The State and Modernity as Anthropological Topics: A Very Short Introduction

Abstract

This paper aims to offer a brief introduction to anthropological studies of modernity and the state. I try to introduce some of the most important theoretical works in this field, built up in different ethnographic contexts ranging from Turkey to Latin America. I was trying to show some of the possibilities of the research of modernity and the state in anthropology emphasizing what anthropology can offer to wider debates on these topics. I argue that the ideas of modernity and the state are far more ambivalent then it sometimes may seem in European political theory and that anthropology can offer an insight into alternative forms of modernity and the state and into wider debates on these topics.