seeing like a scientist: science-making and state-making in modern world

8/11/2019 Seeing Like a Scientist: Science-Making and State-Making in Modern World

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Gramsci Study Sinan Chu

Prof. Mark Rupert Fall 2013

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Seeing Like a Scientist:

Science-Making and State-Making in Modern World

The central theme of this project is the investigation of the relationship between science

and state in modern age. Specifically, I attempt to develop a theory explaining the relationship

between the rise of modern science and the emergence of modern state.

As many studies have shown, the production of scientific knowledge - and those in social

scientific disciplines in particular - is inextricably connected with the formation of governing

structure that most of us today consider as attributes of modern states (Weir & Skocpol 1985;

Wittrock, Wagner & Wollmann 1991; Wittrock and Wagner 1996). For instance, scholars of

state-building have observed that political elites have often seen science as an important

instrument for the state and society to reach modernity, and thus consciously promoted scientific

research in their country in order to achieve their goals of strengthening various aspects of the

states capacity, as well as their countrys general socioeconomic well-being (Campbell et al.

1989; Halpern 1988; Andreas 2009;).

On the other hand, theorists of modernity suggested that, in providing knowledge to the

state in the name of scientific, modern science has fundamentally revolutionized the state-

society relationship, enabling the state to have not only moral and political authority over the

latter, but epistemic authority as well (Scott 1998; Anderson 2006; Liu 2009; Lam 2011;

Mullaney 2011; Giddens 2013). The implication of above two strands of scholarship can thus be

summarized as: the development of modern science and that of modern state went hand in hand,

in a mutually constitutive relationship during the past three centuries or so.


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Can we develop a theory of science-politics interaction that provides insights on the

formation and operation of the modern state? In the following essay I argue that such a theory is

best founded on a nonconventional definition of the state, which I shall term as the state as

institutional fact approach. Drawing on scholarship on state-building, sociology of knowledge, a

well as social constructivist approach of sociopolitical inquiry, I advanced three main claims,

each of which corresponding to a section of the essay.

First, in section I, I argue that a social constructivism informed institutional approach to

politics can avoid collapsing the sociopolitical phenomena to either actors or the structure. Then

in section II, I apply this constructivist institutional approach to the study of state, and argue that

state should be studied as an institutional fact, whose existence relies on collective acceptance.

Finally, in section III, I argue that the specific character of the institutional fact known as the

state is provided by the ideology of science. In other words, science makes the modern state.

I. Beyond Agent-Structure Dichotomy: Institutional Approach Reconsidered

Literature on comparative politics has provided us with a variety of angles to examine the

factors and processes that shape the dynamics of state-society relations (Lichbach & Zuckerman

1997; 2009). Some of them assumes that individual or collective political actors behave

according to a particular form of rationality, which often is defined as a calculative pursuit of

economic benefits, political power, moral standing, or social prestige. The result on the aggregate

level - outcome of policy making and implementation - is interpreted as the result of the

negotiation between the interests of different rational actors within the confines of certain

institutional arrangements. Others see a rational logic of social development manifested in macro

configuration of sociopolitical system, which often emphasizes the tendency towards certain


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attributes of the entire system as the main driving force behind political changes. The structure of

the system generates incentives and disincentives for actors, rewarding behaviors that conform to

the imperative of the system, while punishing deviance. Modern state-building - inasmuch as it

marks a breakaway from previous forms of political structure - represents yet another stage of

social development and the manifestation of the underlying historical rationality. Still others take

into account factors relatively outside the conventional domain of territorial-bounded political

authority, usually described using the language of external factors or international factors.

Often combined with the former two approaches, the external dimension adds another layer of

complexity to the story of state-building by either expanding the pool of relevant actors or

moving the level of analysis to even bigger political community.

Each of these approaches has their particular emphasis, giving them explanatory

leverages in accounting for certain phenomena but not others. Together they suggest a set of

potentially useful angles for one to examine the modern state-building in China. In the past more

than six decades following the takeover of the country by the Chinese Communists, students of

Chinese politics have produced an immensely rich - and still growing - literature that examined

the state-society relation of China from different theoretical perspectives, empirical orientations,

as well as disciplinary traditions (Perry 1994). Many of these works can be read as leaning

towards one or two approaches as discussed above. Today, more and more students of Chinese

politics choose to draw from more than one theoretical and methodological approach in their

inquiry, as the research community has become increasingly aware of the deficiency of

collapsing the complex social world to either the side of actors or the side of the social structure

(Wendt 1987; Onuf 2012; 2013). The dialogue and cross-fertilization between different

approaches has produced an array of innovative ways of studying state-society relations. One of


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such developments is the focus on institutions. Broadly defined, institution refers to the

conventionalized pattern of behavior of social actors, which can be causally associated with

rational interests, legal-political authority, collective mindset, overall economic efficiency, or the

combination of any of those (March and Olsen 1996; 2006). An institutional approach can either

use institution as a variable to construct its causal story, or choose institution as a particular angle

to look into the process in which the structure of power relations within the social system is

constructed. This latter approach calls for our attention, as it entails a quite dramatic change in its

way of using institutions as an analytical tool for sociopolitical inquiry from the mainstream

comparative political literature.

Using institutions as a variable for constructing causal narrative has certain utility but it

also limits the analytical potential of the concept as a theoretical construct. In particular, it

requires a researcher to separate the so-called institutions from other thingspolitical behavior,

socioeconomic structure, etc.so that one can place institutions as either independent variable or

dependent variable in a causal statement. As one can imagine, such treatment inevitably leads

one to confront issues of endogeneity. But more importantly, when institutions are invoked in

studies of variable-based thinking, researchers tend to focus on concrete formal institutions,

while paying less attention to those not conventionally named as institutions. As a result, the

variable-based logic is less incapable of recognizing and thus capturing the nature of a large

portion of the social reality as institutional, i.e. highly patterned human behavior that are socially

reproduced.

These institutionalized phenomenato use Searles terminology (Searle 1995),

institutionalfactsare an important part of the social world and should be treat with attention

by social scientists, precisely because they are often considered as outside of the realm of politics.


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How do these institutions operate, sustain or transform themselves, and what are the political

implications of these institutionsthese are important questions for students of politics. Yet

these questions are largely omitted or only given trivial treatment by the conventional approaches.

In the past several decades, the literature developed around the concept of political culture has

largely taken up the task of studying these institutional facts under the category of either culture

or informal institutions. However, the preoccupation with identifying strong causal power has

led many to declare that culture cannot be a considered as a strong causal variable for political

science, at most a residual one.

The misunderstanding about the role of culture and the narrow definition given to

institutions has been pointed out by a number of scholars of comparative politics; yet with a few

exceptions, not much development has been made. In a different subfield of political science,

international relations, however, the study of institutional phenomena as societal-level

intersubjective structure is not only regarded as legitimate, but also has been met with enduring

enthusiasm from the scholar community, thanks to the constructivist turn in what many refer to

as the Third Debate. More importantly, the philosophical foundation of social constructivism can

provide new perspectives for the study of state-society relations. Without delving into the full

implications of social constructivism on comparative political studies - which would require at

least another book-length discussion - here I would like to highlight a few most important and

immediately relevant insights from the constructivist scholarship, most notably, John Searles

discussion of speech acts, institutional facts and social reality (Searle 1995)1

.

1For a useful discussion about the merit of applying constructivism in comparative political study, see Martha

Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and

Comparative Politics,Annual Review of Political Science, 2001, vol 4, pp.391416.


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First of all, as noted above, institutions as a theoretical concept should be employed as an

analytical tool in a way that fully exploits its potential to conceptualize the world. Simply

equating institutions as a concept with formal social, economic, and political institutions draws

an arbitrary boundary for the study of institutions, at the price of excluding a substantial portion

of institutional phenomena that our social world is consisted of. Instead, it would be more

meaningful to start with all the institutional aspect of the social and political world, which by

definition subsumes the subject of the formal institutional approach but also include those

regularized behavior human agents but yet not institutionalized in the formal-legal sense. This

not only enlarges the scope of social objects that fit the definition of institutions, but also allows

us to see the works of power beyond the realm of those codified form of institutions, thus open

up the possibilities of investigating many institutional phenomena previously understudied and

undertheorized.

Secondly, institutions are best defined as complex systems of speech acts. Whether exists

as codified formal institutions backed up by legal authority and political power or not, all human

institutions share the same logical structure as the most primitive form of speech acts, which

contains the imposition of certain status-function onto other objects in a specific context.

Recognizing this essential logical structure about institutions gives us the ability to look beyond

their content as defined in the common everyday language, and uncover their full meaning as

well as their interdependence with other human institutions. With speech act theory as the

theoretical foundation for such reconceptualization, all institutions can be studied from the power

they carry derived from their logical structure and connection with the wider social context. This

brings us to the third and final point.


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II. Beyond State-Society Dichotomy: State as Institutional Fact

Institutions have always been concerns to theorists of state. Scholarship of Marxian

thinking, diverse as they are, can be more or less characterized as preferring a society-centered

approach to state-society relations. They generally see state as the instrument of class domination.

