Series
Volume 49
EASA Series
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The Politics of Relations
How Self-Government, Infrastructures, and Care Transform the State in Serbia
André Thiemann
302 pages,
ISBN 978-1-80539-551-5 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Published (June 2024)
eISBN 978-1-80539-552-2 eBook
Reviews
“This is a very impressive book. The analysis is developed in sustained, thoughtful and detailed engagement with a very broad range of existing literature. • Stef Jansen, University of Sarajevo
“The book is an excellent contribution to the renewed relational anthropology of the state and to political science, political sociology, public administration and welfare studies.” • Paul Stubbs, University of Zagreb
Description
Rethinking the contributions of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology for political ethnography, the Politics of Relations elaborates its relational approach to the state along four interlaced axes of research – embeddedness, boundary work, modalities and strategic selectivity – that enable thick comparisons across spatio-temporal scales of power.
In Serbia local experiences of self-government, infrastructure and care motivate its citizens to “become the state” while cursing it heartily. While both officials and citizens strive for a state that enables a “normal life,” they navigate the increasingly illiberal politics enacted by national parties and which are tolerated by trans-national donors.
André Thiemann is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Department of Ecological Anthropology at the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is presently Visiting Researcher at the Department of Social Sciences, Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil on the project ‘Materialities of Value: Comparing Grassroots Economics in the Global South and East’.
Subject: Political and Economic AnthropologySociology
Area: Central/Eastern Europe
Contents
Download ToC (PDF)