Everyday life and the state: A materialist revision of state theory.
Item
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Title
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Everyday life and the state: A materialist revision of state theory.
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Identifier
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AAI3063807
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identifier
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3063807
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Creator
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Bratsis, Peter.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Irving Leonard Markovitz
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Political Science, General | Sociology, General | Anthropology, Cultural
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Abstract
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An explanation of how the state is produced through everyday routines and customs: It examines how and why our everyday experiences limit our ability to explain the state and identifies this limitation in the failure of Marxist and Weberian theories to adequately explain the existence of the state. Building upon the more promising tendencies within these theories, it argues that in order to understand how the state is produced as a social fact, the basic categories and ideas that condition its existence in the minds of its citizens must be explained. It goes on to address how two widely recognized conditions of existence for the modern state---the public-private division and the national political community---are materialized and prefigured in everyday life. It argues that each of these conditions are constituted by and founded upon practices within everyday life. From the exchange of commodities, to the eating of hotdogs, to the gift giving rituals associated with public servants, specific everyday practices are identified as causes of national identification and the public/private split. Everyday life institutes the split of society into 'public' and 'private' categories, keeps these categories pure and clean of potential contradictions, and constitutes modern individuals as national subjects, binding them in a libidinal way to their national identity.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