Political institutions are the manifestation of the interests of the ruling class, and the direct means

for whom the oppression of the oppressed class is exercised. Thus state is reduced to, first of all,

political institutions, and secondly, mere servants of class interests. Pluralist theorists, on the

other hand, take a less society-centered view. While admitting that various social groups can

exert influence over the government/state depending their social resources, pluralists see state as

relatively autonomous. The degree of state autonomy is not to be exaggerated, for pluralists, as

the political power does not concentrate in the hands of the government, but dispersed in a

plurality of social groups. However, because power is not monopolized in the hands of a single

group - as traditional Marxian theories contend - the government is not completely an extension

of any single social groups political resource. Lastly, state-centered theorists grant state a much

more active role in shaping political processes. As critique from the bringing the state back in

movement argued, state is an important actor in society politics in and of itself, and should be

treated as such, instead as reflection of the societal politics. Drawing on Webers definition of

state as compulsory organization that monopolizes the legitimate use of force, the revived statist

scholarship argued for restoration of agency to state in comparative political analysis.

Despite the seemingly disagreements on the surface, it is not impossible, on certain level,

to synthesize the various aspects of state-society dynamics as highlighted above into a somewhat

logically coherent laundry list of different but not necessarily contradicting properties of the state.

The properties of the state, as we can infer from these different accounts, contains the following


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several elements: 1) a constellation of agencies and institutions that are granted with the power to

make decisions that are binding on the society, 2) a political platform or channel via which the

conflict between different interests of various social groups is addressed, and 3) a political

instrument that is structurally disposed - but not determined - to favor the interests of certain

social forces than others, while at the same times also allows certain room for maneuver by

different social-political coalition to influence its working on the margin. At the most immediate

and empirical level, a state, one can say based on the above features, is more or less equivalent to

the concrete institutions that possess the formal power over the society, at the same time

responding - in various fashion - to the interests of the latter. Furthermore, the state as concrete

institutions can only be imagined as either a reflection of the underlying social structure, or an

active political player in and of itself, or something in between. In other words, state is studied as

its material manifestation -political institutions, and the dichotomous logical structure of agent

vs. structure remains in the background of those seemingly different conceptualizations of it.

At a more abstract and theoretical level, the assumption that the above different

approaches all share, to a certain extent, is the idea of state as a conceptually distinct and

separate entity from another entity referred to as the society. For society-oriented approaches, the

state is only conceptually different but ontologically dependent upon the society: the formal

political structure performs the function of disciplining power of the state only in service of the

interests of certain social group(s). For statist approaches, the state is poised as ontologically

opposite to the society: state is seen as rational, organized, hierarchical, ready to act upon the

latter, whereas society is seen as natural, spontaneous, anarchical, and needed to be act upon by

an external agent - the state - before order and discipline can be achieved. Yet the commonality is

that one can draw a clear boundary that conceptually separates the state from the society. As soon


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as one attempts a thought exercise in the following direction, one will come to the same

observation as described above: according to the reasoning of any of above approaches, it is

impossible to define, conceptualize, and locate the state without simultaneously also defining,

conceptualizing, and locating the society as the formers conceptual opposite in ones mental

framework about the social world.

This marks an important limitation to and weakness of their imagination about the state.

Yet this is so not only because that they all decide to pursue the conceptual dichotomy between

state and society, but because the implication of such dichotomy is largely untreated, or at least

underexplored. The problem here, similar to the agent vs. structure discussion that we briefly

reviewed in the previous section, lies in their failure to realize the interdependence and co-

constitution between the two entities that are commonly acknowledged as distinct conceptual

entities or categories. States are considered as something external the society, standing apart

from it, recalling Foucaults discussion on The Prince, [t]he prince acquires his principalities by

inheritance or conquest, but in any case he does not form part of it, he remains external to it

(Foucault 1991). Modern states, however, are precisely characterized by its indistinguishable-

ness from the society. This paradox comes from the combination of the self-portrayal of modern

state elites as being independent and the necessary justification for its existence and authority as

the embodiment of the society. Migdal, among others, gave the most refined articulation of such

paradox: [a]s an entity appearing to stand apart from society and its individuals, it has difficulty

gaining conformity through individuals tying their personal identities to a collective of which

they self-consciously felt a part (Migdal 2001).

How would a social constructivism informed institutional approach, as discussed in the

previous sections, conceptualize the state? More specifically, how would such an approach, on


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one hand, redefine state in a way that moves the discussion beyond the seemingly prevailing

conceptual dichotomy of state vs. society, on the other hand, allows research to escape the

rigid and narrow focus on concrete institutions as the only empirical manifestation of the state?

Can such an institutional approach help us develop a way of thinking about the state that helps us

avoid reductionist tendency in both conceptual dichotomies as identified above (agent vs.

structure, state vs. society)?

