Anthropology and Political Participation

Abstract

Abstract From an anthropological perspective, political participation can be defined as all action that attempts to have part in deciding upon one’s collective circumstances. It encompasses all practices that engage with the order of things to impact on it, also those not usually identified with participation in a political system. Anthropologists consider historically changing ways of how membership in polities is formed and study diverse imaginations of political community that are articulated in practices of political participation, not only those of the nation state or its parts, nor only small-scale local ones, but addressing at times the political order of world society. Political participation for anthropologists is thus defined not by its method or its addressee; nor is it restricted to formal citizenship; rather, it is all action in respect to power, which lays claim to the promise of self-determination, and the power to define that very “self”.