* Combines classic theoretical texts with cutting edge anthropological works. * Focuses on the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, and representations that constitute the "state". * Promotes cultural and transnational approaches to the subject.

This innovative reader brings together classic theoretical texts and cutting-edge ethnographic analyses of specific state institutions, practices, and processes and outlines an anthropological framework for rethinking future study of "the state".

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• Focuses on the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, and representations that constitute the "state".
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• Promotes cultural and transnational approaches to the subject.
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• Helps readers to make anthropological sense of the state as a cultural artifact, in the context of a neoliberalizing, transnational world.