Political anthropology: new challenges, new aims

Marc AbClks

Anthropologists were first prompted to take an interest in politics by following up evolutionist theories. Their research was chiefly focused on remote societies with political systems different from those prevailing in modem societies on the state model. Studies conducted all over the world provided material for monographs, com- parative analyses and more general reflections on archaic forms of power. Today, political anthropology has to take into account the ever increasing interdependence of those societies and our own and the transformations which are affecting tra- ditional political processes (Vincent, 1990). Like other anthropological disciplines, it is also being drawn to explore the mysteries of the modem world, the workings of power systems in the framework of a modem State and the crises that can make it fragile. This renewal is not confined to an extension of the empiri-

bols. Far from presupposing a clear-cut and virtually pre-established division between what is political and what is not, anthropologists are seeking to gain a better understanding of the way in which power relationships are inter- woven, their ramifications and the practices to which they give rise. Investigations shed light on roots of political action that do not neces- sarily correspond to our empirical perceptions, which tend to focus on the formal expressions

Marc Abtlts is Director of Research at the Centre National de Recherche Scien- tifique. He is head of the Laboratory of Anthropology of Institutions and Social Organizations, 59 rue Pouchet, 750 17 Paris (France) and teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He is the author of many articles and books on political anthropology. In parti- cular, he has published Anthropologie de IEtat (1990). La vie quotidienne au Parlement europien (1992), En attente dEurope (1 996). and Politique ef insti- tutions: ilimenfs danthropologie (1 997).

I cal field; it gives rise t i hitherto unasked ques- tions and entails a reappraisal of concepts and methods.

Having started from a comparative stand- point which led to the construction of taxo- nomies of political systems, anthropology has progressively moved towards modes of analysis focusing on the practices and codes of power and revealing its forms of expression and stag- ing. This approach has always laid stress on the close links between power, ritual and sym-

of power and the slowly turning wheels of insti- tutions.

Stress has often been laid on the contrast between traditional societies in which the political sphere is embedded and the modem world in which the auto- nomy of politics is mani- fested in the organization of the states and their many institutions. This is prob- ably why for a long time the anthropological approach was confined to exotic

societies, where the absence of familiar land- marks encouraged researchers in their eagerness to identify those roots of political action by engaging in long-term in-depth projects. The counterpart to this preference for far-off places and the exotic was the creation of boundaries between universes perceived as having different ontological properties. Two contrasting approaches were thus adopted; one appropriate to the understanding of societies in which it is difficult to separate the political from other

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aspects of reality, and the other applicable to contemporary society, where politics as an insti- tution is clearly circumscribed. This implicitly set limits to the work of anthropologists, and gave sociologists and political scientists a monopoly of research on modernity. The division of labour has certainly had some posi- tive effects, since it has enabled the different disciplines to delve very deeply into the areas assigned to them.

Power and representation

At the same time, the boundary that had been created could not resist for long a twofold movement: on the one hand, the curiosity which anthropologists felt about their own societies led them to expand their areas of investigation; on the other, political scientists became increas- ingly fascinated by dimensions of politics, such as rites and symbols, which had thus far remained outside their fields of investigation (Sfez, 1978). If we look at the development of anthropological research since the 1970s, a whole new field of issues emerges, linked with the growing interest in developed Western societies. We have only to note the significant increase in work focused on Europe to gauge what has changed. With hindsight, it is possible to discern more clearly the degree of develop- ment of the whole set of issues involved. Anthropologists began by giving prominence to difference, taking more interest in the periphery than the centre, preferring to study traditional rural societies or urban minorities which had preserved their specific features, as though implicitly they still had to keep their distance from their subjects.

It is true that the modem state appears to be very remote from the archaic structures and faltering institutions which attracted the atten- tion of the first anthropologists. With its com- plex civil service, dense bureaucratic fabric and deployment of hierarchies, the functioning of the state in our societies bears little resemblance to the much more diffuse workings of politics in the exotic world. There is a real disparity of scale between the contemporary state phenom- enon and the systems that anthropologists have described, in particular in categories such as segmentary societies or chiefdoms which point

to very different situations. And yet if we look at things from the point of view of the approach adopted, we see them in a quite different light. If we understand anthropology as being the study of the power processes and systems run- ning through our institutions and the ways in which the roots and forms of political action are represented in our societies, it is then pos- sible to obtain a clearer understanding of what this sort of investigation can teach us about our own universe and to determine its prime objec- tives.

