TY - JOUR
T1 - The Structural Sources of Ambiguity in the Modern State
T2 - Race, Empire, and Conflicts over Membership
AU - King, Katrina Quisumbing
N1 - Funding Information:
presented here were shared at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, UCLA, the American Sociological Association, and the Social Science History Association. I thank the audiences and discussants of these spaces, especially Omar Lizardo and Dan Hirschman. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, the MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship, a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in Tagalog, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Institute. Direct correspondence to Katrina Quisumbing King, Department of Sociology, Northwestern, University, 1810 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, Illinois 60208. Email: kqk@northwestern.edu 2Senators Tydings and Copeland, speaking on H.R. 7233, “Philippine Independence,” Cong. Rec., 72nd Cong., 2nd sess., December 8, 1932, p. 186. 3See app. A for definitions of citizenship.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The University of Chicago.
PY - 2022/11
Y1 - 2022/11
N2 - How do we understand ambiguous state activities? How do state actors interpret, use, and produce ambiguous classifications? By asking what explains the simultaneous classification of Filipinos as citizens, nation-als, and aliens during U.S. imperial rule, this article draws attention to modern states’ ideological commitments and the foundational role of concerns over race in shaping state institutions and ambiguous prac-tices. In debating how to rule over Filipinos, U.S. state actors wrestled with tensions between territorial expansion and limiting the rights of nonwhite people. They institutionalized ambiguity into the legal archi-tecture of the state. The coexistence of seemingly contradictory statuses was enabled by the decisions of the highest court in the land and re-flected national and imperial conflicts over belonging. Debates over national boundaries—over who can belong—are key to understanding the structural sources of ambiguity in statecraft. In the United States, these questions are fundamentally about race.
AB - How do we understand ambiguous state activities? How do state actors interpret, use, and produce ambiguous classifications? By asking what explains the simultaneous classification of Filipinos as citizens, nation-als, and aliens during U.S. imperial rule, this article draws attention to modern states’ ideological commitments and the foundational role of concerns over race in shaping state institutions and ambiguous prac-tices. In debating how to rule over Filipinos, U.S. state actors wrestled with tensions between territorial expansion and limiting the rights of nonwhite people. They institutionalized ambiguity into the legal archi-tecture of the state. The coexistence of seemingly contradictory statuses was enabled by the decisions of the highest court in the land and re-flected national and imperial conflicts over belonging. Debates over national boundaries—over who can belong—are key to understanding the structural sources of ambiguity in statecraft. In the United States, these questions are fundamentally about race.
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U2 - 10.1086/722813
DO - 10.1086/722813
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85148299868
SN - 0002-9602
VL - 128
SP - 768
EP - 819
JO - American Journal of Sociology
JF - American Journal of Sociology
IS - 3
ER -