Bringing Empire Back In: Territoriality, Difference, and Theorizing Modern State Formation After the Imperial Turn

Mary Shi, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Although scholars have long recognized that empires preceded the current age of nation-states, the recent imperial turn within sociology offers new concepts through which to understand this transition from empires to nation states. This paper theorizes modern state formation as the transition from territorially ambiguous empires of difference to territorially defined homogenized nation-states. Restoring empire in this way orients scholars away from studying modern state formation as a process of bureaucratization, to instead focus on the political dynamics, contradictions, and unintended consequences that emerged from these transformations. To illustrate this argument, this paper analyzes the case of federalism in the United States. When American state builders operationalized their ideal of popular sovereignty by territorializing sovereignty via federalism, they unintentionally made territorially-based social difference politically powerful in a new and de-stabilizing way. Instead of resolving these contradictions, legislators relied on a series of scalar fixes that sidestepped conflict by excluding conflicting interests. This paper concludes by discussing how centering the territorialization of politics in nation-states illuminates the spatial mismatch between capitalism and democracy and can shed light on the dynamics of nationalism, economic populism, and anti-elitism that characterize political dynamics today.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 208. Empire and Imperialism in Theory and History