Vortrag im Oberseminar

Prof. Dr. Cris Shore (University of Auckland, Neuseeland)

Anthropology of the State Revisited: The ‘Crown’ and Constitutional Reform in Post-colonial Societies

The ‘Crown’ stands at the apex of New Zealand’s constitutional order and features prominently in everyday political discourse, both as partner to Maori in the Treaty of Waitangi and as source of government legitimacy and authority. Yet the concept of the Crown – like that of constitutional monarchy - is poorly understood and curiously hard to discern. Is it the Queen, the Governor General, the Government, the State, the people, a corporation sole or aggregate, a metaphor, a relic of Medieval political theology or a mask for the exercise of executive power? Typically, it is portrayed as an entity situated above everyday politics that sometimes represents the will of the people and sometimes exercises a will of its own. As legal scholars argue, it is a ‘convenient fiction’, but convenient for who?

Drawing on ethnographic research in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the UK, this paper tries to address these questions and open up the ‘black box’ that is the Crown. I also take up wider anthropological debates about how to theorise the modern State and its transformation in the post-colonial era. Like the state, the Crown is also an elusive, shapeshifting and omnipresent entity that has powerful effects. Moving beyond the ontological question of what exactly is the Crown, I ask: How does it represent itself and how is it understood? What can an analysis of its development tell us about the nature of the State in post-colonial societies? And more importantly, what work (legal, political and symbolic) does it perform? Finally, in a context of increasing pressure to for a republic, is the Crown an obstacle to constitutional reform?

Wann?     Montag, 5. Dezember 2016 , 18 Uhr
Wo?         Institut für Ethnologie, Oettingenstraße 67, 80538 München
                Raum L155 (Obergeschoss) Lageplan

Für die Veranstaltungsreihe hat Frau Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr in diesem Semester ein vielseitiges Programm mit interessanten Themen und ReferentInnen zusammengestellt.

Mehr Informationen über Vorträge Institut für Ethnologie für das Wintersemester 2016/17 finden Sie unter  „Veranstaltungen".