DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Anthropology of the State

A Reader

Akhil Gupta editor Aradhana Sharma editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Published:6th Dec '05

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

The Anthropology of the State cover

This innovative reader brings together classic theoretical texts and cutting-edge ethnographic analyses of specific state institutions, practices, and processes and outlines an anthropological framework for rethinking future study of “the state”.


  • Focuses on the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, and representations that constitute the “state”.

  • Promotes cultural and transnational approaches to the subject.

  • Helps readers to make anthropological sense of the state as a cultural artifact, in the context of a neoliberalizing, transnational world.

"[Sharma and Gupta] have compiled a timely, useful and dense collection of classical and more recent texts that cover the field, as I know it, pretty well." (Critique of Anthropology, 2009)

"The volume presents an innovative and greatly needed introduction to an interdisciplinary research programme between anthropology and political science." (Discourse & Society, February 2008)

"[This) volume's refreshing theoretical approach and range of empirical examples should make it a valuable teaching and reference book for all those concerned with the challenging questions posed by the state." (Political Studies Review)

ISBN: 9781405114677

Dimensions: 254mm x 175mm x 25mm

Weight: 862g

424 pages