Reproducing the State

by Jacqueline Stevens

Overview

People are said to acquire their affiliations of ethnicity, race, and sex at birth. Hence, these affiliations have long been understood to be natural, independent of the ability of political societies to define who we are. Reproducing the State vigorously challenges the conventional view, as well as post-structuralist scholarship that minimizes state power. Jacqueline Stevens examines birth-based theories of membership and group affiliations in political societies ranging from the Athenian polis, to tribes of Australia, to the French republic, to the contemporary United States. The book details how political societies determine the kinship rules that are used to reproduce political societies.


Stevens analyzes the ways that ancestral and territorial birth rules for membership in political societies pattern other intergenerational affiliations. She shows how the notion of ethnicity depends on the implicit or explicit invocation of a past, present, or future political society. She also shows how geography is used to represent political regions, including continents, as the seemingly natural underpinning for racial taxonomies perpetuated through miscegenation laws and birth certificates. And Stevens argues that sex differences are also constituted through membership practices of political societies. In its chronological and disciplinary range, Reproducing the State will reward the interest of scholars in many fields, including anthropology, history, political science, sociology, women's studies, race studies, and ethnic studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691017143
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	08/01/1999
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jacqueline Stevens is the Johnson Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at Pomona College, where she teaches political theory.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Preface ix

Introduction 3

One The State of Membership 50

Two The Nation and the Tragedy of Birth 102

Three The Semiotics of Nationality: Naming Names 149

Four Race and the State: Male-Order Brides and the Geographies of Race 172

Five Compensatory Kinship Rules: The Mother of Gender 209

Six The Religious Future 236

Conclusion 267

Bibliograpby 281

Index 299

What People are Saying About This

Wendy Brown

This is the work of an extremely smart, careful, and widely read scholar; it is also well-written and imaginative.

From the Publisher

"This is the work of an extremely smart, careful, and widely read scholar; it is also well-written and imaginative."—Wendy Brown, University of California, Santa Cruz

Editorial Reviews

"Stevens has written an imaginative, detailed, and meticulously documented analysis. . . . This is a stimulating book that will reward readers in many disciplines."

Choice

A very provocative and original book likely to attract a wide audience.
—(Political Theory)

Shannon Stimson

"This is the work of an extremely smart, careful, and widely read scholar; it is also well-written and imaginative."—Wendy Brown, University of California, Santa Cruz

From the Publisher