As suggested, the institutional approach built upon social constructivism see our social

reality as made up of all kinds of institutional facts. Some of these institutional facts are more

visiblewe know them as concrete social, political, and economic institutions, such as marriage,

election, and currency, to name a few examples. Others are not commonly described as such but

are no less institutional than those in the former category. One example is language. As a symbol

system, language creates the possibility for human interaction with a given community. But

language can only be a meaningful and useful communicative tool insofar as a particular human

community collectively accepts its syntax and semantics. Here lies one crucial feature of

institutional facts: an institutional fact is ontologically dependent upon collective acceptance.

Codification of certain institutional phenomena into law, regulations, code of conduct, rules of

organization does not fundamentally change their institutional character, nor does the status of

un-codified cause any institutional phenomena to be less institutional. We thus live in a world

constructed by layers and systems of institutional facts, some more institutionalized than others.

The differences between one human community from another, therefore, should be examined by

focusing on what these institutional facts are, and how they are organized into even larger

institutions.


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It should be apparent now that our society can be seen as a collection of institutional facts:

some codified, formalized, and others not so much. But where do we find the state? The presence

of specific government apparatus, or the creation of particular collective decision-making

institutions, or the popularization of certain kind of belief or awareness, or the combination of

any of them, is commonly taken as the defining feature of and/or evidence for the state. But these

properties only describes what the state appears to be: the agent that act on behalf of the state, the

institutions that are endowed with the formal power of the state, the collective consciousness of

the population in which the existence of statehood is affirmed. None of these, however, can be

equated with the state. The list can go indefinitely, but the point is that without a prior definition

of the state, we can only talk about the various manifestations of the state but never itself directly.

This implies that state must be closely related to institutional phenomena as discussed above. If

the state must be first defined conceptually before it can be located and examined empirically - in

other words, the idea of the state must come before the manifestation of the state - then it seems

that state has the quality of an institutional fact.

Based upon our view on social reality in the preceding discussion, I argue that at the most

basic level, state should be understood as institutional fact itself. As part of our social reality, a

state describes a particular form of human community in which certain institutional fact are

present and are arranged in certain ways. Therefore, it is a complex system of institutional facts

produced, reproduced, and changed by concrete human practices. A state in the modern sense is a

political community that possesses certain features, which give it the modern outlook. But as a

community of people, a modern state nevertheless remains consisting of institutional facts. This

definition is echoed by a similar claim made by Timothy Mitchell (1991), after a similar

discussion and critique of the approaches to state at the time. Drawing upon works by Michel


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Foucault and his idea of disciplinary power specifically, Mitchell argued that state should not

be taken as a free-standing entity, whether an agent, instrument, organization or structure, located

apart from and opposed to another entity called society (Mitchell 1991, 95).

The alternative, according to Mitchell, is instead that the state should be addressed as an

effect of detailed processes of spatial organization, temporal arrangement, functional

specification, and supervision and surveillance, which create the appearance of a world

fundamentally divided into state and society (Mitchell 1991, 95). In essence, this is a call for

seeing state as the product of a larger structural configuration that only came to existence in

modern age, or simply in his own term, the structural effect. The defining feature of this

structural effect is that it produces the very appearance of a separate realm independent from

the society, characterized by a distinct dimension of structure, framework, codification,

planning, and intentionality (Mitchell 1991, 95). In other words, the thing that we came to know

as the state is fundamentally the idea of the state that is produced on a structural level by a

collection of social processes.

In a similar vein, Peter Steinberger claims that state should be best understood as a

structure of intelligibility (2004, 13). As such, the state performs the function of the

institution of institutions, through directing all of the lesser institutions of society (Steinberger

2004, 22). To reframe this claim in the language that we were using, state is a complex system of

institutional fact which is built upon the idea of (a) logical coherence as a unitary entity and (b)

conceptual distinction from society. The idea, the principle, or the logic which arranges all the

rest institutional facts in our social world into a system marked by the above two properties is the

idea of the state. We can only experience or encounter state through the very idea of the state,

which allows us to locate state in relation to the rest of the institutional facts in our social world.


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Although the idea of the state refers to the way in which all other institutions are arranged and

configured, this is by no means to suggest that state as a concept can be collapsed to the

particular constellation of certain sets of institutions. Precisely the opposite is the case: it is the

idea of the state that conceptually connects and arranges the institutions, giving them collectively

the outlook of state. It is also not true to suggest that the concept of state can be collapsed to

any ideasabout the state. The nature of institutional fact requires collective acceptance for its

existence. State, therefore, relies on collective acceptance too. One can say that the state, to

paraphrase Benedict Anderson, is another imagined community, just like nation (Anderson

1983).

