31 Anthropology of Governance

Dr. Shyamasri Mohanty

Contents of this Unit

1.      Learning Outcomes

2.      Introduction

3.      Concept of Governance over the years

4.      Important Elements of Governmentality

5.      From political Anthropology to Anthropology of Policy

1.  Learning Outcomes

After studying this module

1.      You will come to know governance in anthropological perspective.

2.      You will be able to know how the concept of governance evolved over the years.

3.      You will be able to know the paradigm shift from primitive societies to modern societies.

4.      You will be able to know the journey from political anthropology to anthropology of policy.

2. INTRODUCTION

The word governance has come into existence towards the end of twentieth century when world community organized a summit on social development in Copenhagen in 1995 underlining the need for good Governance. It is a concept that helps identify states in terms of their performance. It is more of a process where the government has a role to play. This concept is used not only for the society or the state as a whole but for all systems. But long before this discussion, governance, rather good governance was very much prevalent in earlier societies. It existed in the form of social sanctions to organize socio-cultural behavior and maintain coherence in the society. Conventions, usages, norms, customs, belief system, etc were the informal ways of maintaining coherence. Even unwritten laws were binding on the individual and group behavior. During the Middle Ages since feudal customs and church had the great authority, the social life was governed by those institutions. However, the modern society is highly complex in nature. Presently, the whole world is concerned about the problems relating to positioning of the institutions with the aim of establishing good governance.

3. CONCEPT OF GOVERNANCE OVER THE YEARS

Anthropology, from the second half of the 19th century to first half 20th century was solely concerned with stateless societies. Later during the 1940s with the publication of “African Political System” by Mayer Fortes and E.E. Evans Pritchard the focus shifted to specific study of political organizations. Again Radcliffe Brown’s Structural Functionalism contributed towards this. Edmund Leach (1954) in his book,”Political Systems of Highland Burma” argued, societies change and are not static and not in equilibrium. Max Glukman also said that societies maintain stability through conflicts. Again in 1950s the context shifted from local (village) to larger setting as Robert Redfield emphasized on “little and great traditions”. Thus the trend of studying complex societies using ethnographic method started.

Modern Anthropology owes its analytical style of investigation to the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is concerned with analyzing what has been dubbed the “will to govern”. (Rose 1999:5) of particular importance to such an analytics are three dimensions of government. First, there are reasons of government. Second, there are techniques of government. Finally, there are subjects of government. The reasons of government encompass all those forms of knowledge, expertise, and calculation that render human beings thinkable and make them amenable to political programming. The technical part is that domain of practical mechanisms, instruments and programmes through which authorities of various types seek to shape and instrumentalise human conduct. Finally the subjects of government covers, the diverse types of individual and collective identity that arise out of and inform governmental activity.

Thus, Foucault studied governments a heterogeneous field of thought and action- to ethnographic scrutiny in a variety of empirical settings and called it governmentality. In his lecture Foucault undertakes a genealogical analysis of the art of government. His analysis was based on the questions— who can govern, how best to govern, how to be governed, and how to govern oneself & others. For Foucault, governing- that is, the regulation of conduct- is not merely a matter of the government and its institutions but involves a multitude of heterogeneous entities: from politicians, philanthropists, and the state bureaucrats to academics, clerics and medics. The objective of the Government is efficient & productive disposition of things. The stands of the Government, it is not a matter of improving law on people but of arranging things so as to produce an end appropriate to & convenient for each of the things governed. The important point therefore is that men & things be administered in a correct & efficient way.

According to Foucault, it was “a form of surveillance and control as attentive as that of the head of the family over his household and his goods” (Foucault 2000:207). However, with the expansion of capitalism and the demographic growth, the theme of the family was replaced with the population that became the object & fundamental concern of the Government & its association with technology of power- called “bio-power”. This technology of bio-power, according to Foucault, has two basic forms. One form which Foucault calls, bio-politics of the population or simply bio-politics, is concerned with population at “the level of its aggregate effects” (2000:219). Here bio-power takes as its target the population regarded as species body: “the body imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes: propagation, birth and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these two vary” (1980:139). Thus, bio-politics is the processes of collective social body and its goal is to optimize the life of the population as a whole. The second form is anatomo-politics of the human body or simply discipline “implies the management of population in its depths and its details (2000:219).

4. IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF GOVERNMENTALITY

Analysis of the art of Government emphasizes three important elements to Governmentality. The first element is the term “government”, refers essentially to the conduct as considered & calculated ways of thinking & acting that propose to shape, regulate, and management of individuals or groups towards specific goals or ends. The second element is the exercise of governmental power which is simply not the state, but also the organizations & agencies concerned with exercising authority over the conduct of human beings. The bottom line here is that government takes place both within & outside state contexts. The third element is that the principal target of the government is population. This means that political & other authorities have come to understand the work of governing as to act upon the particulars of human conduct so as to enhance the security, health, prosperity & happiness of population.

5. FROM POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY TO ANTHROPOLOGY OF POLICY

Like Foucault, Max Weber’s ideas on market, Emile Durkheim’s division of labour and Karl Marx’s ideas on class structure influenced the discipline further. While studying political institutions, relationship between government and the governed, anthropologists went deeper to the study of policies. According to Cris Shrore, who championed the field, argues policies as instrumental and always influence upon the social world. Cris Shore’s interest was to study ideology, conflict, organizations, institutions, trade unions and political parties. He made an ethnographic study of Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) from the bottom to upward. He studied, how party organisation and ideolgy intersected with issues of identitity and culture. He differentiated politics from policy. Politics, he said, is the whole realm of power relations and the relationship between government and the governed. But policy, is something more specific. It includes all those ideas and codified formulas that government use to bring about particular political vision. Politics are social-political blueprints, but policies are more than just a blue print. It is about power, authority, and effects. It is also about how plans are traslated in to action, who is authorised to put it into action and with what result. Thus the process or the procedures and effects that policies have at different scale and at different level is the study of policy. As Cris Shore puts, Policy as its trajectory, its geneology, the language used to frame, the way it is translated into practice, its institutionalisation and the effect it gives a methodological frame. To sum up, the study of policy is a way of understanding society and culture.

6. SUMMARY

• Anthropology has come a long way from studying political organisation of small, isolated and stateless societies to modern complex societies.
• Focus on governance is a relatively recent development.
• The concept of governance is not only applicable the society or the state as a whole but for all system.
• Modern anthropology owes a great deal to the Foucauldian concept of “Governmentality”.
• Presently, the focus has been on the study of “Policy” as modern age policies are instrumental in shaping the socio-cultural life of the people.