The power of habits

The materiality of the state depersonalizes power far more than bureaucratization.

Even faceless bureaucrats are more personable than computers, canals, roads, and

sewers. And it makes little sense to blow up a sewer because you hate the government

if you live where that sewer operates. So, the state becomes complicitous in everyday

life through things. The power of habits turns into the powers of the state.

It is also the case that the state has no core or center because it is at heart a

communication complex and territorial entity, one that keeps reweaving the fabric of

government with changing lines of communication and different ways of managing

problems of distance. This gives the state power over information and its flows,

implementing as it does an internal process of negotiation, struggle, and sharing that

helps produce the flexibility and durability of the state. It may be hard to say what the

state is because it is territorially extended and diverse, but it is even harder to say what

the state does because much of what it does is acquire and move information through

things.

Joyce, Patrick, and Chandra Mukerji. "The state of things: state history and theory reconfigured." Theory and Society 46.1 (2017): 1-19.