On the surface, such a definition of the state is radically different from the view of the

popular approaches in the field. Neither the state-centered approaches (Weberian and its variants,

for example) nor the society-centered approaches (Marxian and its variant, for example) would

concede that state can be defined without reference to the materiality of its existence. But to see

state as institutional fact does not deny the material existence of state. It recognizes the necessity

of certain material condition giving rise to and reproducing the state, as for all institutional facts.

The point of departure here is that state does not exist simply as its material manifestation. The

materialingredientsof the state - the expansion and rationalization of bureaucracy, the

territorialization of political authority, the consolidation of control over violent means - only

assume the function of producing the state when its functional meaning as ingredients of the

state is collectively accepted, and when it acts in conjunction with others.

To conclude, it is useful to recall how Berger and Luckmann reminded us the importance

of insisting on understanding the social reality as it is: [i]t is important to keep in mind that the

objectivity of the institutional world, however massive it may appear to the individual, is a


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humanly produced, constructed objectivity (1966, 78). The important question that follows from

such definition, then, is in what ways the collective acceptance of the idea of state came about

and became sustained in our society.

III. Making the State: Intellectuals, Common Sense, and Modern Science

In the paragraphs below I argue that in order to understand the making of modern state

we need to investigate the production and reproduction of collective acceptance of the idea of the

state. Specifically, I advance three interrelated claims in this section. Drawing upon Berger &

Luckmann (1966), Gramsci (1999), and Scott (1998), I argue that, first of all, collective

acceptance can be generated from the construction of a particular common sense; secondly, the

construction of common sense requires the active participation of intellectuals; finally, the

construction of common sense that legitimizes the institutional order of modern state is closely

linked with the rise of modern science.

Construction of Common Sense

To begin with, the form which the collective acceptance of an institutional fact takes can

sometimes be quite explicit, but it could also be tacit and subtle. To be specific, such collective

action can come in two different forms: it can come either directly from the subjective and active

endorsement of people, or - more commonly - indirectly from the unconscious affirmation

embedded in the routinized, conventionalized, normalized human practices. In other words,

collective acceptance does not require an individual subject to offer his/her endorsement in a

conscious way, i.e. he/she does not need to know the full meaning of the endorsement before it is

given. As Berger and Luckmann (1966, 76) pointed out, children are not born into a world empty

of meaning. On the contrary, the moment that they come to this world, they confront a world full


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of norms, conventions, rules, and institutions. As they learn to live in this world, they are

socialized into the existing social world order defined by the institutional facts making up their

parents worlda reality that confronts the individual as an external and coercive fact (Berger

and Luckmann 1966, 76). Thus children learn about the world through the institutions inherited

from their parents generation, which will largely remain as their background knowledge

throughout their lives. In this way people give their endorsement to a great number of

institutional facts collectively not after they were taught about the history and meaning of these

facts, and allowed to decide whether they want them or not, but by simply adopting the common

practices of the society as part of their socialization (speak the national tongue, drive on the right

side of the road, get married around 30 years old, etc.). Unconscious but conventionalized

practice can produce collective acceptance too.2

In the larger world, such unconscious but conventionalized acceptance of various

institutional order is prevalent and carries significant political implications. In Gramscian terms,

this is the site where the struggle for/against hegemony is conducted. Common sense, for

Gramsci, describes the the uncritical and largely unconscious way in which a person perceives

the world (Simon 1999, 72). It is a kind of consciousness held by a person, superficially

explicit or verbal, which he has inherited from thepast and uncritically absorbed (Gramsci 1999,

641). We can therefore understand the production of collective acceptance for the state as

2Searles example of tribe children playing baseball game (Searle 1995, 144) also illustrates how an institutional

fact sustained by collective acceptance can occur even when no one in the community is aware of the meaning or the

origin of the institution itself. In this thought experiment, Searle asked us to imagine a tribe where children grew upplaying baseball. The children never learned about the rules, i.e. they were never taught about the full content of the

rules of the baseball game. Instead they acquired the knowledge about the rules of the game through reward and

criticism of their behavior in the game, e.g. they got to know what are not allowed in a game by being punished for

doing so. As a result they simply become very skillful players even though they had no idea of the name of the sport

or every specific rules about baseball. In this case they behave in accordance to the rules of baseball in a game that

looks like baseball because they simply unconsciously obey the rulesthey do not know whether there are other

ways of playing this game. The game was what they socialized into, something they picked up and took for granted

as they grew up. This echoes nicely with Berger and Luckmanns discussion about the habitualization of social

interactions becoming historical institutions through socialization of subsequent generations of people (1966, 75-78).


