The Anthropology of Politics

A Reader in Ethnography, Theory,

and Critique

Edited by
Joan Vincent

BLACKWELL
Publish

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

viii
1

Joan Vincent
Parti

Prelude: The Enlightenment and its Challenges

15

Introduction
Adam Ferguson, Civil Society (1767)
Adam Smith Free-Market Policies (1776)
Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (1795), Universal History with
Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), and Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View (1797)
Henry Sumner Maine, The Effects of the Observation of India on
European Thought (1887)
Lewis Henry Morgan, The Property Career of Mankind (1877)
Karl Marx, Spectres outside the Domain of Political Economy (1844)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The World Market (1847)
James Mooney, The Dream of a Redeemer (1896)

23
24
24
24
25

Part II

27

Classics and Classics Revisited

Introduction
1
1

17
21
21
22

29

Nuer Politics: Structure and System (1940)

E. E. Evans-Pritchard

34

Nuer Ethnicity Militarized

39

Sharon Elaine Hutchinson

3

"The Bridge": Analysis of a Social Situation in Zululand

Max Gluckman

53

VI

CONTENTS

4 "The Bridge" Revisited

Ronald Frankenberg
5 Market Model, Class Structure and Consent: A Reconsideration
of Swat Political Organization
Talal Asad

59

65

6 The Troubles of Ranhamy Ge Punchirala

E. R. Leach

82

90

Stratagems and Spoils

F. G. Bailey

8 Passages, Margins, and Poverty: Religious Symbols of Communitas

Victor W. Turner
9 Political Anthropology
Marc J. Swartz, Victor W. Turner, and Arthur Tuden

96
102

10 New Proposals for Anthropologists

Kathleen Gough

110

11 National Liberation
Eric R. Wolf

120

Part III

127

Imperial Times, Colonial Places

Introduction
12 From the History of Colonial Anthropology to the Anthropology
of Western Hegemony
Talal Asad
13 East of Said
Richard G. Fox

129
133
143

14 Perceptions of Protest: Defining the Dangerous in Colonial Sumatra

Ann Stoler

153

15 Culture of Terror - Space of Death

Michael Taussig

172

16 Images of the Peasant in the Consciousness of the Venezuelan

Proletariat
William Roseberry

187

17 Of Revelation and Revolution

Jean and John Comaroff

203

18 Between Speech and Silence

Susan Gal

213

19 Facing Power - Old Insights, New Questions

Eric R. Wolf

222

CONTENTS

VII

20 Ethnographic Aspects of the World Capitalist System

June Nash

234

Part IV

255

Cosmopolitics: Confronting a New Millennium

Introduction

257

21 The New World Disorder

Benedict Anderson
22 Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination
Arjun Appadurai

261

23 Transnationalization, Socio-political Disorder, and Ethnification as

Expressions of Declining Global Hegemony
Jonathan Friedman

271

285

24 Deadly Developments and Phantasmagoric Representations

S. P. Reyna

301

25 Modernity at the Edge of Empire

David Nugent

313

26 Politics on the Periphery

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

325

27 Flexible Citizenship among Chinese Cosmopolitans

Aihwa Ong

338

28 Long-distance Nationalism Defined

Nina Glick Schiller and Georges Fouron

356

29 Theorizing Socialism: A Prologue to the "Transition"

Katherine Verdery

366

30 Marx Went Away but Karl Stayed Behind

Caroline Humphrey

387

31 The Anti-politics Machine

James Ferguson

399

32 Peasants against Globalization

Marc Edelman

409

33 On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below

Paul Farmer

424

34 Anthropology and Politics: Commitment, Responsibility

and the Academy
John Gledhill

438

35 Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-coloniality

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

452

Index

461