Like the anthropologists who tackled the question of power in African societies, we can regard politics as a dynamic phenomenon, as a process, freeing it to some degree from a taxonomic approach centred on the concept of systems. The definition of politics proposed by Swartz, Turner and Tuden, whereby it involves processes resulting from the choice and attain- ment of public objectives and the differential use of power by the members of the group concerned by these objectives (1966, p. 7), clearly highlights the combination of three fac- tors - power, determination and the achieve- ment of collective objectives - and the existence of a sphere of public action. Like all definitions, this one can be criticized, but it has the advan- tage of spelling out what is at stake in any political undertaking. A significant oversight will, however, be noted in the propositions of these anthropologists. The territorial dimension is ignored, whereas authors as different as Max Weber and Evans-Pritchard have laid stress on this basic ingredient of politics. We should remember Webers celebrated definition of the state as the having a monopoly on legitimate violence on a given territory, and the charac- terization in Evans-Pritchards The Nuer of political relations as the relations which exist, within the limits of a territorial system, between groups of persons who live in clearly defined areas and are conscious- of their identity and their exclusivity (1940, p. 19).

A coherent anthropological approach that is concerned not to reify the political process should, in our opinion, combine three spheres of interest: in the first place an interest in power, in how it is acquired and in how it is exercised; an interest in the identities which are asserted in a given temtory and in the areas of influence into which it is broken down; and an interest

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in the representations and practices which shape the public sphere. It is easy to see that these different spheres are closely interlinked. It would be difficult to contemplate a study of power which disregarded the territory on which it was exercised; it is likewise difficult to think of the public sphere and the preserve and action of the politician in isolation from each other. From an analytical standpoint, however, it may be necessary to envisage these three dimensions separately and successively as we look at con- temporary societies and the state.

In order to think about politics in our state- based societies, we have to rid ourselves of the stubborn illusion that a political system is an empire within an empire. Then, at a second stage, we must endeavour to combine the separ- ate pieces, in this case the institution on the one hand and society on the other. Foucault, who, in his work on madness, sex and prison, was confronted with the omnipresence of norms and systems, proposed a method of analysis aimed at overcoming this essential difficulty: Analysis in terms of power should not postu- late, as initial facts, the sovereignty of the State, the form of the law or the global unity of a domination; these are only the terminal forms (1976, p. 120). It is important to look beyond the most immediate facts represented by the law and the institution and to consider the power relationships and strategies that are forged within the systems. The traditional instruments of political theories prove inappropriate: We use ways of thinking about power which are based either on legal models (what is the legit- imacy of power?) or on institutional models (what is the State?) (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1984, p, 298).

Rather than concretizing power by treating it as a mysterious substance, whose real nature we should endlessly seek to track down, Fou- cault states that the question of how power is exercised has to be posed. Thinking of power as an act, as a mode of action on actions (1976, p. 3 16), requires from anthropologists an exploration of its roots in the heart of society and of the patterns it produces. Analysing power where it is exercised offers the advantage of setting the state in perspective on the basis of real-life political practices. Trying to take into consideration the exercise of power and its roots in a complex soil in which society and culture

are inextricably bound up can, in fact, enable us to understand politics better, not as a separate sphere but as the crystallization of activities modelled by a culture which provides its own code for the behaviour of human beings.

It is from this angle that the analysis of political phenomena in our societies should be approached, by rediscovering the theme of interweaving which has guided anthropology from its beginnings and in its subsequent devel- opments. In order to study power in the imma- nence of the social sphere, and to understand from the inside how some people govern others, we have to give an account of the conditions in which that power and governing capacity emerged. The capacity can be satisfactorily summarized in the democratic context by the expression representativeness. We disagree here with Foucault on two points: on the one hand, he explicitly rejects the question of rep- resentation as a metaphysical aspect of the basis and nature of power, with two blunt questions: What is power? Where does power come from? (1984, p. 309); and on the other hand, he rejects, as reflecting a legalistic attitude, any question about the legitimacy of power. We have stressed the positive contribution made by Foucaults view of power as a relationship and as action on possible actions, but we do not consider that there is any need to reject ques- tions about representation and legitimacy. That rejection could embroil us in a problem area where power is thought of as a pure dynamic relationship between abstract capacities to act, whose roots in what Foucault calls the social nexus are no longer discerned. For anthropol- ogists, power and representation are like two aspects of the same reality, and refusing to ask questions about the legitimacy of power in order to avoid being legalistic would be tantamount to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Returning to political representation, the two questions of how power is acquired and how it is exercised are clearly indissociable. With regard to the first question, everything in our societies is centred on the idea of election in both its practical impact and in the symbolic content we confer on it. In most Western democracies, engaging in politics means, at some time or other, standing for election to an office that will make it possible to reach a position of power. Moreover, to a large extent,

