Nature and the State Apparatus

Abstract

The previous two chapters have examined key moments and sites of nature– state interaction and have argued for the need to explore the manifold contexts within which these linkages develop. This discussion proved useful as a way of highlighting the different ways in which modern states have sought to frame national natures through ideological and material processes, and began to illustrate the ideological and concrete impacts of national natures on state organizations. This chapter focuses on the ways in which nature has been incorporated into the state apparatus, as well as showing how the state apparatus has helped to frame national natures. When referring to the state apparatus, we mean the ‘set of institutions and organizations through which state power is exercised’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 45). The state apparatus is distinct from the state form, which refers to the relationship between a given state structure and a particular social formation, and the state function, which alludes to the ‘activities which are undertaken in the name of the state’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 37, 41). Despite the reference to a state apparatus in the preceding sentences, it is clear that it does not represent a singular entity. If, as Neil Brenner (2004: 4) maintains, a reference to the state in the singular misleadingly ascribes to it a unity and uniformity that it does not possess, then by the same token, we need to think about the state apparatus as something that is not singular in character. Gordon Clark and Michael Dear (1984) have emphasized the multi-faceted and plural nature of the state apparatus. The state apparatus, in this sense, comprises an agglomeration of different sub-apparatuses, which are the ‘collection of agencies, organizations and institutions which together constitute the means by which state functions are attained’, and para-apparatuses, namely those ‘auxiliary agencies’ that possess ‘some degree of operational autonomy’ (Brenner 2004: 49). The state apparatus ranges, therefore, from those bureaucracies charged with conducting the state’s executive functions to a plethora of agencies involved in its more mundane aspects of governance. For Antonio Gramsci, the state apparatus is even broader in scope, drawing in important aspects of civil society.