Man walks across the unrecognized border between Georgia and Abkhazia. Photo by R. Bryant.
I am a cultural anthropologist who studies forced migration,
borders, and unrecognized states. Through those subjects,
I investigate the state and sovereignty, with a special focus
on temporality, historicities, and the future.
borders, and unrecognized states. Through those subjects,
I investigate the state and sovereignty, with a special focus
on temporality, historicities, and the future.
NEW BOOKS
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"The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty is a significant theoretical and empirical contribution to anthropology, sociology, and political studies concerning 'sovereignty.' In the era of globalization, that concept is increasingly challenged as the shortcomings of what the contributors refer to as the Westphalian view of sovereignty become ever more glaringly apparent."
Katherine Verdery, City University of New York, author of My Life as a Spy "This is a useful and important book that uses fragile states as a lens to examine the notion of sovereignty. The contributors to the volume show the many ways in which sovereignty is produced not only at the national scale but at the transnational and local scales." Elizabeth Cullen Dunn, Indiana University, author of No Path Home |
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"In a world in which such ambivalent, state-like entities seem to have proliferated, the case of northern Cyprus offers many useful lessons for understanding what statehood actually does—lessons that the authors of this insightful and original book artfully extract from a wonderful array of personal experience, documentary evidence, and ethnographic observation."—Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
"Sovereignty Suspended is an absolute joy to read and easily one of the best books written on de facto states. Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay use their extensive knowledge and years of research on the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to provide an extremely rich and original analysis of the processes of de facto state-building: how state-builders tried to make Turkish Cypriots perceptible and recognizable to the world, how this has resulted in a state that seems made up, and the resilient tactics that Turkish Cypriots have developed to go on with their lives. But Bryant and Hatay are not simply interested in state-building in de facto states, and their analysis allows them to reconceptualize sovereignty as capacity, as a form of institutionally realized agency. This is an important contribution which should make this impressive book of interest to anyone interested in state-building and sovereignty."—Nina Caspersen, University of York |
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"The poetics and politics of everyday temporality may never be more engaging than in Bryant and Knight's call to orient the social present in awareness of the not-yet-here, the not-yet-now. Addressing the future as an object of anthropological inquiry, the authors chorus the ‘time-reckoning of capitalism … at the heart of the modern', seeking traces of both spirit and heart across the global ethnoscape. The overall effect is of a future deexoticized. To my mind, this is a work for the ages, deftly informed by theory and felt through people compelled to mobilize prospects for rupture and continuity, as a matter of very real consequence." Debbora Battaglia - Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts |
NEW ARTICLE
Sovereignty in Drag
On Fakes, Foreclosure, and Unbecoming States
new in Cultural Anthropology
NEW COLLECTION
Orientations to the Future
Edited by Rebecca Bryant and Daniel M. Knight
A special collection of American Ethnologist with an introduction and articles by Rebecca Bryant and Daniel M. Knight, as well as contributions by Stef Jansen, Kristin Loftsdottir, Raluca Bianca Roman, Felix Ringel, Dace Dzenovska, Morten Nielsen, and Nigel Rapport.
SHORT ARTICLE
The Stubborn Stasis of the Status Quo
My contribution to our Orientations to the Future collection.