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essentially the construction of common sense around the idea of the state. The process of state-

making, therefore, is the process of construction of a particular type of common sense.

This is one step forward from Gramsci in the sense that he was primarily concerned with

the consolidation of the capitalist order through the construction of a common sense that served

the reproduction of the capitalist system. Here I am proposing, on the other hand, that the basic

notion of state as the general type of political order in modern times is also a common sense

construction. Just like the capitalist order, the modern state is no less being social constructed.

While in the 20th

century world politics, the ideological struggles between capitalism, socialism,

and nationalism took the front stage and people were continuously reminded of their importance

and differences, the advance of state as the universal form of political order of the modern age is

an important process that had no lessif not more profoundimplications on a more general

level.

Intellectuals and Hegemony

If we accept that the state is a social construct that only gained its existence through

institutionalization of itself in the consciousness/common sense of the masses, the obvious

question is: how did the construction of such common sense come about? More specifically, who

produced the idea of the state and managed to make it into the common sense of the masses, in

whose interests? Gramscis theorization of state and of intellectuals is quite helpful for making

sense of the complex social mechanisms involved.

Central to Gramscis political thoughts are his distinct conceptualization of the state and

the crucial role of intellectuals in societal politics. Different from Marx, Gramsci did not

consider state as simply a separate entity being subordinate to the society where the class

struggles are rooted in. Rather, state is seen as the totality of the social world, which includes


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both the formal domain of politics: the government, the legislature, the judiciary, etc.what he

termed as the political society as well as the domain traditionally titled private: schools,

media, church, etc.the civil society in Gramscis term. As he remarked, the general notion

of State includes elements which need to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the

sense that one might say that State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony

protected by the armour of coercion) (Gramsci 1999, 532). In other words, a state is

characterized by presence of an entire institutional order that stretches all the way from

government apparatus to various social institutions, from political institutions to social

institutions, from the realm of formal politics to the realm of civil activities. The ruling group,

accordingly, realizes its control over the society not simply through the means associated with

the formal political institutions: taxation, regulation, policing, oppressionthe power to coerce

and dominate. Simultaneously, or indistinguishably, the control is also realized or reinforced

through persuasion and mobilization in the civil sphere, to which Gramsci referred as

hegemony. In fact, for Gramsci, the two forms of power always go hand in hand: domination

and hegemony, the power in political society and the power in the civil society.

This broader definition of the state and the notion of hegemony provide the crucial link

between Gramsci and our state as institutional fact approach. As noted earlier, our approach

points to the fact that the existence of the state relies on the collective acceptance of the

institutional order that the very of the state attempts to establish. This institutional order is

characterized by a complex system of institutional fact which is built around two essential ideas:

(a) logical coherence of the state as a unitary entity, and (b) conceptual distinction between state

and society. As such, the state functions as the institution of all other institutions (Steinberger

2004, 22). Gramsci, in a similar vein, insisted that to study state one should look beyond the


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government bodies, and include both the political institutions and social institutions, both the

establishments in the realm of formal/political as well those in the realm of social/civil. Thus

both for us and Gramsci, the state is conceived as not merely an equivalent to the government,

but as representing the totality of the institutional order of a society. Again, one can say, state

thus defined is indistinguishable from the society. It is not an entity independent from the latter,

but an idea representing the order around which all the institutions in the society are arranged

and organized.

Additionally, Gramsci suggested that the political order of the state require both

domination and hegemony. The emphasis on the hegemony highlights Gramscis keen insight

into the complex nature of political struggles, which distinguishes him from many other theorists.

Reflecting upon the revolutionary experience in Europe and Russia, he remarked that, to upset a

state, merely attacking and capturing the formal political institutions of the statethe

government, for examplewould not conclude the struggle. Far from it, according to him, such

an act can only be considered as a frontal attack on the exterior of the state. The trenches

resistance in the civil societyruns much deeper and it is here where the struggles of real

importance needs to be fought and won, before a frontal attack on the government can be

successfully secured (Gramsci 1999, 489, 494).

As a result of the above two points, intellectuals and their activity of knowledge

production necessarily come to the forefront. For Gramsci, intellectuals are not identified by

their formal occupation, but by the social function performed: [a]ll men are potentially

intellectuals in the sense of having an intellect and using it, but not all are intellectuals by social

function (Gramsci 1999, 131). Specifically he distinguished two types of intellectuals.

Traditional intellectualsare those who occupy the institutional position of knowledge


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production. They engage in the activity of knowledge production by virtue of being in the

profession of such. But there is another class of intellectualsthe organic intellectuals. These

intellectuals are the thinking and organizing element of a particular fundamental social class.

