400007 SE Seminar für DissertantInnen: Theorie (2014W)

After the agonizing about its apparent withering away in the 1980s, latest with the crisis the state seems to back at the center of theoretical debates in the social sciences. This renewed interest builds upon earlier discussion about the nature of the state, see e.g. Poulantzas-Miliband debate, and neo-Weberian theorists who sought to, bring the state back in, as an autonomous entity ,Evans et al. 1985; Mann 1984. By the late 1980s, these approaches to the state had lost much of their appeal, and in the search for conceptual alternatives to overcome this theoretical stalemate, notions of ideology ,Abrams 1988; Bourdieu 1994, and culture ,Mitchell 1991, 1999; Steinmetz 1999, took center stage. In 2005, Migdal and Schlichte, proposed differentiating the idea of the state from state practices, while Hansen and Stepputat, 2001, opted for the formula ,languages of stateness, to capture both representations and practices of statehood. A distinct line of inquiry was taken by scholars who focused on the idea of the nation state in building communities and, ultimately, national identities, Herzfeld 1992, Borneman 1992. In this seminar we invite students with different backgrounds working on state formations, images and practices to discuss this theoretical development on the basis of selected texts. At the center are also question on how to grasp the nature of such a heterogeneous and fluid entity as the state in their doctoral research.

The first session (17 October) serves as introduction and to see what the specific research interest of participants are in order to decide upon the reading list and distribute further tasks.