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The Natural Border -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Commodity Frontiers -- 2. Plantation Assemblages -- 3. Territorializing Labor -- 4. Impermanent Territories -- 5. Citizen Recognition -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index.

"This book discusses the radical transformation of eastern Congo's political order in the context of apparent armed destruction and state weakness. Looking beyond the dominant paradigms, the author critically assesses the premises of this region's presumed collapse into chaos. He traces violent rule patterns back to a tumultuous history of extra-economic accumulation, armed rebellion and de facto public authority in the margins of regional power plays. Rather than curing the world's ills, the originality of this book lies in its neat focus on cultural and economic uncertainty. It answers the question of what institutional changes are the result of strategies of daily risk management in an environment characterised by violent competition over the right to govern"--

AbstractIn this short commentary, I will reflect on the contributions of this special section from an Africanist perspective, which shows both similarities and differences with the South Asian experiences. For a long time, the dogma has been that African states do not wield full sovereign power over their citizens. Because most colonial states did not make any effort to extend administrative presence much beyond urban populations as well as a few sites of natural resource extraction, it is argued, their ability to control and administer territories and populations consequently remained largely irrelevant to the modern conception of sovereignty in Africa. In this short commentary I will try to place Africanist scholarship in comparative perspective by elaborating on postcolonial sovereignties and the way in which these remain nested in both historical and contemporary global formations. Starting from the failed states paradigm, I will dedicate some space to the so-called extraversion argument, or the idea that African sovereignties are predominantly exerted through external forces. I will elaborate finally on more recent work by some anthropologists and historians who focus their attention on how sovereign state institutions actually work in practice.

Il margine è frequentemente nominato nei studi urbani. Ma il termine è raramente concettualizzato. Questo contributo è un tentativo di proporre una teoria del margine in relazione alle geografie concrete della contestazione politica e del consolidamento del potere sovrano nei processi contemporanei di urbanizzazione planetario. Confrontando il margine con due termini adiacenti –del ghetto e del campo– l'articolo sostiene che, mentre l'espansione del potere territoriale nei margini urbani oggi rimane in primo luogho un progetto ideologico, che cerca di catturare e rendere leggibile un immaginario 'spazio vuoto', questo processo deve essere anche pensato come un progetto che rimane sempre incompleto: un campo di battaglia che si concentra sulla domanda quali sono e quali non sono forme legitimi di governare la vita in questi luoghi. Prendendo l'esempio del ghetto migrante, l'autore ridefinisce il margine come un sito di pratica in cui questo confine tra governo legittimo e illegittimo è effettivamente fondato e contestato.

Tras el 11 de septiembre, el problema del "colapso" del estado aparece una vez más en la agenda como una cuestión importante de seguridad global. Sinembargo, la discusión académica no ha ido mucho más allá de la injerencia en las dinámicas postconflicto de varios "órdenes" nuevos que sobrepasan las capacidades tradicionales de los estados. La discusión sobre el colapso del estado parece situarse cada vez más en un callejón sin salida entre las clásicas proximaciones estatocéntricas —que siguen apuntando los problemas funcionales— y lasperspectivas más orientadas a la sociedad que buscan explicar las otras lealtadespolíticas y económicas que emergen en el contexto del débil rendimiento delestado. Sin embargo ambos enfoques, vienen gradualmente revelando suincapacidad de definir y delimitar la noción de orden político en ausencia de unmarco estatal primordial. Aunque hay explicaciones a menudo contradictorias sobrepor qué los estados colapsan, se ofrecen pocas razones de lo que hay de hecho másallá del desmoronamiento constatado de la autoridad pública testificado por todos. Además de la guerra global contra el terror, estas razones son más necesarias que nunca si tenemos en cuenta la persistente problemática naturaleza de la estatalidad en muchas partes de África subsahariana; un continente acosado hasta el día de hoy por guerras endémicas. En vez de una transición hacia la paz y la democracia, muchas de las regiones hostigadas por los conflictos en África más bien parecen evolucionar hacia una situación de "ni paz ni guerra", pero en la que la evolucióndel (des)orden político se escapa cada vez más de nuestras capacidades analíticas y de intervención. Este artículo es un primer intento de rellenar estos espacios vacíos en el mapa analítico. Lo hace explicando, en primer lugar, los obstáculos que parecen estar impidiendo una aproximación integrada al problema de la implosión del estado. En segundo lugar, da un primer paso hacia el desarrollo de un marco alternativo para el estudio del orden político en las situaciones de post-colapso estatal. El argumento que se presenta en este artículo no es novedoso: se construye fundamentalmente a partir de perspectivas teóricas y empíricas anteriores sobre los límites de las capacidades estatales (en particular, del Tercer Mundo). Sin embargo lo novedoso es que intenta integrar estas visiones al análisisde las situaciones post-colapso. La noción de poder político (o control social) es central en esta aproximación: tomando como punto de partida "las áreas de dominación y oposición" que existen en el seno de las relaciones sociedad-estado, mira en particular las diferentes fuerzas en la sociedad que intentan monopolizar los tres mbitos que se asocian tradicionalmente al rendimiento estado moderno: el monopolio sobre la violencia, la asignación de recursos económicos y la representación de una población más o menos "fija". Aunque claramente más afín a perspectivas más orientadas a la sociedad, la visión presentada intenta sin embargo combinarlas con un modelo más integrador de las relaciones estado-sociedad, que sirve para analizar cómo los estados y las sociedades siguen constituyéndose y transformándose el uno al otro, en un contexto de debilitamiento de las capacidades estatales ; In the aftermath of 9/11, the problem of state 'collapse' appears again on he agenda as an important question of global security. Nevertheless, the academic discussion has not come much further than post conflict dynamics of interference of various new 'orders' that move beyond traditional state capacities. The discussion on state collapse thus seems to be placed in a growing deadlock between classical state-centrist approaches —which keep pointing at functional problems— and more society-oriented insights that try to explain other political and economic loyalties that have emerged in the context of weak state performance. Both approaches nonetheless appear increasingly incapable of defining and delimiting the notion of political order absent of an overarching state framework. While often contradictory xplanations exist about what may lead states to collapse, little grounding is provided as to what actually lays beyond this witnessed breakdown of public authority. Besides the global war on terror, such grounding appears more necessary than ever if we look at the continuing problematic nature of statehood in many parts of sub-Sahara Africa, a continent hitherto beset with endemic warfare. Instead of a transition to peace and democracy, many conflict-ridden regions in Africa seem to evolve rather towards a situation of "neither-war-nor-peace", but in which the evolution of political (dis)order increasingly escapes our analytical and intervention capacities. This paper makes a first attempt to fill these blank spaces on the analytical map. It does so by explaining, first, the obstacles that appear to be blocking an integrative approach towards the problem of state implosion. Second, it offers a first step into developing an alternative framework for studying political order in ituations of post state collapse'. The argument provided in this paper is not new: it builds extensively on earlier theoretical and empirical insights into the limits of particularly Third World) state capacities. What is new though, is that it tries to integrate these views into the analysis of post-collapse situations. Central to this approach is the notion of political power (or social control): taking as an entry point the "areas of domination and opposition" that exist in the midst of state-society relations, it specifically looks at the different forces in society that try to monopolize the three domains that are traditionally connected to modern state performance: the monopoly over violence, the allocation of economic resources and the representation of a more or less 'fixed' population. Although obviously more sympathetic to more society-oriented approaches, the presented view nonetheless tries to combine these with a more integrative model of state-society relations, which serves to analyze how states and societies continue to constitute and transform one another in a context of withering of state capacities

ABSTRACTThis article proposes an explanation for the emergence of non‐state governance in situations of apparent state collapse, based on an ethnographic study of the armed rebellion in Butembo (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo). The model of explanation is inspired by Charles Tilly's description of state making as organized crime, in which armed rebels and private economic agents enter an agreement for private protection. The study seeks to explain how an original meeting between Butembo's armed rebels of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie — Mouvement de Libération (RCD–ML) and an existing network of cross‐border traders actually led to a 'pluralizing' moment, in which the reinterpretation of existing relations and regulatory practices contributed to a gradual transformation of the institutional framework and local governance. Recently, this local political order has entered into increasing competition with the internationally induced project of political 'transition', based on a conflict between dynamics of state building and translocal political (trans)formation.

In preparing for a post-conflict DRC, we should be more aware of young people's aspirations, the opportunities open to them, and the challenges they face in building a decent life. Adapted from the source document.