scholarly journals Corporate sovereignty: Negotiating permissive power for profit in Southern Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 146349962110371
Author(s):  
Tessa Diphoorn ◽  
Nikkie Wiegink
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
The State ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Mining Companies ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Private Security Companies ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
State Actors

The growing engagement with sovereignty in anthropology has resulted in a range of concepts that encapsulate how various (non-state) actors execute power. In this paper, we further unpack the concept of ‘corporate sovereignty’ and outline its conceptual significance. Corporate sovereignty refers to performative claims to power undertaken by (individuals aligned to) corporate entities with profit-making objectives within a state-sanctioned space. This contrasts with claims made by other (non-state) actors who operate in a permissive space that (regularly) lacks this legally grounded relationship with the state. By unpacking this state-sanctioned permissive space and highlighting the role of the state as the arbiter, our approach to corporate sovereignty offers a new comparative analytical perspective to theorize how sovereignty is performed and opens ethnographic avenues to explore how sovereignty is negotiated and co-produced across diverse localities. To elucidate our argument, we draw from ethnographic fieldwork conducted on coal mining companies in Mozambique and private security companies in South Africa. By focusing on cases that differ, we want to show the multitude of ways in which corporate sovereignty is enacted and takes shape.

scholarly journals Implementing Peace Curriculum at Catholic Senior High School in Bali

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agustinus Sumaryono ◽  
Sugiyono Sugiyono
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Senior High School ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
State Actors

This research investigates how curriculum has contributed to society, especially in the context of maintaining peace in Indonesia. Unlike former studies that have paid the most attention to the fundamental role of the state actors or civil society, this study emphasizes the importance of school to build peace. This research pays attention to the case of catholic senior high school in Bali. The finding suggests that school can be agent of peace through implement the peace curriculum in school. This study demonstrates that the peace curriculum should be implemented in school to prevent the violence action. Hence, providing space for further discussion about the content of peace curriculum that can be implemented in Indonesia.

scholarly journals The Problem of State Violence

Daedalus ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 151 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Paul Butler
Keyword(s):  
Use Of Force ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Abuse And Neglect ◽  
The Future ◽  
State Actors

Abstract When violence occurs, the state has an obligation to respond to and reduce the impacts of it; yet often the state originates, or at least contributes to, the violence. This may occur in a variety of ways, including through the use of force by police, pretrial incarceration at local jails, long periods of incarceration in prisons, or abuse and neglect of people who are incarcerated. This essay explores the role of the state in responding to violence and how it should contribute to reducing violence in communities, as well as in its own operations. Finally, it explores what the future of collaboration between state actors and the community looks like and offers examples of successful power-sharing and co-producing of safety between the state and the public.

The Challenges of Antirape Activism in the 1970s

2019 ◽  
pp. 133-159
Author(s):  
Catherine O. Jacquet
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Rape Crisis

This chapter examines the conflicts and constraints posed by varying antirape discourses and approaches to antirape activism in the 1970s. At this time, activists in the women’s liberation and black freedom movements confronted one another’s politics on rape, sometimes unable to find common ground. The competing beliefs and approaches that activists brought to their antirape work heightened the potential for discord between movements. This was particularly exacerbated by the increasing role of the state in antirape work. By the mid-1970s, state actors and agencies played a dominating role in antirape work, leaving many feminists deeply concerned about the direction of the movement. State co-optation of key feminist interventions, such as rape crisis centers, resulted in a movement that was largely reformist. Feminists saw their once radical vision of social revolution overshadowed by increasing state efforts for reform-based solutions to the problem of sexual violence.

Land and Justice in South Africa: Exploring the Ambiguous Role of the State in the Land Claims Process

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thembela Kepe
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
The State ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Rural Land ◽  
Commercial Farming ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Policy Statements

Abstract In addition to challenges facing South Africa’s overall post-apartheid land reform, group rural land claims have particularly proven difficult to resolve. This paper explores the role that the state plays in shaping the outcomes of rural group land claims. It analyzes policy statements, including from policy documents, guidelines and speeches made by politicians during ceremonies to hand over land rights to rural claimants; seeking to understand the possible motives, factual correctness, as well as impact, of these statements on the trajectory of the settled land claims. The paper concludes that land reform as practiced in South Africa is functionally and discursively disembedded from socio-political histories of dispossession, because land has come to be treated more as a commodity, rather than as something that represents multiple meanings for different segments of society. Like many processes leading up to a resolution of a rural claim, subsequent statements by government concerning particular ‘successful’ land claims convey an assumption that local claimants have received just redress; that there was local consensus on what form of land claim redress people wanted, and that the state’s lead role in suggesting commercial farming or tourism as land use options for the new land rights holders is welcome. The paper shows that previous in-depth research on rural land claims proves that the state’s role in the success or failure of rural land claims is controversial at best.

Comparative Perspectives on the Role of the State in the Economy

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Wren
Keyword(s):  
Demand Management ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Growth Stability ◽  
State Actors

This article has a comparative perspectives on the role of the state in the economy. It first describes the challenges that are posed to the thesis that state actors possess the instrumental capacity to engage in macroeconomic demand management. It also discusses the literature analyzing the capacity of state actors to effectively intervene on the supply side of the economy to create the conditions for growth, stability, and expansion. The article also presents an outline of how these debates eventually lead to important questions about the relative explanatory power of arguments.

scholarly journals New wine in old bottles? Korean state actors’ policy engagement with the online gaming industry

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-123
Author(s):  
Ji-Won Song
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Online Gaming ◽  
The State ◽  
Gaming Industry ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Korean State ◽  
Policy Engagement

This article revisits the developmental state literature that stresses the unitary role of the state in steering economic development in East Asia. Focusing on the Korean state actors’ diversity and their agency after the trend of globalization and democratization, this article highlights various state actors as agents and looks into how the role of state actors has changed with industrial development, using the setting of the Korean online gaming industry over the past two decades. By examining government policy measures on the industry, I found that the state actors have actively engaged with the industry, however, this agency has not been uniform due to the different purposes of the actors and sometimes led a detrimental effect against the needs or expectations of the industry. The findings, thus, contribute to the literature by suggesting the potentiality of agent-driven institutional change and the heterogeneity that comes from the state actors’ policy engagement.

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