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Governance at the Edge of the state: Recognition and Exclusion in Resource Frontiers
Provider: Faculty of Science

Activity no.: 5248-19-03-31There are no available seats
Enrollment deadline: 18/06/2019
Date and time26.08.2019, at: 09:00 - 30.08.2019, at: 14:00
Regular seats20
ECTS credits6.00
Contact personCharlotte Bukdahl Jacobsen    E-mail address: cja@ifro.ku.dk
Enrolment Handling/Course OrganiserMattias Borg Rasmussen    E-mail address: mbr@ifro.ku.dk
Teaching languageEnglish
Aim and content
In societies with legal and institutional pluralism, no single institution exercises the political authority as such. Especially, at resource frontiers, a multitude of actors compete to construct institutions and to define and enforce rights to resources and political identity; to property and citizenship. The expansion of capitalism produces contests over the definition and control of resources. On a global scale, new patterns of resource exploration, extraction, and commodification create new territories within a dynamic of frontiers and territorialisation. The ability to (re-)define resources, institutionalization and paperwork, and to exercise violence of enforcement, requires versatility, combinatory skills and capital in various forms.
Frontier dynamics dissolve existing social orders—property systems, political jurisdictions, rights, and social contracts—whereas territorialisation is shorthand for all the dynamics that establish them and re-order space anew. As new types of resource commodification emerge, institutional orders are sometimes undermined or erased, and sometimes reinterpreted, reinvented, and recycled. New property regimes, new forms of authority, and the attendant struggles for legitimacy over the ability to define proper uses and users follow frontier moments. Struggles over land and political identity are inherently open-ended, and different social contracts – of mutual recognition - of right and authority emerge and are challenged.
Recognition always creates exclusions. Such classificatory work becomes particularly evident on resource frontiers, where the establishment of new social contracts make room for new constellations between state and capital while erasing and marginalizing local modes of existence. We invite papers that investigate the social production of property and citizenship, and state formation, and how efforts to formalize and legalize claims to rights and authority intersect in contexts where contesting claims are made to resources such a territory, subsoil resources, water, agribusiness, and scenery. These encounters may include local, statutory and non-statutory institutions that compete over the exercise of political authority and the ability to govern access to resources, and, hence, the recognition of these rights.
Elizabeth Povinelli and Michael Watts are outstanding scholars of the governance of difference in struggles over resources, and recognition of rights to them. Moreover, both have engaged conundrum of political power speaking and acting through the state and its institutions, and the fact that it is at its very edge that conflicts over what may the state and governance be, are often roughed out. Yet, Povinelli and Watts address these issues from different quarters.
In her re-theorization of biopolitics, Povinelli offers explorations of the everyday ordinary suffering and endurance on the margins where violence colonizes social practices. Yet, such ordinary suffering suggests the centrality of perseverance and precarious survival; ‘the Otherwise’ as alternative social projects, that operate along the blurred lines between life and death created by the governance of the distinction between life and non-life. It is within these crammed spaces that what counts as subjects and life is defined. Here, where various modes of existence meet in social struggle over resources, recognition and identity, people operate as they experience the effects of late liberal governance.
Watts, on the other hand, examines powers embedded in the political economy and ecology and how they are exercised when the conditions of possibility allow. Resources, and the political power to control them are central in this Marxist perspective. Powers that control the material reality of life are fundamental, yet people often act in the face of uncertainty, and with a conditioned view of what is possible. Therefore, people’s own ideas about political futures, identity and organisation, are crucial elements of resource struggles.
The MasterClass for PhD students (limited to 25 participants) combines with an open conference. PhD students will participate all five days, whereas conference participants will participate in the conference only.

