Made in Manchester

The final speech was by the Regent Mshiyeni […]. Mshiyeni […] said the bridge would enable them to cross the river in floodtime and would make it possible for their wives to go freely to the Ceza Hospital to have their children. He appealed to the Government, however, not to forget the main road where the river had often held him up and to build a bridge there (Gluckman 1958, 6).

Much of social anthropology’s classical work on local state relations is owed to a dense network of scholars that became known as the Manchester School of Social Anthropology. The

“Mancunians” can still inspire state anthropology with their methods, their insights into the spatial practices and the embeddedness of local state actors in interface positions, and their ethnographies of welfare. I will attend to their contributions in this order.

Methods and practices

As Clyde Mitchell, one of the Manchester Schools’ most senior members, once declared, Max Gluckman (1911 – 1975) was the “point source of our network” (C. Mitchell 1969).⁴⁰ Between 1939 and 1947, Gluckman had worked at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute for Social Research (RLI) in what is now Zambia. When he became head of the new-founded Manchester Department of Social Anthropology in 1949, he maintained his close links with the RLI, which now served as a research laboratory and extended arm of his department. Later, Gluckman expanded his research interests to the new anthropology of the Israeli state, in the “Bernstein Project” (Werbner 1984; Shokeid 2004). Many Manchester researchers were radicals influenced by Marxist or anarchist theory. They understood African workers primarily as workers, and studied recent political-economic phenomena like colonialism, migration, industrialization, ethnic and religious movements, and the (im)probability of revolution, when most anthropologists still aestheticized structures as “a normative order, a set of values, or an arrangement of jural principles” (Werbner 1984, 162). What characterised Manchester anthropology were its problem-driven, ethnographically thick and abductive methods. Indeed,

“(t)he theoretical is emergent from the ethnography. Ethnography should not be treated as mere illustration of theories already agreed upon – usually by those at the metropoles,” as Bruce Kapferer, a member of the second generation, described its legacy (Kapferer and Bertelsen

40 Max Gluckman was, as a South-African Jew, somewhat marginal to the ‘very British’ anthropology of Oxford where he had held a research stipend in 1934-6. He conducted his first field work in political anthropology on Zululand between 1936-8, and later he worked on legal anthropology in Barotseland.

38 2010). In this vein, the practitioners of the Manchester School methodologically pioneered situational analysis, extended case studies, and network analysis (see Epstein 1967).

In his seminal paper ‘Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand,’ first published in 1940/42, Gluckman (1958) pioneered the situational analysis as method. In the piece, which is colloquially referred to as ‘The Bridge,’ Gluckman explained the multi-scalar spatial as well as the multiple historical dimensions of the contemporary South African segregationist political economy, opening out from the perceptive ethnography of the opening of a road bridge. He detailed, for instance, spatial practices (like modes of travelling on and “celebrating”

infrastructure) and bodily practices (walking, dressing, saluting, talking, translating, eating and drinking together or apart) to represent the power relations between colonial state officials, royal Zulu, Zulu commoners, and the Anthropologist.⁴¹ Arguing against the study of ethnic groups as discretely bounded entities, he investigated how the infrastructures were appropriated by diverse social subgroups, emphasising their overlapping, multiple, and asymmetrical social ties in one “African-White community” (Gluckman 1958, 1). By paying nuanced attention to the construction, social usages, and symbolisms of roads and bridges, Gluckman became a founding figure of the anthropology of the road (see 1.3 below). In another situational analysis, Mitchell (1956) captured the emerging African ethno-nationalisms by focusing on spatial appropriations of urbanity in popular dance competitions, analysing dress style, song texts, and dance steps.

Situational analysis informs my method, as I move beyond “apt descriptions” of state theories and provide contextualized descriptions of socio-spatial processes from the vantage point of the experiences of a small set of actors, in order to establish their positionality within, through or against several scales of state relations.

Situational analysis was further advanced and morphed in Victor Turner’s classic ‘Schism and Continuity in an African Society’ first published in 1957 (Turner 1996). In a rare ethnographic achievement, Turner closely shadowed an unlikely pretender to village headmanship, Sandombu, and his village group over four years. On this material, gained through participant observation and enriched by interview material reaching back another couple of years, Turner developed the “social drama,” a milestone of what later became known as the extended case study method (Gluckman 1961; van Velsen 1967; C. Mitchell 1983;

Burawoy 2009). In his monograph, Turner represented several related events first descriptively, then interpretatively, to tease out local structures of action. Thus, Turner detailed and explained the strategies and tactics of one social actor, within but also challenging the social institution of

41 At the day’s end Gluckman joined a political meeting of Zulu leaders with the white District Officer.

39 matrilineal male succession to local state office. When Sandombu’s ambitions for village headmanship were forestalled by his adversaries, this led to breaches in their kin relations. The ensuing social drama was temporarily attenuated by what Turner came to call “rituals of affliction” (Turner 1996, 93; Turner 1968).

