The Fragmentary State

In light of debates about the “return of the state,” the conference explores the idea that fragmentation has transformed and on the whole weakened public capacities for coherent and consequential responses to the social, economic, ecological, and political problems of our time. We propose to analyze the state’s fragmentation, and by implication its coherence, along three dimensions: organizational – coalitional – infrastructural. Contributions address the transformations of state action and structures from a variety of angles, including historical and ethnographic case studies, theoretical analyses, and comparative investigations.