The State as the Great Classifier
The State as the Great Classifier

Author(s): Ivana Spasić, Ana Birešev
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Social Sciences, Political Philosophy
Published by: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju
Keywords: state; politics; Serbia; transition; Pierre Bourdieu
Summary/Abstract: Based on data collected through focus group interviews within the project “Social and Cultural Capital in Serbia”, this paper aims to analyze how “the state” is constructed in discourses by ordinary people in today’s Serbia. Starting from a Bourdieuan theoretical platform that introduces the concepts of social classifications and classification struggles, it is argued that in spite of the many criticisms the state in Serbia is subjected to by the citizens, it still remains in their eyes the only really legitimate classifier of people, capitals, and practices. The numerous negative judgments of the state’s failures and malfunctioning in a wide variety of areas ironically result in a confirmation of “the State” as a kind of Leviathan which perhaps should be tamed and reeducated, but which no one wishes to remove or replace with an alternative set of social arrangements. The ambiguous political potential of this attitude is discussed in the concluding section.

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