Political machine : assembling sovereignty in the Bronze Age Caucasus
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Political machine : assembling sovereignty in the Bronze Age Caucasus
(The Rostovtzeff lectures)
Princeton University Press, c2015
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Incudes bibliographical references (p. [197]-232) and index
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Description and Table of Contents
Description
The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things--from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance--and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world.
Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.
Table of Contents
Preface ix Introduction: Reverse Engineering the Polity 1 The Conditions of Sovereignty 4 Machine Politics 7 Bodies and Things 11 Into the Caucasus 16 Schematic 20 Part I: The Machinery of Sovereignty Chapter 1. On Assemblages and Machines 27 Things and Objects 29 The Exile of Things 33 Nature Morte 40 The Assemblage Assembled 43 The Efficacy of Machines 48 Sense, Sensibility, and Sentiment 54 Chapter 2. On The Matter of Sovereignty 59 Sovereignty Disassembled 61 Prehistory and the Political 64 Archaeologies of Sovereignty 67 Assembly and Assemblage 72 Origin Myths 73 Wayward Things and the Dual Sovereign 78 Exit Objects 1: Liberal Theory and Things 81 Exit Objects 2: Marx and Matter 83 Sovereign Matter, Governmental Machines 86 The Sovereign Conditions 91 Part II: Assembling Sovereignty Chapter 3. The Civilization Machine in the Early Bronze Age 97 The Kura-Araxes 102 Sensibility 105 Sense 110 Sentiment 122 An Early Bronze Age Public 125 Chapter 4. The War Machine in the Middle Bronze Age 127 The Caucasus in Transition 130 Sensibility 138 Sense 144 Sentiment 148 Territorialization and Contradiction 151 Chapter 5. The Political Machine in the Late Bronze Age 154 The Caucasus at the Beginning of the Late Bronze Age 157 Sensibility 165 Sense 171 Sentiment 178 The Enduring Political Machine 183 Conclusion 186 Erebuni-Yerevan 188 Brother Axe 194 References Cited 197 Index 233
by "Nielsen BookData"