Before and After Westphalia

From Bruce, over at Beyond the Beyond:

BEFORE AND AFTER WESTPHALIA: Or, ENTITIES THAT SEEM RATHER LIKE NATION-STATES, but aren’t

• The United Nations (association of states)
• The European Union (post-state economic regulatory zone)
• Trading blocs (NAFTA, ASEAN, Hanseatic League)
• empires and confederacies (multi-states)
• dictatorships (one-man state)
• aristocracies and kingdoms (family states)
• Communist dictatorship of the proletariat (non-state class rule)
• megacorporate multinationals (the global private sector)
• moguls (one-man private sector)
• mega-cities (city-states)
• police and security organizations (police states)
• military (military dictatorships, martial law, occupied zones)
• espionage (siloviki states, secret-police states) organized crime (shadow governments, kakistocracies)
• Classified areas (state-supported labs, weapons-testing zones, secret prisons, Area 51, slave labor areas, puzzle palaces, black money projects that lack official existence)
• social classes (capitalists, laborers, creative class, technocrats, white-collar, blue-collar, pink collar, underclass, aristocrats, the super-rich)
• religions (papal states, holy cities. theocracies, Sharia, Quakers, Amish)
• colonies, territories, protectorates (sub-states)
• secessions, frozen conflicts, liberated zones, warlord havens (illegal states)
• failed states (collapsed states, hollow states, black globalization, narcoterror areas)
• embassies (embedded mini-states)
• emergency rescue camps, refugee camps (damaged states)
• migratory hordes (mobile stateless peoples)
• slums, barrios, ghettos, favelas (under-states)
• the international scientific community
• prisons (states without individuals)
• monasteries, asylums, retreats (antisocial micro-states)
• conspiracies (Carbonari, Al Qaeda, Freemasons, Red Brigades)
• cultural movements (Modernism, the Enlightenment, feminism)
• The Internet
• social-software networks
• gaming environments, virtual worlds
• International regulatory agencies and standards boards (WIPO, WTO, WHO, ITU, etc)
• supra-national political parties (Communists, fascists, socialists, neocons)
• benevolent associations (Elks, Kiwanis)
• labor unions
• universities and colleges
• non-governmental organizations, quasi-autonomous non-governmental associations, blue-ribbon panels, independent prosecutors
• private banking and investment networks (Medici, Fuggers, Rothschilds)
• private postal systems, private logistics networks (Thurn and Taxis, Wal-Mart, Amazon)
• Languages
• Ethnicity
• Phantom folk-sources of state-like power and authority: The Mainstream Media, the Gnomes of Zurich, the Wall Street Exploiters, the Ruling Class, the Elders of Zion, Secular Humanism, the Old Boys’ Network, Jesuits, Freemasons, Illuminati, etc
• “complexes”: the military-industrial complex, the military-entertainment complex, the medical-industrial complex
• tongs, clubs, voluntary associations
• Insurgencies
• pirates, bandits, gangsters
• festivals, temporary autonomous zones
• tribes
• castaways
• hermits
• the dead: cemeteries, organized memorials, archives, museums
• the unborn
• areas devoid of human beings — high seas, involuntary parks, wilderness, poles, outer space, ocean abysses, deserts, ruins…

Since I’m currently in the middle of writing an essay on nomadic capital, file-sharing, and the offshore world, I thought I’d send an email with some suggestions for other possibilities. Today, this email this email made it onto the blog, along with some interesting responses from other readers. Alexander Knorr even mentions the Nuer, which I used as an ethnographic example of segmentary organization in an essay on the anti-globalization movement.

I’m starting to think that this kind of thing – perhaps something to do with power and resistance in non-state entities – might be the broad area that I’d like to focus in on for postgraduate study. And if sci-fi author/designers are talking about it, then so much the better!