In the State's Embrace? Civil Acts in an Imperial Order‪.‬

One of the principal characteristics of the modern state has been its aspiration to acquire extensive and detailed information about the population it oversees. As James C. Scott remarks, whereas its premodern counterpart was content with levels of intelligence sufficient for only the most basic practices of governance, "the modern state increasingly aspired to 'take in charge' the physical and human resources of the nation and make them more productive." John Torpey has likewise noted, "In order to extract resources and to implement policies, states must be in a position to locate and lay claim to people and goods." (1) It is only in the past two centuries or so--and in many cases much more recently--that states have developed the administrative capacity to make confident claims on their subjects and citizens. Until then, there were often great discrepancies between the interventions to which states aspired and the instruments available for their realization. The recognition of such discrepancies enjoins us to focus attention on the processes by which states construct relationships between themselves and their subjects. Torpey has rightly noted that the prevailing analytical tendency to describe states' growing capacity to "penetrate" or "reach into" societies fails to account for the precise mechanisms by which such relationships are forged and sustained. As an alternative, he suggests that we regard states as seeking "not simply to penetrate but also to embrace societies, 'surrounding' and 'taking hold' of their members--individually and collectively--as those states grow larger and more administratively adept." Torpey's emphasis is on the grasp of the state rather than on its reach, on the techniques of governance concerned with the unique and unambiguous identification of individuals that rendered other, more prominent and visible projects--such as conscription and taxation--possible and enforceable. (2)