Research Article


DOI :10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357   IUP :10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357    Full Text (PDF)

Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation

Orhan Hayal

This paper looks at nonhuman forms of state formation. The state is a socio-material assemblage of human and nonhuman materials, technologies, natural forces, and etc.. It is neither a rational human actor or an instrument, nor is it an ideologic reification that conceals real social domination and exploitation, nor is it a sociolinguistic construction that codifies multiple and dispersed governmental techniques. The fact that the state is constructed does not preclude it from being an actual entity with real effects. This paper considers paperwork and infrastructure as apparent materializations of state power. Paper production and its circulation within routine bureaucratic practices, as well as infrastructural technologies that drive natural forces, bring the state together while also allowing it to govern over people and land. Infrastructures are actants that form state-citizen interactions. There are competing political ambitions, economic interests, expertise, technology, and materials underlying their construction and maintenance. Modifications in their composition and function over time affect citizens’ perceptions and their conduct toward the state. As opposed to the dualist ontology of social constructivism, which implies a contradiction between nature and culture, matter and meaning, origin and construction, this paper argues that state formation is an ongoing process in the continuity and entanglement of so-called dualities.

DOI :10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357   IUP :10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357    Full Text (PDF)

Evraklar ve Maddi Altyapıların Öbekleşmesi: Modern Devlet Oluşumu Üzerine Yeni Materyalist Bir Sorgulama

Orhan Hayal

Bu makale devlet oluşumunun insan olmayan biçimlerini ele almaktadır. Devlet insan ve insan olmayan materyallerin, teknolojilerin, doğal kuvvetlerin, vd. sosyo-materyal öbekleşmesidir. Ne insan-benzeri rasyonel bir aktör ya da şey-benzeri bir araç, ne gerçek toplumsal tahakküm ve sömürüyü gizleyen ideolojik bir şeyleştirme, ne de çoklu ve dağınık yönetim tekniklerini kodlayan sosyo-dilbilimsel bir inşadır. Devletin inşa olması, onun gerçek etkilere sahip aktüel bir varlık olmasını engellemez. Bu makale evrak işlerini ve altyapıyı devlet iktidarının en belirgin maddileşmeleri olarak değerlendirir. Rutin bürokratik pratikler içerisindeki kâğıt üretimi ve dolaşımı, doğal kuvvetleri harekete geçiren altyapı teknolojileri devleti bir araya getirirken aynı zamanda insanlar ve ülke üzerinde iktidar icra etmesini sağlar. Altyapılar devlet-yurttaş etkileşimlerini biçimlendiren eyleyicidirler. İnşaları ve sürdürülmelerinin ardında rakip siyasal hırslar, ekonomik çıkarlar, uzmanlıklar, teknolojiler ve materyaller vardır. Bunların bileşiminde ve işlevinde zaman içinde meydana gelen değişiklikler, yurttaşların devlete dair algılarını ve tutumlarını etkiler. Bu makale, sosyal inşacılığın doğa ve kültür, madde ve anlam, köken ve inşa arasında çelişki varsayan düalist ontolojisinin aksine devlet oluşumunun sözde ikiliklerin sürekliliği ve dolanıklığında devam eden bir süreç olduğunu savunmaktadır.


