Do not take the state for granted

Political anthropology used to be associated with stateless societies, chiefs, and brokers far away from political centers. Yet, as a new handbook shows, the field today is engaged in studying power and politics in their contemporary forms in the cities, in government offices, in war zones, or at the borders, trying to understand the interactions of humans within political frames in a complex world. Despite transformations, the state continues to be the most important of these political frames. In their contribution to the volume, DIIS researcher Finn Stepputat and Monique Nuijten from Wageningen University write about the state and how a growing ‘anthropology of the state’ analyzes and depicts the state. Scholars in this field do not take the state for granted, but study states as unfinished projects that are produced every day through images, practices, and infrastructures. Helped by images of collapsing and fragile state administrations since the 1990s, anthropologists seek to understand the state from the outside, without recurring to the categories and concepts through which states ‘understand themselves’.