Crisis of the State

The variety of the essays and empirical cases demonstrate clearly the necessity of careful analysis of local situations and provide strong arguments for avoiding the overemphasis of singular explanations, such as those based on human rights...Because of its theoretical sophistication as well as empirical force the volume deserves a careful reading. Helsinki Review of Global Governance...this volume...provides rich theoretical and empirical inputs for discussions of some of the most important current issues concerning the state, globalization, and the use of violence. AnthroposAnalyzing both historical contexts and geographical locations, this volume explores the continuous reformation of state power and its potential in situations of violent conflict. The state, otherwise understood as an abstract and transcendent concept in many works on globalization in political philosophy, is instead located and analyzed here as an embedded part of lived reality. This relationship to the state is exposed as an integral factor to the formation of the social - whether in Africa, the Middle East, South America or the United States. Through the examination of these particular empirical settings of war or war-like situations, the book further argues for the continued importance of the state in shifting social and political circumstances. In doing so, the authors provide a critical contribution to debates within a broad spectrum of fields that are concerned with the future of the state, the nature of sovereignty, and globalization.Bruce Kapferer is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Bergen. He has held academic positions in Zambia, Manchester, Adelaide, London and Queensland and carried out extensive fieldwork in Zambia, Sri Lanka, India, Australia and South Africa.Bjørn Enge Bertelsen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bergen. His work focuses on violence, history, sovereignty, and the post-colonial state and is based mainly on fieldwork in Mozambique.