Anthropologist Prof. Rebecca Bryant on how the future shapes the past

On 30–31 August 2023, the Anthropologies of State (AnthroState) network of the European Association of Anthropologists co-organised the conference Future States together with Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) in Latvia. Considering how turbulent geopolitics are currently, the conference called on anthropologists to interpret the increasing lack of trust in the state around the world and how the future of the state is envisioned and practiced. Cultural anthropologist Prof. Rebecca Bryant was invited to give the keynote speech.

Bryant’s work focuses on forced migration, borders, and unrecognised states. She is known for her expertise in political and legal anthropology, particularly in ethnic conflict, displacement, border dynamics, and contested sovereignty in regions like the Cyprus Green Line and Turkey. Bryant is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University has degrees from the University of Chicago and has held academic positions at renowned institutions, including the London School of Economics.

She was invited to participate by the organisers, fellow anthropologists, who are working on issues similar to her field of interest. Reflecting on the theme of the conference, Bryant interprets “future states” as being an ethnographic question concerning how to think about our futures as humans, as people via the state, and the role that the state plays in shaping our futures.

A key factor in Bryant’s work is the concept of time. ‘I've done a lot of anthropological research on the state, and I have always had an interest in time, in the future, as well as the past,’ Bryan explains. Looking at long-term ethnic conflicts, as she has done, you naturally have to consider the past. ‘In the past decade or so, I've been especially interested in how people come to terms with past violence and historical reconciliation and reconcile conflicted histories in relationship to the future.

This push-and-pull relationship between the past and the future comes through in her work on Cyprus, about which she published another book, The Past in Pieces: Belonging in the New Cyprus. Here, she focused on a crucial and politically tumultuous moment in the island’s modern history. Simultaneously as the border that had split the island and families for close to 30 years started to open up in 2003, the island was also getting ready to vote on joining the EU. ‘I wrote about how those big questions about the political future of the island shaped the ways that people were looking at the past in that period.’ Her next area of research focused on unrecognised states where she was able to continue to explore the idea of time. ‘People who live in unrecognised states live in extended uncertainty, but they nevertheless try to build a state,’ says Bryant. ‘They still try to go on with their lives, even knowing that the rest of the world is probably never going to recognise their country. All of these questions come together and intersect under this topic: how we think about the state, how the state is involved, how we think about the future, how politics and references to particular kinds of history reflect back on how we legitimise the state.’ 

Bryant explains that ‘the modern European state emerged at the same time as various kinds of instruments to measure and control time, various kinds of time discipline, as a way to try to control contingency. Essentially, the state became about being able to guarantee a future for its citizens within the realm that it controls.’

In her keynote speech at the Future States conference, Bryant presented on a new concept she is working on, a field she is calling “infrastructural imperialism”. This project looks at patterns on a geopolitical level and investigates primarily Turkish, but also Chinese and Russian, foreign infrastructural investments in surrounding countries. 

As global politics have gotten more complicated and seem “out of control”, the state can no longer claim to control contingency. In her speech, Bryant suggested that a more speculative approach to the future has emerged. Her evidence for this is that increasingly more states are becoming involved in real estate speculation of various kinds, which is reflected in an explosion of construction projects around the world.

‘In places like Central Asia, Turkey, Russia, and in the heart of London, you can see that real estate speculation has become an important part of the way in which economies work and an important way in which the state attempts to control the economy.

My talk was essentially about this speculative approach to the future, to the state today and what that might tell us about the future of the state.’

Quite apart from answers that can be gleaned about new ways in which states are looking at the future, researching infrastructural imperialism raises a myriad of equally interesting new topics for investigation. As her project has only recently received funding from the European Research Council, she has only scratched the surface.

One key factor is the idea of potency. These large construction projects give the impression that what is being built is going to be productive to the future of the people living in that state.

The second word in the phrase, imperialism, is equally worth investigating. Bryant believes that this new form of imperialism differs from Western European colonialism in that it aims to make recipient states stronger as opposed to being centred around resource extraction that depletes countries for the benefit of a metropolitan centre. This strategy comes with an image of benevolence that goes hand in hand with painting the “giver” states as mighty and can in some cases, like with China, create a smaller states to become dependent on the larger state through financial mechanisms like loans. 

Reflecting on her experience at the conference, Bryant says she was pleasantly surprised to see that many of her peers seemed to be thinking along the same lines. ‘I had a lot of great conversations with colleagues at the conference. It was really interesting to discover so many people whose field work sites were changing in ways similar to mine.

It seems that there are certain things that are happening around the world that really do need to be studied. This involves things like this massive construction speculation by governments and the emergence of connections with mafia and things like this that are really interesting and frightening.’

In conclusion, Bryant noted that she felt encouraged to see so many doctoral students at the conference who were presenting and getting feedback. The reciprocal nature of the conference stood out to her the most. ‘Overall, I got some very good helpful comments for me to think about how I want to develop this paper,’ concludes Bryant.