[STS-Africa] Fwd: CfP: Patronage and the State as Politics-in-Conjunction | Online Workshop

[David Kananizadeh]

Dear all,

together with Jamal Bashir I am organizing this workshop on 
Patron-Client-Relationships. It may be of interest to some of you. 
Please forward to anyone interested and apologies for cross posting.

All the best,
David Kananizadeh

-- 
PhD Researcher
Graduate School "Society and Culture in Motion"
University of Halle
Reichardtstr. 6, 06114 Halle (Saale)
https://lost-research-group.org/staff/david-kananizadeh/


---

Call for Papers

Online-Workshop
*Patronage and the State as ‘Politics‐in‐Conjunction’*
February 9-10, 2021
Graduate School "Society & Culture in Motion", University of 
Halle-Wittenberg

We cordially invite applications for the two-day online workshop 
"Patronage and the State as ‘Politics-in-Conjunction’", which will be 
held online in February 9-10, 2021.

_*Theme:*_
In social scientific engagements with modern statehood, 
patron‐client‐relationships are on a rather complicated footing, 
regularly framed as state apparatuses’ wicked other. Whereas the modern 
state is understood as working through a bureaucratic process that 
facilitates a fair distribution of resources, 
patron‐client‐relationships emerge as “corrupt” and “ineffective” (cf. 
Asiimwe 2013). However, as more recent contributions (Chatterjee 2004, 
2011; Piliavsky 2014; Lyon 2019) have tried to show, often enough, it is 
exactly these networks that keep states “working” and provide them with 
legitimacy by mediating between state apparatuses and citizens in 
complicated ways. In this workshop, we will contribute to these debates 
by interrogating the relationship between patronage and the state as 
‘politics‐in‐conjunction’, i.e. exploring the ways patronage and the 
state are politically productive in relation to each other. Hereby, we 
focus on exploring the critical moments in which actors navigate between 
these two registers – patronage and the state – in holding politics 
accountable for the ways resources are distributed.

We understand patron‐client‐relationships as a form in which people 
“invest” (Thévenot 1984) to engage the uncertainties of resource 
scarcities and related constraining conditions (Scott 1972). By asking 
how equivalences are established in these relationships, we will inquire 
into the reciprocity at work therein, into how exchanges of service are 
measured, and into the materialities of measurement (cf. Boltanski and 
Thévenot 2006 [1991]). Rather than engaging patron‐client relationships 
merely as an ideal type, we will investigate the negotiations necessary 
to stabilize such relationships and their frequent contestation. While 
patronage as a system of exchange can be mobilized to problematize the 
distribution of resources, often enough, patron‐client‐relationships are 
themselves criticized by the actors involved with reference to other 
institutionalized forms (e.g. Scott 1985; Van der Linden 1997; 
Mannathukkaren 2010; Bolten 2013; Murphy 2017). Here, we interrogate 
patron‐client‐relationships not as isolated, but deeply entangled with 
other social institutions (e.g. kinship, gender, class) and principles 
of sociality, through which actors creatively navigate to make claims, 
pursue negotiations and contest resource flows. These moments of 
contestation provide fruitful insights into the ways patronage is 
accounted for and how these accounts relate to other regimes of 
accountability, like the technical‐financial accounting through which, 
ideally, the modern state distributes its resources (cf. Luhmann 1983 
[1969]). It is exactly in these moments in which actors translate 
between these different regimes, where notions of the common good are 
negotiated (cf. Boltanski and Thévenot 2006 [1991]). In what ways, then, 
do patronage and modern statehood supplement each other in accounting 
for the flows of resources and the inequalities produced therein?

_*Application:*_
Applications for participation are open to PhD students from all social 
science disciplines. interested applicants are requested to send a short 
abstract (250 words max) to david.kananizadeh at scm.uni-halle.de before 
January 4, 2021. Applicants will be notified of the outcome of the 
selection process by January 8, 2021.

_*Format and organization:*_
The workshop will be based on the discussion of pre‐circulated papers. 
Participants should hand in their full papers (up to 8000 words 
excluding bibliography) by January 25, 2021 to be distributed among the 
participants. Participants are expected to read all papers in advance 
and comment on them during the workshop. Papers will be introduced by 
the author with a short presentation followed by intensive discussion 
with the invited discussants. Due to the current Corona‐Pandemic, the 
workshop will be conducted online.

In case of any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at 
david.kananizadeh at scm.uni-halle.de. We are looking forward to your 
applications and eventual participation in the Workshop.

Best Regards & Happy Holidays,

The Workshop Organizers,

Jamal Ali Bashir
(Grad. School "Society & Culture in Motion", University of Halle-Wittenberg)
David Kananizadeh
(Grad. School "Society & Culture in Motion", University of 
Halle-Wittenberg; LOST Research Network)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wiser.org.za/pipermail/sts-africa/attachments/20201223/d6430653/attachment.htm>