"Beyond being topical, this groundbreaking collection represents precisely the kind of inquiry that contemporary anthropology should be dedicating itself to--one brave enough to abide, ethnographically and theoretically, in the interstices of knowledge-based and experiential models, in the gaps between individual and collective agency, in realms of historical and cultural contingency."--Debbora Battaglia, Mount Holyoke College

Introduction: Altered States, Altered Lives / Carol J. GreenhousePart One: Law against CultureGhettos in the Holocaust: The Improvisation of Social Order in a Culture of Terror / Carroll McC. LewinUnsettled Settlers: Internal Pacification and Vagrancy in Namibia / Robert J. GordonJudges without Courts: The Legal Culture of German Reunification / Howard J. De NikePart Two: Ethnographies of Agency in the Fissures of the StateEthnography in/of Transnational Processes: Following Gyres in the Worlds of Big Science and European Integration / Stacia E. ZabuskyThe Composite State: The Poor and the Nation in Manila / Phillip C. ParnellDomestic Matters: Feminism and Activism Among Palestinian Women in Israel / Elizabeth Faier“Best Interests” and the Repatriation of Vietnamese Unaccompanied Minors / James M. Freeman and Nguyen Dinh HuuPart Three: Resistance and RemembranceBeating the Bounds: Law, Identity, and Territory in the New Europe / Eve Darian-Smith“Honest Bandits” and “Warped People”: Russian Narratives about Money, Corruption, and Moral Decay / Nancy RiesTrance Against the State / Judy RosenthalPart Four: ConclusionThe Perfidy of Gaze and the Pain of Uncertainty: Anthropological Theory and the Search for Culture / Elizabeth MertzToward in Anthropology of Fragments, Instabilities, and Incomplete Transitions / Kay B. WarrenContributorsWorks CitedIndex