This innovative reader brings together classic theoretical textsand cutting-edge ethnographic analyses of specific stateinstitutions, practices, and processes and outlines ananthropological framework for rethinking future study of "thestate".* * Focuses on the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, andrepresentations that constitute the "state".* * Promotes cultural and transnational approaches to thesubject.* * Helps readers to make anthropological sense of the state as acultural artifact, in the context of a neoliberalizing,transnational world.

Acknowledgements.Organization of the Book.Introduction: Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age ofGlobalization.Part I: Theoretical Maps: The "Classics".Section Introduction.1. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards anInvestigation): Louis Althusser.2. Selections from the Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci.3. Bureaucracy: Max Weber.4. Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State: PhilipAbrams.5. Governmentality: Michel Foucault.6. Governing "Advanced" Liberal Democracies: NikolasRose.Part II: Ethnographic Mappings.Section I: Bureaucracy/Governmentality.7. Finding the Man in the State: Wendy Brown.8. Society, Economy, and the State Effect: Timothy Mitchell.9. Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Cultureof Politics, and the Imagined State: Akhil Gupta.Section II: Development/Planning.10. Cities, People, and Language: James Scott.11. The Anti-Politics Machine: Jim Ferguson.Section III: Welfare/Warfare/Law/Citizenship.12. The Public/Private Mirage: Mapping Homes and UndomesticatingViolence Work in the South Asian Immigrant Community: AnanyaBhattarcharjee.13. Cultural Logics of Belonging and Movement: Transnationalism,Naturalization, and U.S. Immigration Politics: Susan BiblerCoutin.14. Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization andthe Current Crisis: Catherine Lutz.Section IV: Popular Culture.15. Popular Culture and the State: Stuart Hall.16. The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in thePostcolony: Achille Mbembe.Index