In
political anthropology, a theatre state is a political
state
State most commonly refers to:
* State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory
**Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country
**Nation state, a ...
directed towards the performance of
drama
Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...
and
ritual
A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning. Traditionally ...
rather than towards more conventional ends such as
warfare and
welfare.
Power in a theatre state is exercised through
spectacle
In general, spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Middle English from c. 1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French ''spectacle'', itself a reflection of the ...
. The term, coined by
Clifford Geertz
Clifford James Geertz (; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades&n ...
(1926–2006) in 1980 in reference to political practice in the nineteenth-century Balinese
Negara,
has since expanded in usage. Hunik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung, for example, regard contemporary
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...
as a theatre state.
In Geertz's original usage, the concept of the theatre state contests the notion that
precolonial society can be analysed in the conventional discourse of
Oriental despotism.
In 1966,
Ben Anderson, a scholar of Indonesian culture, explicitly compared the
Japanese occupation of Indonesia to ''Kabuki''. Anderson argued that the Japanese government used the elements of ''Kabuki'', including, “mysterious silences, lightening changes of mood, terrifying grimaces, spectacular acrobatics and sumptuous pageantry” to control the Indonesians.
See also
* ''
Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali''
*
Bread and circuses
*
Military parades in North Korea
*
Byzantinism
Byzantinism, or Byzantism, is the political system and culture of the Byzantine Empire, and its spiritual successors the Orthodox Christian Balkan countries of Greece and Bulgaria especially, and to a lesser extent Serbia and some other Orthodo ...
*
Divide and rule
The term divide and conquer in politics refers to an entity gaining and maintaining political power by using divisive measures. This includes the exploitation of existing divisions within a political group by its political opponents, and also ...
*
Ritual and music system
The Chinese ritual and music system () is a social system that originated in the Zhou dynasty to maintain the social order. Together with the patriarchal system, it constituted the social system of the entire ancient China and had a great influ ...
References
Anthropology
Ritual
Pejorative terms for forms of government
Political metaphors
Drama
Political anthropology
{{Drama-stub