The Cultural of the Political: Toward a Cultural Sociology of State Formation

In the human sciences, the study of culture and the study of the state have often been separate enterprises. The state is assigned to political science and diplomatic history, while culture is placed in care of anthropology and cultural sociology. This division of labor is underwritten by aligning the state/culture opposition with various other binaries: state and nation, self-interest and solidarity, institutions and culture, power and language, and so on. These oppositions are quite stable – and quite old: their genealogy can be traced back through the history of Western political philosophy to Christian ethics.