States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State

The state has recently been rediscovered as an object of inquiry in a broad range of disciplines. New methodological and theoretical approaches have shed light on the meanings and practices that, for good and for bad, turn the state into the great enframer of our lives. States of Imagination draws together the best of this recent critical thinking to explore the postcolonial state. Contributors focus on a variety of locations from Guatemala, Pakistan, and Peru to India and Ecuador and present unique vantage points, including that of rural schools, police departments, small villages, and the inside of the truth commission. Focusing on the micro-politics of everyday state-making, the contributors examine the mythologies, paradoxes, and inconsistencies of the state through ethnographies of diverse postcolonial practices. They show how the authority of the state is constantly challenged from the local as well as the global, and how growing demands to confer rights and recognition to ever more citizens, organisations, and institutions reveal the persistence of the myth of the state as a source of social order and an embodiment of popular sovereignty. Demonstrating the indispensable value of ethnographic work on the practices and the symbols of the state, States of Imagination showcases a range of studies and methods to provide insight into the diverse forms of the postcolonial state as an arena of both political and cultural struggle. This collection will interest students and scholars of anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, political science, and history.