The Politics of Survival

“The contribution of this book lies primarily in the opening up of an important new field of enquiry: what happens to politics, to democracy, to the relationship between the individual and the state, when survival is reframed as a political agenda? This book goes well beyond the dichotomous trade-off between liberty and security to show, instead, how politics itself is changed through discourses of fear and survival, a change that we are likely to be analysing for years to come.” - Marianne Maeckelbergh, Anthropological Forum

“Marc Abélès is one of the foremost anthropological specialists on the study of contemporary politics, and The Politics of Survival is a brilliant book. Abélès’s distinctly European take on issues of globalization will be extraordinarily valuable for a U.S. readership.” - George Marcus, coauthor of Designs for an Anthropology of the Future

“This thoughtful essay on The Politics of Survival offers a new perspective on the relationship between survival, security, governmentality and what Marc Abélès calls the accelerating ‘dearth of the future’. By boldly comparing the central debates about welfare and solidarity in the European Union with a close reading of divine kingship in Africa, Abélès is able to suggest new perspectives on the future of sovereignty, the new sacrality of non-governmental organizations, the function of the discourse of human rights and the general climate of precaution that characterize global politics. This book will be of equal interest to anthropologists, political theorists and all scholars concerned with the nature and future of utopian thinking.” - Arjun Appadurai, author of Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger