Author: Kapferer, Bruce

Source: Social Analysis, Volume 54, Number 1, Spring 2010 , pp. 125-151(27)

Publisher: Berghahn Journals

Abstract:

The argument focuses on the corporate state as an increasingly significant political assemblage that has enabled new configurations of power with related social effects. Here the discussion proceeds from Karl Polanyi's thesis in The Great Transformation. A critical idea that Polanyi pursued related to the state production of economism and individualism, which prepared the ground for the expansion of capital in its globalizing form. The essay develops this idea, indicating that the nationalist capitalism of the state led to a radical change in the political and social orders of states, gradually giving rise to the corporate state assemblage. The emphasis here is on the corporate state as a socio-political order that places radically distinct structural dynamics into impossible conjunction, leading to progressively disastrous social effects concerning poverty and the emergence of new configurations in which war and violence take specific shapes.

Keywords: BUREAUCRATIC PROCESSES; CORPORATE STATE; CRISIS; GLOBALIZATION; NATION-STATE; RETERRITORIALIZATION; VIOLENCE; WAR MACHINE

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/sa.2010.540108

Publication date: 2010-03-01

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• Social Analysis has long been at the forefront of anthropology's engagement with the humanities and other social sciences. In forming a critical, concerned, and empirical perspective, it encourages contributions that break away from the disciplinary bounds of anthropology and suggest innovative ways of challenging hegemonic paradigms through 'grounded theory', analysis based in original empirical research. The journal invites contributions directed toward a critical and theoretical understanding of cultural, political, and social processes, as well as the work of active ethnographic researchers who study the forces involved in the production of human suffering, poverty, prejudice, war, and violence.
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