Abstract: Anthropological accounts of the state are often voiced from the perspective of the public, demonstrating the potential for danger or illegibility in encounters with the state. Less has been said, however, about how functionaries of the state perceive their interactions with the public. This perspectival bias needs to be overcome through ethnographies of the state, which can help scholars to look critically at our understanding of the state in everyday practice. This article examines one such “illegible” state bureaucracy, the Immigration Services Branch of the South African Department of Home Affairs, documenting some of the factors which inform the actions of street-level bureaucrats. It illustrates how officials develop systems of meaning to help them navigate the challenges posed by a mysterious populace and an unpredictable management hierarchy, and to effectively stabilize these two unstable entities. These systems of meaning also enable officials to act in ways which might run counter to official discourse, while simultaneously upholding its legitimacy. Their efforts at stabilization therefore incite a destabilization of the state, leading it to appear as “magical” or “illegible” to the public.

TRANSFORMING RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES INTO ETHNIES: THE PROCESS OF LEBANESE NATION-BUILDING 1920-1958 G&uuml / rcan, AySe Ezgi MSc., Graduate Program of Middle East Studies Supervisor: Dr. Erdogan Yildirim August 2007, 100 pages This thesis analyzes the process of nation-building in Lebanon in an historical context, covering the period staring from the declaration of the French Mandate in 1920 until the first civil war of 1958. The thesis defines nation-building as a process of transformation of the pre-modern form of religious identity into the modern ethnic and/or ethno-national identity, which develops along with state-making. In contrast to the claims in the literature that label all non-Western nation-building and state-making as deficient processes emerged as a result of the direct effects of Western colonialism, this study aims to establish an alternative approach in understanding the process of Lebanese nation-building. In this context the thesis evaluates the validity of the premises of the modern nationalism approaches in the literature on questions such as how far colonialism can be labeled as the primary source of Third World nationalism(s), and to what extent the nation-building processes were successful. The thesis claims that the Lebanese case presents a complex case, since nation-building was emerged not only emerged as a result of Western colonialism and power struggles but also did materialize because of the power struggles between and within domestic (Lebanon), regional (Arab states) and international (Europe and Ottoman Empire) actors.

This thesis addresses the relationship between sectarianism and state-making and nation-building in Iraq. It argues that sectarianism has been an enduring feature of the state-making trajectory in Iraq due to the failure of the modern nation-state to resolve inherent tensions between primordial sectarian identities and concepts of unified statehood and uniform citizenry. After a theoretical excursus that recasts the notion of primordial identity as a socially constructed reality, I set out to explain the persistence of primordial sectarian affiliations in Iraq since the establishment of the modern nation-state in 1921. Looking at the primordial past showed that Sunni-Shicite interactions before the modern nation-state cultivated repositories of divergent collective memories and shaped dynamics of inclusion and exclusion favorable to the Sunni Arabs following the creation of Iraq. Drawing on primary and secondary sources and field interviews, this study proceeds to trace the accentuation of primordial sectarian solidarities despite the adoption of homogenizing policies in a deeply divided society along ethno-sectarian lines. It found that the uneven sectarian composition of the ruling elites nurtured feelings of political exclusion among marginalized sectarian groups, the Shicites before 2003 and the Sunnis in the post-2003 period, which hardened sectarian identities. The injection of hegemonic communal discourses into the educational curriculum was found to have provoked masked forms of resistance that contributed to the sharpening of sectarian consciousness. Hegemonic communal narratives embedded in the curriculum not only undermined the homogenizing utility of education but also implicated education in the accentuation of primordial sectarian identities. The study also found that, by camouflaging anti-Shicite sectarianism, the anti-Persian streak in the nation-state’s Pan-Arab ideology undermined Iraq’s national integration project. It explains that the slide from a totalizing Pan-Arab ideology in the pre-2003 period toward the atomistic impulse of the federalist debate in the post-2003 period is symptomatic of the ghettoization of identity in Iraq. This investigation of the interaction between primordial sectarian attachments and the trajectory of the making of the Iraqi nation-state is ensconced in the project of expanding the range and scope of social scientific applications of the nation-building and primordialism lines of analysis.

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本論文從十九世紀末以來亞洲民族國家形成的脈絡，探討反攻意識型態在戰後台灣歷史的歷程中所扮演的角色，目的在探求戰爭塑造與國家建構兩者之間的關係。戰後台灣承繼了日本總力戰、中國抗日戰爭與動員戡亂等多重戰爭體制的影響，在「反攻大陸」的訴求下延續與強化戰時措施，作為在台灣建立國家的憑藉，也強烈形塑統治體制的特徵。在體制建構外，鼓吹人民支持的即為反攻意識型態，透過意識型態各面向的發展，中華民國政府賦予這場戰爭各種不同的意義，並逐漸找尋出不懼時間流逝、為何一直無法反攻的回答。伴隨著意識型態逐步完備的是宣傳手法的漸次純熟，藉由不斷地實驗摸索，反攻意識型態化為日常生活中無所不在的訊息與制度性措施，所依靠的是由軍方大幅介入、以戰時措施宣傳戰爭的方式。統治體制的性質與反攻意識型態的訴求與手法，反映了五○年代以戰爭為中心思考的策略，也代表著戰後台灣國家體制建立的特質。 / This dissertation discusses the role of the ideology of "Reconquering the Mainland" in the 1950s Taiwan from the context of the formation of the nation-state in Asia. The aim of this dissertation is to analysis the relation between war-making and state-making. Postwar Taiwan is conbined with several war systems, including the late Japanese colonization, the anti-Japan war system, and the system of Mobilization for Suppressing the Communist Rebellion. By the reason of "Reconquering the Mainland," Taiwan inherited and increased these war systems to build its state and make the type of rule. What the way to maintain the war system and encourage Taiwanese to support the rule is the propaganda on the ideology of "Reconquering the Mainland", and builing the propaganda institution for the ideology. Through the development of the ideology, the KMT government finded the resolution of time pass-by and the reason why the government can't reconquere the Mainland. And through the development of the propaganda, the ideology permeated in the daily life of the "normal" people. This dissertation also argues the role of the military in the propaganda institution. From the ideology, propaganda institution and the propaganda way, we can find the central role of the thinking of war, and the importance of war-making in the state-making in the 1950s Taiwan.