PDF View

References

  • Abrams, P. (1988). Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State. Journal of Historical Sociology, 1(1), 58-89. google scholar
  • Adalet, B. (2018). Hotels and Highways: The Construction of Modernization Theory in Cold War Turkey. Stanford: Stanford University Press. google scholar
  • Akpınar, Ö. (2021). Making Property of a Marsh: Environment, Property, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Ioannina. Middle Eastern Studies, 58(4), 487-503. google scholar
  • Almond, G. A. (1960). Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics. In G. A. Almond & J. S. Coleman (Eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas (pp. 3-64). New Jersey: Princeton University Press. google scholar
  • Anand, N. (2015). Leaky states: Water audits, ignorance, and the politics of infrastructure. Public Culture, 27(2), 305-330. google scholar
  • Anand, N. (2017). Hydraulic city: Water and the infrastructures of citizenship in Mumbai. Durham, UK: Duke University Press. google scholar
  • Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. google scholar
  • Aretxaga, B. (2003). Maddening States. Annual Review of Anthropology, 32, 393-410. google scholar
  • Asdal, K. (2015). What is the Issue? The Transformative Capacity of Documents. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 16(1), 74-90. google scholar
  • Aydemir, Ş. S. (1987). Suyu Arayan Adam. İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi. google scholar
  • Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press. google scholar
  • Barak, O. (2020). Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization. California: University of Colifornia Press. google scholar
  • Barrow, C. W. (1993). Critical Theories of the State: Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Post-Marxist. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. google scholar
  • Barry, A. (2001). Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society. London: Athlone Press. google scholar
  • Barry, A. (2013). Material Politics: Disputes Along the Pipeline. Malden: Wiley Blackwell. google scholar
  • Behrent, M. C. (2013). Foucault and Technology. History and Technology, 29(1), 54-104. google scholar
  • Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham and London: Duke University Press. google scholar
  • Biebricher, T., & Vogelmann, F. (2012). Governmentality and State Theory: Reinventing the Reinvented Wheel? Theory & Event, 15(3). google scholar
  • Bolanos, I. A. (2022). Water, Engineers, and French Environmental Imaginaries of Ottoman Iraq, 1868-1908. 27(4), 772-798. google scholar
  • Bourdieu, P. (1994). Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field. Sociological Theory, 12(1), 1-18. google scholar
  • Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge: MIT Press. google scholar
  • Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press. google scholar
  • Burke, P. (2008). A Social History of Knowledge From Gutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge: Polity Press. google scholar
  • Callon, M., & Latour, B. (1981). Unscrewing the Big Levithan: How actors macrostructure reality and how sociologists help them do so. In K. Knorr-Cetina & A. Cicourel (Eds.), Advances in Social Theory and Methodology (pp. 277-303). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. google scholar
  • Carroll, P. (2006). Science, Culture and Modern State Formation. Berkeley: University of California Press. google scholar
  • Collier, S. J. (2011). Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics. google scholar
  • Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. L. (2000). Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming. Public Culture, 12(2), 291-343. google scholar
  • Connolly, W. E. (2013). The ‘New Materialism’ and the Fragility of Things. Millennium, 41(3), 399-412. google scholar
  • Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010). Introducing the New Materialisms. In D. Coole & S. Frost (Eds.), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (pp. 1-43). London: Duke University Press. google scholar
  • Corrigan, P., & Sayer, D. (1985). The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell. google scholar
  • Curtis, B. (1995). Taking the State Back Out: Rose and Miller on Political Power. British journal of sociology, 46(4), 575-589. google scholar
  • Dalakoglou, D. (2017). The Road: An Ethnography of (Im)mobility, Space, and Cross-Border Infrastructure in the Balkans. Manchester: Manchester University Press. google scholar
  • DeLanda, M. (2006). A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum. google scholar
  • Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. google scholar
  • Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2007). Dialogues II (H. Tomlinson & B. Habberjam, Trans.). Columbia University Press: New York. google scholar
  • Dittmer, J. (2017). Diplomatic Material: Affect, Assemblage, and Foreign Policy. Durham: Duke University Press. Easton, D. (1963). The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Evans, P. B., Rueschemeyer, D., & Skocpol, T. (1985). Bringing the State Back In (P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, & T. Skocpol Eds.). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. google scholar
  • Ferguson, J., & Gupta, A. (2002). Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality. American ethnologist, 29(4), 981-1002. google scholar
  • Foucault, M. (1980). The Confession of the Flesh. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 (pp. 194-228). New York: Pantheon Books. google scholar
  • Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books. google scholar
  • Foucault, M. (2005). Hakikat ve İktidar (I. Ergüden, O. Akınhay, & F. Keskin, Trans.). In Entelektüel Siyasi İşlevi: Seçme Yazılar 1 (pp. 59-85). İstanbul: Ayrıntı. google scholar
  • Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-78 (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. google scholar
  • Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-79 (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. google scholar
  • Fox, N. J., & Alldred, P. (2017). Sociology and the New Materialism: Theory, Research, Action. Los Angeles: Sage. google scholar
  • Gandy, M. (1999). The Paris Sewers and the Rationalization of Urban Space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24(1), 23-44. google scholar
  • Gratien, C. (2022). The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier. Stanford: Stanford University Press. google scholar
  • Guldi, J. (2012). Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. google scholar
  • Gupta, A. (1995). Blurred boundaries: The discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state. American ethnologist, 22(2), 375-402. google scholar
  • Hansen, T. B., & Stepputat, F. (2001). Introduction: States of Imagination. In T. B. Hansen & F. Stepputat (Eds.), States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State (pp. 1-38). Durham: Duke University Press. google scholar
  • Harvey, P. (2018). Infrastructures in and out of Time: The Promise of Roads in Contemporary Peru. In N. Anand, A. Gupta, & H. Appel (Eds.), The Promise of Infrastructure (pp. 80-101). Durham, UK: Duke University Press. google scholar
