Congratulations to Dr Insa Koch, whose book Personalizing the State: An anthropology of law, politics, and welfare in austerity Britain (Oxford University Press, 2018) has been shortlisted for both the Hart–SLSA Book Prize and the Hart–SLSA Prize for Early Career Academics. Personalizing the State argues that in order to understand the deep crisis of democracy that Britain is facing today, we need to dig deeper into the legacies of illiberalism that have been central to the British liberal state. Based on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in one of Britain's most disenfranchised neighbourhoods, a post-industrial council estate, it uncovers these legacies in people's intimate lives and demonstrates how those at the receiving end of state coercion have variously contested, appropriated and withdrawn from the state.
click here to read more about Personalizing the State