Moreover, they are distinguished less by their profession, which may be any job characteristic

of their class, than by their function in directing the ideas and aspirations of the class to which

they organically belong. (Gramsci 1999, 131) The two categories are not mutually exclusive but

different from one another due to definitional criteria: one is defined by its formal profession, the

other its social function. Thus organic intellectuals can come from the group of traditional

intellectuals, but they can also come from elsewhere. Traditional intellectuals may be better

equipped for the task of intellectuals due to the special skills they acquired through formal

training. However depending on what kind of activity they ultimately choose to engage in, they

may or may not be performing the function of intellectual in actuality, and thus may or may not

be a practicing organic intellectual.

These organic intellectuals collectively play the central role in transformative politics as

they are the main actors who carry out the struggles for hegemony in the sphere of civil society.

Using knowledge as their weapon, they help to advance the interests of a particular class/social

grouping through articulating and constructing a kind of common sense that serves those

interests. The struggle among organic intellectuals is reflectedand thus can be observedin

the content of the common sense of the masses. Thus organic intellectuals are not exclusive to

the revolutionary party and its associated class. Each class/social grouping can have its own

organic intellectuals that speak for its interests through contending in the realm of common sense.

In this sense, political struggle is the struggle between organic intellectuals representing different

classes. Gramsci calls such struggle as the War of Position, as opposed to the War of


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Movement which characterizes the kind of struggle entailing primarily frontal attacks on formal

state institutions. Given that state exists as an institutional order constructed in the collective

consciousness of the masses, the legitimation of the modern state is necessarily a result of such

intellectual activities.

Science and the Modern State

The final critical element to the story of the emergence of modern state concerns the rise

of another social phenomena: modern science. As we have learned from Gramsci, intellectuals

help to the construct the particular type of common sense that serves to generate collective

acceptance to the institutional order of the state. But as the new ordering principle of institutions,

modern state is decisively different from previous political communities in one crucial aspect

the content of the institutional order it embodies. Our discussion so far suggests two important

elements to the content of such order: state as unitary entity and conceptually different from the

society. To those I argue that there is a third element: epistemic authority of the state over society.

Together these three elements constitute the unique feature of the state that differentiates it from

all its predecessors: the modern-nessof its institutional character.

For James Scott, the modern character of the state to be highlighted is its capacity to

order the nature and social space from above, through producing knowledgedetailed but

nevertheless simplifiedabout the latter which serves the purpose of controlling, managing, and

manipulating them. These simplified knowledge, as Scott, are like maps. Whereas pre-modern

states generally lack the ability to produce and thus see their subjects through these maps,

modern state are distinct in their way of governance because these simplifications played central

role in the statecraft. As Scott commented: [t]hese state simplifications, the basic givens of

modern statecraft were [] rather like abridged maps. But such knowledge is not complete but


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highly limited and selective: [t]hey did not successfully represent the actual activity of the

society they depicted, nor were they intend to; they represented only that slice of it that interested

the official observer. (Scott 1998, 3) Yet because the state concentrates power in its hand, the

knowledge it has about the societythe object of its statecraftbecomes power as well.

One critical element that enabled such modern state practice is what Scott referred to as

the high-modernist ideology. High modernism, according to Scott, must not be confused with

scientific practice.(Scott 1998, 4) Rather, its content is defined as the uncritical, unskeptical,

and thus unscientifically optimistic [attitude] about the possibilities for the comprehensive

planning of human settlement and planning. (Scott 1998, 4) But even if we concede that science

is not directly responsible for such an attitude, it is difficult to deny that the high-modernist

ideology is fundamentally an ideology of modern science: the confidence in human capacity to

know about their world and produce better knowledge about it through scientific practices, which

can then be used to guide human actions. Modern science comes with such confidence and

legitimacy in its own activity, as Scott recognized (1994, 4). Thus we can say that science is what

behind the emergence of high-modernism, which together with several other elements created the

possibility of modern statecraft, or to use Scotts terms, the perspective to see like a state.

But modern science motivated high-modernism did more than simply enabling policy

actions and institutional arrangement of the government. It is true and widely recognized that

science played important roles in informing various government actions in the modern era. But

as our discussion have suggested, the state is more than simply a collection of government

apparatus charged with the power to make policies and create institutions. The phenomenon of

so-called state is to be understood as a particular institutional order rooted in the collective

acceptance of the society. If that is the case, then the investigation of the impact of science needs


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to go beyond the confines of formal governments, and be extended to the consequence of those

science-informed government actions in the larger social context too. Or, one can say, the impact

of science should be viewed in the context of its role in shaping the new institutional order came

to be known as the state. The important question to ask about science, then, should be in what

ways and to what extend science shape the particular kind of common sense whose dominance is

critical to the creation and maintenance of the institutional order of the state. Moreover, we must

also ask, who are the agents behind this project of common sense construction on behalf of the

science?

