The territorially sovereign nation-state - the globally dominant political formation of Western modernity - is in crisis. Though it is a highly heterogeneous assemblage, moulded by different histories involving myriad socio-cultural processes, its territorial integrity and sovereignty are always contingent and related to the distribution and organization of authority and power, and the state's position within encompassing global dynamics.
This volume attends to these contingencies as they are refracted by the communities and populations that are variously incorporated (in conformity or resistance) within their ordering processes. With ethnographically grounded analyses and thick description of locales as various as Russia, Lebanon and Indonesia, a vital conversation emerges about forms of state control under challenge or in transition.
It is clear that the politico-social configurations of the state are still taking new directions, such as extremist populism and a general dissatisfaction with the corporatism of digital and technological revolutions. These are symptoms of the dilemmas at the peripheries of capital growth coming home to roost at their centres. Such transformations demand the new forms of conceptualization that the anthropological approaches of the essays in this volume present.