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an election is regarded as a mysterious process that has the effect of transforming individuals into public figures. From one day to the next, people who were ordinary citizens are called upon to personify the interests of the com- munity and speak on its behalf. This quality of representativeness gives them the right to act on the actions of other people and exercise their power over the group. Bourdieu regards this alchemy of representation as a real circular pattern in which representatives form the group which forms them: spokespersons with full powers to speak and act on behalf of the group and to act on the group . . . become the substi- tutes for the group which then exists only by proxy (1982, p. 101). The delegation which takes place from the group to the individual is, in fact, a constituent part of the collective ident- ity. By their existence representatives mediate between these two terms. Bourdieu interprets the phenomenon of representation in terms of letting go, of the transfer of wills to a third party which sets itself up as a unifying power and as the guarantor of collective harmony. In this theoretical perspective, analysing represen- tation involves deconstructing the mechanisms which result in individuals becoming subjected to power and its symbols. The aim is to engage in a critique of this transfer by bringing to light the roots of the illusion. Anthropology does not purport to engage in a criticism of politics; it aims rather at understanding how power emerges and is asserted in a given situation.

Political institutions and networks

The fieldwork carried out by anthropologists in developed Western societies gave prominence first to the study of politics in restricted com- munities: village politics accordingly became a key theme, and the subject of local power, its reproduction and its ramifications, came to the forefront. Anthropologists circumscribed their aims by not going beyond the bounds of the locality, which was defined as being the ideal field for their investigations. There was accord- ingly an implicit separation between the periph- ery, the chosen field of ethnologists, and the centre, which was bound up with national and state policy and which it was left to other disci-

plines to study. Political anthropology was con- fined to micro-universes and the image of auth- entically insular autochthonous powers, in the closed world of the village community, pre- vailed. As far as history is concerned, promin- ence was given above all to the long term, which might appear relevant in situations where there was a real gap between local forms of politics and the surrounding context. Anthropol- ogists were almost exclusively interested in the traditional aspects of political life. Curiously, although the work of Africanists (Gluckman, 1963; Balandier, 1967) had laid stress on the need to think in terms of dynamics and change, the anthropologists working on Europe seemed to remain on the sidelines of modernity, in an extension of ancestral history.

This trend has nevertheless given rise to new perspectives on phenomena that were hitherto little known - witness the monographs on patronage and power relationships in the Mediterranean world (Boissevain, 1974; Schneider, 1976; Lenclud, 1988). Another theme dear to anthropologists drawn to the exotic, that of the modes of devolution and transmission of political roles, has mobilized researchers; in-depth surveys have been conduc- ted on the construction of legitimacies and on the relations between power, kinship and matri- monial strategies (Pourcher, 1987; AbClbs, 1989). This work has the advantage of showing how veritable dynasties of elected representa- tives are established and reproduced, in accord- ance with a logic which does not always tally with a superficial view of democratic systems. It also reveals that political representation brings into play a whole series of informal networks, which must constantly be taken into account in the elaboration of individual strategies.

The work of anthropologists consists, in fact, of reconstructing this relational pattern, since their autochthonous informants give them only a partial and sometimes biased view of things. The reconstruction can be brought about through very detailed investigations based on intensive observation of local political life. It also entails meticulous work on archival docu- ments. The analyses carried out in rural areas clearly show how positions of eligibility are transmitted over the long term within networks where kinship links and matrimonial strategies are closely intertwined. The overall relational

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patterns which can be revealed and which war- rant the name of networks should be considered as ideal types, in the sense in which Max Weber uses the term, or, to use another expression dear to that author, thought pictures (Weber, 1965).

However, the ideal type produced in this way will probably not reflect all the facets of a situation, which is often more complex than it appears, at least at first sight, even if the ethnological approach offers a good means of discerning the main contours of these relational patterns. The fact that networks are not fixed entities should not be underestimated. The idea is not to list all the ties which unite one individ- ual to others in the very general context of local life. Political networks should be considered as an essentially dynamic phenomenon: we are dealing here not with groups which can be identified to a greater or lesser degree, but with a set of potentialities that are capable of becom- ing actualized according to the practical situ- ations which arise. Voting is one of the points in time when this relational system is actualized. A candidate for political representation can very consciously use his or her relational potential by displaying the signs that are most likely to evoke that potential in the eyes of the com- munity. This strategy can be observed in cases where the candidate is very closely connected with the leading figures of the network. How- ever, even if there are no apparent signs, the inhabitants of the voting community spon- taneously attribute membership of one or other of the patterns to one of the candidates. Accord- ingly, far from the network being an inert reality, it is a factor which can be brought into play by the way others see it; the members of the local society are, in a manner of speaking, the depositaries of a memory which restores links that have become partially blurred. In stressing the very high degree of temtorializ- ation of political practices, the idea is not to minimize the national factor or, obviously, the role of the parties, especially in the selection of candidates for parliamentary seats.