If Scott (1998) showed to us how in the modern era large-scale social engineering

initiatives fueled by the unfounded optimism of high-modernist ideology often failed miserably,

then he remains differentiating the state from the society, politics from science, and practice from

ideology. But it is not enough to say that in modern age the state sought to transform the society

according to its authoritarian desire and taste because it borrowed the faith in human knowledge

from modern science. The modern state is the institutional order in which science is a part. It is

the hegemony of the idea of state that gave rise to the state, legitimizing it as the political order

of the new age through conquering the common sense of the population. This new order entails

the notion that state is a unitary entity which is separate from and above the society. At the same

time, as we can infer from Scott, the new order is also characterized by the idea that the state can

produce knowledge about its governing object, or as Gramsci put it, the capacity of having the

intellectual leadership over the society, alongside with its political and moral leadership

(Gramsci 1999). Therefore we need to transform Scotts argument in the following way. Modern

states are unique not because of the governments increasing tendency of using knowledge about

the society as the means of governance. This, while may be true, is only partial. If the state exists


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as an institutional order rather than as just the government body, then what science gave to the

state is at the most fundamental level a crucial component to the idea of the state as the

organizing principle: the state as possessing the epistemic authority of the society. In other words,

the state did not borrow confidence and knowledge from science and created high-modernist

projects of social engineering to transform the society. Rather, the sequence is the opposite:

through political elites pursuing social engineering of high-modernist fashion in the name of

science, the modern state is created.

Central to all high-modernist social engineering efforts behind the creation of the state is,

of course, the construction of common sense carried out by the organic intellectuals of the

emerging new political order. Because the new political orderthe stateis distinguished by the

idea of the epistemic authority of the state, the organic intellectuals working towards its creation

need to be those who share the vision of that order. As a result, a particular class of intellectuals

must take main responsibility for the making of modern state. This group of intellectuals is the

scientists of the to-be state, the emerging epistemic community that would in time confer the

knowledge authority to the so-called state. In other words, scientists are the organic

intellectuals of the modern state.

IV. Conclusion: Science-Making and State-Making

Commenting on his argument of war-making and state-making, Tilly said: [f]rank

recognition of the central place of force in governmental activity does not require us to believe

that governmental authority rests "only" or "ultimately" on the threat of violence. Nor does it

entail the assumption that a government's only service is protection. []Recognition of the


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centrality of force opens the way to an understanding of the growth and change of governmental

forms.(Tilly 1985, 172) In a way, the preceding discussion serves precisely this purpose.

The argument that I have advanced in this essay suggests that state-making is closely

linked with the production of collective acceptance of the state as a governing form, through the

construction of a particular kind of common sense, with the aid of science. In particular, the

construction of common sense involves the separation of state from society and conferring the

epistemic authority over the society to the state. This latter process went hand in hand with the

process of science-making. But this is not to say that the construction of common sense is the

only or the ultimate determinant behind the formation of modern state. It merely points out a way

to understand the complex phenomena involved in the rise of the state.

If the emergence of modern state, as Tilly argued, involved the monopolization of

violence, then we can say, in the realm of common sense, there is another form of

monopolization of violence: establishing the epistemic authority over the society is what enables

the states epistemic violence towards the society. Thus in modern states, only the government, or

the official observer, can know about the society, understand it, represent it, and then

act upon it. Appropriating the confidence and legitimacy of modern science, the government

becomes the authoritative interpreter of societal matters, whereas the society is rendered

voiceless and subjected to representation, examination, and policy actions by the government.

Gramsci reminded us that common sense of the masses is a central component to any political

order. Whereas pre-modern states could perhaps at most manage to claim political and moral

authority over the society through common sense construction, the ideology of science helped to

make modern states decisively different from their predecessors. The power holders of the

modern state now are equipped with perhaps the most penetrating power towards their ruling


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object: the power to know and represent. Moreover, this is not simply about the capacity of the

government but the character of the institutional order of the modern state. The point is that it is

rooted in the common sense of the modern state that the state represented by the government

is the ultimate authority of knowledge about the society, and the one who is legitimate to use

that knowledge to serve the common good. Thus it should come as no surprise to us to observe

the commitment to develop scientific research programs across different states. Seizing upon the

power of scientific knowledge, governments of the new institutional order became the loyal

advocate of its own epistemic authority. To paraphrase Tilly as the concluding remark, in modern

era, the relation between science and state can be characterized as follows: science made the state,

and the state made science.


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