UC Berkeley Events | Tanner Lectures - Cosmopolities 2 – Forms of Assemblage @UCBerkeleyEvents | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 3 hours ago
Drawing comparatively on ethnographic and historical materials, this lecture will seek to define certain characteristics of the assemblages that extra-modern cosmopolities produce. On the whole these cosmopolities have been misportrayed because they were described with the template of the Westphalian nation-state in mind: i.e. as deriving their specificity from lacking a state, or from striving to prevent its emergence or, more simply, because they were seen as being organized according to institutions more clearly identifiable in state societies or, finally, because they were conceived as nascent, proto- or would-be states. Looking at the kinds of elements composing these cosmopolities – and how they are related – according to the ontological regime they express offers an alternative to the current, Eurocentric and anthropocentric, typology of social forms, whether evolutionist or functionalist.
Drawing comparatively on ethnographic and historical materials, this lecture will seek to define certain characteristics of the assemblages that extra-modern cosmopolities produce. On the whole these cosmopolities have been misportrayed because they were described with the template of the Westphalian nation-state in mind: i.e. as deriving their specificity from lacking a state, or from striving to prevent its emergence or, more simply, because they were seen as being organized according to institutions more clearly identifiable in state societies or, finally, because they were conceived as nascent, proto- or would-be states. Looking at the kinds of elements composing these cosmopolities – and how they are related – according to the ontological regime they express offers an alternative to the current, Eurocentric and anthropocentric, typology of social forms, whether evolutionist or functionalist.