  • Harvey, P., & Knox, H. (2012). The Enchantments of Infrastructure. Mobilities, 7(4), 521-536. google scholar
  • Hilts, H. (1948). Türkiye’nin Yol Durumu. Ankara. google scholar
  • Hull, M. S. (2012). Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press. google scholar
  • Isin, E. F. (2007). City.State: Critique of Scalar Thought. Citizenship Studies, 11(2), 211-228. google scholar
  • Jessop, B. (1982). The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods. Oxford: Martin Robertson. google scholar
  • Jessop, B. (2007). From Micro-powers to Governmentality: Foucault’s Work on Statehood, State Formation, Statecraft and State Power. Political Geography, 26, 34-40. google scholar
  • Jessop, B. (2008). Devlet Teorisi: Kapitalist Devleti Yerine Oturtmak (A. Özcan, Trans.). Ankara: Epos. google scholar
  • Joyce, P. (2003). The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso. google scholar
  • Joyce, P. (2013). The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. google scholar
  • Joyce, P., & Bennett, T. (2010). Material Powers: Introduction. In T. Bennett & P. Joyce (Eds.), Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn (pp. 21-64). London: Routledge. google scholar
  • Kafka, B. (2012). The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork. New York: Zone Books. google scholar
  • Latour, B. (1986). Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands. In H. Kuklick (Ed.), Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present Vol. 6 (pp. 1-40): Jai Press. google scholar
  • Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. google scholar
  • Latour, B. (1996). On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications. Soziale Welt, 47(4), 369-381. google scholar
  • Latour, B. (2010a). An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto”. New Literary History, 41(3), 471-490. google scholar
  • Latour, B. (2010b). The Making of Law: An Ethnography of the Conseil d’Etat (M. Brilman & A. Pottage, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press. google scholar
  • Law, J. (1992). Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity. Systems Practice, 5(4), 379-393. google scholar
  • Legg, S. (2009). Of Scales, Networks and Assemblages: The League of Nations Apparatus and the Scalar Sovereignty of the Government of India. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34(2), 234-253. google scholar
  • Lemke, T. (2007). An Indigestible Meal? Foucault, Governmentality and State Theory. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 15, 43-64. google scholar
  • Li, T. M. (2007). Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Durham: Duke University Press. google scholar
  • Low, M. C. (2020). Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj. New York: Columbia University Press. google scholar
  • Marston, S. A., Jones III, J. P., & Woodward, K. (2005). Human Geography without Scale. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(4), 416-432. google scholar
  • Mitchell, T. (1999). Society, Economy and the State Effect. In G. Steinmetz (Ed.), State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn (pp. 76-97). İthaca: Cornell University Press. google scholar
  • Mitchell, T. (2002). Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. California: University of California Press. google scholar
  • Molnar, V. (2016). The Power of Things: Material Culture as Political Resource. Qualitative Sociology, 39(2), 205-210. google scholar
  • Mukerji, C. (1997). Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. google scholar
  • Mukerji, C. (2003). Intelligent Uses of Engineering and the Legitimacy of State Power. Technology and Culture, 44(4), 655-676. google scholar
  • Mukerji, C. (2010a). The Territorial State as a Figured World of Power: Strategics, Logistics, and Impersonal Rule. Sociological Theory, 28(4), 402-424. google scholar
  • Mukerji, C. (2010b). The Unintended State. In T. Bennett & P. Joyce (Eds.), Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn (pp. 178-220). London: Routledge. google scholar
  • Olsen, B. (2010). In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects. Lanham: AltaMira Press. google scholar
  • Otter, C. (2002). Making Liberalism Durable: Vision and Civility in the Late Victorian City. Social History, 27(1), 1-15. google scholar
  • Painter, J. (2006). Prosaic Geographies of Stateness. Political Geography, 25(7), 752-774. google scholar
  • Petriat, P. (2014). For Pilgrims and for Trade: Merchants and Public Works in Ottoman Jeddah. Turkish Historical Review, 5, 200-220. google scholar
  • Poulantzas, N. (2000). State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso. google scholar
  • Prakash, G. (1999). Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. google scholar
  • Protevi, J. (2013). Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. google scholar
  • Rekret, P. (2018). The Head, the Hand, and Matter: New Materialism and the Politics of Knowledge. Theory, Culture & Society, 35(7-8), 49-72. google scholar
  • Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government. British journal of sociology, 173-205. google scholar
  • Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. google scholar
  • Sharma, A., & Gupta, A. (2006). Introduction: Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age of Globalization. In A. google scholar
  • Sharma & A. Gupta (Eds.), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (pp. 1-41). Malden: Blackwell Publishing. google scholar
  • Skocpol, T. (2004). Devletler ve Toplumsal Devrimler: Fransa, Rusya ve Çin’in Karşılaştırmalı Bir Çözümlemesi (S. E. Türközü, Trans.). Ankara: İmge Kitabevi. google scholar
  • Sneddon, C., & Fox, C. (2011). The Cold War, the US Bureau of Reclamation, and the Technopolitics of River Basin Development, 1950-1970. Political Geography, 30(8), 450-460. google scholar
  • Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces. Information Systems Research, 7(1), 111-134. google scholar
  • Steinmetz, G. (1999). State/Culture: State-Formaton after the Cultural Turn. London: Cornell University Press. google scholar
  • Tekeli, İ., & İlkin, S. (2004). Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda 19. Yüzyılda Araba Teknolojisi ve Karayolu Yapımındaki Gelişmeler. In Cumhuriyetin Harcı 3: Modernitenin Altyapısı Oluşurken (pp. 63-122). İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları. google scholar
  • Tilly, C. (1985). War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. In P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, & T. Skocpol (Eds.), Bringing the State Back In (pp. 169-186). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. google scholar
  • Trouillot, M. R. (2001). The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization: Close Encounters of the Deceptive Kind. Current Anthropology, 42(1), 125-138. google scholar
  • Tütengil, C. O. (1961). İçtimai ve İktisadi Bakımdan Türkiye’nin Karayolları. İstanbul: Elif Kitabevi. google scholar
  • Von Schnitzler, A. (2016). Democracy’s Infrastructure: Techno-politics & Protest after Apartheid. Princeton: Princeton University Press. google scholar
  • Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (E. Fischoff, H. Gerth, A. M. Henderson, F. Kolegar, C. W. Mills, T. Parsons, M. Rheinstein, G. Roth, E. Shils, & C. Wittich, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press. google scholar