Learning outcome
Knowledge
1. Define key concepts: recognition, exclusion, governance, power
2. Describe how resource struggles are shaped by historical context
3. Explain how contemporary formations of power distribute resources unevenly

Skills
1. Dissect academic articles
2. Analyze governance in marginal spaces
3. Juxtapose different approaches to similar phenomena
4. Discuss how insights from one empirical context can be used to generate insights in another

Competencies
1. Critical engagement with theories of recognition and exclusion
2. Participate in academic debates on neoliberal governance of people and resource
3. Preparation and presentation of original work at conference

Literature
The course involves two sets of literature. A compulsory compendium contains key contributions by Povinelli and Watts. The students are furthermore expected to deliver a presentation of a draft manuscript at the conference. The compulsory reading list is as follows:
Povinelli, Elizabeth A.. 1995. "Do Rocks Listen?" American Anthropologist 97 (3):505-518. doi: doi:10.1525/aa.1995.97.3.02a00090.
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 1998b. "The State of Shame: Australian Multiculturalism and the Crisis of Indigenous Citizenship." Critical Inquiry 24 (2):575-610. doi: 10.1086/448886.
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2008. "The Child in the Broom Closet: States of Killing and Letting Die." South Atlantic Quarterly 107 (3):509-530. doi: 10.1215/00382876-2008-004.
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2016. The Three Figures of Geontologies in Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism.
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2018 "Horizons and Frontiers, Late Liberal Territoriality, and Toxic Habitats" https://www.e-flux.com/journal/90/191186/horizons-and-frontiers-late-liberal-territoriality-and-toxic-habitats/
Watts, M. 2018 The spatial turn and areas of limited statehood (co-authored with Timothy Raemaekers and Bendikt Korf), in The Oxford book of Governance and Limited Statehood, A. Draude, T. Boerzel and T.Risse (eds)., London: Oxford University Press, pp.167-190.
Watts, M. 2018. Frontiers: Precarity, authority and insurgency at the edge of the state, World Development, 101 May,pp.477-488.
Watts, M. 2015. Specters of Oil: The Photography of Ed Kashi, in Oil Subterranean estates: Life Worlds of the Oil and Gas. Ithaca. Cornell University Press, edited with Arthur Mason and Hannah Appel, pp.165-188.
Watts, M. 2017. Precarious Life, in Wali Adebanwi (ed)., The Political Economy of Everyday Life in Africa: Beyond the Margins; Essays in Honor of Jane Guyer. Indiana University Press, pp.177-215.
Watts, M. 2012. A tale of two gulfs: life, death and dispossession along two oil frontiers, American Quarterly, Vol. 64/3, pp.437-467 (reprinted in Paula Chakrabarty and Denise da Silva (eds)., Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime. Baltimore; The Johns Hopkins Press, 2013).

Teaching and learning methods
Teaching is based on three lectures, moderated group sessions, plenary discussions, and conference participation.
Students will engage with two eminent scholars – Elizabeth Povinelli and Michael Watts - around central concepts in their work and how they connect (power, class, identity, rights, structure, agency etc.). On the basis of assigned readings, students will work in supervised groups to discuss the texts and develop questions to be discussed with Povinelli and Watts. These questions can be epistemological, conceptual as well as methodological. Students will then, have sessions with Povinelli and Watts and discuss the questions they developed. Participants in the MasterClass must also submit a paper for the Conference and are expected to participate throughout.

Lecturers
Program:
Monday
9-11: Welcome and introductions by Christian Lund and Mattias Borg Rasmussen
11-12: Lecture by Michael Watts
12-13: Lunch
13-15: Moderated group sessions
15-17: Plenary discussion with Michael Watts
17-20: Course dinner

Tuesday
9-10: Lecture by Elizabeth Povinelli
10-12: Moderated group sessions
12-13: Lunch
13-15: Plenary discussion with Elizabeth Povinelli
15-17: Roundtable: Elizabeth Povinelli, Michael Watts, Christian Lund
18-20: Screening of film by Elizabeth Povinelli

Wednesday
12.30-13: Welcome by Christian Lund
13-14: Keynote by Michael Watts
14.30-17.30: Parallel Panel Session 1

Thursday:
9-12: Parallel Panel Session 2
12-13: Lunch
13-14: Keynote by Elizabeth Povinelli
14.30-17.30: Parallel panel session 3

Friday:
9-12 Parallel Panel Session 4
12-13: Lunch
13-14: Keynote by Nandini Sundar

Workload
Category Hours
Lectures 6,5
Moderated Group work 4
Plenary discussions 6
Conference panel participation 12
Masterclass preparation 40
Conference preparation 109,5
Total 180

Remarks
Academic qualifications
Enrollment in relevant phd program

Exam
Credits: 6 ETCS
Type of assessment: Active course participation; paper presentation; submission of conference paper
Marking scale: Pass/fail
Censorship form: Internal examination

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