Anthropology of power: Beyond state-centric politics

Abstract

Since the labeling of the ‘anthropology of politics’ in the mid-20th century, the discipline has changed in multiple ways. Anthropology moved from state-centric politics (in the forms of state, stateless, anti-state or alter-state notions) to wider and contradictory realms of configurations of power, and the ways in which power works out day-by-day. A per- spective on power entails a privileged ethnographic focus on everyday differentiation, contradiction and struggle in the making of social organization, as well as in arrangements and disputes over the labor of categorizing (or grassroots philosophical work) invested in these processes. In this article, and in light of these concerns, I ask if anthropologists could reframe some questions that have been present since the very foundation of modern social sciences.