Political representation is a phenomenon which takes on its full meaning in the long term. Talking politics is, in one way or another, a way of situating oneself in relation to certain divides which go back to the remote past but whose traces have still not faded. The

example of French political life, marked by the major founding events which were, in addition to the French Revolution, the separation of Church and State, and the Resistance, is sig- nificant; these conflictual vicissitudes still have a lasting influence on the collective imagination. When, at the end of the last century, relations between the Church and the Third Republic grew increasingly bitter, the political networks organized themselves on either side of this line. Over the years, the ideological antagonism was to become gradually less sharp, but even today it is still the background to a good many elec- toral bouts; even in situations where there is an outward show of disregard for politics, any candidate is immediately identified by reference to this ancestral bipolarity. The founding event leaves its mark and the behaviour of the electors is very much conditioned by this memory, which is handed down from generation to gener- ation.

The ceremonial of politics

Showing accordingly appears to be a consub- stantial dimension of the political order. This order operates in the sphere of representation: power exists only on stage, according to Balandier ( I 980). Whatever the regime adopts, the protagonists of the political game claim to have a mandate from society as a whole. Legiti- macy, whether founded in immanence or trans- cendence, is a quality assumed by power. It is up to this power to project an image of coher- ence and cohesion to the community it embodies. Power represents: this means that an individual or a group stands as a spokesperson for the whole. However, power also represents in that it creates a picture of the universe from which it emerged and whose permanence it ensures.

Anthropologists have succeeded in explor- ing the symbols and rituals of power in remote societies and it should come as no surprise that the modem world offers ample material for their analyses. The political drama takes on more familiar forms these days, but it still does not abolish the gap between the people and those who govern. Everything suggests, on the con- trary, that this gulf between the world of public figures and the daily lives of ordinary citizens

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is tending to widen. The public arena of media societies does not conflict with that of tra- ditional parties in bringing the sphere of power and civil society closer together. A whole set of rituals draws a magic circle around those who govern, making them unassailable at the very time when media commodities enable us to capture their image with unequalled ease. In order to penetrate these modem symbolizations of politics, it is worth considering the ritual construction of political reality (Kertzer, 1988, p. 77) and analysing the workings of political liturgies (Rivibre, 1988) and the ceremonial mise en sctne of power. This can shed light on the contemporary public arena for anthropol- ogists.

The ceremonial is inseparable from a glo- bal concept of representativeness. It is a concept which anchors legitimacy in the temtory: in order to build and subsequently maintain this legitimacy by the reactivation of rites which appeal to the nation and its memory, which exalt a system of common patriotic values through the flag, medals and references to the nation which punctuate speeches. It is not very surprising, therefore, that those who govern engage in these practices whose use may appear dubious to the outsider. These rituals offer material for a twofold political operation: firstly, an expression of strong cohesion among those who are governed, who display their attachment to common values and symbols and to a com- mon history; and secondly the reaffirmation of the collective consent given to the established power and those who personify it. In very dif- ferent societies, the important rites surrounding the enthronement of the sovereign also take the form of a tour of the territory by the new monarch, each stopping-place being the occasion for ceremony and reinforcing the link between the governors and the governed. As Geertz (1983) has shown, the ceremonial forms in which monarchs take possession of their kingdoms display significant variations, such as the peaceful and virtuous procession through England when Elizabeth Tudor assumed power in 1559, or the splendid caravan of Hayam Wuruk in fourteenth-century Java.

Other major rituals form an essential part of political life: these are political meetings and street demonstrations. These rites punctuate cir- cumstances in which political life takes a more

agitated turn. Street demonstrations provide an opportunity for brandishing a very specific form of symbolism; while the rites mentioned above refer to consensual values, street demonstrations brandish symbols of antagonism. To start with, the people, with their slogans and banners, are in the street, where they shout and heckle and there is always an undercurrent of violence. They are demonstrations of force which are ordered in accordance with a set scenario: improvisation is only allowed within a protocol for action which should not depart from the collectively acknowledged rules.

The same observation could be made about another rite of confrontation - the political meeting: now battered, transformed and per- haps subjugated, political meetings are neverthe- less still the preferred weapon of political debate and of electoral campaigning, notes Pourcher (1990, p. 90). Both camps engage in a demonstration of power. And there are no surprises. On the platform, there are speakers and dignitaries chosen according to the place, circumstances and their ranking order in the movement. In the meeting hall there is the audi- ence which has sometimes been brought in from a vast surrounding area. Everything depends on the relationship that is established between this community, whose task is to applaud and to call out names and slogans, and those officiat- ing, who must constantly fan the flames of popular enthusiasm. The succession of announcements, promises or threats which are greeted with applause or booing make the meet- ing a carefully produced show. The staging, the decor, the music, the postures, all play a part in building up the candidates distinctive ident- ity. The meeting has to represent a highlight, where every possible means is used to create both a sense of communion around the speaker and the firm determination to confront and beat all the other candidates, who are por- trayed to the participants as adversaries.

