Everyday life and the state / Peter Bratsis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bratsis, Peter.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political sociology.

State, The.

Physical Description:

x, 139 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Boulder : Paradigm Publishers, [2006]

Summary:

Nearly four centuries ago, liberal political thought asserted that the state was the product of a distant, prehistorical, social contract. Social science has done little to overcome this fiction. Even the most radical of theories have tended to remain silent on the question of the production of the state, preferring instead to focus on the determinations and functions of state actions. Bratsis argues that the causes of the state are to be found within everyday life. Building upon insights from social, political, and anthropological theories, his book shows how the repetitions and habits of our daily lives lead to our nationalization and the perception of certain interests and institutions as "public." Bratsis shows that only by seeking the state's everyday, material causes can we free ourselves from the pitfalls of viewing the state as natural, inevitable, and independent from social relations.

Contents:

Introduction: don't take it literally

Situating the arguments

The spontaneous theory of the state and the state as spontaneous theory

The state as subject and as object

A note on Philip Abrams and ontology

The state as a social relation

From the reification of the state to its explanation

From The king's two bodies to the fetish of the public: The foundations of the state abstraction

The polis versus the state

Kantorowicz as state theorist

The bourgeois foundations and functions of the private/public split

Exchange, concrete abstractions, and the fetish of the public

Political corruption as symptom of the public fetish or, rules of separation and illusions of purity in bourgeois societies

What is political corruption?

Why corruption?

Rules of separation: from Leviticus to Washington, D.C.

The Australian case: fetishism revealed

The national individual and the machine of enjoyment; or, the dangers of baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie

From Rousseau to Easton, identifying the problem

Practice, ideology, and interpellation

Enjoyment and the everyday

The constitution of the Greek Americans: toward an empirical study of interpellation

The fried and the baked

The discrete charm of the Greek Americans

The Greek American work ethic and family life

Religion, superstitions, and totems

Friends, language, and leisure

The symbolic order and the mapping of the Greek American everyday

Interpellation and the national political community

Tentative conclusions and notes toward future study

Leonard Cohen as political theorist

Considerations on everyday life

What is the state?

Materialism, the public/private split, and the national individual

Reconsiderations, clarifications, and notes toward future analyses.

Notes:

"Great Barrington books"--P. [ii].

Includes bibliographical references (pages 127-133) and index.

ISBN:

1594512183

OCLC:

67346084

Publisher Number:

9781594512186