Anthropologists Against Sovereignty

In a world consisting of more than two hundred sovereign states in competitive relationships, shared global challenges are difficult to deal with. Socio-cultural anthropology has been greatly influenced by postcolonial studies. Anthropologists have been prominent in this field, scrutinizing their discipline's close ties to a variety of empires, mainly those of states in Northwest Europe. The decolonization campaigns continue vigorously in the 2020s, with implications for the curriculum and research. It is taken for granted that the anthropologist stands on the side of the underdog, of every small people seeking to assert itself against all lingering traces of imperialism. The shorthand for this is sovereignty. The word is a trump card for all: from small indigenous peoples seeking to extract resources from the states that dominate them to nation-states themselves vis-à-vis more powerful neighbours or supranational bodies. But the word sovereignty has many meanings and the social consequences of its assertion may be ambiguous and even undesirable, both internally and externally. Some anthropologists steer clear of the concept, leaving it to be unpacked by political theorists and international lawyers. Others have stretched the familiar political meaning to reflect the prominence of sovereignty in popular discourses. Sovereignty indicates the aspiration to ‘take back control’ and somehow transcend the state in an increasingly interconnected world (Bryant and Reeves 2021). This is consistent with the radical, anti-state bias of socio-cultural anthropology. Anthropologists have a predilection for topics such as ‘food sovereignty’ that imply anti-capitalist solutions (including more self-sufficiency) for particular peoples within the boundaries of particular states. This may overlap with ‘ecological sovereignty’, an ambiguous term that can also refer to the need to end the domination of nature by homo sapiens. The preservation of cultural and biological diversity on the planet was a central theme for the late Thomas Hylland Eriksen, whose work focused mainly on human social relations in the impending Anthropocene. Without fuelling the inflationary use of sovereignty, Eriksen (2021) argued that the destruction wreaked by states and markets must be countered by a combination of downscaling and ‘sideways scaling through networks of localised initiatives’. Notwithstanding such critical approaches, the postcolonial consciences of most anthropologists continue to acknowledge the political principle of national self-determination in the form of sovereign states, as formulated and practised since the First World War. In this contribution, I show that the fundamental shortcomings of this principle were recognized in the last century by Bronislaw Malinowski and Ernest Gellner. In the final section, I illustrate the persisting problems with reference to Viktor Orbán's Hungary. Ernest Gellner (1983) (a highly unusual anthropologist, it must be admitted) historicized the nation-state by arguing that cultural homogeneity provided the functionally indispensable framework for modern industrial society. Without explicitly highlighting sovereignty, the Gellnerian theory was emphatically statist. It was rooted in the disintegration of the Habsburg empire in Central Europe and is often criticized for European bias. But it also took inspiration from the author's firsthand observations of the anti-colonial struggle in North Africa (Franzinetti 2022); the abstract model was intended to have general validity. Another criticism of Gellner's model is that it offers little purchase on international migration and the contemporary ‘multicultural mess’ (Eriksen 2007). Drawing on his own research on fluid identities in the Caribbean and the consequences of migration for his native Norway, Eriksen criticizes Gellner for equating cultural variation with ethnic variation. Social cohesion (solidarity) and identity are different again. In Eriksen's view, the dynamics we observe in the 21st century cannot be reduced to functionality and the ‘objective forces’ of the economy. When it comes to the integration or exclusion of people termed by Gellner ‘entropy resistant’, much depends on symbolic recognition and emotions such as respect and humiliation. Gellner's ‘limited and simplistic notion of culture’ (Eriksen 2007, 184) prevented him from recognizing the salience of individual and collective identities that are genuinely transnational, rather than diasporic identities subordinate to the logic of sovereign states. This particular critique could not be answered by Gellner, who died in 1995. In a later essay, Eriksen probed both similarities and differences between Gellner and Edward Said, widely perceived to be the seminal figure in postcolonial critique (Eriksen 2022). Following acrimonious public debates in which he was dismissive of the Saidian approach to imperialism, in several late essays and his most important posthumous publication, Gellner went out of his way to distance himself from anti-colonial approaches. In doing so, he modified his theory of nationalism by addressing the question of sovereignty explicitly for the first time (implicitly, the nation-state he modelled had always been sovereign). Accepting the premise that ‘(t)he asymmetry between coloniser and colonised is morally repellent’, Gellner argued not for the extension of sovereignty to all (i.e., the abolition of colonialism) but rather that ‘everyone [Gellner's italics] should be colonised!’ (Gellner 1998, 142). In light of ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia, Gellner (1998, 143) stressed that ‘the total un-shackling of Eastern Europe in 1989’ could not be stabilized by the principle of national sovereignty. Whereas Eriksen embraced ‘downscaling’ and transnational identities, it can be seen that Gellner tackled the problem of sovereignty differently. This twist in his thinking was doubtless shaped by his lifelong contrariness and distaste for the affinity between postcolonial theorists and postmodernist approaches in general: they tended to privilege ideas, whereas Gellner remained a non-Marxist materialist. Ironically, the case for generalizing colonialism was made in a work devoted to ideas, those of Bronislaw Malinowski and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Building on his own earlier analyses of the political theory of the former, Gellner connects his support for the principle of indirect rule in the British empire to his cultural nationalism as a Pole, which never strayed into anti-Habsburg political nationalism (cf. Eriksen 2007, 168). Malinowski (1944) spelled out the implications himself in a series of lectures given at Yale in 1942 and published posthumously as Freedom and Civilization. Freedom in his sense was not compatible with the principle of political sovereignty, since it was clear from recent European history that this would lead to the oppression of minority groups. To avoid the catastrophe of another world war, cultural units would have to be contained in larger, encompassing structures. This ‘superstate’ would be federal, and it would require the ‘abrogation of sovereignty’ in its political form (Malinowski 1944, 333–334). This principle is fully endorsed by Gellner in his late work. The triumph of nationalism at Versailles, the termination of the European colonial empires and, finally, the collapse of the socialist bloc with its multinational ideology have led to a world in which the sovereign nation-state is the only game in town. As Gellner explains, this cannot possibly play out peacefully: Given the complexity of the ethnic map, … it would seem that some solution along the lines proposed by Malinowski is the only humane one, the only one with some prospect of implementation without major loss of life. Colonise simply everybody—i.e. deprive their political units of sovereignty—whilst allowing them absolute cultural freedom of expression … It is obvious that this is our only hope. (Gellner 1998, 144) Unfortunately, Gellner did not elaborate on what exactly he meant by universal colonization or how it might be brought into existence. What is ‘absolute cultural freedom of expression’ and which groups would qualify for such rights? Even in these late publications, Gellner's failure to consider the implications of international migration and the reduction of culture to ethnicity vitiate his theory. It remains a statist model, insensitive to identities that transcend states, which are perhaps more deeply rooted in cities than in countries and which depend on ‘a more fluid notion of sociality’ (Eriksen 2007, 180). Eriksen himself often pointed out that there are limits to globalized fluidity. Both migrants and host populations continue to assert boundaries—and we may expect these trends to be strengthened in the era of Trumpian deglobalization and economic recession. Even before we consider the consequences of international migration, contemporary Europe is extremely diverse in its forms of ethnicity, or what might be termed peoplehood. Peoples such as the Welsh and the Basques seem by and large satisfied with the freedoms they have come to enjoy within their states. Yet rather larger numbers of Scots and Catalans are dissatisfied with those same states. They strive for sovereign independence. Many look to Scandinavia for examples of well-integrated minorities, some of them indigenous and others newcomers for whom transnational identities have greater significance than diaspora integration. The case of Norway is exceptionally interesting, because it has not diluted its sovereignty by joining the European Union. Its ability to finance freedom of expression for diverse cultural groups and the welfare of all citizens is enabled by the country's prosperity and ‘sovereign’ wealth fund. The Baltic states that used to form part of the Soviet Union are prospering nowadays as members of the European Union. They attract significant numbers of international migrants with new transnational affiliations. However, members of the much larger Russian minorities in these states, many of them migrants of the Soviet era, do not enjoy full cultural freedoms. Discrimination is routinely justified in terms of national sovereignty and a cultural imperative to repair what was weakened in the Soviet decades. Sovereignty