The extended case method was later refined into social network analysis, conceptualised as the analysis of social practices reinforcing or subverting structures. Arnold Epstein, for instance, followed an urban Zambian interlocutor into beer parlours, road junctions, and housing quarters in order to understand how his social networks emerged through interactions (Epstein 1969b). The researcher also reconstructed the paths gossip took through such networks and highlighted the relation-producing qualities of shared gossip/discourses (Epstein 1969a).

This methodological innovation – qualitative network analysis – is an important heuristic for a relational anthropology of the state: it makes it possible to capture incipient and transforming social relations, the “real” stuff of the imagined State, as Radcliffe-Brown argued in the epigraph.

However, in the political circumstances of Southern Africa and Great Britain in the 1940s to 1960s, Manchester Anthropologists could not openly declare their radical politics without reprisals and prosecutions, as they learned the hard way (see Frankenberg 1990b). Furthermore, the concepts of emergence and agency were not familiar in the Manchester heyday. Therefore, Gluckman drew on ‘as if equilibrium analysis’ to develop models of the reproduction of political formations and of profound social change (‘revolution’) (Gluckman 1968).⁴² This reinforced his reputation as a ‘timeless’ structural-functionalist, even though he and his network prefigured process theories by a generation (Vincent 1978; Vincent 1986).⁴³

In sum, the Manchester School investigated relational power asymmetries on several socio-spatial scales, and they were keen on historical contextualisation and interested in the

42 Gluckman developed his analysis – which always factored in change – as a critical response to the ahistorical equilibrium models of neo-classical economics. However, from today’s vantage point, the problem arises how equilibrium (as an idea or as a state) can be achieved amidst constant flux.

43 In the 1970s, structuralist Marxist anthropologists distanced themselves from Manchester’s perceived lack of radicalism. Their structuralism came under attack in the 1980s by Post-Marxists who re-emphasized the (albeit limited) agency of actors in constructing their social fields (Bourdieu 1984) and in structuring their structures (Giddens 1984). The materialist critique of Post-Marxism by Latour and others then imbued technological change with the power of agency. However, the new “symmetrical” or “flat” approach (Latour 1993; 2005) deemphasised questions of asymmetrical power relations. Marxists answered by accentuating historical depth, spatial breadth and comparison (Mintz 1986; Roseberry 1997a; Wolf 1982; 1999), or they embraced the new materialism arguing that it was “difficult to think about materiality, or to think materially about the social, without thinking about Marxism” (Maurer 2006, 13). In any case agency and relational research now appeared as post-Marxist inventions.

The confusion reached its apogee when one influential anthropologist working on Zambia misrepresented Mancunians as “liberals” and offered his perspective as a theoretically and politically radical innovation (Ferguson 1999, 32; for a critique, see Kapferer 2005b, 97, 117–18). Only since the 2000s has the Manchester approach been rehabilitated from overdrawn misreading (Schumaker 2001; Evens and Handelman 2006; Burawoy 2009).

40 emergence, reproduction and passing of relations through discursive and material practices. The school’s fruitful methods and theoretical interests are thus translatable into new avenues for researching emerging state relations. Importantly, the Manchester discussions on the

“intercalary position” of the village headman, which I will turn to next, prefigured a focus on the conflictive embeddedness of local state actors in the interface with multiple social spaces.

Embeddedness: from intercalary role to interface positionality

In his “Social Analysis in Modern Zululand” (introduced above), Max Gluckman casually represented the criticism of colonial rule immanent in local state relations, citing for instance the perspective of his host Matolana, a representative and advisor of the Zulu king. Gluckman set out to drive Matolana to the bridge, when they were greeted by a government policeman (a Zulu) who had just caught an accused thief with the help of Matolana’s private police:

Matolana upbraided the prisoner, saying he would have no izigebengu (scoundrels) in his district; then he turned to the policeman and criticized Government which expected him and his private police to assist it in arresting dangerous people, but paid them nothing for this work and would not compensate their dependants if they were killed. He then pointed out that he, who worked many hours administering the law for Government, had no salary;

he had a good mind to stop doing this work and go back to the mines where he used to earn ten pounds a month as a ‘boss-boy’ (Gluckman 1958, 3).

In footnotes, Gluckman alluded that Matolana’s criticism might be taken with a grain of salt, because he presumably profited from his entitlement to try civil cases, like his private police which “get a small part of courtfees” (Gluckman 1958, 2 fn.2, 3 fn.1).In this scene we already see the relational dilemmas of the famous “village headman of central Africa” developed later by Gluckman, Mitchell and Barnes (1949). Village headmanship was a local government position filled by a local actor who was often appointed by – and always also responsible to – the colonial administration. As I will develop next, a headman navigated between conforming, resigning, self-interested action, and social rebellion, much like local state actors today.

Conforming. The village headman, “in his personal and in his dual corporate links […]

interlocks two distinct systems of social relations and therefore the attitudes of his followers to him are fundamentally ambivalent” (Gluckman, Mitchell, and Barnes 1949, 93). The contradictory demands on village headmen from the population they governed and from the colonial authorities they were responsible to rendered their “intercalary role” strenuous.⁴⁴ They could not maintain their position without at least partly conforming to the contradictory demands of one relation (e.g. from outside the village), but by this very act of conforming they

44 The term intercalary role was used only later. Gluckman (2013, ix) claimed he borrowed it from Meyer Fortes.

41 might already compromise the interests of another relation (e.g. from within the village kin-group).

Resigning. Lloyd Fallers developed this dilemma of the village headman into a role analysis of a conflict between bureaucratic and personalised demands. Fallers showed how line officers (social protection workers) in the colonial Ugandan office felt frustrated by the policies and bureaucratic demands formulated in policy centres far removed from their point of duty (Fallers 1956, 209). Further down the line, the Ugandan chiefs had also fully internalised “the civil service norm of disinterestedness and the personal ties of kinship and clientship” (Fallers 1955, 302). Social conflicts between subordinate chiefs and their superiors (who had themselves internalised both value sets and situationally stressed the norms that worked in their interest), resulted in a high rate of resignation of chiefs. Those who managed to remain in office

“achieved [it] at considerable psychic cost” (Fallers 1955, 303). Beyond that, in the Welsh village Pendriwaithe studied by Ronald Frankenberg, community organisers juggled five conflicting relations. Their initiatives to advance the community spirit through football faltered as they wore themselves out between football organising, two parish churches, their families, neighbourhoods, and occupations (Frankenberg 1990 [1957]). To concentrate Fallers point, we might say option two for intercalary position holders was resigning.⁴⁵

Self-interestedness. Adam Kuper (1970) reformulated the argument to differentiate between two sets of relational dilemma. First, the ‘intercalary dilemma’ portrayed the state official as in a mediating position within vertical relations: “[A]s a servant of the government [he] must respond to the demands of his superiors. However, his people expect him to represent their interests as against the often uncomprehending and unpopular alien regime.” Second, the

‘domestic dilemma’ was that “subjects want their leader to be unbiased and to act in the interests of the community as a whole. However, in particular cases members of his faction or special interest groups also expect him to favor them. The values invoked […] are […] kinship, friendship, and neighborliness […] and objectivity and judicious leadership” (Kuper 1970, 356). Based on his Kalahari material, Kuper argued we “should be aware of [how] the balance of obligations and demands” created room for manoeuver (Kuper 1970, 357). In this vein Romanian mayors, for instance, subverted central restitution policies and enriched themselves (Verdery 2002) or reproduced local social hierarchies (see Dorondel and Popa 2014). The third option of local state actors was therefore self-interested action.

45 The resignation option was further problematized by Leonard Mars (1976) who found that Israeli co-operative administrators had to deal with three sets of political relations – with the cooperative villagers, the administrative hierarchy, and party politics, so that many quit before their end of term.

42 Social rebellion. However, the possibilities of navigating intercalary and domestic dilemmas were not exhausted by self-interested action, as the second generation Manchester anthropologist Norman Long showed more recently (Long 2001, 81–3, chapter 9). In Long’s account, an agricultural extension officer, técnico Roberto, tried to establish himself by innovating agricultural services for Mexican villagers. The initially sceptical villagers (might) find these unrequested services useful. Instead of self-interestedness, Roberto discursively practiced what I call ‘social rebellion,’ a newly emergent form of organisation at the “interface”

between rebellion and revolution.⁴⁶ The term social rebellion is my own, but it harks back to Max Gluckman’s analyses of rebellion and revolution in African states.⁴⁷

As became obvious, the influences on a local state actor cannot be determined a priori but have to be empirically explored. Consequently, Long translated the idea of the “intercalary position” into a more open-ended “interface” approach to the state. An interface was defined as

“critical points of intersection between different social fields, domains or lifeworlds, where social discontinuities based upon differences in values, social interests and power are found”

(Long 2001, 177). Referencing especially James Scott (1985),⁴⁸ Long stressed four modalities operative in the state interface: power, resistance, accommodation and strategic compliance, resulting in “newly emergent forms of organization and understanding” (Long 2001, 71, 177).

Combining the interface paradigm with the intercalary role perspective, we can think of local state actors as engaging these modalities in three interface types.

