states, states, and more states – a guest blog post by nick rowland

Nicholas Rowland is an associate professor of sociology at Penn State – Altoona. He is a sociologist of science and an Indiana alumnus. In this guest post, he asks for your help in exploring how social scientists imagine the state.

Greetings Orgtheory community,

I write to ask for help, help in hunting-down states. I am in the middle of compiling a list of different state concepts from all over academia. By “state concepts” (specifically plural) I am referring of concepts that appear to be crafted according to the formula “[select key term] state” wherein “[s]tate activity related to [select key term] becomes the definition of the self-referential term” (2015). Many of you are doubtlessly familiar with these sorts of concepts, for example, Adams’ “spectacular state” or Karl’s “petro state” of Guss’s “festive state” or Geertz’s “theater state” and so on. While some of these terms are esoteric and perhaps only used once or only by one scholar, others – such as “modern state,” “bureaucratic state” or “administrative state” – are so commonplace they almost appear to have no progenitor at all.

If you are familiar with concepts not featured below, please do leave a quick comment with the name of the concept and, if possible, some idea of where it comes from – even a vague idea of its origins helps. So far, this is the list of state concepts, and “thank you in advance” to those who offer to help.

[Ed. – It gets real statey and fun below this page break… you’ve been warned.]

1. “Absolutist State”,
2. “Actor State”,
3. “Actor-Network State”,
4. “Administrative State”,
5. “Ambiguous State”,
6. “Apartheid State”,
7. “Aseptic State”,
8. “Associative State”,
9. “Authoritarian State”,
10. “Autonomous State”,
11. “Autopoietic State”,
12. “Bolshevist State”,
13. “Bureaucratic State”,
14. “Calibrating State”,
15. “Capitalist State”,
16. “City State”,
17. “Class State”,
18. “Client State”,
19. “Coercive State”,
20. “Colonial State”,
21. “Commodity State”,
22. “Communist State”,
23. “Confessional State”,
24. “Constituent State”,
25. “Constitutive State”,
26. “Container State”,
27. “Contaminated State”,
28. “Core State”,
29. “Cyborg State”,
30. “Data State”,
31. “De Facto State”,
32. “Defective State”,
33. “Democratic State”,
34. “Developmental State”,
35. “Developmentalist State”,
36. “Dirigiste State”,
37. “Disabled State”,
38. “Disaggregated State”,
39. “Disembodied State”,
40. “Distributive State”,
41. “Elusive State”,
42. “Embodied State”,
43. “Emergency State”,
44. “Enabling State”,
45. “Engineering State”,
46. “Enviro State”,
47. “Environmental State”,
48. “Fascist State”,
49. “Failed State”,
50. “Familial State”,
51. “Federal State”,
52. “Festive State”,
53. “Feudal State”,
54. “Fiscal-Military State”,
55. “Fragile State”,
56. “Fragmented State”,
57. “Future State”,
58. “Garrison State”,
59. “Glass State”,
60. “Gendered State”,
61. “Global State”,
62. “Heretical State”,
63. “Hobbesian State”
64. “Hollow State”,
65. “Hydraulic State”,
66. “Imagined State”,
67. “Imperial State”,
68. “Informational State”,
69. “Infrastructure State”,
70. “Kenyseian State”,
71. “Laissez-Faire State”,
72. “Leaky State”,
73. “Local State”,
74. “Magic State”,
75. “Magical State”,
76. “Military State”,
77. “Mineral State”,
78. “Mining State”,
79. “Modern State”,
80. “Nanny State”,
81. “Nascent State”,
82. “Nation State”,
83. “National Security State”,
84. “Neoliberal State”,
85. “Network State”,
86. “Networked State”,
87. “Para State”,
88. “Parent State”,
89. “Parental State”,
90. “Paternalistic State”,
91. “Patriot State”,
92. “Patron State”,
93. “Penal State”,
94. “Periphery State”,
95. “Petro State”,
96. “Person State”,
97. “Pariah State”,
98. “Paternal State”,
99. “Police State”
100. “Policy State”,
101. “Politicized State”,
102. “Post-Colonial State”,
103. “Post-Fordist Welfare State”,
104. “Post-Industrial State”,
105. “Post-Regulatory State”,
106. “Predatory State”,
107. “Premodern State”,
108. “Pristine State”,
109. “Pseudo State”,
110. “Powerless State”,
111. “Quasi State”,
112. “Racial State”,
113. “Real State”,
114. “Regulatory State”,
115. “Rentier State”,
116. “Republican State”,
117. “Scientific State”,
118. “Security State”,
119. “Shadow State”,
120. “Schumpeterian Workfare State”,
121. “Social Services State”,
122. “Socialist State”,
123. “Sovereign State”,
124. “Spectacle State”,
125. “Spectacular State”,
126. “Surveillance State”,
127. “Sustainable State”,
128. “Strong State”,
129. “Technoscientific State”,
130. “Temple State”,
131. “Territorial State”,
132. “Theater State”,
133. “Therapeutic State”,
134. “Total State”,
135. “Transnational State”,
136. “Transnational Network State”,
137. “Unrecognized State”,
138. “Virtual State”,
139. “Weak State”,
140. “Weberian State”,
141. “Welfare State”,

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