What political meetings and demon- strations have in common with consensual ritu- als is that they require a physical presence on the part of the protagonists. They are likewise localized, are broken down into a large number of sequences and combine words and non-ver- bal symbols, such as gestures and the manipu- lation of objects of symbolic value, all in a production which integrates action and speeches

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Crowd awaiting Pope John Paul I1 in Warsaw, June 1979. FahiadSygma

in accordance with a traditional framework. Another analogy can be seen in the religious dimension of these ceremonies, which all refer back to a transcendence (the nation, the people, the working class), a transcendence alluded to in the speeches of those officiating or through the interplay of the symbols used on such occasions. Also of note is the truly religious dimension of the relationship that is established between those officiating and the faithful. In this case, we are indeed dealing with rites in the full meaning of the term. On the one hand, we have splitting-up and repetition, while on the other we have dramatization: everything contributes to producing a thought trap. Simi- larly, we find the four ingredients - sacredness, territory, the primacy of symbols and collective values - all at work.

Nowadays, the political spectacle is insep- arable from the growth of the mass media. It is chiefly through television that people partici- pate in history as it is being made. Electoral

campaigns, the actions and gestures of those who govern, and major political happenings only take on their full dimension when they are retransmitted on our television screens. The production of images for the general public is creating a new form of theatre. An electoral campaign has a full impact only if its main actor can be relied on to go down well on television. Major meetings are organized in such a way that the message can be echoed on tele- vision immediately; during the French Presiden- tial campaign, FranGois Mitterrand made his appearances at 8.00 pm sharp, so as to benefit from live transmission on the evening news (Pourcher, 1990, p. 87). The very style of these meetings has eventually come to be modelled on television broadcasts. The fact is that polit- ical life now has to follow the rules of the media game. Modern public figures set out above all to be good communicators: eloquence on television is synonymous with simplicity; emphasis is placed as much on form as on

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content. Knowing how to sell a political pro- duct is all-important.

One of the most conspicuous effects of media inflation is that all events become ordi- nary. The repetition of images, the omnipres- ence of well-known faces and speeches produce a dulling effect. The possibility of channel-hop- ping from one programme to another tends to make the political scene just one feature among many others of a multifaceted show, where a football match or variety show will be more attractive than a political event. If politics is to make itself felt, dramatic art is required. At election time suspense has to be maintained through opinion polls and confrontations between antagonists, all culminating with the evening the results come in. Elections increas- ingly resemble television series in which per- sonalities confront each other rather than ideas. The contempt shown by American television networks for the Republican convention in 1996 is significant: what was chiefly involved was the candidate Bob Doles lack of charisma and his inability to win over an audience. In France, the contest between Jacques Chirac and Edouard Balladur during the 1995 Presidential election particularly caught the attention of television viewers, since it brought face to face two friends of thirty years standing and ended with a spectacular reversal of fortune when the candidate who had long been predicted to be the loser finally won.

Television has become a mode of expression which makes it possible not only to broadcast events but also to create them. The journey which Pope John Paul I1 made to his country of origin in 1979, one year after assuming office, offers an example of a com- munication exercise that succeeded beyond all expectation. Even before the Popes journey took place, it had become a symbolic issue which brought two contradictory interpretations face to face. On either side, a historical refer- ence was put forward to guide the public in its reading of the event: the assassination of Saint Stanislas and, in the other camp, the creation of the communist state. The Popes visit dealt a very severe blow to the regime. The rite rocked the very foundations of its legitimacy, as a speech, however critical, could never have done. It displayed an image of what another type of political community (in this case, that

uniting the Pope and the faithful) might be like, and suggested another possible legitimacy. In short, the rite gave substance to an alternative. From this example, it is possible to gauge the extraordinary impact of an occasion which com- bines a ritual, a political act and a media event. It is clear that, far from being exceptional, this type of public demonstration forms an integral part of political action. Acting and communicat- ing merge at certain critical moments to estab- lish a relationship between governors and gov- erned in a mode different from that of the ballot paper. We are dealing with a real test of legitimacy. Through the Popes actions and words, his journey to Poland produced a strong message which destabilized the communist authorities, even though it remained in the domain of symbol and ritual. We are dealing with what Augt (1994, p. 94) described as an expanded ritual arrangement. This arrange- ment is characterized by the distance between the transmitter and the receivers: it aims not only at reproducing the existing situation, but also at making it evolve.

This message, whose geo-political effects were considerable, could have an impact only if it fitted in with an overall dramatic staging of the event. John Paul 11s return to Poland took on the dimensions of a world event by being totally suited to the universe of television. It was presented to viewers as an exceptional occasion, for which the normal programme schedules were disrupted. The journey was handled as if it were a narrative, with different episodes and a progression. The public was held spellbound and, sitting in front of their tele- vision sets, identified with the pilgrim. This presentation of the Pope as a traveller (Dayan, 1990) illustrates the power of the media. The fact is that representation has become an essen- tial ingredient of political action. The journey of John Paul I1 was not only a pilgrimage; it took on the sense of a reconquest. It was not merely the reflection of a power relationship, which was, when all is said and done, unfavour- able to the Vatican. We remember Stalins sally: How many divisions has the Pope? In both its performance and its orchestration, the Popes visit to Poland produced a new situation.

While representation and action, spectacle and life, are often contrasted, the image is seen more and more clearly as a constituent dimen-

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sion of real contemporary politics. Politics abides by the rules of the game of communi- cation. If we compare the power of the tele- vision screen and the media with the firmly rooted rites of the ancestral political scene, we find that the former gives pride of place to innovation. In order to be present on the scene, without a real message, the medium of the message must be constantly renewed. On the other hand, political ritual always brings into play a tradition, and it takes on its full dimen- sion by explicit or implicit reference to that tradition. Another characteristic distinction is that modem communication tends to lay heavy stress on individuality. Viewers in front of their television sets expect to see a face appear, they are attentive to a voice or an inflection: a good leader is a person who has managed to construct this difference with the assistance of market- ing and audio-visual experts. With rites, how- ever, the persons officiating will tend to keep in the background in order to let the symbols speak, or to set their action in a system of values which goes beyond their persons and reaches out to a more all-embracing collective history. The dominant feature here is the system of values and symbols reactualized by the ritual. One last notable aspect of modem political communication is its deterritorialized character. A leader can immediately communicate the message of his or her choice to the whole planet; there is no longer any need to move crowds. Everybody experiences politics sitting in an armchair. Here again is a contrast with the ritual practices to which we have referred and which give a stage setting to the aspect of territory.

All these observations highlight a sort of hiatus between modem political communication and the various aspects of the rituals which have hitherto prevailed in traditional societies: the sacred, tradition, the relative obscurity of individuals who are mainly there to express collective values, and the emphasis on territory. This is the case at first sight, at least, since it can be observed that the new forms of political communication do not mechanically replace practices which have preserved their vitality intact: inaugurations and commemorations have not disappeared, and demonstrations and polit- ical meetings still occupy a large place in polit- ical life. Far from finding that there is a real

contradiction between the functioning of ritual and the use of the media, we should rather ask whether the latter do not foster the emergence of new forms which combine old referents with modern procedures. The question is particularly interesting in connection with the representation of power; in the staging of power, the combi- nation of heterogeneous contents and symbolic forms, drawn from different historical contexts and periods, has been highlighted (Balandier, 1985; Rivikre, 1988; AugC, 1995).

From postnational to multicultural

The interest anthropologists take in the subject of political arenas in the societies of centralized states is now leading them to give thought to the way in which those arenas are being reor- ganized and the changes in scale that this entails. The fact that actors on the political scene can at one and the same time play a leading local role and participate in the govem- ment of the country prompts questions about links between spheres of political action and about the historical construction of local ident- ities which, far from being a stable and perma- nent factor, have been reordered many times over the years. Anthropological study of polit- ical arenas, which sets out to place the field in a ramified whole, embracing powers and values, also offers a means of seeing the state from below (AbClCs, 1990, p. 79), starting from the temtorialized practices of the local protagonists, whether they be politicians, man- agers or ordinary citizens. The need to take a pluridimensional view of the strategies and forms of involvement of all those who, from near or far, participate in the political process, in no way implies giving up the localized approach in which ethnographic methods have been tried and tested. However, it is important to replace the illusion of a microcosm and of enclosure by study of how the universes studied by ethnologists come into being.

In addition, describing the facts of power in non-Western cultures not only helps us to think about how politics fit into reference sys- tems different from our own, it also prompts us to reflect, from a comparative standpoint, on

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the coherence of our own conceptions. The work done by L. Dumont and E. Gellner is very convincing on this point. While both of them began with an interest in thought systems very different from our own, they subsequently came up with a new angle on the concepts at the root of modern political organization. Dumont did not consider that his far-reaching study on castes in India was an end in itself. In highlighting the impact of the hierarchical principle in this universe, he set out to define the holistic ideology which enhances the social totality and which he contrasted with the indi- vidualism dominant in our societies. Having studied the conditions in which individualism emerged and the conceptual nature of this Homo aequalis which triumphed in the nine- teenth century, Dumont looked into the contrast between the French and German concepts of the nation-state, which prompted him to ask questions about modem forms of democracy and totalitarianism. The path taken by this anthropologist, and his preoccupations, are in some ways reminiscent of Gellner, whose first work on Morocco was an extension of tra- ditional studies on segmentary systems. His reflection then led him to tackle the thorny problem of nationalism in modem states in a book which is one of the most important contri- butions to the intelligibility of highly topical issues. This rewarding to-and-fro movement between the nearby and the remote has given rise to a real renewal of issues, which is inseparable from developments at the end of this century.