Citations

Copy and paste a formatted citation or use one of the options to export in your chosen format


EXPORT



APA

Hayal, O. (2024). Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation. Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences, 33(1), 133-149. https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357


AMA

Hayal O. Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation. Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences. 2024;33(1):133-149. https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357


ABNT

Hayal, O. Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation. Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences, [Publisher Location], v. 33, n. 1, p. 133-149, 2024.


Chicago: Author-Date Style

Hayal, Orhan,. 2024. “Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation.” Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences 33, no. 1: 133-149. https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357


Chicago: Humanities Style

Hayal, Orhan,. Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation.” Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences 33, no. 1 (May. 2024): 133-149. https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357


Harvard: Australian Style

Hayal, O 2024, 'Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation', Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 133-149, viewed 7 May. 2024, https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357


Harvard: Author-Date Style

Hayal, O. (2024) ‘Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation’, Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences, 33(1), pp. 133-149. https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357 (7 May. 2024).


MLA

Hayal, Orhan,. Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation.” Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences, vol. 33, no. 1, 2024, pp. 133-149. [Database Container], https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357


Vancouver

Hayal O. Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation. Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences [Internet]. 7 May. 2024 [cited 7 May. 2024];33(1):133-149. Available from: https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357 doi: 10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357


ISNAD

Hayal, Orhan. Assembling Paperwork and Material Infrastructures: A New Materialist Inquiry on Modern State Formation”. Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences 33/1 (May. 2024): 133-149. https://doi.org/10.26650/siyasal.2024.33.1307357



TIMELINE


Submitted30.05.2023
Accepted29.12.2023
Published Online19.04.2024

LICENCE


Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.


SHARE




Istanbul University Press aims to contribute to the dissemination of ever growing scientific knowledge through publication of high quality scientific journals and books in accordance with the international publishing standards and ethics. Istanbul University Press follows an open access, non-commercial, scholarly publishing.