Interface Type 1 denotes the front line work between local state actors and the diverse fractions of the population outside state employment.

Interface Type 2 relates to local state work in collaboration or collision with other local state actors in similar positions.

Interface Type 3 means ties of local state actors to superiors and managers on the same or higher scales of the state.

The positionality of a local state actor can thus become very complicated. A local politician for instance may be a Vice President of the Municipal Parliament, an advisor to the President of the Municipality, a member of two Parliamentary committees, a party member, a

46 Roberto in the end failed to deliver the promised services because he was quickly transferred by his alert unit manager. As a result the villagers resumed their temporarily suspended critical state discourse.

47 According to Gluckman (1956, 28) rebellion happened if “subordinates turn against a leader […] to turn him out of that office and to install another in it. […] A revolution aims to alter the nature of political offices and of the social structure in which they function, and not merely to change the incumbents in persisting offices.”

48 James Scott has been an influential figure in peasant studies. Inspired by cultural Marxism (Moral Economy) as well as by the Manchester School, Scott developed an anarchist approach to the state. Thus, he tended to see the state as an all-seeing, self-interested and potentially violent force (Scott 1998), tending to treat it as a powerful Subject. Society was portrayed as resistant to the state’s hierarchical logics, e.g. through rebellion (Scott 1976), acts of sabotage (Scott 1985), hidden transcripts (Scott 1990) or avoidance (Scott 2009).

43 veterinarian, a local football club organiser, a school friend, a son, a husband, a father, a neighbour, a friend, an enemy, and a patron (see Chapter Two). It is impossible to act on all multiple social identities with the same intensity all the time. The switching between social identities (Elwert 2002; Rottenburg 2005) therefore becomes a situational necessity which can be studied at the interface. Sometimes, spatial and temporal markers suggest the switching and highlighting/shading of certain identities. Thus, after office closing time, or on a holiday in their home region, government officials tend to feel “off-state,” although their relations may often try to activate their state identity (Benda-Beckmann and Benda-Beckmann 1998). The way the local state actors navigate their complex relational identities in multiple social fields – by conforming, resigning, acting self-interestedly or socially rebelling – has to do with their ability to occupy productive positions in their network. To study the embeddedness of local state actors is therefore the first axis in my relational anthropology of the state.

I will now turn to one example of Manchester’s analysis on local state actors’ embeddedness – the urban welfare officer. The complexity of the welfare apparatus suggested an analysis of the interface construction of knowledge and power in relations with welfare recipients.

Manchester and welfare

Local welfare state relations have been analysed by the Mancunian Don Handelman as forming in a triad of “bureaucratic world views,” bureaucratic practices, and “emerging welfare relations” (Handelman 1976; 1978; 1980; 2004). As part of the Bernstein project in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Handelman had conducted an urban ethnography of a Jerusalem old age home and a municipal welfare department. His postdoctoral studies led him to research welfare bureaucrats in Newfoundland. In his articles on welfare work, Handelman retrospectively analysed welfare state relations using case documentation and interviews. Case files were analysed both as “actuarial” evidence of actions of social workers, and “contractual” recordings of opinions and sentiments by social workers to back up their administrative decisions (Handelman 1976, 235). Changes in the representation of a welfare client were dialectically linked to the emergent form of the welfare relation (see Handelman 1980, 2004). As the social worker’s assessment of a man in a complex, 19 year-long “welfare career” deteriorated, for example, the urgency and worth of cancelling the welfare state relationship changed;

influencing modalities like degrees of supportiveness and degrees of coerciveness (Handelman 1976). In subsequent research, Handelman (2004) constructed the “prospective history” of a case, observing the emerging and unstable knowledge of social workers on a presumed case of child abuse in Newfoundland. Observing the process of knowledge production, Handelman

44 shadowed the social workers’ interactions in several interfaces – with colleagues, the police, neighbours, a child, its parents, and its siblings (Handelman 1978).

Thus, the negotiated nature of welfare state relations emerged at (1) the interface contacts between social workers and other social fields constituted by networks of actors, mediated by the emerging “welfare relation”; (2) in discussions between colleagues within the bureaucratic social field; and (3) in report writing. Handelman’s research demonstrated how, as his Africanist contemporaries formulated, the “management of meaning is an expression of power, and the meanings so managed [are] a crucial aspect of social relations” (Cohen and Comaroff 1976, 102). I will take up “prospective history” by representing the emerging relations between an elder care worker, elders, and social workers in Chapter Six. I will also do retrospective history and reconstruct a 10-year-long “extended welfare state relation” in Chapter Five.

In sum, from the Manchester School’s work on state relations I have gleaned my first crucial axis of analysis, the embeddedness of local state actors. I now turn to the transformations in the anthropology and the sociology of the state since the 1970s.