Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State

Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced.

Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, the book shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural "survivors" rooted in the past.

With insights drawn from diverse global contexts and empirical research from Bolivia and Ecuador, this work advocates for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology. Savages and Citizens makes a compelling case for the centrality of Indigenous perspectives to understand the modern state from political theory to international studies.

Author: Andrew Canessa, Manuela Lavinas Picq
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 11/12/2024
Pages: 238
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.17h x 6.34w x 0.87d
ISBN: 9780816553969

About the Author
Andrew Canessa is a professor of anthropology at the University of Essex. Among his most important books are Intimate Indigeneities and Natives Making Nation.

Manuela Lavinas Picq is a senior lecturer in political science at Amherst College. Her most influential books include Vernacular Sovereignties and Sexualities in World Politics.