Joseph and Nugent - Everyday forms of state formation

The authors compile a series of articles that reconsider the rol of the mexican revolution in the constitution of conetmporary mexican state. Scott introduces the main question of the book as: "to what extent has the state's hegemonic project influenced by the force of popular experience and mobilized popular expecations of the revolution ? (viii)

They oppose to three lines of analysis: 1) the dominant discourses analyzing the Mexican revolution as the constitution of a popular state of the people end for the people, 2) revisionists approaches pointing to the betrayals of the revolutionary leaders conforming the Mexican state to the popular peasant sectors supporting and making the revolution in order to create a new regime of privilege, 3) the neopopulist approaches that claim that populist movements necesarilly influenced the revolution adn the concequent events but do not question exactly what they understand and how diverse and complex is the popular itself. They claim to take a relational, procesual perspective that considers difference within the popular, they propose to closely analayze what is that makes a popular culture into a revolutionary consciousness to understand how it acted upon the revolution and the state and how this constuitutes a form of negotiation form below.

The point of discussion of the authors is the dynamics within the long period of the revolution. The want to recover the proc3ess over the understanding of the revolution as event. In this they position their work in the lines of inquiry opened by Scott and MArtin-Barbero, in regards to popular culture, Abrams and Corrigan and Sayer in relation to the formation of the state. In regards to the concept of popular the consider it "to designate the day to day practices of subordinated groups" (17) that both denies the folkloristic approaches pointing to an atemporal and untouched patern of cultural practice and the approaches claiming for its massification as a result of the overlapping of popular culture media and the market. Popular cualture is a multilocal space in which subjects, different form the dominant groups are constituted.

They follow Currigan and Sayer in their understanding of the state as a cultural phenomena rather than as the constitution of an institutional "thing" with an entity and power outside social relations. For the authors the state is about how power effects are generated in society, of making sense of the world, unfolded in the state activities, rituals and habit and constituted in the experience of its subjects. One of the fundamental state dimensions is its embodiment of the habits of rule. For the authors a feature of modern state is both its totalizing power over population's identity and its simultaneous individualizing effects that find individuals as its point of operation rather than communities. [escribo esto como sentido comun arrollador, si estas ideas siguen siendo un punto de partida, cuanto mas hay para problematizar? probablemente foucault me resulta como un paso mas alla ahora]

In this they intend to focus in the relational nature of state and subject formation as well as the dimension of practice in this constitution. The state involvement with "grass root" society is one of the focuse of their interest not as space of necessary tension, but also where opening and collaboration may happen. For them the revolution opens a space in which new habits as well as institutional and power structures continuity took place and in which multiple tensions unfolded in the localities and particular conjunctures of what is understood as revolution. The perspective takes both the dominant projects and the popular cultures as arenas of diversity and struggle in themselves and not as coherent, unidirectional and organized blocks. How is this project translated into practice is other diemnsion the authors are interested in understanding [ojo con esto de traducir un proyecto a la practica, bastante problematico como piensan la acci'on politica en una cadena racional de planificacion, proposito y accion]
They join the critique to the subaltern studies group in their supposedly reification of that popular as a site of autonomy and as a consciousness never fully incorporated to hegemony. They claim the popular is nor autonomous nor a fabrication of the state rule. [bueno conozco esa critica, lo que si defiendo de Guha y cia ahora es que la idea de grupos contraditorios no permite entender lo generativo, no permite entender lo que queda por fuera de la sintesis, si bien esos grupos no estan por fuera de las relaciones, si quedan siempre sin condificar, si bien el significado les corre atraz nunca se captura totalmente, creo que a eso no puedo ir, aunque claro que sin saberlo estaba parada en la subalternidad de lo indigena no representado siempre]

To synthesize they quote of Nungent and Alonso "Popular culture is contradictory since it embodies and elaborates dominant symbols and meanings but also contests, challenges, rejects and revualues and presents alternatives to them" (22) tro do this they propose to engage in different and simultaneous time scales of the revolution.