1st Edition

The Problem of the State

By Michael Mair Copyright 2021
198 Pages
by Routledge

198 Pages
by Routledge

198 Pages
by Routledge

The Problem of the State provides a new perspective on what the social and political sciences can contribute to understandings of the state and the ambivalent place it occupies in our collective affairs. Distinguishing two broad conceptual and methodological approaches to addressing the problem of how to study the state empirically rather than theoretically - the constitutionalist and... Read more

1. The Problem of the State in the Social and Political Sciences

2. The Matter Thereof and the Artificer – Hobbes, Weber and the Constitutionalist Approach

3. The Government of Men and Things – Foucault’s Radical Critique of Constitutionalism

4. Problematising the State – Historical and Ethnographic Studies of State Practices

5. The Limits of Problematisation – Historical Studies and the Divorce of Discourse from Practice

6. Fictions of Practice – Anthropological Accounts and the Fabrication of the Real

7. The Problem of the State Beyond Constitution and Construction

8. What We Talk About When We Talk About the State

Biography

Michael Mair is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK.