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Book Details
Abstract
This book explores both the complexities of local situations and the power relations that shape the global order. He shows how historically informed anthropological perspectives can contribute to debates about democratisation by incorporating a 'view from below' and revealing forces that shape power relations behind the formal facade of state institutions.
Examples are drawn from Brazil, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Peru, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Sri Lanka, amongst others.
'Coverage is world-wide, critical, and cogent'
Choice
'Covers a lot of ground in drawing out the thematic and theoretical focuses of political anthropology, brilliantly giving them life through a wide variety of empirical examples. The book will serve as a very good introduction to political anthropology for any student of power and politics'
Journal of Peace Research
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contents | v | ||
| PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION | vii | ||
| 1. Locating the political: a political anthropology for today | 1 | ||
| How not to use the West as a point of departure | 8 | ||
| The distinctiveness of the modern state | 15 | ||
| Wider implications of historical discontinuity | 18 | ||
| Political anthropology reconstituted | 20 | ||
| 2. The origins and limits of coercive power: the anthropology of stateless societies | 23 | ||
| The externalization of the political as the negation of power | 27 | ||
| Sexual politics in stateless societies | 32 | ||
| Civilization, mother of barbarism | 38 | ||
| 'Stateless societies' under the modern state | 41 | ||
| 3. From hierarchy to surveillance: the politics of agrarian civilizations and the rise of the Western national state | 45 | ||
| Political systems in theories of European development | 48 | ||
| A specifically European dynamic? | 51 | ||
| Agrarian civilization outside Europe | 58 | ||
| 4. The political anthropology of colonialism: a study of domination and resistance | 67 | ||
| Structural- functionalist political anthropology as a child of its time | 69 | ||
| The colonial process as an object of analysis | 71 | ||
| Cracks in the structures: the anthropology of resistance | 77 | ||
| 5. Post- colonial states: legacies of history and pressures of modernity | 92 | ||
| Regime variation in post- independence Africa | 94 | ||
| Deep politics: the state and civil society | 100 | ||
| Power relations in the shadow state | 103 | ||
| 'Democratization' in Latin America | 105 | ||
| Mexico: democratization versus the shadow state and militarization | 110 | ||
| Indigenous peoples and the state in Mexico and Guatemala | 119 | ||
| 6. From macro- structure to micro- process: anthropological analysis of political practice | 127 | ||
| Getting at structure through events | 130 | ||
| Politics as the activity of political men | 135 | ||
| The autonomy of the political field and its symbolic practices | 138 | ||
| Insidious strategies of power | 149 | ||
| 7. Political process and global disorder : perspectives on contemporary conflict and violence | 153 | ||
| Expanding capitalism, declining empires | 154 | ||
| Cultural globalization and power | 161 | ||
| From the fantasies of Senderology to the roots of political violence in Peru | 167 | ||
| Sri Lanka: constructing new orders through violence | 177 | ||
| 8. Society against the modern state? The politics of social movements | 184 | ||
| Social movements theory: the need for scepticism | 185 | ||
| Alternative Modernities | 196 | ||
| Cultural politics and political constructions of culture | 199 | ||
| Popular politics and the politicization of gender | 205 | ||
| 9. Anthropology and politics: commitment, responsibility and the academy | 214 | ||
| The politics of anthropological knowledge production: some initial | 215 | ||
| Acting on the basis of knowledge | 221 | ||
| Commitment at the grassroots | 227 | ||
| From knowledge to wisdom? | 234 | ||
| Power and its disguises | 238 | ||
| Bibliography | 243 | ||
| Index | 259 | ||
| Abélès, M., | 20 | ||
| 20-1 | 20 | ||
| 145-7 | 145 | ||
| academic politics 220-1 | 220 | ||
| advocacy and participation, possible forms of 236-7 | 236 | ||
| agrarian civilizations | 45 |