Anthropology of the State: An Introduction

Abstract

By maintaining a close dialogue with political philosophy, history, sociology, and the legal sciences, anthropological research has produced a large body of ethnographic analysis and theoretical reflections that analyze the concrete ways through which state power is exercised, the daily interactions of people with the state, and the practices and discourses through which its legitimacy is reproduced, challenged and renegotiated. The state has proved to be a broad and multifaceted research object, which has been tackled on multiple levels of analysis.