Anthropology in the Margins of the State

by Das, Veena; Poole, Deborah

• ISBN13: 9781930618404
• ISBN10: 1930618409
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr

Summary

The very form and reach of the modern state are changing radically under the pressure of globalization. Drawing on fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Peru, Guatemala, India, Chad, Colombia, and South Africa, the contributors examine official documentary practices and their forms and falsifications; the problems that highly mobile mercenaries, currency, goods, arms, and diamonds pose to the state; emerging non-state regulatory authorities; and the role language plays as cultures struggle to articulate their situation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
1 State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies	3	(32)
Veena Das and Deborah Poole
2 Between Threat and Guarantee: Justice and Community in the Margins of the Peruvian State	35	(32)
Deborah Poole
3 Checkpoint: Anthropology, Identity, and the State	67	(14)
Pradeep Jeganathan
4 Deterritorialized Citizenship and the Resonances of the Sierra Leonean State	81	(36)
Mariane C. Ferme
5 Anthropologist Discovers Legendary Two-Faced Indian! Margins, the State, and Duplicity in Postwar Guatemala	117	(24)
Diane M. Nelson
6 AIDS and Witchcraft in Post-Apartheid South Africa	141	(24)
Adam Ashforth
7 Operability: Surgery at the Margin of the State	165	(26)
Lawrence Cohen
8 Productivity in the Margins: The Reconstitution of State Power in the Chad Basin	191	(34)
Janet Roitman
9 The Signature of the State: The Paradox of Illegibility	225	(28)
Veena Das
10 Contesting Displacement in Colombia: Citizenship and State Sovereignty at the Margins	253	(26)
Victoria Sanford
11 Where Are the Margins of the State?	279	(10)
Talal Asad
References	289	(32)
Index	321