This course examines the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, and representations that constitute and question the nation-state. It draws on perspectives on the state developed within other disciplines. Simultaneously, a distinctively anthropological understanding of the state is articulated by focusing on systems of meaning and belief; personhood and agency; everyday practices; and persistent structures and emergent forms. The course also examines how institutions which are considered to define the modern state, such as citizenship, sovereignty, territoriality, secularism, and violence, are manifested in and represented by ethnographic research and writing.
