the state form. Examples from Spain to Afghanistan and from Western Sahara to Taiwan show how calls to take back control or to bring back order are best understood as longings for sovereign agency. By paying close ethnographic attention to these desires and their consequences, The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty offers a new way to understand why these yearnings have such profound political resonance in a globally interconnected world. Contributors: Panos Achniotis, Jens Bartelson, Joyce Dalsheim, Dace Dzenovska, Sara L. Friedman, Azra Hromadzic, Louisa Lombard, Alice Wilson, and Torunn Wimpelmann.
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First published 2021 by Cornell University Press
Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names:Bryant,Rebecca(Professorofanthropology),editor.|Reeves,Madeleine, editor. Title:Theeverydaylivesofsovereignty:politicalimaginationbeyondthestate / edited by Rebecca Bryant and Madeleine Reeves. Description:Ithaca[NewYork]:CornellUniversityPress,2021.|Includesbibliographical references and index. Identifiers:LCCN2020039285(print)|LCCN2020039286(ebook)|ISBN79N0518|)rBSIrdhaveco5775(36kc)|(paperba10715155774839 ISBN051879NBSI|)kooeb(5057750115987)(pdf7671755 Subjects: LCSH: Sovereignty. Classification:LCCJC327.E982021(print)|LCCJC327(ebook)|DDC320.1/5—dc23 LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2020039285LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2020039286
Cover image: “Man crossing the unrecognized border between Georgia and Abkhazia, 2016.” Photo by Rebecca Bryant. Used by permission.
Contents
ListofIllustrationsAcknowledgments
Introduction:TowardanAnthropologyofSovereignAgencyRebecca Bryant and Madeleine Reeves1. Sovereignty in the Skies: An Anthropology of Everyday AeropoliticsRebecca Bryant2. Sovereignty as Generator of Inconsistent State Desire in Northeastern Central African RepublicLouisa Lombard3. “Because I Have a Hookup”: Cheating Citizens and the Unbearable State in PostDayton BosniaHerzegovina AzraHromadži´c4. Aspirational Sovereignty and Human Rights Advocacy: Audience, Recognition, and the Reach of the Taiwan StateSara L. Friedman5.Gender, Violence, and Competing Sovereign Claims in AfghanistanTorunn Wimpelmann6. Everyday Sovereignty in Exile: People, Territory, and Resources among Sahrawi RefugeesAlice Wilson7. Existential Sovereignty: Latvian People, Their State, and the Problem of MobilityDace Dzenovska8. Sovereign Days: Imagining and Making the Catalan Republic from BelowPanos Achniotis9. The False Promises of Sovereignty: Enclaves, Exclaves, and Impossible Politics in the Jewish StateJoyce Dalsheim10.Signs of Sovereignty: Mapping and Countermapping at an “Unwritten” BorderMadeleine ReevesEpilogue:TheIroniesofMisrecognitionJens Bartelson
ContributorsIndex
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Illustrations
1. Map showing Cyprus’s three airports2. Map showing some of the destinations from Larnaca Airport3. Cyprus Turkish Airlines plane taking off from Ercan Airport4. Pilot and stewardesses of Turkish Air, Turkey’s flag carrier, in 19745. “I love my country, but it is stealing my dreams☺” Mapping the Crisis Exhibit.6. Production ofpuškiceduring recess7. Production ofpuškiceduring recess8. Map of Western Sahara9. Gas distribution10. Homemade license plate
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Acknowledgments
AnumberofthepaperspublishedherewereoriginallypresentedinOctober2015 at the conference “The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty,” held in Nicosia, Cyprus, and sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council. Support for the conference was part of the fouryear project, “Imagined Sovereignties,” directed by Åshild Kolås of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. We thank the NRC for its funding of the conference and this publication, as well as PRIO and its branch office in Cyprus for their support of the project and the long process of bringing this collection into print. Several colleagues commented on earlier versions of the Introduction and generously shared their reflections on the academic lives of sovereignty in the disciplines of IR and political geography. For their astute feedback at different stages of the project we are particularly grateful to Stef Jansen, Penny Harvey, John Heathershaw, Fiona McConnell, Stefanie Ortmann, Ed Schatz, and Chika Watanabe. We are grateful to Roger Haydon at Cornell University Press for his enthusiasm for the project, and to Karen Laun and Jack Rummel for their careful edits of the manuscript.