Widlok, Thomas . Original Power Pointing: Legibility and Opacity in the Deictic Field. Ethnos. ABINGDON: ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD. ISSN 1469-588X
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Governance by domination is easy to 'read' for political theory, but what about modes of governance that operate without centralised institutions? Such modes of governance are exemplified in the social relations of San in southern Africa. They rely on deictic practices (most fundamentally, pointing and being pointed at) that remain largely under the analytic radar of political theory. This contribution shows how such practices structure social interactions yet can also undermine domination. While state legibility is built on symbolic action, opacity in non-centralised environments is sustained through deictic action: The contribution shows that San strategies are not geared towards eliminating opacity or towards embracing it but rather towards dealing with it in a way that keeps egalitarian relations and personal autonomy in place. The observed practices are characterised by high degrees of mutuality and transience and are part of the larger repertoire of political levelling mechanisms that sustain egalitarianism.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
| Creators: |
|
||||||||
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-564353 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/00141844.2021.1981971 | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Ethnos | ||||||||
| Publisher: | ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD | ||||||||
| Place of Publication: | ABINGDON | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1469-588X | ||||||||
| Language: | English | ||||||||
| Faculty: | Unspecified | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Unspecified | ||||||||
| Subjects: | no entry | ||||||||
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
|
||||||||
| URI: | http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/56435 |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
Altmetric
Export
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |