The Embodied State

This edited collection advances a reconceptualisation of state power through emotions. Methodologically, it rethinks the study of the state from the bottom up, by seeking contributions that engage with performances and enactments of state power at the ground level, by frontline staff in direct contact with marginalised populations, and those that reflect on encounters with symbols and practices of state power. Conceptually, it advances a new theory of state power which places values and affects at the heart of its analysis.

In doing so, it seeks to make a crucial intellectual intervention in the study of the people, images and processes involved in the governance of social marginality in various institutional settings – criminal justice, immigration and asylum bureaucracies, the welfare system, the care sector, etc. – to explore how emotions are mobilised, how their expression in contemporary institutional settings of state power connects to broader moral and affective economies, the contradictions, and dilemmas they embody and reproduce, and the implications of these emotionalised forms of governance for state praxis and theory.

The Embodied State will therefore appeal to students and scholars of critical criminology, political sociology, anthropology, migration and border studies, and penology. It will also be of interest to policymakers and professionals involved in these fields.

Ana Aliverti is Professor of Law at University of Warwick’s Law School. Her research work looks at the intersections between criminal law and criminal justice, on the one hand, and border regimes, on the other, and explores the impact of such intertwining on criminal justice institutions and on those subject to the resulting set of controls. She has conducted extensive ethnographic work on the police and immigration enforcement, courts and asylum.

Henrique Carvalho is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Critical Legal Studies at the University of Warwick. His work investigates issues in criminalisation, punishment, state power and justice through dialogues between legal, social, political and cultural theory. Henrique is the co-author of Questioning Punishment (Routledge, 2024).

Anastasia Chamberlen is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender at the University of Warwick. Her research explores the relations between punishment, embodiment, arts and justice. Anastasia is the co-author of Questioning Punishment (Routledge, 2024).

Simon Tawfic is LSE Fellow in Social Policy at the London School of Economics. He holds a PhD in anthropology (2023) from the London School of Economics, having previously completed the joint honours BA in Anthropology and Law there (2017, First Class). Simon was a postdoctoral research fellow on the Vulnerable State project. His research interests include vulnerability, moral labour on the frontline and the everyday politics of care.