Ckelty, thanks for the further comments on ‘planning’, although I still am not completely clear on point you are making. I read the term ‘planning’ more narrowly as refering to a specific set of calculative rational, bureacratically authorized practices with a modernist optic and aesthetic (thinking of James Scott’s Seeing Like a State.) So I would distinguish planning from the more encompassing concept of practical, problem-solving activity. Indeed, everybody is constantly involved in practical action, but we can distinguish how planners (whether as part of the state or not) go about this from the rationalities, ethics, and aesthetics of others’ practical actions.

It seems to me that this distinction is crucial for Moore’s ethnographic composition of assemblages. I broadly agree with your characterization, that “the complexity of Kaerezi is not “emergent” in the popular theoretical sense, it is more like a tangled, ingrown, auto-immune form of complexity manifest in the fact that it seems illogical, uncivilized, irrational etc…” The complexity of the situation in Kaerezi, as opposed to Dewey’s model liberal democracy, is in part the result of the smash-up of a bunch of differing historically sedimented styles of practical reasoning and acting. Hence, from the perspective of those involved in the situation, the actions of others seem illogical, uncivilized, irrational, etc.. Moore nicely conveys the conflicting rationalities of different subjects, while not claiming to uncover the singular force operating behind everyones back. He is able to keep the knot tied (to use his metaphor) because he does not overlay the situation with an all-encompassing concept like modernity, but rather focuses on entanglements and overlaps. This, for me at least, is what intrigues me about the book. It is also getting me closer to a sense of what the analytical concept ‘articulated assemblage’ might be capable of doing, even while waiting for Moore to more directly tie the theory of the introduction with the ethnographic content of the rest of the book.

Question for Ckelty (or Arendt or Dewey if they are out there in cyberspace somewhere): How does the (liberal?) conceptual pair of ‘public’ and ‘private’ map onto a knotted situation like that of Kaerezi?

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I think it may be as simple as re-affirming that not all governance happens in the government, which I take to be the core insight of “governmentality.” The fact that something like “community-based resource management” exists (i.e. instead of just “local government”) is proof positive of that. So yes, it could be about conceiving of the oikos as a locus of “planning” (and Arendt’s Human Condition does exactly that, pointing out the ways in which it is effectively a dictatorship, not a democracy). But the next level up, that of inter-family or village level planning is not always visited from above, nor emergent in some organic form. Wherever groups gather to solve problems, planning is about to happen. This is also Dewey’s definition of the State– and of the publics that he sees as the first stage of government. So in the idealized model whereby government progresses from family to village to region to State, with each level of complexity layered on top of the next, then planning is a ubiquitous activity of mitigating the unintended consequences of private action on others. Obviously, in Moore’s case, with a history of colonialism, post-colonialism, globalization, and democratic dictatorship, such nice models of embedded, emergent complexity make no sense. As such the activity of planning at the local level is always already about arguing with planners at some other level, whose activity is always already about arguing with planners at some other level, whose activities… etc. The complexity of Kaerezi is not “emergent” in the popular theoretical sense, it is more like a tangled, ingrown, auto-immune form of complexity manifest in the fact that it seems illogical, uncivilized, irrational etc. and is shot through with brutality and suffering. Uncovering the places where power emerges through these arguments and their outcomes is the work of the concept of governmentality, when it works.

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I am interested in the problem of planning you are pointing to. Everyone’s a planner? What would be lost in understanding the home as a scene of rational planning, an oikos governed by, perhaps, the father? Why do you wish to impute ‘planning’ to everyday subsistence farming? I am not sure I understand your complaint here. Is it just that you think it is empirically problematic? I think I just need more clarity on what you are saying, because perhaps I am misunderstanding it.

Another question I have is: Is anyone else out there reading the book with us? Have we lost them? Hello people!

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