RSU researcher Klāvs Sedlenieks participates in an international conference on the anthropology of the state
Klāvs Sedlenieks, Leading Researcher of the (R)E-TIES project at Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU), participated in the international conference Shifting States, held on 23–24 October 2025 at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
As part of the conference, Klāvs Sedlenieks presented the paper The State and the Afterworld. In his presentation, the researcher proposed an approach to understanding the state and political community by analysing conceptions of the afterlife as an indirect way of reflecting on social order and political relations.
The conference brought together anthropologists and researchers from different countries to discuss shifting state formations, governance processes, and societal relationships with the state. The event was organised by the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) network Anthropology of the State, with Klāvs Sedlenieks also contributing as a co-organiser.
- Abstract 'The state and the Afterworld'
Klāvs Sedlenieks
How can we understand what individuals think about the state or the political community, and how they imagine the relationships within it? The most straightforward approach would be to observe their actions – yet this offers limited insight into the concepts and ideas they hold. Alternatively, one might conduct interviews, though their reliability is often contested. In this presentation, I propose an indirect method: examining conceptions of the afterlife as a means of reflecting on this life and its political order. This approach, admittedly, also depends on interviews or self-reflection and thus lacks the advantages of direct observation or participant observation. The theoretical framework draws on classical assumptions – from Marx to Weber and Durkheim – concerning the relationship between social reality and religious ideas. Empirically, it builds on examples from preliminary interviews conducted in recent years in Latvia.
