The
Research Unit investigates the process of state formation and
fragmentation in developing societies. We study this apparently
incongruous process through a focus on local politics and the social
production of property and citizenship.
Conventional state theories, modeled after developed societies, see state institutions as a source of hegemony. We investigate how hegemonic struggles over the power to determine the parameters of property and citizenship create
moments of sovereignty and form different institutions with state
quality. It is in the creation of the political delineations of two
fundamental aspects of social life: what we can have, and who we are -
property and citizenship - that state quality is produced.
The focus is the political,
social and developmental consequences where states have limited
empirical sovereignty and where states have been forced to cede ground
to competing non-state forms of authority. We undertake field research
in rural, peri-urban and urban contexts in Benin, Ghana, Indonesia,
Laos, the Philippines and Zimbabwe.
Funding has been made
available by the Danish Social Science Research Council; the
Universities of Copenhagen and Roskilde and the Research and
Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims.
Updated January 2017
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