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'Society Despite the State asks why the state endures. ... A probing, panoramic analysis that also brilliantly models creative pathways into critical pedagogies and methodologies' Ruth Kinna, Professor of Political Theory, Loughborough University
'An accessible, expansive and beautifully written intervention in critical social theory. It will spur readers to reconsider the "silent statism" in prevailing ways of knowing our shared world' Alex Prichard, Associate Professor of International Political Theory, University of Exeter
The logic of the state has come to define social and spatial relations, embedding itself into our understandings of the world and our place in it. Anthony Ince and Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre challenge this logic as the central pivot around which knowledge and life orbit, by exposing its vulnerabilities, contradictions and, crucially, alternatives.
Society Despite the State disrupts the dominance of state-centred ways of thinking by presenting a radical political geography approach inspired by anarchist thought and practice. The book draws on a broad range of voices that have affinities with Western anarchism but also exceed it.
This book challenges radicals and scholars to confront and understand the state through a way of seeing and a set of intellectual tools that the authors call 'post-statism'. In de-centring the state's logics and ways of operating, the authors incorporate a variety of threads to identify alternative ways to understand and challenge statism's effects on our political imaginations.
Anthony Ince is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University.
Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University.
List of contents
Introduction
1. The Anti-Authoritarian Family
Vignette I: Counterfactual Statism
2. Threads of the State
3. Myths of the State
Vignette II: We Are the Romans
4. Statist Timescapes
Vignette III: Are We Afraid of Ruins?
5. Naturalising the State
6. Un/making Order
Vignette IV: A Conversation Across / Beyond / Despite Worlds
7. Seeking Post-Statist Horizons
About the author
Anthony Ince is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University. He has been active within radical movements for more than a decade. He primarily studies issues around human agency, and the capacity of people in different contexts to collectively self-manage the affairs of life.
Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre holds a PhD in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. His research focuses on the political ecology of forest conservation, historical geography, post-statist geographies and participatory cartography.
Summary
A sharp, critical perspective on what the state is and does, drawing on anarchist, decolonial and indigenous thought
