Call for papers
Convenor
Gaku Moriguchi
Toyo University
Abstract
This panel is going to explore the experience of the Nation-State, from below, which is narrated by the people who were sometimes centrally subjected and sometimes marginalized in their history as a citizen of the state.
We will focus on three topics on this theme. The first topic is on the “Narration: Who narrates the nation-states?” In principal, the narration of the nation-state has been dominated by the authority of the national history, which means sometimes His-story of the dominant groups. Anthropological studies on the nation-state, however, have varieties of narrations of peoples in the margins of the state, minorities and marginals. By examining the diversities of narrations on the nation-states, it will consider several images and experiences of living within or on peripheral areas of the state.
The second one is on the “Local citizenships: What kind of experience is it for the local people to be a citizen?” Nowadays “citizenship” has been one of the main issues for anthropologist, who is engaged with the research on migrants, sexual minorities, and human right. On the other hand, there is a tendency to discuss the “Citizenship”, which has been predominantly disciplined and oriented by the tradition of Euro-American nations. The reason of the plurality of “local citizenships” comes from varieties of cultural citizenships in local contexts. This panel would point out the
The third one is “Governance and Subject: What options were possible for the people who were subjugated and marginalized by the modern central government, especially in countries where war, poverty and epidemics are common in people’s everyday life? It will analyse politics and discourses in domestic history of the post-colonial states, and at the same time how local actors, with which anthropologists are engaged, have been adopted themselves and practically self-fashioned into the subjugated and marginal contexts of the nation-state.
“Governance” and “Citizenship” will be the key terms to discuss the issue since these two words have been theoretically involved in recent anthropological debates on the nation-state. It will cover the newly independent nation-states, mainly in the third world countries, though reports by convenors and chairs are on the nation-states in Africa.