This article looks at the relationship between logistical power and the assemblages of sites that constitute modern states. Rather than treating states as centralizing institutions and singular sites of power, we treat them as multi-sited. They gain power by using logistical methods of problem solving, using infrastructures to enforce and depersonalize relations of domination and limit the autonomy of elites. But states necessarily solve diverse problems by different means in multiple locations. So, educating children is not continuous with governing colonies even though both are necessary to nineteenth-century states. For this reason, states use logistical means of coordination to link sites, and they make the power of the state seem unitary even though the exercise of state power is not.

What is the state? The State of Freedom offers an important new take on this classic question by exploring what exactly the state did and how it worked. Patrick Joyce asks us to re-examine the ordinary things of the British state from dusty government files and post offices to well-thumbed primers in ancient Greek and Latin and the classrooms and dormitories of public schools and Oxbridge colleges. This is also a history of the 'who' and the 'where' of the state, of the people who ran the state, the government offices they sat in and the college halls they dined in. Patrick Joyce argues that only by considering these things, people and places can we really understand the nature of the modern state. This is both a pioneering new approach to political history in which social and material factors are centre stage, and a highly original history of modern Britain.

Material Powers Introduction Patrick Joyce and Tony Bennett Part 1: A History of the Categories 1. Matter and Materialism: A Brief Prehistory of the Present John Frow 2. Locating Matter: The Place of Materiality in Urban History Chris Otter 3. The Matter of Materialism: Literary Mediations Bill Brown Part 2: Assembling the State 4. The Unintended State Chandra Mukerji 5. Filing the Raj: Political Technologies of the Imperial British State Patrick Joyce 6. Abstraction, Materiality and the 'Science of the Concrete' in Engineering Practice Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox Part 3: Colonial Materialities 7. Camerawork as Technical Practice in Colonial India Christopher Pinney 8. Exploring the Senses and Exploiting the Land : Railroads, Bodies and Measurement in Nineteenth-Century French Colonies Nelia Dias 9. Making and Mobilising Worlds: Assembling and Governing the Other Tony Bennett

The British Journal of SociologyVolume 61, Issue s1 p. 305-310 Free Access The state, politics and problematics of government Patrick Joyce, Corresponding Author Patrick Joyce Emeritus Professor of Hisotry, University of Manchester, Visiting Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowemail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Patrick Joyce, Corresponding Author Patrick Joyce Emeritus Professor of Hisotry, University of Manchester, Visiting Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowemail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 15 January 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2009.01291.xCitations: 2AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Bibliography Goldstein, J. (ed.) 1994 Foucault and the Writing of History, Blackwell. Google Scholar Joyce, P. 2003 The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City, Verso. Google Scholar Otter, C. 2008 The Victorian Eye: a Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800–1910, University of Chicago Press. 10.7208/chicago/9780226640785.001.0001 Google Scholar Prakash, G. 1999 Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India, Princeton University Press. 10.1515/9780691214214 Google Scholar Vernon, J. 2007 Hunger: a Modern History, Harvard University Press. 10.4159/9780674044678 Google Scholar Citing Literature Volume61, Issues1Special Issue: The BJS: Shaping sociology over 60 yearsJanuary 2010Pages 305-310 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Journal Article What is the Social in Social History? Get access Patrick Joyce Patrick Joyce University of Manchester London School of Economics Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 206, Issue 1, February 2010, Pages 213–248, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtp030 Published: 18 February 2010