Everyday Life and the State

Description: Building upon insights from social, political, and anthropological theories, this book shows how the repetitions and habits of our daily lives lead to our nationalization and the perception of certain interests and institutions as 'public.'

Review Quotes:

"Peter Bratsis makes a significant contribution to our understanding of one of the most important political issues of our time--the nature and production of the state, and its relationship to the concrete realities of people's lived experience. Offering a valuable rereading of marxist state- theory, he extends it in original ways to connect to the complexities and contradictions of contemporary political life."
--Lawrence Grossberg, author of Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America's Future (Paradigm, 2005)

"Peter Bratsis breaks new ground, forcing us to think of the connections between big structures and our most intimate inner lives. A fascinating and erudite book." -Frances Fox Piven, CUNY

"This is an important theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of the state and state power. Arguing that we should not take the state too literally, as a simple fact of life, it shows how we can analyze the ways in which a heterogeneous web of social and political actors reproduce the state in its various moments through a variety of interconnected everyday practices. It will have a significant impact on how state is theorized and researched in many disciplines and, especially, in inter-disciplinary inquiries."
--Bob Jessop, Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University