is constrained on the ground by economic factors, which leave the owners of agricultural land vulnerable to more powerful actors from east and west alike (Dzenovska 2022). The Ukrainian constellation differs again. Ukrainian peoplehood is complex due to the relatively late emergence of nationalist ideology and a stable political framework in which it could develop. Soviet socialism brought stability but the federal frame was never accepted by nationalists. Cultural proximity to Russians (and Belarussians) and the fact that millions of self-identifying Ukrainians use Russian in their everyday lives (often as their mother tongue) brought about a complex situation. The principle of ‘absolute cultural freedom of expression’ for minorities was not acceptable to Ukrainian nationalists. In the absence of a new ‘superstate’ to mediate and diffuse conflict by upholding the deterritorialization of cultural difference, the outcome has been exactly as Gellner and Malinowski would have predicted: the most tragic violence on the European continent since the Second World War. While many observers, including anthropologists (e.g., Dunn 2022), have framed the conflict as one that opposes a neo-imperial Russian Federation to a former colony asserting its right to sovereignty (and a smooth path into western supranational institutions), I argue that the concept of sovereignty is the problem, not the solution (Hann 2023). The territorialization of culture remains deeply rooted, not only in Ukraine but also in neighbouring states integrated for decades into the ‘superstate’ of the European Union. The strategies of populist politicians in the countries of the Visegrád Cooperation highlight the tensions between the principle of sovereignty and the constraints imposed by political and economic dependence on a larger entity. Since becoming Prime Minister of Hungary for the second time in 2010, Viktor Orbán has regularly claimed that Hungarian sovereignty, threatened in the past by the empires of the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, is nowadays vulnerable to the coercive powers of the EU. Identification of the external enemy is accompanied by authoritarian measures against internal opposition. In his speech on the steps of the National Museum on 15 March 2025 commemorating the 177th anniversary of the outbreak of the Magyar war of independence against Austrian rulers in 1848, after describing Brussels as the new imperial threat, Orbán attacked internal critics of the regime as bedbugs (poloskák) to be swept away in the course of spring cleaning. A few weeks later, Hungary's parliament approved a ban on public meetings of LGBTQ organizations and a tendentious ‘advisory referendum’ on whether or not Ukraine should be admitted to the European Union. Turnout was exceptionally high, with 95% of voters following the Prime Minister's advice and rejecting EU membership for Ukraine. A new Hungarian opposition in the form of the Tisza Party emerged from nowhere to poll almost 30% in the European Parliament elections of June 2024. The state-controlled media accuse Tisza Party representatives in Strasbourg and Brussels of betraying the national interest by supporting accelerated accession for Ukraine (which would divert EU budgets eastward and, by opening the labour market, drive down the wages of Hungarian workers). By supporting EU sanctions against their homeland for alleged breaches of the rule of law and corruption, the Tisza Party is accused by the government of denying Hungarians the funds needed to renovate their schools and hospitals, resources to which according to Orbán the country is entitled. If the economy stagnates, Brussels is responsible. The principle of national sovereignty is likely to figure prominently in the elections due in 2026, in which Orbán will insinuate that no Magyar patriot could possibly vote for any party other than his own. I have drawn on little-known posthumous publications of Bronislaw Malinowski (born 1884) and Ernest Gellner (born 1925) to indicate an anthropological tradition that is subversively critical of sovereignty, but limited by its emphasis on the state and ethnonational minorities. Thomas Hylland Eriksen (born 1962) has extended the anthropological critique into a more globalized era in which entropy plays out on larger scales. Nation-states have ceded much of their power, politically and economically. Both empirically and theoretically, Eriksen has shown why it is important to distinguish between the registers of culture, ethnicity, cohesion and identity. Rather than indirect rule or universal colonization, he urges downscaling to local communities and grassroots networks. The analysis of peoplehood and transnational identities allows us to escape from the logic of sovereign states and thereby ‘explode the paradigm of nationalism and … historicize Gellner's theory’ (Eriksen 2007, 178). But this point has yet to be reached in the entropy-resistant postsocialist nation-states of central Europe. Here, the concerns of Gellner and Malinowski remain pertinent. The EU as a supranational entity has so far failed to provide solutions. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.