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Social Security, Personhood, and the State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2015

Keebet VON BENDA-BECKMANN
Keebet VON BENDA-BECKMANN*
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus, Martin Luther University Halle/Wittenberg, and Associate, Department of Law and Anthropology, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
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Abstract

This paper looks at the relationship between personhood and the state by taking a relational perspective both on the concept of personhood and on that of the state, and with a focus on social security. It presents a broad concept of social security. Based on research in the Moluccas of East Indonesia, and among Moluccan migrants in the Netherlands, it is explained how social security shapes personhood in situations in which the state is only a minor contributor, and people depend on mechanisms other than support and care from the state. Finally, it will be explored how long-distance relations of social security are maintained and how the position that respective actors have within these relationships affects notions not only of appropriate care, but also of personhood.

Keywords

migrationsocial securitycarelegal pluralismpersonhoodMoluccans
Type
State and Personhood in Southeast Asia
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , November 2015 , pp. 323 - 338
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is professor emeritus at Martin Luther University Halle/Wittenberg and an associate of the Department of Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She has done field research in West Sumatra and the Moluccas, and in the Netherlands, and has published widely on legal pluralism, exploring its temporal and spatial dimensions. Her publications address issues of dispute management, property, social (in)security, law and religion, natural resource management, and decentralization in Indonesia. Her most recent publication, which she wrote together with F. von Benda-Beckmann, is Political and Legal Transformations of an Indonesian Polity (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Correspondence to Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, PO Box 110351, 06017 Halle/Saale, Germany, E-mail address: [email protected].

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