Political anthropology has therefore broken free of the limits which it had explicitly set itself, in terms of both space and time. It is now undergoing new developments which mirror the burning issues of the day. It should not be surprising to find anthropologists mobilized by contemporary issues. It is sufficient to gauge the changes that have occurred during the last quarter of the twentieth century to realize that the whole concept of politics goes well beyond references to modes of government and embraces a whole set of processes which culmi- nate in the destructuring and recomposition of historical forms which appeared to be unshake- able. Various events have left their mark on the recent situation including, in the first place, the collapse of a system which, as well as exerting

pressures, was an essential factor in the balance of world forces. The bankruptcy of socialism and the Soviet empire destabilized the world order and reintroduced contingency at a global level. One of the consequences of this situation was the fragmentation of certain geo-political units whose intrinsic fragility had not always been seen for what it was. On the fringes of Russia and of the former Yugoslavia, the pro- cess of structural decomposition of the state has reintroduced conflict in the very heart of a continent which seemed to have abolished it by substituting the all too familiar balance of terror. War no longer seems to be the business of developed countries, yet it has reappeared with its train of horrors, and the whole question of the nature and foundations of political com- munities has arisen again.

For a long time, the figure of the nation- state was dominant and circumscribed political practices. It is this model which is called into question in the context of the post-Cold War situation and of the conflicts w3ich this has brought to the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, as well as in the context of increasing economic interdependence in multinational groupings. European construction is a good illustration of the emergence of these new polit- ical arenas. States are engaged increasingly in a process of large-scale negotiation, and no country can refuse to budge from its position. The question of the further division of political areas of action or their recomposition can there- fore be seen as coming to the fore. These pro- cesses are bound to give rise to in-depth reflec- tion on political affiliations and identities. Terms such as territory, nation and ethnic group (Amselle, 1990) have never before had such resonance. They take us back to phenomena which have often been underestimated by a political discourse which was obsessed with the rising power of centralized political organiza- tions, seen as the triumph of rationality and progress.

The affirmation of distinctive group charac- teristics and the establishment of relations between infra-national territorial levels and the European authorities will not necessarily con- tribute to a weakening of the state, but may involve it in more complex arrangements. The movement may lead to competition between dif- ferent community levels, as in France, or con-

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versely, as in Germany, confirm the existing balance between the Federal state and the regions. In any event, this development is prompting researchers to think again about the location of politics, which was long associated with the pre-eminence of the bench-mark nation-state. Gellner (1983, p. 11) defined the principle of nationalism as a principle which asserts that political unity and national unity must be congruent. However, it is the congru- ence which now creates the problem. Another question pertinently raised by B. Anderson (1983) concerns the nature of the ties which bind the members of the same nation. Anderson stresses the imaginary character of this com- munity. Imagined as being limited and sover- eign, the nation takes the place of the control exercised by religious communities and dynastic kingdoms which had marked earlier periods.

From different standpoints, Gellner and Anderson both take us back to the need for in-depth reflection on political affiliations and identities. It is probably no coincidence that this issue marks a rewarding meeting between anthropologists and historians: the production of a common tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) and the symbolic construction of the nation have been the subject of far-reaching research, giving rise to such studies as that of M. Agulhon (1 979; 1989) on the figure of Mari- anne and the symbolism of the republican nation in France. In this case, the historian high- lights the vicissitudes which marked the con- struction of a political community and the images it has generated. One of the lessons that can be drawn from these analyses is that pre- eminence of a national representation of the political link is inseparable from a pattern and a balance whose lasting nature can by no means be relied upon. The patriotic memory remains an essential factor: analysing the way in which the symbolic and the political are interwoven in commemorative events, such as the building of the memorial dedicated to the American combatants in Vietnam and the controversy to which it gave rise among veterans (Bodnar, 1994, pp. 3-9), or the reburial of the Hungarian leaders eliminated by the Russians during the events of 1956 (Zempelini, 1996), makes it possible to gain a clearer understanding of how representations of a common citizenship and a divided country are crystallized.

The questions that crop up everywhere on the concept of citizenship clearly indicate that this is a peculiar historical instance of the relationship between the individual and the community. This concept is founded on the idea of the nation and is inseparable from a type of political sphere of action whose specificity anthropologists are well placed to demonstrate. At the same time, this political sphere is now undergoing far-reaching transformations, and this new historical factor cannot be underesti- mated. It is the duty of anthropology to analyse its consequences. Anthropologists have always been concerned to set the modem form of the state in perspective by showing historical and geographical variations in the exercise of poli- tics. However, this work is being carried out in a hitherto unprecedented context, marked by the intensification of relations between different parts of the world. Globalization is one of the most significant phenomena of this latter end of the century. It is bound up with technological transformations and increasing economic inter- dependence. The planet has shrunk and the sense of strangeness which surrounded peoples once described as exotic has disappeared for ever. The rapid circulation of information and images help to erase the mythical dimension which used to be attached to these other societies and which was the prime subject of ethnological scrutiny. The reign of communi- cation has come, and the media and tourism offer ready access to this other world, which used to provide so much material for anthro- pology. Otherness is no longer identified with remote places: it forms part of our everyday lives. There is one essential political issue which, moreover, comes to the fore. It concerns intercultural relations, the promiscuity and plu- rality of cultures which operate within given political arenas and the institutions of power. This question is one for anthropologists to the extent that, as Balandier wrote, The knowledge of acculturations which come from outside seems to be capable of contributing to a better understanding of self-acculturating modernity (1985, p. 166).

One of the objectives of political anthro- pology is to give an account of the effects of globalization on the workings of the institutions and organizations which govern the economy and society. Transnationalism is certainly a fea-

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ture of contemporary capitalism, but it also gov- erns power relations and cultural referents. We see the emergence of new supranational insti- tutional patterns, such as the European Union, in which representatives of different political cultures and traditions come together to work on the harmonization of legislation and the con- struction of an all-embracing project. These trends raise several questions for anthropol- ogists. One question relates to the effects of this permanent confrontation between different identities (McDonald, 1996) and between heterogeneous languages and administrative traditions in a common political undertaking (Bellier, 1995). Other questions concern the invention of forms of co-operation in a wider bureaucratic framework (Zabuski, 1995) or the practical and symbolic effects of deterritorializ- ation and changes of scale in these new places where power is exercised (AbClks, 1992; 1996).

The case of national administrations, in which homogeneity of thinking and action may seem to be guaranteed by the fact that there is only one language and that civil servants have benefited from the same type of training, appears to contradict this type of assertion. It might be thought that a bureaucracy, backed by a strong body of concepts and values which it helps to reproduce, would be relatively exempt from external developments. In fact, this is by no means the case; a demonstration is given in the analyses of Herzfeld (1992) of the modem Greek bureaucracy, where a language, meta- phors and stereotypes constitute the ingredients of a true rhetoric. The latter, far from being the simple expression of a pre-established system, can be seen as an essential feature of the state process. In addition to the constant recourse to stereotypes and the use of a language which reifies and acts as a fetish, there is a whole symbolic pattern which defines peoples respect- ive positions. However, the terminology that circulates in the bureaucratic machine draws on meaningful resources which refer back to historical strata as varied as ancient Greek democracy and the Ottoman Empire. Closer to home, we might mention public service in France and the upheavals that the institution has experienced, tom as it is between the old republican concepts and the need to integrate a liberal outlook in the context of competition within Europe. This prospect has a direct impact

on the everyday practice of civil servants. Henceforward, the game is played in an arena which extends beyond the strict national frame- work. The use of the ideas and vocabulary of management, which cobble together French and English, and the frequent references to Brussels, clearly illustrate this intellectual remodelling. There can be no doubt that some- thing has changed at the very heart of the state and national framework; borders that were hitherto impervious are being shaken by this speeded-up circulation of ideas. Does this mean that a uniform and hegemonic global model is being imposed?

An answer in the affirmative would appear to be borne out by our second example, namely that of international firms established in coun- tries freshly converted to the market economy. In fact, matters are more complex: in the coun- tries of Eastern Europe, it can be seen that the injection of a corporate culture made in the USA does not entail the immediate replacement of the old order by a new one. Re-appropriation and reinterpretation are concepts that correspond more closely to a process which calls into ques- tion the issues of power and brings into play cognitive factors referring back to earlier his- tory. The twofold task of decontextualization and recontextualization which operates in organizations cannot be reduced to a phenom- enon of assimilation which would result in stan- dard copies of the dominant paradigm spreading all over the world. Social scientists have the task of analysing how institutions construct the representations and conceptual procedures which govern the practicalities of their negoti- ations and decision-making, and play a decisive role in their functioning.

The dialectics of political and cultural issues in the transnational universe of today require new analyses, in which the contribution of anthropology takes on its full dimension, without thereby invalidating the specific contri- butions of political science and the sociology of institutions. The power processes experienced by institutions in increasingly complex social and cultural organizations are likely to be better understood by an approach that is concerned with reporting on intersecting relationships of power and meaning in a fast-changing universe. This is the challenge which anthropology has to face in the light of developments in the

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modern world. Taking up this challenge does not mean denying a tradition which has enabled us to know more about societies that are remote from our own, it means broadening a field of

research to grapple with the problems of our contemporaries.

Translated f r o m French

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